649 research outputs found
A local Gaussian filter and adaptive morphology as tools for completing partially discontinuous curves
This paper presents a method for extraction and analysis of curve--type
structures which consist of disconnected components. Such structures are found
in electron--microscopy (EM) images of metal nanograins, which are widely used
in the field of nanosensor technology.
The topography of metal nanograins in compound nanomaterials is crucial to
nanosensor characteristics. The method of completing such templates consists of
three steps. In the first step, a local Gaussian filter is used with different
weights for each neighborhood. In the second step, an adaptive morphology
operation is applied to detect the endpoints of curve segments and connect
them. In the last step, pruning is employed to extract a curve which optimally
fits the template
Characterizing Cardiac Electrophysiology during Radiofrequency Ablation : An Integrative Ex vivo, In silico, and In vivo Approach
Catheter ablation is a major treatment for atrial tachycardias. Hereby, the precise monitoring of the lesion formation is an important success factor. This book presents computational, wet-lab, and clinical studies with the aim of evaluating the signal characteristics of the intracardiac electrograms (IEGMs) recorded around ablation lesions from different perspectives. The detailed analysis of the IEGMs can optimize the description of durable and complex lesions during the ablation procedure
Development of a fast and accurate method for the segmentation of diabetic foot ulcer images
A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of
Master’s in Information and Communication Science and Engineering of the Nelson
Mandela African Institution of Science and TechnologyGlobally, Diabetic Foot Ulcers (DFUs) are among the major sources of morbidity and death
among people diagnosed with diabetes. Diabetic foot ulcers are the leading diabetes-related
complications that result in non-traumatic lower-limb amputations among these patients. Being
a serious health concern, DFUs present a significant therapeutic challenge to specialists,
particularly in countries with limited health resources and where the vast majority of patients
are admitted to healthcare facilities when the ulcers have fully advanced.
Clinical practices currently employed to assess and treat DFU are mostly based on the vigilance
of both the patient and clinician. These practices have been proved to experience major
limitations which include less accurate assessment methods, time-consuming diagnostic
procedures, and relatively high treatment costs. Digital image processing is thus a potential
solution to address issues of the inaccuracy of visual assessment as well as minimizing
consecutive patient visits to the clinics.
Image processing techniques for ulcer assessment have thus been a center of study in various
works of literature. In the available works of literature, these methods include measuring the
ulcer area as well as using a medical digital photography scheme. The most notable drawbacks
of such approaches include system complexity, complex-exhaustive training phases, and high
computational cost.
Inspired by the weaknesses of the existing techniques, this study proposes a segmentation
method that incorporates a hybrid diffusion-steered functional derived from the Total variation
and the Perona-Malik diffusivities, which have been reported that they can effectively capture
semantic features in images. Empirical results from the experiments that were carried out in
the MATLAB environment show that the proposed method generates clearer segmented
outputs with higher perceptual and objective qualities. More importantly, the proposed method
offers lower computational times—an advantage that gives more insights into the possible
application of the method in time-sensitive tasks
Computational intelligence approaches to robotics, automation, and control [Volume guest editors]
No abstract available
Brain-Inspired Computing
This open access book constitutes revised selected papers from the 4th International Workshop on Brain-Inspired Computing, BrainComp 2019, held in Cetraro, Italy, in July 2019. The 11 papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in this book. They deal with research on brain atlasing, multi-scale models and simulation, HPC and data infra-structures for neuroscience as well as artificial and natural neural architectures
An image segmentation and registration approach to cardiac function analysis using MRI
Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are one of the major causes of death in the world. In recent
years, significant progress has been made in the care and treatment of patients with such
diseases. A crucial factor for this progress has been the development of magnetic resonance
(MR) imaging which makes it possible to diagnose and assess the cardiovascular function
of the patient. The ability to obtain high-resolution, cine volume images easily and safely
has made it the preferred method for diagnosis of CVDs. MRI is also unique in its ability
to introduce noninvasive markers directly into the tissue being imaged(MR tagging) during
the image acquisition process. With the development of advanced MR imaging acquisition
technologies, 3D MR imaging is more and more clinically feasible. This recent development has
allowed new potentially 3D image analysis technologies to be deployed. However, quantitative
analysis of cardiovascular system from the images remains a challenging topic.
The work presented in this thesis describes the development of segmentation and motion
analysis techniques for the study of the cardiac anatomy and function in cardiac magnetic
resonance (CMR) images. The first main contribution of the thesis is the development of a fully
automatic cardiac segmentation technique that integrates and combines a series of state-of-the-art
techniques. The proposed segmentation technique is capable of generating an accurate 3D
segmentation from multiple image sequences. The proposed segmentation technique is robust
even in the presence of pathological changes, large anatomical shape variations and locally
varying contrast in the images.
Another main contribution of this thesis is the development of motion tracking techniques that
can integrate motion information from different sources. For example, the radial motion of
the myocardium can be tracked easily in untagged MR imaging since the epi- and endocardial
surfaces are clearly visible. On the other hand, tagged MR imaging allows easy tracking of
both longitudinal and circumferential motion. We propose a novel technique based on non-rigid
image registration for the myocardial motion estimation using both untagged and 3D tagged MR
images. The novel aspect of our technique is its simultaneous use of complementary information
from both untagged and 3D tagged MR imaging. The similarity measure is spatially weighted
to maximise the utility of information from both images.
The thesis also proposes a sparse representation for free-form deformations (FFDs) using the principles of compressed sensing. The sparse free-form deformation (SFFD) model can
capture fine local details such as motion discontinuities without sacrificing robustness. We
demonstrate the capabilities of the proposed framework to accurately estimate smooth as well
as discontinuous deformations in 2D and 3D CMR image sequences. Compared to the standard
FFD approach, a significant increase in registration accuracy can be observed in datasets with
discontinuous motion patterns.
Both the segmentation and motion tracking techniques presented in this thesis have been
applied to clinical studies. We focus on two important clinical applications that can be
addressed by the techniques proposed in this thesis. The first clinical application aims
at measuring longitudinal changes in cardiac morphology and function during the cardiac
remodelling process. The second clinical application aims at selecting patients that positively
respond to cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT).
The final chapter of this thesis summarises the main conclusions that can be drawn from the
work presented here and also discusses possible avenues for future research
Exploiting Spatio-Temporal Coherence for Video Object Detection in Robotics
This paper proposes a method to enhance video object detection for indoor environments in robotics. Concretely, it exploits knowledge about the camera motion between frames to propagate previously detected objects to successive frames. The proposal is rooted in the concepts of planar homography to propose regions of interest where to find objects, and recursive Bayesian filtering to integrate observations over time. The proposal is evaluated on six virtual, indoor environments, accounting for the detection of nine object classes over a total of ∼ 7k frames. Results show that our proposal improves the recall and the F1-score by a factor of 1.41 and 1.27, respectively, as well as it achieves a significant reduction of the object categorization entropy (58.8%) when compared to a two-stage video object detection method used as baseline, at the cost of small time overheads (120 ms) and precision loss (0.92).</p
Doctor of Philosophy
dissertationSuccessful shale gas and tight oil production is enabled by the engineering innovation of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing. Hydraulically induced fractures will most likely deviate from the bi-wing planar pattern and generate complex fracture networks due to mechanical interactions and reservoir heterogeneity, both of which render the conventional fracture simulators insufficient to characterize the fractured reservoir. Moreover, in reservoirs with ultra-low permeability, the natural fractures are widely distributed, which will result in hydraulic fractures branching and merging at the interface and consequently lead to the creation of more complex fracture networks. Thus, developing a reliable hydraulic fracturing simulator, including both mechanical interaction and fluid flow, is critical in maximizing hydrocarbon recovery and optimizing fracture/well design and completion strategy in multistage horizontal wells. A novel fully coupled reservoir flow and geomechanics model based on the dual-lattice system is developed to simulate multiple nonplanar fractures' propagation in both homogeneous and heterogeneous reservoirs with or without pre-existing natural fractures. Initiation, growth, and coalescence of the microcracks will lead to the generation of macroscopic fractures, which is explicitly mimicked by failure and removal of bonds between particles from the discrete element network. This physics-based modeling approach leads to realistic fracture patterns without using the empirical rock failure and fracture propagation criteria required in conventional continuum methods. Based on this model, a sensitivity study is performed to investigate the effects of perforation spacing, in-situ stress anisotropy, rock properties (Young's modulus, Poisson's ratio, and compressive strength), fluid properties, and natural fracture properties on hydraulic fracture propagation. In addition, since reservoirs are buried thousands of feet below the surface, the parameters used in the reservoir flow simulator have large uncertainty. Those biased and uncertain parameters will result in misleading oil and gas recovery predictions. The Ensemble Kalman Filter is used to estimate and update both the state variables (pressure and saturations) and uncertain reservoir parameters (permeability). In order to directly incorporate spatial information such as fracture location and formation heterogeneity into the algorithm, a new covariance matrix method is proposed. This new method has been applied to a simplified single-phase reservoir and a complex black oil reservoir with complex structures to prove its capability in calibrating the reservoir parameters
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