Otsu Method for Chicken Egg Embryo Detection based-on Increase Image Quality

Detection of chicken egg embryos using image processing has limitations and needs some processes for improvement. By human vision, the previous process used binoculars and candling using light/beams directed at the chicken eggs in the incubator. In this study, we propose the application of image segmentation using the Otsu method in detecting chicken egg embryos. This method uses image segmentation with increased image quality (preprocessing) by several methods such as resizing, grayscaling, image adjustment, and image enhancement. These processes produce a better image and can be used for input in the segmentation process. In addition, this study compares several segmentation methods in detecting chicken egg embryos, such as thresholding, Otsu basic, and k-means clustering. The results show that our proposed method produced segmentation images to detect chicken egg embryos of 200 datasets images. This method has a faster process and can create a uniform segmentation than other methods. However, other methods can also detect chicken egg embryos. The method’s accuracy proposed in this study increased by 1.5% compared to other methods. In addition, the resulting SSIM value has a percentage close to and more than 90%, which means that the segmentation of the results obtained can be used to detect chicken egg embryos

DC-image for real time compressed video matching

This chapter presents a suggested framework for video matching based on local features extracted from the DC-image of MPEG compressed videos, without full decompression. In addition, the relevant arguments and supporting evidences are discussed. Several local feature detectors will be examined to select the best for matching using the DC-image. Two experiments are carried to support the above. The first is comparing between the DC-image and I-frame, in terms of matching performance and computation complexity. The second experiment compares between using local features and global features regarding compressed video matching with respect to the DC-image. The results confirmed that the use of DC-image, despite its highly reduced size, it is promising as it produces higher matching precision, compared to the full I-frame. Also, SIFT, as a local feature, outperforms most of the standard global features. On the other hand, its computation complexity is relatively higher, but it is still within the real-time margin which leaves a space for further optimizations that can be done to improve this computation complexity

Digital Rock Reconstruction And Property Calculation Of Fractured Shale Rock Samples

As the preferential flow channels in the shale reservoir, the fracture systems including the natural micro-cracks and hydraulic fractures have received great attention from the whole energy industry worldwide. However, it is challenging to quantify the fracture systems in the shale rocks precisely because most of well-developed “histogram-based” image processing techniques cannot handle the case of small target segmentation. Because the fracture apertures are very thin, the over-segmentation or insufficient segmentation would lead to significant error in the quantification, including the fracture porosity, aperture, length, tortuosity etc., which would lead to serious mistakes to the property calculation. In this research, two novel image processing methods are proposed. The self-adaptive image enhancement method employs incomplete beta function and simulated annealing algorithm to modify the grayscale intensity histogram. The contrast between the target and the background of the transformed gray image reaches the maximum. Also, “self-adaptive” means the enhancement process is specified by the input images. The comparison of segmentation results before and after the image enhancement show that the target becomes more obvious to the naked eyes and the precise fracture porosity of the test image is 4.02 %. The multi-stage image segmentation (MSS) method combines the global and local information of the image to finish the segmentation. The generated three-dimensional model provides visualization of the fracture systems existing in the core. Also, the important parameters of the fractures can be obtained, including aperture, length, tortuosity, and porosity. Compared with the real permeability from the core-flooding experiments, the permeability calculated from the MSS method has the minimum error of 22.1 %. The results show that the proposed methods in this research can be effective tools for the precise quantification of the thin fracture systems

Detection of Myofascial Trigger Points With Ultrasound Imaging and Machine Learning

Myofascial Pain Syndrome (MPS) is a common chronic muscle pain disorder that affects a large portion of the global population, seen in 85-93% of patients in specialty pain clinics [10]. MPS is characterized by hard, palpable nodules caused by a stiffened taut band of muscle fibers. These nodules are referred to as Myofascial Trigger Points (MTrPs) and can be classified by two states: active MTrPs (A-MTrPs) and latent MtrPs (L-MTrPs). Treatment for MPS involves massage therapy, acupuncture, and injections or painkillers. Given the subjectivity of patient pain quantification, MPS can often lead to mistreatment or drug misuse. A deterministic way to quantify the pain is needed for better diagnosis and treatment. Various medical imaging technologies have been used to try to find quantifiable and measurable biomarkers of MTrPs. Ultrasound imaging, with it’s accessibility and variety of modalities, has shown significant findings in identifying MTrPs. Elastography ultrasound, which is used for measuring stiffness in soft tissues, has shown that MTrPs tend to be stiffer than normal muscle tissue. Doppler ultrasound has shown that bloodflow velocities differ significantly in areas surrounding MTrPs. MTrPs have been identified in standard B-mode grayscale ultrasound, but have varying conclusions with some studies identifying them as dark hypoechoic blobs and other studies showing them as bright hyperechoic blobs. Despite these discoveries, there is a high variance among results with no correlations to severity or pain. As a step towards quantifying the pain associated with MTrPs, this work aims to introduce a machine learning approach using image processing with texture recognition to detect MTrPs in Bmode ultrasound. A texture recognition algorithm called Gray Level Co-Occurrence Matrix (GLCM) is used to extract texture features from the B-mode ultrasound image. Feature maps are generated to emphasize these texture features in an image format in anticipation that a deep convolutional neural network will be able to correlate the features with the presence of a MTrP. The GLCM feature maps are compared to the elastography ultrasound to determine any correlations with muscle stiffness and then evaluated in the presence of MTrPs. The feature map generation is accelerated with a GPU-based implementation for the goal of real-time processing and inference of the machine learning model. Finally, two deep learning models are implemented to detect MTrPs comparing the effect of using GLCM feature maps of B-mode ultrasound to emphasize texture features for machine learning model inputs

AN OVERVIEW OF IMAGE SEGMENTATION ALGORITHMS

Image segmentation is a puzzled problem even after four decades of research. Research on image segmentation is currently conducted in three levels. Development of image segmentation methods, evaluation of segmentation algorithms and performance and study of these evaluation methods. Hundreds of techniques have been proposed for segmentation of natural images, noisy images, medical images etc. Currently most of the researchers are evaluating the segmentation algorithms using ground truth evaluation of (Berkeley segmentation database) BSD images. In this paper an overview of various segmentation algorithms is discussed. The discussion is mainly based on the soft computing approaches used for segmentation of images without noise and noisy images and the parameters used for evaluating these algorithms. Some of these techniques used are Markov Random Field (MRF) model, Neural Network, Clustering, Particle Swarm optimization, Fuzzy Logic approach and different combinations of these soft techniques

Improving cancer subtype diagnosis and grading using clinical decision support system based on computer-aided tissue image analysis

This research focuses towards the development of a clinical decision support system (CDSS) based on cellular and tissue image analysis and classification system that improves consistency and facilitates the clinical decision making process. In a typical cancer examination, pathologists make diagnosis by manually reading morphological features in patient biopsy images, in which cancer biomarkers are highlighted by using different staining techniques. This process is subjected to pathologist's training and experience, especially when the same cancer has several subtypes (i.e. benign tumor subtype vs. malignant subtype) and the same cancer tissue biopsy contains heterogeneous morphologies in different locations. The variability in pathologist's manual reading may result in varying cancer diagnosis and treatment. This Ph.D. research aims to reduce the subjectivity and variation existing in traditional histo-pathological reading of patient tissue biopsy slides through Computer-Aided Diagnosis (CAD). Using the CAD, quantitative molecular profiling of cancer biomarkers of stained biopsy images are obtained by extracting and analyzing texture and cellular structure features. In addition, cancer sub-type classification and a semi-automatic grade scoring (i.e. clinical decision making) for improved consistency over a large number of cancer subtype images can be performed. The CAD tools do have their own limitations and in certain cases the clinicians, however, prefer systems which are flexible and take into account their individuality when necessary by providing some control rather than fully automated system. Therefore, to be able to introduce CDSS in health care, we need to understand users' perspectives and preferences on the new information technology. This forms as the basis for this research where we target to present the quantitative information acquired through the image analysis, annotate the images and provide suitable visualization which can facilitate the process of decision making in a clinical setting.PhDCommittee Chair: Dr. May D. Wang; Committee Member: Dr. Andrew N. Young; Committee Member: Dr. Anthony J. Yezzi; Committee Member: Dr. Edward J. Coyle; Committee Member: Dr. Paul Benkese

Acceleration of Histogram-Based Contrast Enhancement via Selective Downsampling

In this paper, we propose a general framework to accelerate the universal histogram-based image contrast enhancement (CE) algorithms. Both spatial and gray-level selective down- sampling of digital images are adopted to decrease computational cost, while the visual quality of enhanced images is still preserved and without apparent degradation. Mapping function calibration is novelly proposed to reconstruct the pixel mapping on the gray levels missed by downsampling. As two case studies, accelerations of histogram equalization (HE) and the state-of-the-art global CE algorithm, i.e., spatial mutual information and PageRank (SMIRANK), are presented detailedly. Both quantitative and qualitative assessment results have verified the effectiveness of our proposed CE acceleration framework. In typical tests, computational efficiencies of HE and SMIRANK have been speeded up by about 3.9 and 13.5 times, respectively.Comment: accepted by IET Image Processin