22,578 research outputs found
Segmentation of Myocardial Boundaries in Tagged Cardiac MRI Using Active Contours: A Gradient-Based Approach Integrating Texture Analysis
The noninvasive assessment of cardiac function is of first importance for the diagnosis of cardiovascular diseases. Among all medical scanners only a few enables radiologists to evaluate the local cardiac motion. Tagged cardiac MRI is one of them. This protocol generates on Short-Axis (SA) sequences a dark grid which is deformed in accordance with the cardiac motion. Tracking the grid allows specialists a local estimation of cardiac geometrical parameters within myocardium. The work described in this paper aims to automate the myocardial contours detection in order to optimize the detection and the tracking of the grid of tags within myocardium. The method we have developed for endocardial and epicardial contours detection is based on the use of texture analysis and active contours models. Texture analysis allows us to define energy maps more efficient than those usually used in active contours methods where attractor is often based on gradient and which were useless in our case of study, for quality of tagged cardiac MRI is very poor
Accurate detection of dysmorphic nuclei using dynamic programming and supervised classification
A vast array of pathologies is typified by the presence of nuclei with an abnormal morphology. Dysmorphic nuclear phenotypes feature dramatic size changes or foldings, but also entail much subtler deviations such as nuclear protrusions called blebs. Due to their unpredictable size, shape and intensity, dysmorphic nuclei are often not accurately detected in standard image analysis routines. To enable accurate detection of dysmorphic nuclei in confocal and widefield fluorescence microscopy images, we have developed an automated segmentation algorithm, called Blebbed Nuclei Detector (BleND), which relies on two-pass thresholding for initial nuclear contour detection, and an optimal path finding algorithm, based on dynamic programming, for refining these contours. Using a robust error metric, we show that our method matches manual segmentation in terms of precision and outperforms state-of-the-art nuclear segmentation methods. Its high performance allowed for building and integrating a robust classifier that recognizes dysmorphic nuclei with an accuracy above 95%. The combined segmentation-classification routine is bound to facilitate nucleus-based diagnostics and enable real-time recognition of dysmorphic nuclei in intelligent microscopy workflows
Contour Detection from Deep Patch-level Boundary Prediction
In this paper, we present a novel approach for contour detection with
Convolutional Neural Networks. A multi-scale CNN learning framework is designed
to automatically learn the most relevant features for contour patch detection.
Our method uses patch-level measurements to create contour maps with
overlapping patches. We show the proposed CNN is able to to detect large-scale
contours in an image efficienly. We further propose a guided filtering method
to refine the contour maps produced from large-scale contours. Experimental
results on the major contour benchmark databases demonstrate the effectiveness
of the proposed technique. We show our method can achieve good detection of
both fine-scale and large-scale contours.Comment: IEEE International Conference on Signal and Image Processing 201
An extension of min/max flow framework
In this paper, the min/max flow scheme for image restoration is revised. The novelty consists of the fol-
24 lowing three parts. The first is to analyze the reason of the speckle generation and then to modify the
25 original scheme. The second is to point out that the continued application of this scheme cannot result
26 in an adaptive stopping of the curvature flow. This is followed by modifications of the original scheme
27 through the introduction of the Gradient Vector Flow (GVF) field and the zero-crossing detector, so as
28 to control the smoothing effect. Our experimental results with image restoration show that the proposed
29 schemes can reach a steady state solution while preserving the essential structures of objects. The third is
30 to extend the min/max flow scheme to deal with the boundary leaking problem, which is indeed an
31 intrinsic shortcoming of the familiar geodesic active contour model. The min/max flow framework pro-
32 vides us with an effective way to approximate the optimal solution. From an implementation point of
33 view, this extended scheme makes the speed function simpler and more flexible. The experimental
34 results of segmentation and region tracking show that the boundary leaking problem can be effectively
35 suppressed
Segmentation of ultrasound images of thyroid nodule for assisting fine needle aspiration cytology
The incidence of thyroid nodule is very high and generally increases with the
age. Thyroid nodule may presage the emergence of thyroid cancer. The thyroid
nodule can be completely cured if detected early. Fine needle aspiration
cytology is a recognized early diagnosis method of thyroid nodule. There are
still some limitations in the fine needle aspiration cytology, and the
ultrasound diagnosis of thyroid nodule has become the first choice for
auxiliary examination of thyroid nodular disease. If we could combine medical
imaging technology and fine needle aspiration cytology, the diagnostic rate of
thyroid nodule would be improved significantly. The properties of ultrasound
will degrade the image quality, which makes it difficult to recognize the edges
for physicians. Image segmentation technique based on graph theory has become a
research hotspot at present. Normalized cut (Ncut) is a representative one,
which is suitable for segmentation of feature parts of medical image. However,
how to solve the normalized cut has become a problem, which needs large memory
capacity and heavy calculation of weight matrix. It always generates over
segmentation or less segmentation which leads to inaccurate in the
segmentation. The speckle noise in B ultrasound image of thyroid tumor makes
the quality of the image deteriorate. In the light of this characteristic, we
combine the anisotropic diffusion model with the normalized cut in this paper.
After the enhancement of anisotropic diffusion model, it removes the noise in
the B ultrasound image while preserves the important edges and local details.
This reduces the amount of computation in constructing the weight matrix of the
improved normalized cut and improves the accuracy of the final segmentation
results. The feasibility of the method is proved by the experimental results.Comment: 15pages,13figure
Automatic Objects Removal for Scene Completion
With the explosive growth of web-based cameras and mobile devices, billions
of photographs are uploaded to the internet. We can trivially collect a huge
number of photo streams for various goals, such as 3D scene reconstruction and
other big data applications. However, this is not an easy task due to the fact
the retrieved photos are neither aligned nor calibrated. Furthermore, with the
occlusion of unexpected foreground objects like people, vehicles, it is even
more challenging to find feature correspondences and reconstruct realistic
scenes. In this paper, we propose a structure based image completion algorithm
for object removal that produces visually plausible content with consistent
structure and scene texture. We use an edge matching technique to infer the
potential structure of the unknown region. Driven by the estimated structure,
texture synthesis is performed automatically along the estimated curves. We
evaluate the proposed method on different types of images: from highly
structured indoor environment to the natural scenes. Our experimental results
demonstrate satisfactory performance that can be potentially used for
subsequent big data processing: 3D scene reconstruction and location
recognition.Comment: 6 pages, IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications
(INFOCOM 14), Workshop on Security and Privacy in Big Data, Toronto, Canada,
201
DepthCut: Improved Depth Edge Estimation Using Multiple Unreliable Channels
In the context of scene understanding, a variety of methods exists to
estimate different information channels from mono or stereo images, including
disparity, depth, and normals. Although several advances have been reported in
the recent years for these tasks, the estimated information is often imprecise
particularly near depth discontinuities or creases. Studies have however shown
that precisely such depth edges carry critical cues for the perception of
shape, and play important roles in tasks like depth-based segmentation or
foreground selection. Unfortunately, the currently extracted channels often
carry conflicting signals, making it difficult for subsequent applications to
effectively use them. In this paper, we focus on the problem of obtaining
high-precision depth edges (i.e., depth contours and creases) by jointly
analyzing such unreliable information channels. We propose DepthCut, a
data-driven fusion of the channels using a convolutional neural network trained
on a large dataset with known depth. The resulting depth edges can be used for
segmentation, decomposing a scene into depth layers with relatively flat depth,
or improving the accuracy of the depth estimate near depth edges by
constraining its gradients to agree with these edges. Quantitatively, we
compare against 15 variants of baselines and demonstrate that our depth edges
result in an improved segmentation performance and an improved depth estimate
near depth edges compared to data-agnostic channel fusion. Qualitatively, we
demonstrate that the depth edges result in superior segmentation and depth
orderings.Comment: 12 page
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