1,318 research outputs found
Invertible Orientation Scores of 3D Images
The enhancement and detection of elongated structures in noisy image data is
relevant for many biomedical applications. To handle complex crossing
structures in 2D images, 2D orientation scores were introduced, which already
showed their use in a variety of applications. Here we extend this work to 3D
orientation scores. First, we construct the orientation score from a given
dataset, which is achieved by an invertible coherent state type of transform.
For this transformation we introduce 3D versions of the 2D cake-wavelets, which
are complex wavelets that can simultaneously detect oriented structures and
oriented edges. For efficient implementation of the different steps in the
wavelet creation we use a spherical harmonic transform. Finally, we show some
first results of practical applications of 3D orientation scores.Comment: ssvm 2015 published version in LNCS contains a mistake (a switch
notation spherical angles) that is corrected in this arxiv versio
Locally Adaptive Frames in the Roto-Translation Group and their Applications in Medical Imaging
Locally adaptive differential frames (gauge frames) are a well-known
effective tool in image analysis, used in differential invariants and
PDE-flows. However, at complex structures such as crossings or junctions, these
frames are not well-defined. Therefore, we generalize the notion of gauge
frames on images to gauge frames on data representations defined on the extended space of positions and
orientations, which we relate to data on the roto-translation group ,
. This allows to define multiple frames per position, one per
orientation. We compute these frames via exponential curve fits in the extended
data representations in . These curve fits minimize first or second
order variational problems which are solved by spectral decomposition of,
respectively, a structure tensor or Hessian of data on . We include
these gauge frames in differential invariants and crossing preserving PDE-flows
acting on extended data representation and we show their advantage compared
to the standard left-invariant frame on . Applications include
crossing-preserving filtering and improved segmentations of the vascular tree
in retinal images, and new 3D extensions of coherence-enhancing diffusion via
invertible orientation scores
Nilpotent Approximations of Sub-Riemannian Distances for Fast Perceptual Grouping of Blood Vessels in 2D and 3D
We propose an efficient approach for the grouping of local orientations
(points on vessels) via nilpotent approximations of sub-Riemannian distances in
the 2D and 3D roto-translation groups and . In our distance
approximations we consider homogeneous norms on nilpotent groups that locally
approximate , and which are obtained via the exponential and logarithmic
map on . In a qualitative validation we show that the norms provide
accurate approximations of the true sub-Riemannian distances, and we discuss
their relations to the fundamental solution of the sub-Laplacian on .
The quantitative experiments further confirm the accuracy of the
approximations. Quantitative results are obtained by evaluating perceptual
grouping performance of retinal blood vessels in 2D images and curves in
challenging 3D synthetic volumes. The results show that 1) sub-Riemannian
geometry is essential in achieving top performance and 2) that grouping via the
fast analytic approximations performs almost equally, or better, than
data-adaptive fast marching approaches on and .Comment: 18 pages, 9 figures, 3 tables, in review at JMI
Left-invariant evolutions of wavelet transforms on the Similitude Group
Enhancement of multiple-scale elongated structures in noisy image data is
relevant for many biomedical applications but commonly used PDE-based
enhancement techniques often fail at crossings in an image. To get an overview
of how an image is composed of local multiple-scale elongated structures we
construct a multiple scale orientation score, which is a continuous wavelet
transform on the similitude group, SIM(2). Our unitary transform maps the space
of images onto a reproducing kernel space defined on SIM(2), allowing us to
robustly relate Euclidean (and scaling) invariant operators on images to
left-invariant operators on the corresponding continuous wavelet transform.
Rather than often used wavelet (soft-)thresholding techniques, we employ the
group structure in the wavelet domain to arrive at left-invariant evolutions
and flows (diffusion), for contextual crossing preserving enhancement of
multiple scale elongated structures in noisy images. We present experiments
that display benefits of our work compared to recent PDE techniques acting
directly on the images and to our previous work on left-invariant diffusions on
orientation scores defined on Euclidean motion group.Comment: 40 page
Numerical Approaches for Linear Left-invariant Diffusions on SE(2), their Comparison to Exact Solutions, and their Applications in Retinal Imaging
Left-invariant PDE-evolutions on the roto-translation group (and
their resolvent equations) have been widely studied in the fields of cortical
modeling and image analysis. They include hypo-elliptic diffusion (for contour
enhancement) proposed by Citti & Sarti, and Petitot, and they include the
direction process (for contour completion) proposed by Mumford. This paper
presents a thorough study and comparison of the many numerical approaches,
which, remarkably, is missing in the literature. Existing numerical approaches
can be classified into 3 categories: Finite difference methods, Fourier based
methods (equivalent to -Fourier methods), and stochastic methods (Monte
Carlo simulations). There are also 3 types of exact solutions to the
PDE-evolutions that were derived explicitly (in the spatial Fourier domain) in
previous works by Duits and van Almsick in 2005. Here we provide an overview of
these 3 types of exact solutions and explain how they relate to each of the 3
numerical approaches. We compute relative errors of all numerical approaches to
the exact solutions, and the Fourier based methods show us the best performance
with smallest relative errors. We also provide an improvement of Mathematica
algorithms for evaluating Mathieu-functions, crucial in implementations of the
exact solutions. Furthermore, we include an asymptotical analysis of the
singularities within the kernels and we propose a probabilistic extension of
underlying stochastic processes that overcomes the singular behavior in the
origin of time-integrated kernels. Finally, we show retinal imaging
applications of combining left-invariant PDE-evolutions with invertible
orientation scores.Comment: A final and corrected version of the manuscript is Published in
Numerical Mathematics: Theory, Methods and Applications (NM-TMA), vol. (9),
p.1-50, 201
Sub-Riemannian Fast Marching in SE(2)
We propose a Fast Marching based implementation for computing sub-Riemanninan
(SR) geodesics in the roto-translation group SE(2), with a metric depending on
a cost induced by the image data. The key ingredient is a Riemannian
approximation of the SR-metric. Then, a state of the art Fast Marching solver
that is able to deal with extreme anisotropies is used to compute a SR-distance
map as the solution of a corresponding eikonal equation. Subsequent
backtracking on the distance map gives the geodesics. To validate the method,
we consider the uniform cost case in which exact formulas for SR-geodesics are
known and we show remarkable accuracy of the numerically computed SR-spheres.
We also show a dramatic decrease in computational time with respect to a
previous PDE-based iterative approach. Regarding image analysis applications,
we show the potential of considering these data adaptive geodesics for a fully
automated retinal vessel tree segmentation.Comment: CIARP 201
From receptive profiles to a metric model of V1
In this work we show how to construct connectivity kernels induced by the
receptive profiles of simple cells of the primary visual cortex (V1). These
kernels are directly defined by the shape of such profiles: this provides a
metric model for the functional architecture of V1, whose global geometry is
determined by the reciprocal interactions between local elements. Our
construction adapts to any bank of filters chosen to represent a set of
receptive profiles, since it does not require any structure on the
parameterization of the family. The connectivity kernel that we define carries
a geometrical structure consistent with the well-known properties of long-range
horizontal connections in V1, and it is compatible with the perceptual rules
synthesized by the concept of association field. These characteristics are
still present when the kernel is constructed from a bank of filters arising
from an unsupervised learning algorithm.Comment: 25 pages, 18 figures. Added acknowledgement
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