A robust nonlinear scale space change detection approach for SAR images

In this paper, we propose a change detection approach based on nonlinear scale space analysis of change images for robust detection of various changes incurred by natural phenomena and/or human activities in Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images using Maximally Stable Extremal Regions (MSERs). To achieve this, a variant of the log-ratio image of multitemporal images is calculated which is followed by Feature Preserving Despeckling (FPD) to generate nonlinear scale space images exhibiting different trade-offs in terms of speckle reduction and shape detail preservation. MSERs of each scale space image are found and then combined through a decision level fusion strategy, namely "selective scale fusion" (SSF), where contrast and boundary curvature of each MSER are considered. The performance of the proposed method is evaluated using real multitemporal high resolution TerraSAR-X images and synthetically generated multitemporal images composed of shapes with several orientations, sizes, and backscatter amplitude levels representing a variety of possible signatures of change. One of the main outcomes of this approach is that different objects having different sizes and levels of contrast with their surroundings appear as stable regions at different scale space images thus the fusion of results from scale space images yields a good overall performance

A Fully Unsupervised Texture Segmentation Algorithm

This paper presents a fully unsupervised texture segmentation algorithm by using a modified discrete wavelet frames decomposition and a mean shift algorithm. By fully unsupervised, we mean the algorithm does not require any knowledge of the type of texture present nor the number of textures in the image to be segmented. The basic idea of the proposed method is to use the modified discrete wavelet frames to extract useful information from the image. Then, starting from the lowest level, the mean shift algorithm is used together with the fuzzy c-means clustering to divide the data into an appropriate number of clusters. The data clustering process is then refined at every level by taking into account the data at that particular level. The final crispy segmentation is obtained at the root level. This approach is applied to segment a variety of composite texture images into homogeneous texture areas and very good segmentation results are reported

Multiresolution hierarchy co-clustering for semantic segmentation in sequences with small variations

This paper presents a co-clustering technique that, given a collection of images and their hierarchies, clusters nodes from these hierarchies to obtain a coherent multiresolution representation of the image collection. We formalize the co-clustering as a Quadratic Semi-Assignment Problem and solve it with a linear programming relaxation approach that makes effective use of information from hierarchies. Initially, we address the problem of generating an optimal, coherent partition per image and, afterwards, we extend this method to a multiresolution framework. Finally, we particularize this framework to an iterative multiresolution video segmentation algorithm in sequences with small variations. We evaluate the algorithm on the Video Occlusion/Object Boundary Detection Dataset, showing that it produces state-of-the-art results in these scenarios.Comment: International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV) 201

Brain Tumor Detection and Segmentation in Multisequence MRI

Tato práce se zabývá detekcí a segmentací mozkového nádoru v multisekvenčních MR obrazech se zaměřením na gliomy vysokého a nízkého stupně malignity. Jsou zde pro tento účel navrženy tři metody. První metoda se zabývá detekcí prezence částí mozkového nádoru v axiálních a koronárních řezech. Jedná se o algoritmus založený na analýze symetrie při různých rozlišeních obrazu, který byl otestován na T1, T2, T1C a FLAIR obrazech. Druhá metoda se zabývá extrakcí oblasti celého mozkového nádoru, zahrnující oblast jádra tumoru a edému, ve FLAIR a T2 obrazech. Metoda je schopna extrahovat mozkový nádor z 2D i 3D obrazů. Je zde opět využita analýza symetrie, která je následována automatickým stanovením intenzitního prahu z nejvíce asymetrických částí. Třetí metoda je založena na predikci lokální struktury a je schopna segmentovat celou oblast nádoru, jeho jádro i jeho aktivní část. Metoda využívá faktu, že většina lékařských obrazů vykazuje vysokou podobnost intenzit sousedních pixelů a silnou korelaci mezi intenzitami v různých obrazových modalitách. Jedním ze způsobů, jak s touto korelací pracovat a používat ji, je využití lokálních obrazových polí. Podobná korelace existuje také mezi sousedními pixely v anotaci obrazu. Tento příznak byl využit v predikci lokální struktury při lokální anotaci polí. Jako klasifikační algoritmus je v této metodě použita konvoluční neuronová síť vzhledem k její známe schopnosti zacházet s korelací mezi příznaky. Všechny tři metody byly otestovány na veřejné databázi 254 multisekvenčních MR obrazech a byla dosáhnuta přesnost srovnatelná s nejmodernějšími metodami v mnohem kratším výpočetním čase (v řádu sekund při použitý CPU), což poskytuje možnost manuálních úprav při interaktivní segmetaci.This work deals with the brain tumor detection and segmentation in multisequence MR images with particular focus on high- and low-grade gliomas. Three methods are propose for this purpose. The first method deals with the presence detection of brain tumor structures in axial and coronal slices. This method is based on multi-resolution symmetry analysis and it was tested for T1, T2, T1C and FLAIR images. The second method deals with extraction of the whole brain tumor region, including tumor core and edema, in FLAIR and T2 images and is suitable to extract the whole brain tumor region from both 2D and 3D. It also uses the symmetry analysis approach which is followed by automatic determination of the intensity threshold from the most asymmetric parts. The third method is based on local structure prediction and it is able to segment the whole tumor region as well as tumor core and active tumor. This method takes the advantage of a fact that most medical images feature a high similarity in intensities of nearby pixels and a strong correlation of intensity profiles across different image modalities. One way of dealing with -- and even exploiting -- this correlation is the use of local image patches. In the same way, there is a high correlation between nearby labels in image annotation, a feature that has been used in the ``local structure prediction'' of local label patches. Convolutional neural network is chosen as a learning algorithm, as it is known to be suited for dealing with correlation between features. All three methods were evaluated on a public data set of 254 multisequence MR volumes being able to reach comparable results to state-of-the-art methods in much shorter computing time (order of seconds running on CPU) providing means, for example, to do online updates when aiming at an interactive segmentation.

Histopathological image analysis : a review

Over the past decade, dramatic increases in computational power and improvement in image analysis algorithms have allowed the development of powerful computer-assisted analytical approaches to radiological data. With the recent advent of whole slide digital scanners, tissue histopathology slides can now be digitized and stored in digital image form. Consequently, digitized tissue histopathology has now become amenable to the application of computerized image analysis and machine learning techniques. Analogous to the role of computer-assisted diagnosis (CAD) algorithms in medical imaging to complement the opinion of a radiologist, CAD algorithms have begun to be developed for disease detection, diagnosis, and prognosis prediction to complement the opinion of the pathologist. In this paper, we review the recent state of the art CAD technology for digitized histopathology. This paper also briefly describes the development and application of novel image analysis technology for a few specific histopathology related problems being pursued in the United States and Europe

Fast unsupervised multiresolution color image segmentation using adaptive gradient thresholding and progressive region growing

In this thesis, we propose a fast unsupervised multiresolution color image segmentation algorithm which takes advantage of gradient information in an adaptive and progressive framework. This gradient-based segmentation method is initialized by a vector gradient calculation on the full resolution input image in the CIE L*a*b* color space. The resultant edge map is used to adaptively generate thresholds for classifying regions of varying gradient densities at different levels of the input image pyramid, obtained through a dyadic wavelet decomposition scheme. At each level, the classification obtained by a progressively thresholded growth procedure is combined with an entropy-based texture model in a statistical merging procedure to obtain an interim segmentation. Utilizing an association of a gradient quantized confidence map and non-linear spatial filtering techniques, regions of high confidence are passed from one level to another until the full resolution segmentation is achieved. Evaluation of our results on several hundred images using the Normalized Probabilistic Rand (NPR) Index shows that our algorithm outperforms state-of the art segmentation techniques and is much more computationally efficient than its single scale counterpart, with comparable segmentation quality

A Novel Active Contour Model for Texture Segmentation

Texture is intuitively defined as a repeated arrangement of a basic pattern or object in an image. There is no mathematical definition of a texture though. The human visual system is able to identify and segment different textures in a given image. Automating this task for a computer is far from trivial. There are three major components of any texture segmentation algorithm: (a) The features used to represent a texture, (b) the metric induced on this representation space and (c) the clustering algorithm that runs over these features in order to segment a given image into different textures. In this paper, we propose an active contour based novel unsupervised algorithm for texture segmentation. We use intensity covariance matrices of regions as the defining feature of textures and find regions that have the most inter-region dissimilar covariance matrices using active contours. Since covariance matrices are symmetric positive definite, we use geodesic distance defined on the manifold of symmetric positive definite matrices PD(n) as a measure of dissimlarity between such matrices. We demonstrate performance of our algorithm on both artificial and real texture images