Optimally Stabilized PET Image Denoising Using Trilateral Filtering

Low-resolution and signal-dependent noise distribution in positron emission tomography (PET) images makes denoising process an inevitable step prior to qualitative and quantitative image analysis tasks. Conventional PET denoising methods either over-smooth small-sized structures due to resolution limitation or make incorrect assumptions about the noise characteristics. Therefore, clinically important quantitative information may be corrupted. To address these challenges, we introduced a novel approach to remove signal-dependent noise in the PET images where the noise distribution was considered as Poisson-Gaussian mixed. Meanwhile, the generalized Anscombe's transformation (GAT) was used to stabilize varying nature of the PET noise. Other than noise stabilization, it is also desirable for the noise removal filter to preserve the boundaries of the structures while smoothing the noisy regions. Indeed, it is important to avoid significant loss of quantitative information such as standard uptake value (SUV)-based metrics as well as metabolic lesion volume. To satisfy all these properties, we extended bilateral filtering method into trilateral filtering through multiscaling and optimal Gaussianization process. The proposed method was tested on more than 50 PET-CT images from various patients having different cancers and achieved the superior performance compared to the widely used denoising techniques in the literature.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures; to appear in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science (MICCAI 2014

3D mesh processing using GAMer 2 to enable reaction-diffusion simulations in realistic cellular geometries

Recent advances in electron microscopy have enabled the imaging of single cells in 3D at nanometer length scale resolutions. An uncharted frontier for in silico biology is the ability to simulate cellular processes using these observed geometries. Enabling such simulations requires watertight meshing of electron micrograph images into 3D volume meshes, which can then form the basis of computer simulations of such processes using numerical techniques such as the Finite Element Method. In this paper, we describe the use of our recently rewritten mesh processing software, GAMer 2, to bridge the gap between poorly conditioned meshes generated from segmented micrographs and boundary marked tetrahedral meshes which are compatible with simulation. We demonstrate the application of a workflow using GAMer 2 to a series of electron micrographs of neuronal dendrite morphology explored at three different length scales and show that the resulting meshes are suitable for finite element simulations. This work is an important step towards making physical simulations of biological processes in realistic geometries routine. Innovations in algorithms to reconstruct and simulate cellular length scale phenomena based on emerging structural data will enable realistic physical models and advance discovery at the interface of geometry and cellular processes. We posit that a new frontier at the intersection of computational technologies and single cell biology is now open.Comment: 39 pages, 14 figures. High resolution figures and supplemental movies available upon reques

Robust Cardiac Motion Estimation using Ultrafast Ultrasound Data: A Low-Rank-Topology-Preserving Approach

Cardiac motion estimation is an important diagnostic tool to detect heart diseases and it has been explored with modalities such as MRI and conventional ultrasound (US) sequences. US cardiac motion estimation still presents challenges because of the complex motion patterns and the presence of noise. In this work, we propose a novel approach to estimate the cardiac motion using ultrafast ultrasound data. -- Our solution is based on a variational formulation characterized by the L2-regularized class. The displacement is represented by a lattice of b-splines and we ensure robustness by applying a maximum likelihood type estimator. While this is an important part of our solution, the main highlight of this paper is to combine a low-rank data representation with topology preservation. Low-rank data representation (achieved by finding the k-dominant singular values of a Casorati Matrix arranged from the data sequence) speeds up the global solution and achieves noise reduction. On the other hand, topology preservation (achieved by monitoring the Jacobian determinant) allows to radically rule out distortions while carefully controlling the size of allowed expansions and contractions. Our variational approach is carried out on a realistic dataset as well as on a simulated one. We demonstrate how our proposed variational solution deals with complex deformations through careful numerical experiments. While maintaining the accuracy of the solution, the low-rank preprocessing is shown to speed up the convergence of the variational problem. Beyond cardiac motion estimation, our approach is promising for the analysis of other organs that experience motion.Comment: 15 pages, 10 figures, Physics in Medicine and Biology, 201

Unified Heat Kernel Regression for Diffusion, Kernel Smoothing and Wavelets on Manifolds and Its Application to Mandible Growth Modeling in CT Images

We present a novel kernel regression framework for smoothing scalar surface data using the Laplace-Beltrami eigenfunctions. Starting with the heat kernel constructed from the eigenfunctions, we formulate a new bivariate kernel regression framework as a weighted eigenfunction expansion with the heat kernel as the weights. The new kernel regression is mathematically equivalent to isotropic heat diffusion, kernel smoothing and recently popular diffusion wavelets. Unlike many previous partial differential equation based approaches involving diffusion, our approach represents the solution of diffusion analytically, reducing numerical inaccuracy and slow convergence. The numerical implementation is validated on a unit sphere using spherical harmonics. As an illustration, we have applied the method in characterizing the localized growth pattern of mandible surfaces obtained in CT images from subjects between ages 0 and 20 years by regressing the length of displacement vectors with respect to the template surface.Comment: Accepted in Medical Image Analysi

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