518 research outputs found
A review of segmentation and deformable registration methods applied to adaptive cervical cancer radiation therapy treatment planning
Objective: Manual contouring and registration for radiotherapy treatment planning and online adaptation for cervical cancer radiation therapy in computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance images (MRI) are often necessary. However manual intervention is time consuming and may suffer from inter or intra-rater variability. In recent years a number of computer-guided automatic or semi-automatic segmentation and registration methods have been proposed. Segmentation and registration in CT and MRI for this purpose is a challenging task due to soft tissue deformation, inter-patient shape and appearance variation and anatomical changes over the course of treatment. The objective of this work is to provide a state-of-the-art review of computer-aided methods developed for adaptive treatment planning and radiation therapy planning for cervical cancer radiation therapy. Methods: Segmentation and registration methods published with the goal of cervical cancer treatment planning and adaptation have been identified from the literature (PubMed and Google Scholar). A comprehensive description of each method is provided. Similarities and differences of these methods are highlighted and the strengths and weaknesses of these methods are discussed. A discussion about choice of an appropriate method for a given modality is provided. Results: In the reviewed papers a Dice similarity coefficient of around 0.85 along with mean absolute surface distance of 2-4. mm for the clinically treated volume were reported for transfer of contours from planning day to the treatment day. Conclusions: Most segmentation and non-rigid registration methods have been primarily designed for adaptive re-planning for the transfer of contours from planning day to the treatment day. The use of shape priors significantly improved segmentation and registration accuracy compared to other models
Patch-based segmentation with spatial context for medical image analysis
Accurate segmentations in medical imaging form a crucial role in many applications from pa-
tient diagnosis to population studies. As the amount of data generated from medical images
increases, the ability to perform this task without human intervention becomes ever more de-
sirable. One approach, known broadly as atlas-based segmentation, is to propagate labels from
images which have already been manually labelled by clinical experts. Methods using this ap-
proach have been shown to be e ective in many applications, demonstrating great potential for
automatic labelling of large datasets. However, these methods usually require the use of image
registration and are dependent on the outcome of the registration. Any registrations errors
that occur are also propagated to the segmentation process and are likely to have an adverse
e ect on segmentation accuracy. Recently, patch-based methods have been shown to allow a
relaxation of the required image alignment, whilst achieving similar results. In general, these
methods label each voxel of a target image by comparing the image patch centred on the voxel
with neighbouring patches from an atlas library and assigning the most likely label according
to the closest matches. The main contributions of this thesis focuses around this approach
in providing accurate segmentation results whilst minimising the dependency on registration
quality. In particular, this thesis proposes a novel kNN patch-based segmentation framework,
which utilises both intensity and spatial information, and explore the use of spatial context in
a diverse range of applications. The proposed methods extend the potential for patch-based
segmentation to tolerate registration errors by rede ning the \locality" for patch selection and
comparison, whilst also allowing similar looking patches from di erent anatomical structures
to be di erentiated. The methods are evaluated on a wide variety of image datasets, ranging
from the brain to the knees, demonstrating its potential with results which are competitive to
state-of-the-art techniques.Open Acces
Landmark Localization, Feature Matching and Biomarker Discovery from Magnetic Resonance Images
The work presented in this thesis proposes several methods that can be roughly divided into three different categories: I) landmark localization in medical images, II) feature matching for image registration,
and III) biomarker discovery in neuroimaging.
The first part deals with the identification of anatomical landmarks. The motivation stems from the fact that the manual identification and labeling of these landmarks is very time consuming and prone to observer errors, especially when large datasets must be analyzed. In this thesis we present three methods to tackle this challenge: A landmark descriptor based on local self-similarities (SS), a subspace building framework based on manifold learning and a sparse coding landmark descriptor based on data-specific learned dictionary basis.
The second part of this thesis deals with finding matching features between a pair of images. These matches can be used to perform a registration between them. Registration is a powerful tool that allows mapping images in a common space in order to aid in their analysis. Accurate registration can be challenging to achieve using intensity based registration algorithms. Here, a framework is proposed for learning correspondences in pairs of images by matching SS features and random sample and consensus (RANSAC) is employed as a robust model estimator to learn a deformation model based on feature matches.
Finally, the third part of the thesis deals with biomarker discovery using machine learning. In this section a framework for feature extraction from learned low-dimensional subspaces that represent inter-subject
variability is proposed. The manifold subspace is built using data-driven regions of interest (ROI). These regions are learned via sparse regression, with stability selection. Also, probabilistic distribution models for
different stages in the disease trajectory are estimated for different class populations in the low-dimensional manifold and used to construct a probabilistic scoring function.Open Acces
Aligning 3D Curve with Surface Using Tangent and Normal Vectors for Computer-Assisted Orthopedic Surgery
Registration that aligns different views of one interested organ together is an essential technique and outstanding problem in medical robotics and image-guided surgery (IGS). This work introduces a novel rigid point set registration (PSR) approach that aims to accurately map the pre-operative space with the intra-operative space to enable successful image guidance for computer-assisted orthopaedic surgery (CAOS). The normal vectors and tangent vectors are first extracted from the pre-operative and intra-operative point sets (PSs) respectively, and are further utilized to enhance the registration accuracy and robustness. The contributions of this article are three-folds. First, we propose and formulate a novel distribution that describes the error between one normal vector and the corresponding tangent vector based on the von-Mises Fisher (vMF) distribution. Second, by modelling the anisotropic position localization error with the multi-variate Gaussian distribution, we formulate the PSR considering anisotropic localization error as a maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) problem and then solve it under the expectation maximization (EM) framework. Third, to facilitate the optimization process, the gradients of the objective function with respect to the desired parameters are computed and presented. Extensive experimental results on the human femur and pelvis models verify that the proposed approach outperforms the state-of-the-art methods, and demonstrate potential clinical values for relevant surgical navigation applications
Computational Anatomy for Multi-Organ Analysis in Medical Imaging: A Review
The medical image analysis field has traditionally been focused on the
development of organ-, and disease-specific methods. Recently, the interest in
the development of more 20 comprehensive computational anatomical models has
grown, leading to the creation of multi-organ models. Multi-organ approaches,
unlike traditional organ-specific strategies, incorporate inter-organ relations
into the model, thus leading to a more accurate representation of the complex
human anatomy. Inter-organ relations are not only spatial, but also functional
and physiological. Over the years, the strategies 25 proposed to efficiently
model multi-organ structures have evolved from the simple global modeling, to
more sophisticated approaches such as sequential, hierarchical, or machine
learning-based models. In this paper, we present a review of the state of the
art on multi-organ analysis and associated computation anatomy methodology. The
manuscript follows a methodology-based classification of the different
techniques 30 available for the analysis of multi-organs and multi-anatomical
structures, from techniques using point distribution models to the most recent
deep learning-based approaches. With more than 300 papers included in this
review, we reflect on the trends and challenges of the field of computational
anatomy, the particularities of each anatomical region, and the potential of
multi-organ analysis to increase the impact of 35 medical imaging applications
on the future of healthcare.Comment: Paper under revie
Deep learning in medical image registration: introduction and survey
Image registration (IR) is a process that deforms images to align them with
respect to a reference space, making it easier for medical practitioners to
examine various medical images in a standardized reference frame, such as
having the same rotation and scale. This document introduces image registration
using a simple numeric example. It provides a definition of image registration
along with a space-oriented symbolic representation. This review covers various
aspects of image transformations, including affine, deformable, invertible, and
bidirectional transformations, as well as medical image registration algorithms
such as Voxelmorph, Demons, SyN, Iterative Closest Point, and SynthMorph. It
also explores atlas-based registration and multistage image registration
techniques, including coarse-fine and pyramid approaches. Furthermore, this
survey paper discusses medical image registration taxonomies, datasets,
evaluation measures, such as correlation-based metrics, segmentation-based
metrics, processing time, and model size. It also explores applications in
image-guided surgery, motion tracking, and tumor diagnosis. Finally, the
document addresses future research directions, including the further
development of transformers
3D Deep Learning on Medical Images: A Review
The rapid advancements in machine learning, graphics processing technologies
and availability of medical imaging data has led to a rapid increase in use of
deep learning models in the medical domain. This was exacerbated by the rapid
advancements in convolutional neural network (CNN) based architectures, which
were adopted by the medical imaging community to assist clinicians in disease
diagnosis. Since the grand success of AlexNet in 2012, CNNs have been
increasingly used in medical image analysis to improve the efficiency of human
clinicians. In recent years, three-dimensional (3D) CNNs have been employed for
analysis of medical images. In this paper, we trace the history of how the 3D
CNN was developed from its machine learning roots, give a brief mathematical
description of 3D CNN and the preprocessing steps required for medical images
before feeding them to 3D CNNs. We review the significant research in the field
of 3D medical imaging analysis using 3D CNNs (and its variants) in different
medical areas such as classification, segmentation, detection, and
localization. We conclude by discussing the challenges associated with the use
of 3D CNNs in the medical imaging domain (and the use of deep learning models,
in general) and possible future trends in the field.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures, 2 table
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