Motion Artifact Reduction in Breast Dynamic Infrared Imaging

Dynamic infrared imaging is a promising technique in breast oncology. In this study a QWIP infrared camera is used to acquire a sequence of consecutive thermal images of the patient's breast for 10 s. Information on the local blood perfusion is obtained from the spectral analysis of the time series at each image pixel. Due to respiratory and motion artifacts, the direct comparison of the temperature values that a pixel assumes along the sequence becomes difficult. In fact, the small temperature changes due to blood perfusion, of the order of 10-50 mK, which constitute the signal of interest in the time domain, are superimposed onto large temperature fluctuations due to the subject's motion, which represent noise. To improve the time series signal-to-noise ratio, and, as a consequence, enhance the specificity and sensitivity of the dynamic infrared examination, it is important to realign the thermal images of the acquisition sequence thus reducing motion artifacts. In a previous study we demonstrated that a registration algorithm based on fiducial points is suitable to both clinical applications and research, when associated with a proper set of skin markers. In this paper, we quantitatively evaluate the performance of different marker sets by means of a model that allows for estimating the signal-to-noise ratio increment due to registration, and we conclude that a 12-marker set is a good compromise between motion artifact reduction and the time required to prepare the patien

A CNN based hybrid approach towards automatic image registration

Image registration is a key component of spatial analyses that involve different data sets of the same area. Automatic approaches in this domain have witnessed the application of several intelligent methodologies over the past decade; however accuracy of these approaches have been limited due to the inability to properly model shape as well as contextual information. In this paper, we investigate the possibility of an evolutionary computing based framework towards automatic image registration. Cellular Neural Network has been found to be effective in improving feature matching as well as resampling stages of registration, and complexity of the approach has been considerably reduced using corset optimization. CNN-prolog based approach has been adopted to dynamically use spectral and spatial information for representing contextual knowledge. The salient features of this work are feature point optimisation, adaptive resampling and intelligent object modelling. Investigations over various satellite images revealed that considerable success has been achieved with the procedure. Methodology also illustrated to be effective in providing intelligent interpretation and adaptive resampling

Local interpolation schemes for landmark-based image registration: a comparison

In this paper we focus, from a mathematical point of view, on properties and performances of some local interpolation schemes for landmark-based image registration. Precisely, we consider modified Shepard's interpolants, Wendland's functions, and Lobachevsky splines. They are quite unlike each other, but all of them are compactly supported and enjoy interesting theoretical and computational properties. In particular, we point out some unusual forms of the considered functions. Finally, detailed numerical comparisons are given, considering also Gaussians and thin plate splines, which are really globally supported but widely used in applications

Alinhamento de imagens de esclerose múltipla

Nos doentes com esclerose múltipla (EM), a imagiologia por Ressonância Magnética (RM), apesar de não ser uma técnica imagiológica específica para esta doença, permite melhorar a capacidade de diagnóstico e acompanhar a evolução das lesões associadas. Assim, os médicos especialistas são frequentemente confrontados com diversas imagens por RM, quer obtidas em instantes distintos quer adquiridas segundo condições diferentes, para avaliar e comparar cargas de lesões. Contudo, nas avaliações e comparações manuais, além de demoradas e tediosas, residem sempre numerosas fontes de erro, o que origina resultados não confiáveis e repetíveis. Desta forma, para melhorar a análise das imagens, é frequente proceder ao seu alinhamento prévio. O principal objectivo deste trabalho consiste em avaliar o desempenho de dois algoritmos no alinhamento automático das estruturas representadas em imagens cerebrais de doentes com EM, obtidas através de RM, para o acompanhamento do progresso das lesões associadas

A novel hierarchical template matching model for cardiac motion estimation

Cardiovascular disease diagnosis and prognosis can be improved by measuring patient-specific in-vivo local myocardial strain using Magnetic Resonance Imaging. Local myocardial strain can be determined by tracking the movement of sample muscles points during cardiac cycle using cardiac motion estimation model. The tracking accuracy of the benchmark Free Form Deformation (FFD) model is greatly affected due to its dependency on tunable parameters and regularisation function. Therefore, Hierarchical Template Matching (HTM) model, which is independent of tunable parameters, regularisation function, and image-specific features, is proposed in this article. HTM has dense and uniform points correspondence that provides HTM with the ability to estimate local muscular deformation with a promising accuracy of less than half a millimetre of cardiac wall muscle. As a result, the muscles tracking accuracy has been significantly (p<0.001) improved (30%) compared to the benchmark model. Such merits of HTM provide reliably calculated clinical measures which can be incorporated into the decision-making process of cardiac disease diagnosis and prognosis

Research Issues in Image Registration for Remote Sensing

Image registration is an important element in data processing for remote sensing with many applications and a wide range of solutions. Despite considerable investigation the field has not settled on a definitive solution for most applications and a number of questions remain open. This article looks at selected research issues by surveying the experience of operational satellite teams, application-specific requirements for Earth science, and our experiments in the evaluation of image registration algorithms with emphasis on the comparison of algorithms for subpixel accuracy. We conclude that remote sensing applications put particular demands on image registration algorithms to take into account domain-specific knowledge of geometric transformations and image content

MOUNTAINOUS REMOTE SENSING IMAGES REGISTRATION BASED ON IMPROVED OPTICAL FLOW ESTIMATION

Mountainous remote sensing images registration is more complicated than in other areas as geometric distortion caused by topographic relief, which could not be precisely achieved via constructing local mapping functions in the feature-based framework. Optical flow algorithm estimating motion of consecutive frames in computer vision pixel by pixel is introduced for mountainous remote sensing images registration. However, it is sensitive to land cover changes that are inevitable for remote sensing image, resulting in incorrect displacement. To address this problem, we proposed an improved optical flow estimation concentrated on post-processing, namely displacement modification. First of all, the Laplacian of Gaussian (LoG) algorithm is employed to detect the abnormal value in color map of displacement. Then, the abnormal displacement is recalculated in the interpolation surface constructed by the rest accurate displacements. Following the successful coordinate transformation and resampling, the registration outcome is generated. Experiments demonstrated that the proposed method is insensitive in changeable region of mountainous remote sensing image, generating precise registration, outperforming the other local transformation model estimation methods in both visual judgment and quantitative evaluation