6,694 research outputs found
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
Toward Feature-Preserving Vector Field Compression
The objective of this work is to develop error-bounded lossy compression methods to preserve topological features in 2D and 3D vector fields. Specifically, we explore the preservation of critical points in piecewise linear and bilinear vector fields. We define the preservation of critical points as, without any false positive, false negative, or false type in the decompressed data, (1) keeping each critical point in its original cell and (2) retaining the type of each critical point (e.g., saddle and attracting node). The key to our method is to adapt a vertex-wise error bound for each grid point and to compress input data together with the error bound field using a modified lossy compressor. Our compression algorithm can be also embarrassingly parallelized for large data handling and in situ processing. We benchmark our method by comparing it with existing lossy compressors in terms of false positive/negative/type rates, compression ratio, and various vector field visualizations with several scientific applications
Scanning Tunnelling Spectroscopic Studies of Dirac Fermions in Graphene and Topological Insulators
We report novel properties derived from scanning tunnelling spectroscopic (STS) studies of Dirac fermions in graphene and the surface state (SS) of a strong topological insulator (STI), Bi_2Se_3. For mono-layer graphene grown on Cu by chemical vapour deposition (CVD), strain-induced scalar and gauge potentials are manifested by the charging effects and the tunnelling conductance peaks at quantized energies, respectively. Additionally, spontaneous time-reversal symmetry breaking is evidenced by the alternating anti-localization and localization spectra associated with the zero-mode of two sublattices while global time-reversal symmetry is preserved under the presence of pseudo-magnetic fields. For Bi_2Se_3 epitaxial films grown on Si(111) by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE), spatially localized unitary impurity resonances with sensitive dependence on the energy difference between the Fermi level and the Dirac point are observed for samples thicker than 6 quintuple layers (QL). These findings are characteristic of the SS of a STI and are direct manifestation of strong topological protection against impurities. For samples thinner than 6-QL, STS studies reveal the openup of an energy gap in the SS due to overlaps of wave functions between the surface and interface layers. Additionally, spin-preserving quasiparticle interference wave-vectors are observed, which are consistent with the Rashba-like spin-orbit splitting
Chaotic Mixing in Three Dimensional Porous Media
Under steady flow conditions, the topological complexity inherent to all
random 3D porous media imparts complicated flow and transport dynamics. It has
been established that this complexity generates persistent chaotic advection
via a three-dimensional (3D) fluid mechanical analogue of the baker's map which
rapidly accelerates scalar mixing in the presence of molecular diffusion. Hence
pore-scale fluid mixing is governed by the interplay between chaotic advection,
molecular diffusion and the broad (power-law) distribution of fluid particle
travel times which arise from the non-slip condition at pore walls. To
understand and quantify mixing in 3D porous media, we consider these processes
in a model 3D open porous network and develop a novel stretching continuous
time random walk (CTRW) which provides analytic estimates of pore-scale mixing
which compare well with direct numerical simulations. We find that chaotic
advection inherent to 3D porous media imparts scalar mixing which scales
exponentially with longitudinal advection, whereas the topological constraints
associated with 2D porous media limits mixing to scale algebraically. These
results decipher the role of wide transit time distributions and complex
topologies on porous media mixing dynamics, and provide the building blocks for
macroscopic models of dilution and mixing which resolve these mechanisms.Comment: 36 page
A classification of smooth embeddings of 3-manifolds in 6-space
We work in the smooth category. If there are knotted embeddings S^n\to R^m,
which often happens for 2m<3n+4, then no concrete complete description of
embeddings of n-manifolds into R^m up to isotopy was known, except for disjoint
unions of spheres. Let N be a closed connected orientable 3-manifold. Our main
result is the following description of the set Emb^6(N) of embeddings N\to R^6
up to isotopy.
The Whitney invariant W : Emb^6(N) \to H_1(N;Z) is surjective. For each u \in
H_1(N;Z) the Kreck invariant \eta_u : W^{-1}u \to Z_{d(u)} is bijective, where
d(u) is the divisibility of the projection of u to the free part of H_1(N;Z).
The group Emb^6(S^3) is isomorphic to Z (Haefliger). This group acts on
Emb^6(N) by embedded connected sum. It was proved that the orbit space of this
action maps under W bijectively to H_1(N;Z) (by Vrabec and Haefliger's
smoothing theory). The new part of our classification result is determination
of the orbits of the action. E. g. for N=RP^3 the action is free, while for
N=S^1\times S^2 we construct explicitly an embedding f : N \to R^6 such that
for each knot l:S^3\to R^6 the embedding f#l is isotopic to f.
Our proof uses new approaches involving the Kreck modified surgery theory or
the Boechat-Haefliger formula for smoothing obstruction.Comment: 32 pages, a link to http://www.springerlink.com added, to appear in
Math. Zei
Graph Spectral Image Processing
Recent advent of graph signal processing (GSP) has spurred intensive studies
of signals that live naturally on irregular data kernels described by graphs
(e.g., social networks, wireless sensor networks). Though a digital image
contains pixels that reside on a regularly sampled 2D grid, if one can design
an appropriate underlying graph connecting pixels with weights that reflect the
image structure, then one can interpret the image (or image patch) as a signal
on a graph, and apply GSP tools for processing and analysis of the signal in
graph spectral domain. In this article, we overview recent graph spectral
techniques in GSP specifically for image / video processing. The topics covered
include image compression, image restoration, image filtering and image
segmentation
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