Seismic Fault Preserving Diffusion

This paper focuses on the denoising and enhancing of 3-D reflection seismic data. We propose a pre-processing step based on a non linear diffusion filtering leading to a better detection of seismic faults. The non linear diffusion approaches are based on the definition of a partial differential equation that allows us to simplify the images without blurring relevant details or discontinuities. Computing the structure tensor which provides information on the local orientation of the geological layers, we propose to drive the diffusion along these layers using a new approach called SFPD (Seismic Fault Preserving Diffusion). In SFPD, the eigenvalues of the tensor are fixed according to a confidence measure that takes into account the regularity of the local seismic structure. Results on both synthesized and real 3-D blocks show the efficiency of the proposed approach.Comment: 10 page

Accelerated graph-based spectral polynomial filters

Graph-based spectral denoising is a low-pass filtering using the eigendecomposition of the graph Laplacian matrix of a noisy signal. Polynomial filtering avoids costly computation of the eigendecomposition by projections onto suitable Krylov subspaces. Polynomial filters can be based, e.g., on the bilateral and guided filters. We propose constructing accelerated polynomial filters by running flexible Krylov subspace based linear and eigenvalue solvers such as the Block Locally Optimal Preconditioned Conjugate Gradient (LOBPCG) method.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures. Accepted to the 2015 IEEE International Workshop on Machine Learning for Signal Processin

Computerized Analysis of Magnetic Resonance Images to Study Cerebral Anatomy in Developing Neonates

The study of cerebral anatomy in developing neonates is of great importance for the understanding of brain development during the early period of life. This dissertation therefore focuses on three challenges in the modelling of cerebral anatomy in neonates during brain development. The methods that have been developed all use Magnetic Resonance Images (MRI) as source data. To facilitate study of vascular development in the neonatal period, a set of image analysis algorithms are developed to automatically extract and model cerebral vessel trees. The whole process consists of cerebral vessel tracking from automatically placed seed points, vessel tree generation, and vasculature registration and matching. These algorithms have been tested on clinical Time-of- Flight (TOF) MR angiographic datasets. To facilitate study of the neonatal cortex a complete cerebral cortex segmentation and reconstruction pipeline has been developed. Segmentation of the neonatal cortex is not effectively done by existing algorithms designed for the adult brain because the contrast between grey and white matter is reversed. This causes pixels containing tissue mixtures to be incorrectly labelled by conventional methods. The neonatal cortical segmentation method that has been developed is based on a novel expectation-maximization (EM) method with explicit correction for mislabelled partial volume voxels. Based on the resulting cortical segmentation, an implicit surface evolution technique is adopted for the reconstruction of the cortex in neonates. The performance of the method is investigated by performing a detailed landmark study. To facilitate study of cortical development, a cortical surface registration algorithm for aligning the cortical surface is developed. The method first inflates extracted cortical surfaces and then performs a non-rigid surface registration using free-form deformations (FFDs) to remove residual alignment. Validation experiments using data labelled by an expert observer demonstrate that the method can capture local changes and follow the growth of specific sulcus

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 $U:\mathbb{R}^{d} \rtimes S^{d-1} \to \mathbb{R}$ defined on the extended space of positions and orientations, which we relate to data on the roto-translation group $SE(d)$, $d=2,3$. 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 $SE(d)$. 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 $SE(d)$. We include these gauge frames in differential invariants and crossing preserving PDE-flows acting on extended data representation $U$ and we show their advantage compared to the standard left-invariant frame on $SE(d)$. 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

Pyramidal flux in an anisotropic diffusion scheme for enhancing structures in 3D images

Pyramid based methods in image processing provide a helpful framework for accelerating the propagation of information over large spatial domains, increasing the efficiency for large scale applications. Combined with an anisotropic diffusion scheme tailored to preserve the boundaries at a given level, an efficient way for enhancing large structures in 3D images is presented. In our approach, the partial differential equation defining the evolution of the intensity in the image is solved in an explicit scheme at multiple resolutions in an ascending-descending cycle. Intensity 'flux' between distant voxels is allowed, while preserving borders relative to the scale. Experiments have been performed both with phantoms and with real data from 3D Transrectal Ultrasound Imaging. The effectiveness of the method to remove speckle noise and to enhance large structures such as the prostate has been demonstrated. For instance, using two scales reduces the computation time by 87% as compared to a single scale. Furthermore, we show that the boundaries of the prostate are mainly preserved, by comparing with manually outlined edges

Guided Filter Technique: Various Aspects In Image Processing

The guided image filter is based on a local linear model. The guided filter delivers the filtering output by considering a reference image. The reference image is said as the guidance image which can be the input image itself or another different image. The guided filter has better edge preserving smoothing and gradient preserving property. The guided filter is effectual in a variety of computer vision and computer graphics applications

Ball-Scale Based Hierarchical Multi-Object Recognition in 3D Medical Images

This paper investigates, using prior shape models and the concept of ball scale (b-scale), ways of automatically recognizing objects in 3D images without performing elaborate searches or optimization. That is, the goal is to place the model in a single shot close to the right pose (position, orientation, and scale) in a given image so that the model boundaries fall in the close vicinity of object boundaries in the image. This is achieved via the following set of key ideas: (a) A semi-automatic way of constructing a multi-object shape model assembly. (b) A novel strategy of encoding, via b-scale, the pose relationship between objects in the training images and their intensity patterns captured in b-scale images. (c) A hierarchical mechanism of positioning the model, in a one-shot way, in a given image from a knowledge of the learnt pose relationship and the b-scale image of the given image to be segmented. The evaluation results on a set of 20 routine clinical abdominal female and male CT data sets indicate the following: (1) Incorporating a large number of objects improves the recognition accuracy dramatically. (2) The recognition algorithm can be thought as a hierarchical framework such that quick replacement of the model assembly is defined as coarse recognition and delineation itself is known as finest recognition. (3) Scale yields useful information about the relationship between the model assembly and any given image such that the recognition results in a placement of the model close to the actual pose without doing any elaborate searches or optimization. (4) Effective object recognition can make delineation most accurate.Comment: This paper was published and presented in SPIE Medical Imaging 201