4,983 research outputs found
Robust Cardiac Motion Estimation using Ultrafast Ultrasound Data: A Low-Rank-Topology-Preserving Approach
Cardiac motion estimation is an important diagnostic tool to detect heart
diseases and it has been explored with modalities such as MRI and conventional
ultrasound (US) sequences. US cardiac motion estimation still presents
challenges because of the complex motion patterns and the presence of noise. In
this work, we propose a novel approach to estimate the cardiac motion using
ultrafast ultrasound data. -- Our solution is based on a variational
formulation characterized by the L2-regularized class. The displacement is
represented by a lattice of b-splines and we ensure robustness by applying a
maximum likelihood type estimator. While this is an important part of our
solution, the main highlight of this paper is to combine a low-rank data
representation with topology preservation. Low-rank data representation
(achieved by finding the k-dominant singular values of a Casorati Matrix
arranged from the data sequence) speeds up the global solution and achieves
noise reduction. On the other hand, topology preservation (achieved by
monitoring the Jacobian determinant) allows to radically rule out distortions
while carefully controlling the size of allowed expansions and contractions.
Our variational approach is carried out on a realistic dataset as well as on a
simulated one. We demonstrate how our proposed variational solution deals with
complex deformations through careful numerical experiments. While maintaining
the accuracy of the solution, the low-rank preprocessing is shown to speed up
the convergence of the variational problem. Beyond cardiac motion estimation,
our approach is promising for the analysis of other organs that experience
motion.Comment: 15 pages, 10 figures, Physics in Medicine and Biology, 201
Unified Heat Kernel Regression for Diffusion, Kernel Smoothing and Wavelets on Manifolds and Its Application to Mandible Growth Modeling in CT Images
We present a novel kernel regression framework for smoothing scalar surface
data using the Laplace-Beltrami eigenfunctions. Starting with the heat kernel
constructed from the eigenfunctions, we formulate a new bivariate kernel
regression framework as a weighted eigenfunction expansion with the heat kernel
as the weights. The new kernel regression is mathematically equivalent to
isotropic heat diffusion, kernel smoothing and recently popular diffusion
wavelets. Unlike many previous partial differential equation based approaches
involving diffusion, our approach represents the solution of diffusion
analytically, reducing numerical inaccuracy and slow convergence. The numerical
implementation is validated on a unit sphere using spherical harmonics. As an
illustration, we have applied the method in characterizing the localized growth
pattern of mandible surfaces obtained in CT images from subjects between ages 0
and 20 years by regressing the length of displacement vectors with respect to
the template surface.Comment: Accepted in Medical Image Analysi
Subdivision surface fitting to a dense mesh using ridges and umbilics
Fitting a sparse surface to approximate vast dense data is of interest for many applications: reverse engineering, recognition and compression, etc. The present work provides an approach to fit a Loop subdivision surface to a dense triangular mesh of arbitrary topology, whilst preserving and aligning the original features. The natural ridge-joined connectivity of umbilics and ridge-crossings is used as the connectivity of the control mesh for subdivision, so that the edges follow salient features on the surface. Furthermore, the chosen features and connectivity characterise the overall shape of the original mesh, since ridges capture extreme principal curvatures and ridges start and end at umbilics. A metric of Hausdorff distance including curvature vectors is proposed and implemented in a distance transform algorithm to construct the connectivity. Ridge-colour matching is introduced as a criterion for edge flipping to improve feature alignment. Several examples are provided to demonstrate the feature-preserving capability of the proposed approach
Canonical Melnikov theory for diffeomorphisms
We study perturbations of diffeomorphisms that have a saddle connection
between a pair of normally hyperbolic invariant manifolds. We develop a
first-order deformation calculus for invariant manifolds and show that a
generalized Melnikov function or Melnikov displacement can be written in a
canonical way. This function is defined to be a section of the normal bundle of
the saddle connection.
We show how our definition reproduces the classical methods of Poincar\'{e}
and Melnikov and specializes to methods previously used for exact symplectic
and volume-preserving maps. We use the method to detect the transverse
intersection of stable and unstable manifolds and relate this intersection to
the set of zeros of the Melnikov displacement.Comment: laTeX, 31 pages, 3 figure
Reconstruction of cosmological initial conditions from galaxy redshift catalogues
We present and test a new method for the reconstruction of cosmological
initial conditions from a full-sky galaxy catalogue. This method, called
ZTRACE, is based on a self-consistent solution of the growing mode of
gravitational instabilities according to the Zel'dovich approximation and
higher order in Lagrangian perturbation theory. Given the evolved
redshift-space density field, smoothed on some scale, ZTRACE finds via an
iterative procedure, an approximation to the initial density field for any
given set of cosmological parameters; real-space densities and peculiar
velocities are also reconstructed. The method is tested by applying it to
N-body simulations of an Einstein-de Sitter and an open cold dark matter
universe. It is shown that errors in the estimate of the density contrast
dominate the noise of the reconstruction. As a consequence, the reconstruction
of real space density and peculiar velocity fields using non-linear algorithms
is little improved over those based on linear theory. The use of a
mass-preserving adaptive smoothing, equivalent to a smoothing in Lagrangian
space, allows an unbiased (although noisy) reconstruction of initial
conditions, as long as the (linearly extrapolated) density contrast does not
exceed unity. The probability distribution function of the initial conditions
is recovered to high precision, even for Gaussian smoothing scales of ~ 5
Mpc/h, except for the tail at delta >~ 1. This result is insensitive to the
assumptions of the background cosmology.Comment: 19 pages, MN style, 12 figures included, revised version. MNRAS, in
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