697 research outputs found
Networks for Nonlinear Diffusion Problems in Imaging
A multitude of imaging and vision tasks have seen recently a major
transformation by deep learning methods and in particular by the application of
convolutional neural networks. These methods achieve impressive results, even
for applications where it is not apparent that convolutions are suited to
capture the underlying physics.
In this work we develop a network architecture based on nonlinear diffusion
processes, named DiffNet. By design, we obtain a nonlinear network architecture
that is well suited for diffusion related problems in imaging. Furthermore, the
performed updates are explicit, by which we obtain better interpretability and
generalisability compared to classical convolutional neural network
architectures. The performance of DiffNet tested on the inverse problem of
nonlinear diffusion with the Perona-Malik filter on the STL-10 image dataset.
We obtain competitive results to the established U-Net architecture, with a
fraction of parameters and necessary training data
Improving Fiber Alignment in HARDI by Combining Contextual PDE Flow with Constrained Spherical Deconvolution
We propose two strategies to improve the quality of tractography results
computed from diffusion weighted magnetic resonance imaging (DW-MRI) data. Both
methods are based on the same PDE framework, defined in the coupled space of
positions and orientations, associated with a stochastic process describing the
enhancement of elongated structures while preserving crossing structures. In
the first method we use the enhancement PDE for contextual regularization of a
fiber orientation distribution (FOD) that is obtained on individual voxels from
high angular resolution diffusion imaging (HARDI) data via constrained
spherical deconvolution (CSD). Thereby we improve the FOD as input for
subsequent tractography. Secondly, we introduce the fiber to bundle coherence
(FBC), a measure for quantification of fiber alignment. The FBC is computed
from a tractography result using the same PDE framework and provides a
criterion for removing the spurious fibers. We validate the proposed
combination of CSD and enhancement on phantom data and on human data, acquired
with different scanning protocols. On the phantom data we find that PDE
enhancements improve both local metrics and global metrics of tractography
results, compared to CSD without enhancements. On the human data we show that
the enhancements allow for a better reconstruction of crossing fiber bundles
and they reduce the variability of the tractography output with respect to the
acquisition parameters. Finally, we show that both the enhancement of the FODs
and the use of the FBC measure on the tractography improve the stability with
respect to different stochastic realizations of probabilistic tractography.
This is shown in a clinical application: the reconstruction of the optic
radiation for epilepsy surgery planning
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