Medical imaging analysis with artificial neural networks

Given that neural networks have been widely reported in the research community of medical imaging, we provide a focused literature survey on recent neural network developments in computer-aided diagnosis, medical image segmentation and edge detection towards visual content analysis, and medical image registration for its pre-processing and post-processing, with the aims of increasing awareness of how neural networks can be applied to these areas and to provide a foundation for further research and practical development. Representative techniques and algorithms are explained in detail to provide inspiring examples illustrating: (i) how a known neural network with fixed structure and training procedure could be applied to resolve a medical imaging problem; (ii) how medical images could be analysed, processed, and characterised by neural networks; and (iii) how neural networks could be expanded further to resolve problems relevant to medical imaging. In the concluding section, a highlight of comparisons among many neural network applications is included to provide a global view on computational intelligence with neural networks in medical imaging

Numerical methods for multiscale inverse problems

We consider the inverse problem of determining the highly oscillatory coefficient $a^\epsilon$ in partial differential equations of the form $-\nabla\cdot (a^\epsilon\nabla u^\epsilon)+bu^\epsilon = f$ from given measurements of the solutions. Here, $\epsilon$ indicates the smallest characteristic wavelength in the problem ($0<\epsilon\ll1$). In addition to the general difficulty of finding an inverse, the oscillatory nature of the forward problem creates an additional challenge of multiscale modeling, which is hard even for forward computations. The inverse problem in its full generality is typically ill-posed and one common approach is to replace the original problem with an effective parameter estimation problem. We will here include microscale features directly in the inverse problem and avoid ill-posedness by assuming that the microscale can be accurately represented by a low-dimensional parametrization. The basis for our inversion will be a coupling of the parametrization to analytic homogenization or a coupling to efficient multiscale numerical methods when analytic homogenization is not available. We will analyze the reduced problem, $b = 0$, by proving uniqueness of the inverse in certain problem classes and by numerical examples and also include numerical model examples for medical imaging, $b > 0$, and exploration seismology, $b < 0$

Inviwo -- A Visualization System with Usage Abstraction Levels

The complexity of today's visualization applications demands specific visualization systems tailored for the development of these applications. Frequently, such systems utilize levels of abstraction to improve the application development process, for instance by providing a data flow network editor. Unfortunately, these abstractions result in several issues, which need to be circumvented through an abstraction-centered system design. Often, a high level of abstraction hides low level details, which makes it difficult to directly access the underlying computing platform, which would be important to achieve an optimal performance. Therefore, we propose a layer structure developed for modern and sustainable visualization systems allowing developers to interact with all contained abstraction levels. We refer to this interaction capabilities as usage abstraction levels, since we target application developers with various levels of experience. We formulate the requirements for such a system, derive the desired architecture, and present how the concepts have been exemplary realized within the Inviwo visualization system. Furthermore, we address several specific challenges that arise during the realization of such a layered architecture, such as communication between different computing platforms, performance centered encapsulation, as well as layer-independent development by supporting cross layer documentation and debugging capabilities