25,567 research outputs found
Adaptive Segmentation of Knee Radiographs for Selecting the Optimal ROI in Texture Analysis
The purposes of this study were to investigate: 1) the effect of placement of
region-of-interest (ROI) for texture analysis of subchondral bone in knee
radiographs, and 2) the ability of several texture descriptors to distinguish
between the knees with and without radiographic osteoarthritis (OA). Bilateral
posterior-anterior knee radiographs were analyzed from the baseline of OAI and
MOST datasets. A fully automatic method to locate the most informative region
from subchondral bone using adaptive segmentation was developed. We used an
oversegmentation strategy for partitioning knee images into the compact regions
that follow natural texture boundaries. LBP, Fractal Dimension (FD), Haralick
features, Shannon entropy, and HOG methods were computed within the standard
ROI and within the proposed adaptive ROIs. Subsequently, we built logistic
regression models to identify and compare the performances of each texture
descriptor and each ROI placement method using 5-fold cross validation setting.
Importantly, we also investigated the generalizability of our approach by
training the models on OAI and testing them on MOST dataset.We used area under
the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve (AUC) and average precision
(AP) obtained from the precision-recall (PR) curve to compare the results. We
found that the adaptive ROI improves the classification performance (OA vs.
non-OA) over the commonly used standard ROI (up to 9% percent increase in AUC).
We also observed that, from all texture parameters, LBP yielded the best
performance in all settings with the best AUC of 0.840 [0.825, 0.852] and
associated AP of 0.804 [0.786, 0.820]. Compared to the current state-of-the-art
approaches, our results suggest that the proposed adaptive ROI approach in
texture analysis of subchondral bone can increase the diagnostic performance
for detecting the presence of radiographic OA
Predicting optical coherence tomography-derived diabetic macular edema grades from fundus photographs using deep learning
Diabetic eye disease is one of the fastest growing causes of preventable
blindness. With the advent of anti-VEGF (vascular endothelial growth factor)
therapies, it has become increasingly important to detect center-involved
diabetic macular edema (ci-DME). However, center-involved diabetic macular
edema is diagnosed using optical coherence tomography (OCT), which is not
generally available at screening sites because of cost and workflow
constraints. Instead, screening programs rely on the detection of hard exudates
in color fundus photographs as a proxy for DME, often resulting in high false
positive or false negative calls. To improve the accuracy of DME screening, we
trained a deep learning model to use color fundus photographs to predict
ci-DME. Our model had an ROC-AUC of 0.89 (95% CI: 0.87-0.91), which corresponds
to a sensitivity of 85% at a specificity of 80%. In comparison, three retinal
specialists had similar sensitivities (82-85%), but only half the specificity
(45-50%, p<0.001 for each comparison with model). The positive predictive value
(PPV) of the model was 61% (95% CI: 56-66%), approximately double the 36-38% by
the retinal specialists. In addition to predicting ci-DME, our model was able
to detect the presence of intraretinal fluid with an AUC of 0.81 (95% CI:
0.81-0.86) and subretinal fluid with an AUC of 0.88 (95% CI: 0.85-0.91). The
ability of deep learning algorithms to make clinically relevant predictions
that generally require sophisticated 3D-imaging equipment from simple 2D images
has broad relevance to many other applications in medical imaging
Adjusted empirical likelihood estimation of the youden index and associated threshold for the bigamma model
The Youden index is a widely used measure in the framework of medical diagnostic, where the effectiveness of a biomarker (screening marker or predictor) for classifying a disease status is studied. When the biomarker is continuous, it is important to determine the threshold or cut-off point to be used in practice for the discrimination between diseased and healthy populations. We introduce a new method based on adjusted empirical likelihood for quantiles aimed to estimate the Youden index and its associated threshold. We also include bootstrap based confidence intervals for both of them. In the simulation study, we compare this method with a recent approach based on the delta method under the bigamma scenario. Finally, a real example of prostatic cancer, well known in the literature, is analyzed to provide the reader with a better understanding of the new metho
Nonparametric Covariate Adjustment for Receiver Operating Characteristic Curves
The accuracy of a diagnostic test is typically characterised using the
receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve. Summarising indexes such as the
area under the ROC curve (AUC) are used to compare different tests as well as
to measure the difference between two populations. Often additional information
is available on some of the covariates which are known to influence the
accuracy of such measures. We propose nonparametric methods for covariate
adjustment of the AUC. Models with normal errors and non-normal errors are
discussed and analysed separately. Nonparametric regression is used for
estimating mean and variance functions in both scenarios. In the general noise
case we propose a covariate-adjusted Mann-Whitney estimator for AUC estimation
which effectively uses available data to construct working samples at any
covariate value of interest and is computationally efficient for
implementation. This provides a generalisation of the Mann-Whitney approach for
comparing two populations by taking covariate effects into account. We derive
asymptotic properties for the AUC estimators in both settings, including
asymptotic normality, optimal strong uniform convergence rates and MSE
consistency. The usefulness of the proposed methods is demonstrated through
simulated and real data examples
Modeling Siberian ibex (Capra sibirica) occupancy in Ikh Nart Nature Reserve, Mongolia
As the world becomes increasingly populated, humans continue to modify habitats to suit their needs. Mongolia is one of many Asian countries currently undergoing human-induced landscape change, namely in the form of increased grazing pressure on the land by domesticated animals. There is uncertainty as to how wildlife will be impacted by this change. The Siberian ibex (Capra sibirica) is an ungulate classified as IUCN Near Threatened in Mongolia and an important species for tourism. I developed an occupancy model for the species based on radio- telemetry locations (n = 920) collected in Ikh Nart Nature Reserve, then estimated the effect of habitat reductions as expected under increasing levels of grazing. I developed 13 candidate models that include combinations of habitat and human variables, and used model selection techniques to evaluate the best-supported model in the set. The model with the most support indicated that rocky outcrop, open plain, and their interaction best described ibex occupancy. Average occupancy was 5.7% across the northern Ikh Nart landscape, 7.4% within the borders of the reserve, and 17.4% within the reserve’s core protected area. Simulations showed that in the absence of open plain habitat, average occupancy declined to 1.9%, 2.1%, and 5.0% respectively in these areas. The results provide a description of how landscape factors shape the distribution of the species. Because livestock grazing is concentrated in open plain habitats, these results may be used to inform decision-making about ibex conservation in the region
- …