Image Restoration Using Functional and Anatomical Information Fusion with Application to SPECT-MRI Images

Image restoration is usually viewed as an ill-posed problem in image processing, since there is no unique solution associated with it. The quality of restored image closely depends on the constraints imposed of the characteristics of the solution. In this paper, we propose an original extension of the NAS-RIF restoration technique by using information fusion as prior information with application in SPECT medical imaging. That extension allows the restoration process to be constrained by efficiently incorporating, within the NAS-RIF method, a regularization term which stabilizes the inverse solution. Our restoration method is constrained by anatomical information extracted from a high resolution anatomical procedure such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). This structural anatomy-based regularization term uses the result of an unsupervised Markovian segmentation obtained after a preliminary registration step between the MRI and SPECT data volumes from each patient. This method was successfully tested on 30 pairs of brain MRI and SPECT acquisitions from different subjects and on Hoffman and Jaszczak SPECT phantoms. The experiments demonstrated that the method performs better, in terms of signal-to-noise ratio, than a classical supervised restoration approach using a Metz filter

Applications of different machine learning approaches in prediction of breast cancer diagnosis delay

Background: The increasing rate of breast cancer (BC) incidence and mortality in Iran has turned this disease into a challenge. A delay in diagnosis leads to more advanced stages of BC and a lower chance of survival, which makes this cancer even more fatal. Objectives: The present study was aimed at identifying the predicting factors for delayed BC diagnosis in women in Iran. Methods: In this study, four machine learning methods, including extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost), random forest (RF), neural networks (NNs), and logistic regression (LR), were applied to analyze the data of 630 women with confirmed BC. Also, different statistical methods, including chi-square, p-value, sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, and area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC), were utilized in different steps of the survey. Results: Thirty percent of patients had a delayed BC diagnosis. Of all the patients with delayed diagnoses, 88.5% were married, 72.1% had an urban residency, and 84.8% had health insurance. The top three important factors in the RF model were urban residency (12.04), breast disease history (11.58), and other comorbidities (10.72). In the XGBoost, urban residency (17.54), having other comorbidities (17.14), and age at first childbirth (>30) (13.13) were the top factors; in the LR model, having other comorbidities (49.41), older age at first childbirth (82.57), and being nulliparous (44.19) were the top factors. Finally, in the NN, it was found that being married (50.05), having a marriage age above 30 (18.03), and having other breast disease history (15.83) were the main predicting factors for a delayed BC diagnosis. Conclusion: Machine learning techniques suggest that women with an urban residency who got married or had their first child at an age older than 30 and those without children are at a higher risk of diagnosis delay. It is necessary to educate them about BC risk factors, symptoms, and self-breast examination to shorten the delay in diagnosis. Copyright © 2023 Dehdar, Salimifard, Mohammadi, Marzban, Saadatmand, Fararouei and Dianati-Nasab

A cycle-consistent adversarial network for brain PET partial volume correction without prior anatomical information

Purpose: Partial volume effect (PVE) is a consequence of the limited spatial resolution of PET scanners. PVE can cause the intensity values of a particular voxel to be underestimated or overestimated due to the effect of surrounding tracer uptake. We propose a novel partial volume correction (PVC) technique to overcome the adverse effects of PVE on PET images. Methods: Two hundred and twelve clinical brain PET scans, including 50 18F-Fluorodeoxyglucose (18F-FDG), 50 18F-Flortaucipir, 36 18F-Flutemetamol, and 76 18F-FluoroDOPA, and their corresponding T1-weighted MR images were enrolled in this study. The Iterative Yang technique was used for PVC as a reference or surrogate of the ground truth for evaluation. A cycle-consistent adversarial network (CycleGAN) was trained to directly map non-PVC PET images to PVC PET images. Quantitative analysis using various metrics, including structural similarity index (SSIM), root mean squared error (RMSE), and peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), was performed. Furthermore, voxel-wise and region-wise-based correlations of activity concentration between the predicted and reference images were evaluated through joint histogram and Bland and Altman analysis. In addition, radiomic analysis was performed by calculating 20 radiomic features within 83 brain regions. Finally, a voxel-wise two-sample t-test was used to compare the predicted PVC PET images with reference PVC images for each radiotracer. Results: The Bland and Altman analysis showed the largest and smallest variance for 18F-FDG (95% CI: − 0.29, + 0.33 SUV, mean = 0.02 SUV) and 18F-Flutemetamol (95% CI: − 0.26, + 0.24 SUV, mean = − 0.01 SUV), respectively. The PSNR was lowest (29.64 ± 1.13 dB) for 18F-FDG and highest (36.01 ± 3.26 dB) for 18F-Flutemetamol. The smallest and largest SSIM were achieved for 18F-FDG (0.93 ± 0.01) and 18F-Flutemetamol (0.97 ± 0.01), respectively. The average relative error for the kurtosis radiomic feature was 3.32%, 9.39%, 4.17%, and 4.55%, while it was 4.74%, 8.80%, 7.27%, and 6.81% for NGLDM_contrast feature for 18F-Flutemetamol, 18F-FluoroDOPA, 18F-FDG, and 18F-Flortaucipir, respectively. Conclusion: An end-to-end CycleGAN PVC method was developed and evaluated. Our model generates PVC images from the original non-PVC PET images without requiring additional anatomical information, such as MRI or CT. Our model eliminates the need for accurate registration or segmentation or PET scanner system response characterization. In addition, no assumptions regarding anatomical structure size, homogeneity, boundary, or background level are required. © 2023, The Author(s)

Markov models in image processing

The aim of this paper is to present some aspects of Markov model based statistical image processing. After a brief review of statistical processing in image segmentation, classical Markov models (fields, chains, and trees) used in image processing are developed. Bayesian methods of segmentation are then described and different general parameter estimation methods are presented. More recent models and processing techniques, such as Pairwise and Triplet Markov models, Dempster-Shafer fusion in a Markov context, and generalized mixture estimation, are then discussed. We conclude with a nonexhaustive desciption of candidate extensions to multidimensional, multisensor, and multiresolution imagery. Connections with general graphical models are also highlighted.L'objet de l'article est de présenter divers aspects des traitements statistiques des images utilisant des modèles de Markov. En choisissant pour cadre la segmentation statistique nous rappelons brièvement la nature et l'intérêt des traitements probabilistes et présentons les modèles de Markov cachés classiques : champs, chaînes, et arbres. Les méthodes bayésiennes de segmentation sont décrites, ainsi que les grandes familles des méthodes d'apprentissage. Quelques modèles ou méthodes de traitements plus récents comme les modèles de Markov Couple et Triplet, la fusion de Dempster-Shafer dans le contexte markovien, ou l'estimation des mélanges généralisés sont également présentés. Nous terminons par une liste non exhaustive des divers prolongements des méthodes et modèles vers l'imagerie multidimensionnelle, multisenseurs, multirésolution. Des liens avec les modèles graphiques généraux sont également brièvement décrits

Three-Dimensional Blind Deconvolution Of Spect Images

Thanks to its ability to yield functionally rather than anatomically-based information, the threedimensional (3D) SPECT imagery technique has become a great help in the diagnostic of cerebrovascular diseases. Nevertheless, due to the imaging process, the 3D SPECT images are very blurred and consequently their interpretation by the clinician is often difficult and subjective. In order to improve the resolution of these 3D images and then to facilitate their interpretation, we propose herein, to extend a recent image blind deconvolution technique (called the NAS-RIF deconvolution method) in order to improve both the spatial and the inter-slice resolution of SPECT volumes. This technique requires a preliminary step in order to find the support of the object to be restored. In this paper, we propose to solve this problem with an unsupervised 3D Markovian segmentation technique. This method has been successfully tested on numerous real and simulated brain SPECT volumes, yielding very promis..