850 research outputs found
Born Normalization for Fluorescence Optical Projection Tomography for Whole Heart Imaging
Optical projection tomography is a three-dimensional imaging technique that has been recently introduced as an imaging tool primarily in developmental biology and gene expression studies. The technique renders biological sample optically transparent by first dehydrating them and then placing in a mixture of benzyl alcohol and benzyl benzoate in a 2:1 ratio (BABB or Murray s Clear solution). The technique renders biological samples optically transparent by first dehydrating them in graded ethanol solutions then placing them in a mixture of benzyl alcohol and benzyl benzoate in a 2:1 ratio (BABB or Murray s Clear solution) to clear. After the clearing process the scattering contribution in the sample can be greatly reduced and made almost negligible while the absorption contribution cannot be eliminated completely. When trying to reconstruct the fluorescence distribution within the sample under investigation, this contribution affects the reconstructions and leads, inevitably, to image artifacts and quantification errors.. While absorption could be reduced further with a permanence of weeks or months in the clearing media, this will lead to progressive loss of fluorescence and to an unrealistically long sample processing time. This is true when reconstructing both exogenous contrast agents (molecular contrast agents) as well as endogenous contrast (e.g. reconstructions of genetically expressed fluorescent proteins)
Shearlet-based compressed sensing for fast 3D cardiac MR imaging using iterative reweighting
High-resolution three-dimensional (3D) cardiovascular magnetic resonance
(CMR) is a valuable medical imaging technique, but its widespread application
in clinical practice is hampered by long acquisition times. Here we present a
novel compressed sensing (CS) reconstruction approach using shearlets as a
sparsifying transform allowing for fast 3D CMR (3DShearCS). Shearlets are
mathematically optimal for a simplified model of natural images and have been
proven to be more efficient than classical systems such as wavelets. Data is
acquired with a 3D Radial Phase Encoding (RPE) trajectory and an iterative
reweighting scheme is used during image reconstruction to ensure fast
convergence and high image quality. In our in-vivo cardiac MRI experiments we
show that the proposed method 3DShearCS has lower relative errors and higher
structural similarity compared to the other reconstruction techniques
especially for high undersampling factors, i.e. short scan times. In this
paper, we further show that 3DShearCS provides improved depiction of cardiac
anatomy (measured by assessing the sharpness of coronary arteries) and two
clinical experts qualitatively analyzed the image quality
Microscopy without Imaging: Compressive Sensing for Heart-synchronized Imaging
We demonstrate experimentally that direct analysis of compressively sensed signals provides sufficient information to achieve high-precision phase lock to a periodicallymoving structure, without any need to ever reconstruct an image of the target object
Submillimeter diffusion tensor imaging and late gadolinium enhancement cardiovascular magnetic resonance of chronic myocardial infarction.
BackgroundKnowledge of the three-dimensional (3D) infarct structure and fiber orientation remodeling is essential for complete understanding of infarct pathophysiology and post-infarction electromechanical functioning of the heart. Accurate imaging of infarct microstructure necessitates imaging techniques that produce high image spatial resolution and high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). The aim of this study is to provide detailed reconstruction of 3D chronic infarcts in order to characterize the infarct microstructural remodeling in porcine and human hearts.MethodsWe employed a customized diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) technique in conjunction with late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) on a 3T clinical scanner to image, at submillimeter resolution, myofiber orientation and scar structure in eight chronically infarcted porcine hearts ex vivo. Systematic quantification of local microstructure was performed and the chronic infarct remodeling was characterized at different levels of wall thickness and scar transmurality. Further, a human heart with myocardial infarction was imaged using the same DTI sequence.ResultsThe SNR of non-diffusion-weighted images was >100 in the infarcted and control hearts. Mean diffusivity and fractional anisotropy (FA) demonstrated a 43% increase, and a 35% decrease respectively, inside the scar tissue. Despite this, the majority of the scar showed anisotropic structure with FA higher than an isotropic liquid. The analysis revealed that the primary eigenvector orientation at the infarcted wall on average followed the pattern of original fiber orientation (imbrication angle mean: 1.96 ± 11.03° vs. 0.84 ± 1.47°, p = 0.61, and inclination angle range: 111.0 ± 10.7° vs. 112.5 ± 6.8°, p = 0.61, infarcted/control wall), but at a higher transmural gradient of inclination angle that increased with scar transmurality (r = 0.36) and the inverse of wall thickness (r = 0.59). Further, the infarcted wall exhibited a significant increase in both the proportion of left-handed epicardial eigenvectors, and in the angle incoherency. The infarcted human heart demonstrated preservation of primary eigenvector orientation at the thinned region of infarct, consistent with the findings in the porcine hearts.ConclusionsThe application of high-resolution DTI and LGE-CMR revealed the detailed organization of anisotropic infarct structure at a chronic state. This information enhances our understanding of chronic post-infarction remodeling in large animal and human hearts
Video Compressive Sensing for Dynamic MRI
We present a video compressive sensing framework, termed kt-CSLDS, to
accelerate the image acquisition process of dynamic magnetic resonance imaging
(MRI). We are inspired by a state-of-the-art model for video compressive
sensing that utilizes a linear dynamical system (LDS) to model the motion
manifold. Given compressive measurements, the state sequence of an LDS can be
first estimated using system identification techniques. We then reconstruct the
observation matrix using a joint structured sparsity assumption. In particular,
we minimize an objective function with a mixture of wavelet sparsity and joint
sparsity within the observation matrix. We derive an efficient convex
optimization algorithm through alternating direction method of multipliers
(ADMM), and provide a theoretical guarantee for global convergence. We
demonstrate the performance of our approach for video compressive sensing, in
terms of reconstruction accuracy. We also investigate the impact of various
sampling strategies. We apply this framework to accelerate the acquisition
process of dynamic MRI and show it achieves the best reconstruction accuracy
with the least computational time compared with existing algorithms in the
literature.Comment: 30 pages, 9 figure
Early Diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease by NIRF Spectroscopy\ud and Nuclear Medicine\ud
Novel approaches to Early Diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease by NIRF Spectroscopy and Nuclear Medicine are presented and related cognitive, as well as molecular and cellular, models are critically evaluated.\u
Early Diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease by NIRF Spectroscopy and Nuclear Medicine-v.4.0
There is an urgent need for the early detection of diseases such as Alzheimer’s (AD) and Cancers in order to enable their successful treatment. Cancer is the second major cause of death after Heart Disease, and AD is the third major cause of death with major, human and financial/economics trillion dollar consequences for the society. Nuclear Medicine is concerned with applications in Medicine of Nuclear Science and Engineering techniques and knowledge. Three major Nuclear Medicine techniques that are established for diagnostic and research purposes are: Positron Emission Tomography (PET) and CAT/CT, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging (NMRI/MRI). However, these three techniques have also major limitations in terms of either cost or image resolution, as well as patient irradiation in the case of CAT/CT and PET. On the other hand, Near Infrared Chemical Imaging Microspectroscopy and certain Fluorescence spectroscopic techniques are capable of single cancer cell and/or single molecule detection and/or imaging. Such powerful capabilities, combined with low cost of diagnostics, make these novel techniques very attractive means for early detection of diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer’s, that are promising to reduce the fatality rate of patients through adequate diagnosis and treatment of such diseases at early stages. 
Currently NIH provides only inadequate funding for the clinical and research aspects of these novel investigation and clinical diagnostic techniques by FT-NIRS and Fluorescence spectrocopy for early detection of Alzheimer’s and Cancers.

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