40 research outputs found
Integrating clinical research in an operative screening and diagnostic breast imaging department: First experience, results and perspectives using microwave imaging.
Clinical research is crucial for evaluating new medical procedures and devices. It is important for healthcare units and hospitals to minimize the disruptions caused by conducting clinical studies; however, complex clinical pathways require dedicated recruitment and study designs.This work presents the effective introduction of novel microwave breast imaging (MBI), via MammoWave apparatus, into the clinical routine of an operative screening and diagnostic breast imaging department for conducting a multicentric clinical study. Microwave breast imaging, using MammoWave apparatus, was performed on volunteers coming from different clinical pathways. Clinical data, comprising demographics and conventional radiologic reports (used as reference standard), was collected; a satisfaction questionnaire was filled by every volunteer. Microwave images were analyzed by an automatic clinical decision support system, which quantified their corresponding features to discriminate between breasts with no relevant radiological findings (NF) and breasts with described findings (WF). Conventional breast imaging (DBT, US, MRI) and MBI were performed and adapted to assure best clinical practices and optimum pathways. 180 volunteers, both symptomatic and asymptomatic, were enrolled in the study. After microwave images' quality assessment, 48 NF (15 dense) and 169 WF (88 dense) breasts were used for the prospective study; 48 (18 dense) breasts suffered from a histology-confirmed carcinoma. An overall sensitivity of 85.8 % in breasts lesions' detection was achieved by the microwave imaging apparatus. An optimum recruitment strategy was implemented to assess MBI. Future trials may show the clinical usefulness of microwave imaging, which may play an important role in breast screening. [Abstract copyright: © 2023 The Authors.
Detection of Microcalcifications in Digital Breast Tomosynthesis using Faster R-CNN and 3D Volume Rendering
Microcalcification clusters (MCs) are one of the most important biomarkers for breast cancer and Digital
Breast Tomosynthesis (DBT) has consolidated its role in breast cancer imaging. As there are mixed
observations about MCs detection using DBT, it is important to develop tools that improve this task.
Furthermore, the visualization mode of MCs is also crucial, as their diagnosis is associated with their 3D
morphology. In this work, DBT data from a public database were used to train a faster region-based
convolutional neural network (R-CNN) to locate MCs in entire DBT. Additionally, the detected MCs were
further analyzed through standard 2D visualization and 3D volume rendering (VR) specifically developed for
DBT data. For MCs detection, the sensitivity of our Faster R-CNN was 60% with 4 false positives. These
preliminary results are very promising and can be further improved. On the other hand, the 3D VR
visualization provided important information, with higher quality and discernment of the detected MCs. The
developed pipeline may help radiologists since (1) it indicates specific breast regions with possible lesions
that deserve additional attention and (2) as the rendering of the MCs is similar to a segmentation, a detailed
complementary analysis of their 3D morphology is possible
Computer-aided Detection of Breast Cancer in Digital Tomosynthesis Imaging Using Deep and Multiple Instance Learning
Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women in the world. Nevertheless, early detection of breast cancer improves the chance of successful treatment. Digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) as a new tomographic technique was developed to minimize the limitations of conventional digital mammography screening. A DBT is a quasi-three-dimensional image that is reconstructed from a small number of two-dimensional (2D) low-dose X-ray images. The 2D X-ray images are acquired over a limited angular around the breast.
Our research aims to introduce computer-aided detection (CAD) frameworks to detect early signs of breast cancer in DBTs. In this thesis, we propose three CAD frameworks for detection of breast cancer in DBTs. The first CAD framework is based on hand-crafted feature extraction. Concerning early signs of breast cancer: mass, micro-calcifications, and bilateral asymmetry between left and right breast, the system includes three separate channels to detect each sign. Next two CAD frameworks automatically learn complex patterns of 2D slices using the deep convolutional neural network and the deep cardinality-restricted Boltzmann machines. Finally, the CAD frameworks employ a multiple-instance learning approach with randomized trees algorithm to classify DBT images based on extracted information from 2D slices. The frameworks operate on 2D slices which are generated from DBT volumes. These frameworks are developed and evaluated using 5,040 2D image slices obtained from 87 DBT volumes. We demonstrate the validation and usefulness of the proposed CAD frameworks within empirical experiments for detecting breast cancer in DBTs
Knowledge-based in silico models and dataset for the comparative evaluation of mammography AI for a range of breast characteristics, lesion conspicuities and doses
To generate evidence regarding the safety and efficacy of artificial
intelligence (AI) enabled medical devices, AI models need to be evaluated on a
diverse population of patient cases, some of which may not be readily
available. We propose an evaluation approach for testing medical imaging AI
models that relies on in silico imaging pipelines in which stochastic digital
models of human anatomy (in object space) with and without pathology are imaged
using a digital replica imaging acquisition system to generate realistic
synthetic image datasets. Here, we release M-SYNTH, a dataset of cohorts with
four breast fibroglandular density distributions imaged at different exposure
levels using Monte Carlo x-ray simulations with the publicly available Virtual
Imaging Clinical Trial for Regulatory Evaluation (VICTRE) toolkit. We utilize
the synthetic dataset to analyze AI model performance and find that model
performance decreases with increasing breast density and increases with higher
mass density, as expected. As exposure levels decrease, AI model performance
drops with the highest performance achieved at exposure levels lower than the
nominal recommended dose for the breast type.Comment: NeurIPS 2023 Datasets and Benchmarks Trac
Automatic Classification of Simulated Breast Tomosynthesis Whole Images for the Presence of Microcalcification Clusters Using Deep CNNs
Microcalcification clusters (MCs) are among the most important biomarkers for breast cancer, especially in cases of nonpalpable lesions. The vast majority of deep learning studies on digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) are focused on detecting and classifying lesions, especially soft-tissue lesions, in small regions of interest previously selected. Only about 25% of the studies are specific to MCs, and all of them are based on the classification of small preselected regions. Classifying the whole image according to the presence or absence of MCs is a difficult task due to the size of MCs and all the information present in an entire image. A completely automatic and direct classification, which receives the entire image, without prior identification of any regions, is crucial for the usefulness of these techniques in a real clinical and screening environment. The main purpose of this work is to implement and evaluate the performance of convolutional neural networks (CNNs) regarding an automatic classification of a complete DBT image for the presence or absence of MCs (without any prior identification of regions). In this work, four popular deep CNNs are trained and compared with a new architecture proposed by us. The main task of these trainings was the classification of DBT cases by absence or presence of MCs. A public database of realistic simulated data was used, and the whole DBT image was taken into account as input. DBT data were considered without and with preprocessing (to study the impact of noise reduction and contrast enhancement methods on the evaluation of MCs with CNNs). The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) was used to evaluate the performance. Very promising results were achieved with a maximum AUC of 94.19% for the GoogLeNet. The second-best AUC value was obtained with a new implemented network, CNN-a, with 91.17%. This CNN had the particularity of also being the fastest, thus becoming a very interesting model to be considered in other studies. With this work, encouraging outcomes were achieved in this regard, obtaining similar results to other studies for the detection of larger lesions such as masses. Moreover, given the difficulty of visualizing the MCs, which are often spread over several slices, this work may have an important impact on the clinical analysis of DBT images
Enhanced Digital Breast Tomosynthesis diagnosis using 3D visualization and automatic classification of lesions
Breast cancer represents the main cause of cancer-related deaths in women. Nonetheless, the mortality rate of this disease has been decreasing over the last three decades, largely due to the screening programs for early detection. For many years, both screening and clinical diagnosis were mostly done through Digital Mammography (DM). Approved in 2011, Digital Breast Tomosynthesis (DBT) is similar to DM but it allows a 3D reconstruction of the breast tissue, which helps the diagnosis by reducing the tissue overlap. Currently, DBT is firmly established and is approved as a stand-alone modality to replace DM.
The main objective of this thesis is to develop computational tools to improve the visualization and interpretation of DBT data.
Several methods for an enhanced visualization of DBT data through volume rendering were studied and developed. Firstly, important rendering parameters were considered. A new approach for automatic generation of transfer functions was implemented and two other parameters that highly affect the quality of volume rendered images were explored: voxel size in Z direction and sampling distance. Next, new image processing methods that improve the rendering quality by considering the noise regularization and the reduction of out-of-plane artifacts were developed.
The interpretation of DBT data with automatic detection of lesions was approached through artificial intelligence methods. Several deep learning Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) were implemented and trained to classify a complete DBT image for the presence or absence of microcalcification clusters (MCs). Then, a faster R-CNN (region-based CNN) was trained to detect and accurately locate the MCs in the DBT images. The detected MCs were rendered with the developed 3D rendering software, which provided an enhanced visualization of the volume of interest. The combination of volume visualization with lesion detection may, in the future, improve both diagnostic accuracy and also reduce analysis time.
This thesis promotes the development of new computational imaging methods to increase the diagnostic value of DBT, with the aim of assisting radiologists in their task of analyzing DBT volumes and diagnosing breast cancer
Computer-aided detection and diagnosis of breast cancer in 2D and 3D medical imaging through multifractal analysis
This Thesis describes the research work performed in the scope of a doctoral research program
and presents its conclusions and contributions. The research activities were carried on in the
industry with Siemens S.A. Healthcare Sector, in integration with a research team.
Siemens S.A. Healthcare Sector is one of the world biggest suppliers of products, services and
complete solutions in the medical sector. The company offers a wide selection of diagnostic
and therapeutic equipment and information systems. Siemens products for medical imaging and
in vivo diagnostics include: ultrasound, computer tomography, mammography, digital breast tomosynthesis,
magnetic resonance, equipment to angiography and coronary angiography, nuclear
imaging, and many others.
Siemens has a vast experience in Healthcare and at the beginning of this project it was strategically
interested in solutions to improve the detection of Breast Cancer, to increase its competitiveness
in the sector.
The company owns several patents related with self-similarity analysis, which formed the background
of this Thesis. Furthermore, Siemens intended to explore commercially the computer-
aided automatic detection and diagnosis eld for portfolio integration. Therefore, with the
high knowledge acquired by University of Beira Interior in this area together with this Thesis,
will allow Siemens to apply the most recent scienti c progress in the detection of the breast
cancer, and it is foreseeable that together we can develop a new technology with high potential.
The project resulted in the submission of two invention disclosures for evaluation in Siemens
A.G., two articles published in peer-reviewed journals indexed in ISI Science Citation Index,
two other articles submitted in peer-reviewed journals, and several international conference
papers. This work on computer-aided-diagnosis in breast led to innovative software and novel
processes of research and development, for which the project received the Siemens Innovation
Award in 2012.
It was very rewarding to carry on such technological and innovative project in a socially sensitive
area as Breast Cancer.No cancro da mama a deteção precoce e o diagnóstico correto são de extrema importância na
prescrição terapêutica e caz e e ciente, que potencie o aumento da taxa de sobrevivência à
doença. A teoria multifractal foi inicialmente introduzida no contexto da análise de sinal e a
sua utilidade foi demonstrada na descrição de comportamentos siológicos de bio-sinais e até
na deteção e predição de patologias. Nesta Tese, três métodos multifractais foram estendidos
para imagens bi-dimensionais (2D) e comparados na deteção de microcalci cações em mamogramas.
Um destes métodos foi também adaptado para a classi cação de massas da mama, em
cortes transversais 2D obtidos por ressonância magnética (RM) de mama, em grupos de massas
provavelmente benignas e com suspeição de malignidade. Um novo método de análise multifractal
usando a lacunaridade tri-dimensional (3D) foi proposto para classi cação de massas da
mama em imagens volumétricas 3D de RM de mama. A análise multifractal revelou diferenças
na complexidade subjacente às localizações das microcalci cações em relação aos tecidos normais,
permitindo uma boa exatidão da sua deteção em mamogramas. Adicionalmente, foram
extraídas por análise multifractal características dos tecidos que permitiram identi car os casos
tipicamente recomendados para biópsia em imagens 2D de RM de mama. A análise multifractal
3D foi e caz na classi cação de lesões mamárias benignas e malignas em imagens 3D de RM de
mama. Este método foi mais exato para esta classi cação do que o método 2D ou o método
padrão de análise de contraste cinético tumoral. Em conclusão, a análise multifractal fornece
informação útil para deteção auxiliada por computador em mamogra a e diagnóstico auxiliado
por computador em imagens 2D e 3D de RM de mama, tendo o potencial de complementar a
interpretação dos radiologistas