Improved adaptive complex diffusion despeckling filter

Despeckling optical coherence tomograms from the human retina is a fundamental step to a better diagnosis or as a preprocessing stage for retinal layer segmentation. Both of these applications are particularly important in monitoring the progression of retinal disorders. In this study we propose a new formulation for a well-known nonlinear complex diffusion filter. A regularization factor is now made to be dependent on data, and the process itself is now an adaptive one. Experimental results making use of synthetic data show the good performance of the proposed formulation by achieving better quantitative results and increasing computation speed.Fundação para a Ciência e TecnologiaFEDERPrograma COMPET

Echocardiography

The book "Echocardiography - New Techniques" brings worldwide contributions from highly acclaimed clinical and imaging science investigators, and representatives from academic medical centers. Each chapter is designed and written to be accessible to those with a basic knowledge of echocardiography. Additionally, the chapters are meant to be stimulating and educational to the experts and investigators in the field of echocardiography. This book is aimed primarily at cardiology fellows on their basic echocardiography rotation, fellows in general internal medicine, radiology and emergency medicine, and experts in the arena of echocardiography. Over the last few decades, the rate of technological advancements has developed dramatically, resulting in new techniques and improved echocardiographic imaging. The authors of this book focused on presenting the most advanced techniques useful in today's research and in daily clinical practice. These advanced techniques are utilized in the detection of different cardiac pathologies in patients, in contributing to their clinical decision, as well as follow-up and outcome predictions. In addition to the advanced techniques covered, this book expounds upon several special pathologies with respect to the functions of echocardiography