89,819 research outputs found
Designing an analysis system for imaging process from bone scintigraphy as a potential predictor for validation of bone metastases
Cancer is a disease that is the leading cause of death worldwide. In 2012, there were 8.2 million deaths caused by cancer. Cancer suffered by patients can metastasize to other body parts, such as the lungs, liver, brain, and bones. The risk of bone metastases becomes higher after cancer has spread to other body tissues, so it is necessary to do more specific bone examinations. Bone scintigraphy is one of the applications from nuclear medicine that utilizes 99mTc radioactive material as a radio-pharmaceutical for bone scanning examinations. Bone scintigraphy is done to determine the presence of metastases in the bone caused by cancer. This bone scan is an image capture method with high sensitivity but has the disadvantage of not clearly distinguishing the presence of hotspots that appear due to metastases, trauma, or other abnormalities in the bones. This research aims to create an analysis system design based on image processing scripts using MATLAB. Medical physicists and nuclear medicine technicians can later use this system to conduct quantitative analysis as a reliable predictor system that validates visual analysis of hotspots suspected of being metastasis of cancer. Based on the result, prediction of the presence of bone metastasis by quantitative analysis using digital image processing techniques can be made. With a significance level of 5%, a prediction results using the analysis system design are compatible with the results of the diagnosis obtained from the medical record data of the patient of (85.67% ± 12.71%)
MedGAN: Medical Image Translation using GANs
Image-to-image translation is considered a new frontier in the field of
medical image analysis, with numerous potential applications. However, a large
portion of recent approaches offers individualized solutions based on
specialized task-specific architectures or require refinement through
non-end-to-end training. In this paper, we propose a new framework, named
MedGAN, for medical image-to-image translation which operates on the image
level in an end-to-end manner. MedGAN builds upon recent advances in the field
of generative adversarial networks (GANs) by merging the adversarial framework
with a new combination of non-adversarial losses. We utilize a discriminator
network as a trainable feature extractor which penalizes the discrepancy
between the translated medical images and the desired modalities. Moreover,
style-transfer losses are utilized to match the textures and fine-structures of
the desired target images to the translated images. Additionally, we present a
new generator architecture, titled CasNet, which enhances the sharpness of the
translated medical outputs through progressive refinement via encoder-decoder
pairs. Without any application-specific modifications, we apply MedGAN on three
different tasks: PET-CT translation, correction of MR motion artefacts and PET
image denoising. Perceptual analysis by radiologists and quantitative
evaluations illustrate that the MedGAN outperforms other existing translation
approaches.Comment: 16 pages, 8 figure
Medical imaging analysis with artificial neural networks
Given that neural networks have been widely reported in the research community of medical imaging, we provide a focused literature survey on recent neural network developments in computer-aided diagnosis, medical image segmentation and edge detection towards visual content analysis, and medical image registration for its pre-processing and post-processing, with the aims of increasing awareness of how neural networks can be applied to these areas and to provide a foundation for further research and practical development. Representative techniques and algorithms are explained in detail to provide inspiring examples illustrating: (i) how a known neural network with fixed structure and training procedure could be applied to resolve a medical imaging problem; (ii) how medical images could be analysed, processed, and characterised by neural networks; and (iii) how neural networks could be expanded further to resolve problems relevant to medical imaging. In the concluding section, a highlight of comparisons among many neural network applications is included to provide a global view on computational intelligence with neural networks in medical imaging
Classification of interstitial lung disease patterns with topological texture features
Topological texture features were compared in their ability to classify
morphological patterns known as 'honeycombing' that are considered indicative
for the presence of fibrotic interstitial lung diseases in high-resolution
computed tomography (HRCT) images. For 14 patients with known occurrence of
honey-combing, a stack of 70 axial, lung kernel reconstructed images were
acquired from HRCT chest exams. A set of 241 regions of interest of both
healthy and pathological (89) lung tissue were identified by an experienced
radiologist. Texture features were extracted using six properties calculated
from gray-level co-occurrence matrices (GLCM), Minkowski Dimensions (MDs), and
three Minkowski Functionals (MFs, e.g. MF.euler). A k-nearest-neighbor (k-NN)
classifier and a Multilayer Radial Basis Functions Network (RBFN) were
optimized in a 10-fold cross-validation for each texture vector, and the
classification accuracy was calculated on independent test sets as a
quantitative measure of automated tissue characterization. A Wilcoxon
signed-rank test was used to compare two accuracy distributions and the
significance thresholds were adjusted for multiple comparisons by the
Bonferroni correction. The best classification results were obtained by the MF
features, which performed significantly better than all the standard GLCM and
MD features (p < 0.005) for both classifiers. The highest accuracy was found
for MF.euler (97.5%, 96.6%; for the k-NN and RBFN classifier, respectively).
The best standard texture features were the GLCM features 'homogeneity' (91.8%,
87.2%) and 'absolute value' (90.2%, 88.5%). The results indicate that advanced
topological texture features can provide superior classification performance in
computer-assisted diagnosis of interstitial lung diseases when compared to
standard texture analysis methods.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, Proceedings SPIE Medical Imaging 201
Volumetric analysis of arteriovenous malformation using computed tomographic angiography
Thesis (M.A.)--Boston UniversityAn arteriovenous malformation (AVM) is an abnormal collection of blood vessels in which arterial blood flows directly into the draining vein without the normal interposed capillaries. It is an important and growing public healthcare problem affecting millions of Americans and many more people internationally. There are several potential treatment options for the AVM, and the best treatment depends on the maximum length of nidus based on the Spetzler- Martin grading system. However, this grading system is insensitive to volume, because it was designed on the basis of two dimensional digital subtraction
angiography images. Here, we report a method using computed tomographic angiography to measure the volume of AVM nidus, as a means for noninvasively assessment. The initial results show statistically significant differences between healthy and AVM subject groups in the direct comparisons of the volume (cm3) through the method we suggested (2.456 ± 1.482, 12.478 ± 5.743 and 53.963 ± 9.338 (mean ± stdev.); Normal (No AVM), Small (< 3cm), Medium (3 ~ 6 cm) respectively; P < 0.005 for all), and they also show the exponential correlation between the AVM volume and the maximum length of a nidus (trend-line: y = 4.4183e0.536x with R2 = 0.945). These results provide more accurate volumetric information. Therefore, this noninvasive imaging-based method is a promising means to measure the volume of AVM using clinically available imaging tools
The Small World of Osteocytes: Connectomics of the Lacuno-Canalicular Network in Bone
Osteocytes and their cell processes reside in a large, interconnected network
of voids pervading the mineralized bone matrix of most vertebrates. This
osteocyte lacuno-canalicular network (OLCN) is believed to play important roles
in mechanosensing, mineral homeostasis, and for the mechanical properties of
bone. While the extracellular matrix structure of bone is extensively studied
on ultrastructural and macroscopic scales, there is a lack of quantitative
knowledge on how the cellular network is organized. Using a recently introduced
imaging and quantification approach, we analyze the OLCN in different bone
types from mouse and sheep that exhibit different degrees of structural
organization not only of the cell network but also of the fibrous matrix
deposited by the cells. We define a number of robust, quantitative measures
that are derived from the theory of complex networks. These measures enable us
to gain insights into how efficient the network is organized with regard to
intercellular transport and communication. Our analysis shows that the cell
network in regularly organized, slow-growing bone tissue from sheep is less
connected, but more efficiently organized compared to irregular and
fast-growing bone tissue from mice. On the level of statistical topological
properties (edges per node, edge length and degree distribution), both network
types are indistinguishable, highlighting that despite pronounced differences
at the tissue level, the topological architecture of the osteocyte canalicular
network at the subcellular level may be independent of species and bone type.
Our results suggest a universal mechanism underlying the self-organization of
individual cells into a large, interconnected network during bone formation and
mineralization
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