Inter-comparison of medical image segmentation algorithms

Segmentation of images is a vital part of medical image processing, and MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) is already recognized as a very important tool for clinical diagnosis. In this thesis, comparisons between different segmentation algorithms are carried out, specifically on brain MRI images. Initial parts of the thesis provide the background to the project, and an introduction to the basic principles of MRI, respectively, followed by parameter definitions and MRI image artifacts. The next part briefly covers various image pre-processing techniques which are required, and this is followed with a review of the major segmentation techniques which are available, including thresholding, region growing, clustering, and K-Means clustering. The concept of fuzzy logic is also introduced here, and the chapter concludes with a discussion of fuzzy logic based segmentation algorithms such as Fuzzy C-Means (FCM) and Improved Fuzzy C-Means (IFCM) clustering algorithms. The following part provides details concerning the source, type and parameters of the data (images) used for this thesis. Evaluation and inter-comparisons between a number of different segmentation algorithms are given in near concluding part, finally, conclusions and suggestions for future research are provided in last part. Qualitative comparisons on real images and quantitative comparisons on simulated images were performed. Both qualitative and quantitative comparisons demonstrated that fuzzy logic based segmentation algorithms are superior in comparison with classical segmentation algorithms. Edge-based segmentation algorithms demonstrated the poorest performance of all; K-means and IFCM clustering algorithms performed better, and FCM demonstrated the best performance of all. However, it should be noted that IFCM was not properly evaluated due to time restrictions in code generation, testing and evaluation.Segmentation of images is a vital part of medical image processing, and MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) is already recognized as a very important tool for clinical diagnosis. In this thesis, comparisons between different segmentation algorithms are carried out, specifically on brain MRI images. Initial parts of the thesis provide the background to the project, and an introduction to the basic principles of MRI, respectively, followed by parameter definitions and MRI image artifacts. The next part briefly covers various image pre-processing techniques which are required, and this is followed with a review of the major segmentation techniques which are available, including thresholding, region growing, clustering, and K-Means clustering. The concept of fuzzy logic is also introduced here, and the chapter concludes with a discussion of fuzzy logic based segmentation algorithms such as Fuzzy C-Means (FCM) and Improved Fuzzy C-Means (IFCM) clustering algorithms. The following part provides details concerning the source, type and parameters of the data (images) used for this thesis. Evaluation and inter-comparisons between a number of different segmentation algorithms are given in near concluding part, finally, conclusions and suggestions for future research are provided in last part. Qualitative comparisons on real images and quantitative comparisons on simulated images were performed. Both qualitative and quantitative comparisons demonstrated that fuzzy logic based segmentation algorithms are superior in comparison with classical segmentation algorithms. Edge-based segmentation algorithms demonstrated the poorest performance of all; K-means and IFCM clustering algorithms performed better, and FCM demonstrated the best performance of all. However, it should be noted that IFCM was not properly evaluated due to time restrictions in code generation, testing and evaluation

Pattern Recognition

A wealth of advanced pattern recognition algorithms are emerging from the interdiscipline between technologies of effective visual features and the human-brain cognition process. Effective visual features are made possible through the rapid developments in appropriate sensor equipments, novel filter designs, and viable information processing architectures. While the understanding of human-brain cognition process broadens the way in which the computer can perform pattern recognition tasks. The present book is intended to collect representative researches around the globe focusing on low-level vision, filter design, features and image descriptors, data mining and analysis, and biologically inspired algorithms. The 27 chapters coved in this book disclose recent advances and new ideas in promoting the techniques, technology and applications of pattern recognition

Particle Swarm Optimization

Particle swarm optimization (PSO) is a population based stochastic optimization technique influenced by the social behavior of bird flocking or fish schooling.PSO shares many similarities with evolutionary computation techniques such as Genetic Algorithms (GA). The system is initialized with a population of random solutions and searches for optima by updating generations. However, unlike GA, PSO has no evolution operators such as crossover and mutation. In PSO, the potential solutions, called particles, fly through the problem space by following the current optimum particles. This book represents the contributions of the top researchers in this field and will serve as a valuable tool for professionals in this interdisciplinary field

Pattern Recognition

Pattern recognition is a very wide research field. It involves factors as diverse as sensors, feature extraction, pattern classification, decision fusion, applications and others. The signals processed are commonly one, two or three dimensional, the processing is done in real- time or takes hours and days, some systems look for one narrow object class, others search huge databases for entries with at least a small amount of similarity. No single person can claim expertise across the whole field, which develops rapidly, updates its paradigms and comprehends several philosophical approaches. This book reflects this diversity by presenting a selection of recent developments within the area of pattern recognition and related fields. It covers theoretical advances in classification and feature extraction as well as application-oriented works. Authors of these 25 works present and advocate recent achievements of their research related to the field of pattern recognition

A Comprehensive Survey on Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithm and Its Applications

Particle swarm optimization (PSO) is a heuristic global optimization method, proposed originally by Kennedy and Eberhart in 1995. It is now one of the most commonly used optimization techniques. This survey presented a comprehensive investigation of PSO. On one hand, we provided advances with PSO, including its modifications (including quantum-behaved PSO, bare-bones PSO, chaotic PSO, and fuzzy PSO), population topology (as fully connected, von Neumann, ring, star, random, etc.), hybridization (with genetic algorithm, simulated annealing, Tabu search, artificial immune system, ant colony algorithm, artificial bee colony, differential evolution, harmonic search, and biogeography-based optimization), extensions (to multiobjective, constrained, discrete, and binary optimization), theoretical analysis (parameter selection and tuning, and convergence analysis), and parallel implementation (in multicore, multiprocessor, GPU, and cloud computing forms). On the other hand, we offered a survey on applications of PSO to the following eight fields: electrical and electronic engineering, automation control systems, communication theory, operations research, mechanical engineering, fuel and energy, medicine, chemistry, and biology. It is hoped that this survey would be beneficial for the researchers studying PSO algorithms

A New Approach to Automatic Saliency Identification in Images Based on Irregularity of Regions

This research introduces an image retrieval system which is, in different ways, inspired by the human vision system. The main problems with existing machine vision systems and image understanding are studied and identified, in order to design a system that relies on human image understanding. The main improvement of the developed system is that it uses the human attention principles in the process of image contents identification. Human attention shall be represented by saliency extraction algorithms, which extract the salient regions or in other words, the regions of interest. This work presents a new approach for the saliency identification which relies on the irregularity of the region. Irregularity is clearly defined and measuring tools developed. These measures are derived from the formality and variation of the region with respect to the surrounding regions. Both local and global saliency have been studied and appropriate algorithms were developed based on the local and global irregularity defined in this work. The need for suitable automatic clustering techniques motivate us to study the available clustering techniques and to development of a technique that is suitable for salient points clustering. Based on the fact that humans usually look at the surrounding region of the gaze point, an agglomerative clustering technique is developed utilising the principles of blobs extraction and intersection. Automatic thresholding was needed in different stages of the system development. Therefore, a Fuzzy thresholding technique was developed. Evaluation methods of saliency region extraction have been studied and analysed; subsequently we have developed evaluation techniques based on the extracted regions (or points) and compared them with the ground truth data. The proposed algorithms were tested against standard datasets and compared with the existing state-of-the-art algorithms. Both quantitative and qualitative benchmarking are presented in this thesis and a detailed discussion for the results has been included. The benchmarking showed promising results in different algorithms. The developed algorithms have been utilised in designing an integrated saliency-based image retrieval system which uses the salient regions to give a description for the scene. The system auto-labels the objects in the image by identifying the salient objects and gives labels based on the knowledge database contents. In addition, the system identifies the unimportant part of the image (background) to give a full description for the scene

MATLAB

A well-known statement says that the PID controller is the "bread and butter" of the control engineer. This is indeed true, from a scientific standpoint. However, nowadays, in the era of computer science, when the paper and pencil have been replaced by the keyboard and the display of computers, one may equally say that MATLAB is the "bread" in the above statement. MATLAB has became a de facto tool for the modern system engineer. This book is written for both engineering students, as well as for practicing engineers. The wide range of applications in which MATLAB is the working framework, shows that it is a powerful, comprehensive and easy-to-use environment for performing technical computations. The book includes various excellent applications in which MATLAB is employed: from pure algebraic computations to data acquisition in real-life experiments, from control strategies to image processing algorithms, from graphical user interface design for educational purposes to Simulink embedded systems

Automatic dental caries detection in bitewing radiographs.

Doctoral Degree. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban.Dental Caries is one of the most prevalent chronic disease around the globe. Distinguishing carious lesions has been a challenging task. Conventional computer aided diagnosis and detection methods in the past have heavily relied on visual inspection of teeth. These are only effective on large and clearly visible caries on affected teeth. Conventional methods have been limited in performance due to the complex visual characteristics of dental caries images, which consists of hidden or inaccessible lesions. Early detection of dental caries is an important determinant for treatment and benefits much from the introduction of new tools such as dental radiography. A method for the segmentation of teeth in bitewing X-rays is presented in this thesis, as well as a method for the detection of dental caries on X-ray images using a supervised model. The diagnostic method proposed uses an assessment protocol that is evaluated according to a set of identifiers obtained from a learning model. The proposed technique automatically detects hidden and inaccessible dental caries lesions in bitewing radio graphs. The approach employed data augmentation to increase the number of images in the data set in order to have a total of 11,114 dental images. Image pre-processing on the data set was through the use of Gaussian blur filters. Image segmentation was handled through thresholding, erosion and dilation morphology, while image boundary detection was achieved through active contours method. Furthermore, the deep learning based network through the sequential model in Keras extracts features from the images through blob detection. Finally, a convexity threshold value of 0.9 is introduced to aid in the classification of caries as either present or not present. The relative efficacy of the supervised model in diagnosing dental caries when compared to current systems is indicated by the results detailed in this thesis. The proposed model achieved a 97% correct diagnostic which proved quite competitive with existing models.Author's Publications are listed on page 4 of this thesis

Biomedical signal analysis in automatic classification problems

A lo largo de la última década hemos asistido a un desarrollo sin precedentes de las tecnologías de la salud. Los avances en la informatización, la creación de redes, las técnicas de imagen, la robótica, las micro/nano tecnologías, y la genómica, han contribuido a aumentar significativamente la cantidad y diversidad de información al alcance del personal clínico para el diagnóstico, pronóstico, tratamiento y seguimiento de los pacientes. Este aumento en la cantidad y diversidad de datos clínicos requiere del continuo desarrollo de técnicas y metodologías capaces de integrar estos datos, procesarlos, y dar soporte en su interpretación de una forma robusta y eficiente. En este contexto, esta Tesis se focaliza en el análisis y procesado de señales biomédicas y su uso en problemas de clasificación automática. Es decir, se focaliza en: el diseño e integración de algoritmos para el procesado automático de señales biomédicas, el desarrollo de nuevos métodos de extracción de características para señales, la evaluación de compatibilidad entre señales biomédicas, y el diseño de modelos de clasificación para problemas clínicos específicos. En la mayoría de casos contenidos en esta Tesis, estos problemas se sitúan en el ámbito de los sistemas de apoyo a la decisión clínica, es decir, de sistemas computacionales que proporcionan conocimiento experto para la decisión en el diagnóstico, pronóstico y tratamiento de los pacientes. Una de las principales contribuciones de esta tesis consiste en la evaluación de la compatibilidad entre espectros de resonancia magnética (ERM) obtenidos mediante dos tecnologías de escáneres de resonancia magnética coexistentes en la actualidad (escáneres de 1.5T y de 3T). Esta compatibilidad se evalúa en el contexto de clasificación automática de tumores cerebrales. Los resultados obtenidos en este trabajo sugieren que los clasificadores existentes basados en datos de ERM de 1.5T pueden ser aplicables a casos obtenidos con la nueva tecnologFuster García, E. (2012). Biomedical signal analysis in automatic classification problems [Tesis doctoral]. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/17176Palanci

Multi-Agent Systems

A multi-agent system (MAS) is a system composed of multiple interacting intelligent agents. Multi-agent systems can be used to solve problems which are difficult or impossible for an individual agent or monolithic system to solve. Agent systems are open and extensible systems that allow for the deployment of autonomous and proactive software components. Multi-agent systems have been brought up and used in several application domains