19 research outputs found
UOLO - automatic object detection and segmentation in biomedical images
We propose UOLO, a novel framework for the simultaneous detection and
segmentation of structures of interest in medical images. UOLO consists of an
object segmentation module which intermediate abstract representations are
processed and used as input for object detection. The resulting system is
optimized simultaneously for detecting a class of objects and segmenting an
optionally different class of structures. UOLO is trained on a set of bounding
boxes enclosing the objects to detect, as well as pixel-wise segmentation
information, when available. A new loss function is devised, taking into
account whether a reference segmentation is accessible for each training image,
in order to suitably backpropagate the error. We validate UOLO on the task of
simultaneous optic disc (OD) detection, fovea detection, and OD segmentation
from retinal images, achieving state-of-the-art performance on public datasets.Comment: Publised on DLMIA 2018. Licensed under the Creative Commons
CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Effects of hospital facilities on patient outcomes after cancer surgery: an international, prospective, observational study
Background Early death after cancer surgery is higher in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs) compared with in high-income countries, yet the impact of facility characteristics on early postoperative outcomes is unknown. The aim of this study was to examine the association between hospital infrastructure, resource availability, and processes on early outcomes after cancer surgery worldwide.Methods A multimethods analysis was performed as part of the GlobalSurg 3 study-a multicentre, international, prospective cohort study of patients who had surgery for breast, colorectal, or gastric cancer. The primary outcomes were 30-day mortality and 30-day major complication rates. Potentially beneficial hospital facilities were identified by variable selection to select those associated with 30-day mortality. Adjusted outcomes were determined using generalised estimating equations to account for patient characteristics and country-income group, with population stratification by hospital.Findings Between April 1, 2018, and April 23, 2019, facility-level data were collected for 9685 patients across 238 hospitals in 66 countries (91 hospitals in 20 high-income countries; 57 hospitals in 19 upper-middle-income countries; and 90 hospitals in 27 low-income to lower-middle-income countries). The availability of five hospital facilities was inversely associated with mortality: ultrasound, CT scanner, critical care unit, opioid analgesia, and oncologist. After adjustment for case-mix and country income group, hospitals with three or fewer of these facilities (62 hospitals, 1294 patients) had higher mortality compared with those with four or five (adjusted odds ratio [OR] 3.85 [95% CI 2.58-5.75]; p<0.0001), with excess mortality predominantly explained by a limited capacity to rescue following the development of major complications (63.0% vs 82.7%; OR 0.35 [0.23-0.53]; p<0.0001). Across LMICs, improvements in hospital facilities would prevent one to three deaths for every 100 patients undergoing surgery for cancer.Interpretation Hospitals with higher levels of infrastructure and resources have better outcomes after cancer surgery, independent of country income. Without urgent strengthening of hospital infrastructure and resources, the reductions in cancer-associated mortality associated with improved access will not be realised
Brain-inspired robust delineation operator
In this paper we present a novel filter, based on the existing COSFIRE
filter, for the delineation of patterns of interest. It includes a mechanism of
push-pull inhibition that improves robustness to noise in terms of spurious
texture. Push-pull inhibition is a phenomenon that is observed in neurons in
area V1 of the visual cortex, which suppresses the response of certain simple
cells for stimuli of preferred orientation but of non-preferred contrast. This
type of inhibition allows for sharper detection of the patterns of interest and
improves the quality of delineation especially in images with spurious texture.
We performed experiments on images from different applications, namely the
detection of rose stems for automatic gardening, the delineation of cracks in
pavements and road surfaces, and the segmentation of blood vessels in retinal
images. Push-pull inhibition helped to improve results considerably in all
applications.Comment: Accepted at Brain-driven Computer Vision workshop at ECCV 201