Feature Neighbourhood Mutual Information for multi-modal image registration: An application to eye fundus imaging

© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Multi-modal image registration is becoming an increasingly powerful tool for medical diagnosis and treatment. The combination of different image modalities facilitates much greater understanding of the underlying condition, resulting in improved patient care. Mutual Information is a popular image similarity measure for performing multi-modal image registration. However, it is recognised that there are limitations with the technique that can compromise the accuracy of the registration, such as the lack of spatial information that is accounted for by the similarity measure. In this paper, we present a two-stage non-rigid registration process using a novel similarity measure, Feature Neighbourhood Mutual Information. The similarity measure efficiently incorporates both spatial and structural image properties that are not traditionally considered by MI. By incorporating such features, we find that this method is capable of achieving much greater registration accuracy when compared to existing methods, whilst also achieving efficient computational runtime. To demonstrate our method, we use a challenging medical image data set consisting of paired retinal fundus photographs and confocal scanning laser ophthalmoscope images. Accurate registration of these image pairs facilitates improved clinical diagnosis, and can be used for the early detection and prevention of glaucoma disease

U.S. Department of Energy worker health risk evaluation methodology for assessing risks associated with environmental restoration and waste management

This document describes a worker health risk evaluation methodology for assessing risks associated with Environmental Restoration (ER) and Waste Management (WM). The methodology is appropriate for estimating worker risks across the Department of Energy (DOE) Complex at both programmatic and site-specific levels. This document supports the worker health risk methodology used to perform the human health risk assessment portion of the DOE Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) although it has applications beyond the PEIS, such as installation-wide worker risk assessments, screening-level assessments, and site-specific assessments

Phosphoinositides Regulate Membrane-dependent Actin Assembly by Latex Bead Phagosomes

Actin assembly on membrane surfaces is an elusive process in which several phosphoinositides (PIPs) have been implicated. We have reconstituted actin assembly using a defined membrane surface, the latex bead phagosome (LBP), and shown that the PI(4,5)P(2)-binding proteins ezrin and/or moesin were essential for this process (Defacque et al., 2000b). Here, we provide several lines of evidence that both preexisting and newly synthesized PI(4,5)P(2), and probably PI(4)P, are essential for phagosomal actin assembly; only these PIPs were routinely synthesized from ATP during in vitro actin assembly. Treatment of LBP with phospholipase C or with adenosine, an inhibitor of type II PI 4-kinase, as well as preincubation with anti-PI(4)P or anti-PI(4,5)P(2) antibodies all inhibited this process. Incorporation of extra PI(4)P or PI(4,5)P(2) into the LBP membrane led to a fivefold increase in the number of phagosomes that assemble actin. An ezrin mutant mutated in the PI(4,5)P(2)-binding sites was less efficient in binding to LBPs and in reconstituting actin assembly than wild-type ezrin. Our data show that PI 4- and PI 5-kinase, and under some conditions also PI 3-kinase, activities are present on LBPs and can be activated by ATP, even in the absence of GTP or cytosolic components. However, PI 3-kinase activity is not required for actin assembly, because the process was not affected by PI 3-kinase inhibitors. We suggest that the ezrin-dependent actin assembly on the LBP membrane may require active turnover of D4 and D5 PIPs on the organelle membrane