1,328 research outputs found

    DoctorEye: A clinically driven multifunctional platform, for accurate processing of tumors in medical images

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    Copyright @ Skounakis et al.This paper presents a novel, open access interactive platform for 3D medical image analysis, simulation and visualization, focusing in oncology images. The platform was developed through constant interaction and feedback from expert clinicians integrating a thorough analysis of their requirements while having an ultimate goal of assisting in accurately delineating tumors. It allows clinicians not only to work with a large number of 3D tomographic datasets but also to efficiently annotate multiple regions of interest in the same session. Manual and semi-automatic segmentation techniques combined with integrated correction tools assist in the quick and refined delineation of tumors while different users can add different components related to oncology such as tumor growth and simulation algorithms for improving therapy planning. The platform has been tested by different users and over large number of heterogeneous tomographic datasets to ensure stability, usability, extensibility and robustness with promising results. AVAILABILITY: THE PLATFORM, A MANUAL AND TUTORIAL VIDEOS ARE AVAILABLE AT: http://biomodeling.ics.forth.gr. It is free to use under the GNU General Public License

    Deciphering hierarchical organization of topologically associated domains through change-point testing.

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    BACKGROUND: The nucleus of eukaryotic cells spatially packages chromosomes into a hierarchical and distinct segregation that plays critical roles in maintaining transcription regulation. High-throughput methods of chromosome conformation capture, such as Hi-C, have revealed topologically associating domains (TADs) that are defined by biased chromatin interactions within them. RESULTS: We introduce a novel method, HiCKey, to decipher hierarchical TAD structures in Hi-C data and compare them across samples. We first derive a generalized likelihood-ratio (GLR) test for detecting change-points in an interaction matrix that follows a negative binomial distribution or general mixture distribution. We then employ several optimal search strategies to decipher hierarchical TADs with p values calculated by the GLR test. Large-scale validations of simulation data show that HiCKey has good precision in recalling known TADs and is robust against random collisions of chromatin interactions. By applying HiCKey to Hi-C data of seven human cell lines, we identified multiple layers of TAD organization among them, but the vast majority had no more than four layers. In particular, we found that TAD boundaries are significantly enriched in active chromosomal regions compared to repressed regions. CONCLUSIONS: HiCKey is optimized for processing large matrices constructed from high-resolution Hi-C experiments. The method and theoretical result of the GLR test provide a general framework for significance testing of similar experimental chromatin interaction data that may not fully follow negative binomial distributions but rather more general mixture distributions

    Brain Tumor Segmentation with Deep Neural Networks

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    In this paper, we present a fully automatic brain tumor segmentation method based on Deep Neural Networks (DNNs). The proposed networks are tailored to glioblastomas (both low and high grade) pictured in MR images. By their very nature, these tumors can appear anywhere in the brain and have almost any kind of shape, size, and contrast. These reasons motivate our exploration of a machine learning solution that exploits a flexible, high capacity DNN while being extremely efficient. Here, we give a description of different model choices that we've found to be necessary for obtaining competitive performance. We explore in particular different architectures based on Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN), i.e. DNNs specifically adapted to image data. We present a novel CNN architecture which differs from those traditionally used in computer vision. Our CNN exploits both local features as well as more global contextual features simultaneously. Also, different from most traditional uses of CNNs, our networks use a final layer that is a convolutional implementation of a fully connected layer which allows a 40 fold speed up. We also describe a 2-phase training procedure that allows us to tackle difficulties related to the imbalance of tumor labels. Finally, we explore a cascade architecture in which the output of a basic CNN is treated as an additional source of information for a subsequent CNN. Results reported on the 2013 BRATS test dataset reveal that our architecture improves over the currently published state-of-the-art while being over 30 times faster

    The Topology ToolKit

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    This system paper presents the Topology ToolKit (TTK), a software platform designed for topological data analysis in scientific visualization. TTK provides a unified, generic, efficient, and robust implementation of key algorithms for the topological analysis of scalar data, including: critical points, integral lines, persistence diagrams, persistence curves, merge trees, contour trees, Morse-Smale complexes, fiber surfaces, continuous scatterplots, Jacobi sets, Reeb spaces, and more. TTK is easily accessible to end users due to a tight integration with ParaView. It is also easily accessible to developers through a variety of bindings (Python, VTK/C++) for fast prototyping or through direct, dependence-free, C++, to ease integration into pre-existing complex systems. While developing TTK, we faced several algorithmic and software engineering challenges, which we document in this paper. In particular, we present an algorithm for the construction of a discrete gradient that complies to the critical points extracted in the piecewise-linear setting. This algorithm guarantees a combinatorial consistency across the topological abstractions supported by TTK, and importantly, a unified implementation of topological data simplification for multi-scale exploration and analysis. We also present a cached triangulation data structure, that supports time efficient and generic traversals, which self-adjusts its memory usage on demand for input simplicial meshes and which implicitly emulates a triangulation for regular grids with no memory overhead. Finally, we describe an original software architecture, which guarantees memory efficient and direct accesses to TTK features, while still allowing for researchers powerful and easy bindings and extensions. TTK is open source (BSD license) and its code, online documentation and video tutorials are available on TTK's website

    Robust laparoscopic instruments tracking using colored strips

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    To assist surgeons in the acquisition of the required skills for the proper execution of the laparoscopic procedure, surgical simulators are used. During training with simulators it is useful to provide a surgical performance quantitative evaluation. Recent research works showed that such evaluation can be obtained by tracking the laparoscopic instruments, using only the images provided by the laparoscope and without hindering the surgical scene. In this work the state of the art method is improved so that a robust tracking can run even with the noisy background provided by realistic simulators. The method was validated by comparison with the tracking of a â\u80\u9cchess-boardâ\u80\u9d pattern and following tests were performed to check the robustness of the developed algorithm. Despite the noisy environment, the implemented method was found to be able to track the tip of the surgical instrument with a good accuracy compared to the other studies in the literature
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