Automating Carotid Intima-Media Thickness Video Interpretation with Convolutional Neural Networks

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of mortality yet largely preventable, but the key to prevention is to identify at-risk individuals before adverse events. For predicting individual CVD risk, carotid intima-media thickness (CIMT), a noninvasive ultrasound method, has proven to be valuable, offering several advantages over CT coronary artery calcium score. However, each CIMT examination includes several ultrasound videos, and interpreting each of these CIMT videos involves three operations: (1) select three end-diastolic ultrasound frames (EUF) in the video, (2) localize a region of interest (ROI) in each selected frame, and (3) trace the lumen-intima interface and the media-adventitia interface in each ROI to measure CIMT. These operations are tedious, laborious, and time consuming, a serious limitation that hinders the widespread utilization of CIMT in clinical practice. To overcome this limitation, this paper presents a new system to automate CIMT video interpretation. Our extensive experiments demonstrate that the suggested system significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art methods. The superior performance is attributable to our unified framework based on convolutional neural networks (CNNs) coupled with our informative image representation and effective post-processing of the CNN outputs, which are uniquely designed for each of the above three operations.Comment: J. Y. Shin, N. Tajbakhsh, R. T. Hurst, C. B. Kendall, and J. Liang. Automating carotid intima-media thickness video interpretation with convolutional neural networks. CVPR 2016, pp 2526-2535; N. Tajbakhsh, J. Y. Shin, R. T. Hurst, C. B. Kendall, and J. Liang. Automatic interpretation of CIMT videos using convolutional neural networks. Deep Learning for Medical Image Analysis, Academic Press, 201

Error Corrective Boosting for Learning Fully Convolutional Networks with Limited Data

Training deep fully convolutional neural networks (F-CNNs) for semantic image segmentation requires access to abundant labeled data. While large datasets of unlabeled image data are available in medical applications, access to manually labeled data is very limited. We propose to automatically create auxiliary labels on initially unlabeled data with existing tools and to use them for pre-training. For the subsequent fine-tuning of the network with manually labeled data, we introduce error corrective boosting (ECB), which emphasizes parameter updates on classes with lower accuracy. Furthermore, we introduce SkipDeconv-Net (SD-Net), a new F-CNN architecture for brain segmentation that combines skip connections with the unpooling strategy for upsampling. The SD-Net addresses challenges of severe class imbalance and errors along boundaries. With application to whole-brain MRI T1 scan segmentation, we generate auxiliary labels on a large dataset with FreeSurfer and fine-tune on two datasets with manual annotations. Our results show that the inclusion of auxiliary labels and ECB yields significant improvements. SD-Net segments a 3D scan in 7 secs in comparison to 30 hours for the closest multi-atlas segmentation method, while reaching similar performance. It also outperforms the latest state-of-the-art F-CNN models.Comment: Accepted at MICCAI 201

Efficient Active Learning for Image Classification and Segmentation using a Sample Selection and Conditional Generative Adversarial Network

Training robust deep learning (DL) systems for medical image classification or segmentation is challenging due to limited images covering different disease types and severity. We propose an active learning (AL) framework to select most informative samples and add to the training data. We use conditional generative adversarial networks (cGANs) to generate realistic chest xray images with different disease characteristics by conditioning its generation on a real image sample. Informative samples to add to the training set are identified using a Bayesian neural network. Experiments show our proposed AL framework is able to achieve state of the art performance by using about 35% of the full dataset, thus saving significant time and effort over conventional methods

The occipital lateral plate mesoderm is a novel source for vertebrate neck musculature

In vertebrates, body musculature originates from somites, whereas head muscles originate from the cranial mesoderm. Neck muscles are located in the transition between these regions. We show that the chick occipital lateral plate mesoderm has myogenic capacity and gives rise to large muscles located in the neck and thorax. We present molecular and genetic evidence to show that these muscles not only have a unique origin, but additionally display a distinct temporal development, forming later than any other muscle group described to date. We further report that these muscles, found in the body of the animal, develop like head musculature rather than deploying the programme used by the trunk muscles. Using mouse genetics we reveal that these muscles are formed in trunk muscle mutants but are absent in head muscle mutants. In concordance with this conclusion, their connective tissue is neural crest in origin. Finally, we provide evidence that the mechanism by which these neck muscles develop is conserved in vertebrates

Short communication: A study of food consumption of the deepwater goby, Ponticola bathybius (Kessler, 1877), during spring migration in the southern Caspian Sea

The gobies exhibit a main role in the general production of the Caspian Sea due to their species diversity and unexploited stocks. So, of the 80 fish species known from Iranian part of the Caspian Sea, 10 of them are gobies. The deepwater goby, Ponticola bathybius (Kessler, 1877), Gobiidae, is a native species in the Caspian Sea which settles on sandy and shelly substrates and, in a few numbers, on firm silt down to 75 meters. The presence of predators such as Acipenseridae and prey items as Clupeonella sp. could be effective in the abundance of gobies. Gobies fishes are known as the great consumers of food resources and the considerable competitors for other species. ... In Iranian coastal waters of the Caspian Sea, there are differences in some important ecological factors including substrate type, slope and light intensity which may affect the prey community. Therefore, this study was carried out to compare dietary composition of P. bathybius at three different localities (Bandar-e-Anzali, Salmanshahr and Miankaleh) along the southern Caspian Sea coastal waters

Endometriosis of diaphragm: A case report

Endometriosis affects about 10 of women of reproductive age. Its main feature is the presence of stroma and endometrial glands in sites other than the uterus, mainly in pelvis. Pelvic peritoneum, ovaries, uterine ligaments, bladder, intestines, andcul-de-sac are among the affected areas. Sometimes endometriosis can be found outside of the pelvis and even above abdominal cavity, like indiaphragm.Herein, we present a case of an asymptomatic diaphragmatic endometriosis that was discovered incidentally during laparoscopy of pelvic endometriosis, as well as our appropriately proposed treatment protocol. © 2018, Royan Institute (ACECR). All rights reserved

Hemoperitoneum due to bleeding from a vein overlying a subserous uterine myoma: A case report

Background: Fibroids are the most common pelvic tumors in women; serious complications are rare but can be life-threatening. Case presentation: We present a case report of a 38-year-old Persian woman with acute abdominal pain and a history of uterine fibroids. The patient refused to undergo a laparoscopic myomectomy. Her ultrasound examination revealed free fluid in the abdominal cavity, and her vital signs were indicative of vasogenic shock. A diagnostic laparoscopy was performed to identify and control the source of bleeding: 400 ml of blood and blood clots were removed. Active bleeding was seen from a vein overlying a subserosal myoma. A laparotomic myomectomy was performed, and the patient was discharged 3 days after surgery with no complications. Conclusion: Surgeons should consider the possibility of this complication in women with acute abdominal pain and a history of uterine leiomyoma. © 2020 The Author(s)