Analysis of tuberculosis severity levels from CT pulmonary images based on enhanced residual deep learning architecture

This research investigates the application of CT pulmonary images to the detection and characterisation of TB at five levels of severity, in order to monitor the efficacy of treatment. To contend with smaller datasets (i.e. in hundreds) and the characteristics of CT TB images in which abnormalities occupy only limited regions, a 3D block-based residual deep learning network (ResNet) coupled with injection of depth information (depth-Resnet) at each layer was implemented. Progress in evaluation has been accomplished in two ways. One is to assess the proposed depth-Resnet in prediction of severity scores and another is to analyse the probability of high severity of TB. For the former, delivered results are of 92.70 ± 5.97% and 67.15 ± 1.69% for proposed depth-Resnet and ResNet-50 respectively. For the latter, two additional measures are put forward, which are calculated using (1) the overall severity (1 to 5) probability, and (2) separate probabilities of both high severity (scores of 1 to 3) and low severity (scores of 4 and 5) respectively, when scores of 1 to 5 are mapped into initial probabilities of (0.9, 0.7, 0.5, 0.3, 0.2) respectively. As a result, these measures achieve the averaged accuracies of 75.88% and 85.29% for both methods respectively

Overview of ImageCLEF 2018: Challenges, Datasets and Evaluation

This paper presents an overview of the ImageCLEF 2018 evaluation campaign, an event that was organized as part of the CLEF (Conference and Labs of the Evaluation Forum) Labs 2018. ImageCLEF is an ongoing initiative (it started in 2003) that promotes the evaluation of technologies for annotation, indexing and retrieval with the aim of providing information access to collections of images in various usage scenarios and domains. In 2018, the 16th edition of ImageCLEF ran three main tasks and a pilot task: (1) a caption prediction task that aims at predicting the caption of a figure from the biomedical literature based only on the figure image; (2) a tuberculosis task that aims at detecting the tuberculosis type, severity and drug resistance from CT (Computed Tomography) volumes of the lung; (3) a LifeLog task (videos, images and other sources) about daily activities understanding and moment retrieval, and (4) a pilot task on visual question answering where systems are tasked with answering medical questions. The strong participation, with over 100 research groups registering and 31 submitting results for the tasks, shows an increasing interest in this benchmarking campaign

Clasificación de imágenes TC de tórax afectados por tuberculosis

En este trabajo se propone el estudio de métodos para tratar la clasificación de las imágenes de tomografía computarizada TAC de tórax afectadas por diferentes tipos de tuberculosis. Se realizará un estudio de los métodos utilizados en la literatura para el análisis de imágenes TAC, con énfasis en la utilización de técnicas de clasificación novedosas basadas en aprendizaje profundo. Se propondrán métodos basados en la interpretación del conjunto de imágenes transversales de tórax proporcionadas por la tomografía computarizada, no como un volumen sino como una secuencia de imágenes de video. Se estudiará la posibilidad de extraer descriptores de movimiento capaces de clasificar las afecciones tuberculosas analizando las deformaciones o movimientos producidos en estas secuencias de vídeo

Artificial Intelligence in Image-Based Screening, Diagnostics, and Clinical Care of Cardiopulmonary Diseases

Cardiothoracic and pulmonary diseases are a significant cause of mortality and morbidity worldwide. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the lack of access to clinical care, the overburdened medical system, and the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) in improving medicine. There are a variety of diseases affecting the cardiopulmonary system including lung cancers, heart disease, tuberculosis (TB), etc., in addition to COVID-19-related diseases. Screening, diagnosis, and management of cardiopulmonary diseases has become difficult owing to the limited availability of diagnostic tools and experts, particularly in resource-limited regions. Early screening, accurate diagnosis and staging of these diseases could play a crucial role in treatment and care, and potentially aid in reducing mortality. Radiographic imaging methods such as computed tomography (CT), chest X-rays (CXRs), and echo ultrasound (US) are widely used in screening and diagnosis. Research on using image-based AI and machine learning (ML) methods can help in rapid assessment, serve as surrogates for expert assessment, and reduce variability in human performance. In this Special Issue, “Artificial Intelligence in Image-Based Screening, Diagnostics, and Clinical Care of Cardiopulmonary Diseases”, we have highlighted exemplary primary research studies and literature reviews focusing on novel AI/ML methods and their application in image-based screening, diagnosis, and clinical management of cardiopulmonary diseases. We hope that these articles will help establish the advancements in AI

The 2nd International Electronic Conference on Applied Sciences

This book is focused on the works presented at the 2nd International Electronic Conference on Applied Sciences, organized by Applied Sciences from 15 to 31 October 2021 on the MDPI Sciforum platform. Two decades have passed since the start of the 21st century. The development of sciences and technologies is growing ever faster today than in the previous century. The field of science is expanding, and the structure of science is becoming ever richer. Because of this expansion and fine structure growth, researchers may lose themselves in the deep forest of the ever-increasing frontiers and sub-fields being created. This international conference on the Applied Sciences was started to help scientists conduct their own research into the growth of these frontiers by breaking down barriers and connecting the many sub-fields to cut through this vast forest. These functions will allow researchers to see these frontiers and their surrounding (or quite distant) fields and sub-fields, and give them the opportunity to incubate and develop their knowledge even further with the aid of this multi-dimensional network

Front-Line Physicians' Satisfaction with Information Systems in Hospitals

Day-to-day operations management in hospital units is difficult due to continuously varying situations, several actors involved and a vast number of information systems in use. The aim of this study was to describe front-line physicians' satisfaction with existing information systems needed to support the day-to-day operations management in hospitals. A cross-sectional survey was used and data chosen with stratified random sampling were collected in nine hospitals. Data were analyzed with descriptive and inferential statistical methods. The response rate was 65 % (n = 111). The physicians reported that information systems support their decision making to some extent, but they do not improve access to information nor are they tailored for physicians. The respondents also reported that they need to use several information systems to support decision making and that they would prefer one information system to access important information. Improved information access would better support physicians' decision making and has the potential to improve the quality of decisions and speed up the decision making process.Peer reviewe

New Techniques in Gastrointestinal Endoscopy

As result of progress, endoscopy has became more complex, using more sophisticated devices and has claimed a special form. In this moment, the gastroenterologist performing endoscopy has to be an expert in macroscopic view of the lesions in the gut, with good skills for using standard endoscopes, with good experience in ultrasound (for performing endoscopic ultrasound), with pathology experience for confocal examination. It is compulsory to get experience and to have patience and attention for the follow-up of thousands of images transmitted during capsule endoscopy or to have knowledge in physics necessary for autofluorescence imaging endoscopy. Therefore, the idea of an endoscopist has changed. Examinations mentioned need a special formation, a superior level of instruction, accessible to those who have already gained enough experience in basic diagnostic endoscopy. This is the reason for what these new issues of endoscopy are presented in this book of New techniques in Gastrointestinal Endoscopy