The Role of Transient Vibration of the Skull on Concussion

Concussion is a traumatic brain injury usually caused by a direct or indirect blow to the head that affects brain function. The maximum mechanical impedance of the brain tissue occurs at 450±50 Hz and may be affected by the skull resonant frequencies. After an impact to the head, vibration resonance of the skull damages the underlying cortex. The skull deforms and vibrates, like a bell for 3 to 5 milliseconds, bruising the cortex. Furthermore, the deceleration forces the frontal and temporal cortex against the skull, eliminating a layer of cerebrospinal fluid. When the skull vibrates, the force spreads directly to the cortex, with no layer of cerebrospinal fluid to reflect the wave or cushion its force. To date, there is few researches investigating the effect of transient vibration of the skull. Therefore, the overall goal of the proposed research is to gain better understanding of the role of transient vibration of the skull on concussion. This goal will be achieved by addressing three research objectives. First, a MRI skull and brain segmentation automatic technique is developed. Due to bones’ weak magnetic resonance signal, MRI scans struggle with differentiating bone tissue from other structures. One of the most important components for a successful segmentation is high-quality ground truth labels. Therefore, we introduce a deep learning framework for skull segmentation purpose where the ground truth labels are created from CT imaging using the standard tessellation language (STL). Furthermore, the brain region will be important for a future work, thus, we explore a new initialization concept of the convolutional neural network (CNN) by orthogonal moments to improve brain segmentation in MRI. Second, the creation of a novel 2D and 3D Automatic Method to Align the Facial Skeleton is introduced. An important aspect for further impact analysis is the ability to precisely simulate the same point of impact on multiple bone models. To perform this task, the skull must be precisely aligned in all anatomical planes. Therefore, we introduce a 2D/3D technique to align the facial skeleton that was initially developed for automatically calculating the craniofacial symmetry midline. In the 2D version, the entire concept of using cephalometric landmarks and manual image grid alignment to construct the training dataset was introduced. Then, this concept was extended to a 3D version where coronal and transverse planes are aligned using CNN approach. As the alignment in the sagittal plane is still undefined, a new alignment based on these techniques will be created to align the sagittal plane using Frankfort plane as a framework. Finally, the resonant frequencies of multiple skulls are assessed to determine how the skull resonant frequency vibrations propagate into the brain tissue. After applying material properties and mesh to the skull, modal analysis is performed to assess the skull natural frequencies. Finally, theories will be raised regarding the relation between the skull geometry, such as shape and thickness, and vibration with brain tissue injury, which may result in concussive injury

Application of a novel automatic method for determining the bilateral symmetry midline of the facial skeleton based on invariant moments

© 2020 by the authors. Assuming a symmetric pattern plays a fundamental role in the diagnosis and surgical treatment of facial asymmetry, for reconstructive craniofacial surgery, knowing the precise location of the facial midline is important since for most reconstructive procedures the intact side of the face serves as a template for the malformed side. However, the location of the midline is still a subjective procedure, despite its importance. This study aimed to automatically locate the bilateral symmetry midline of the facial skeleton based on an invariant moment technique using pseudo-Zernike moments. A total of 367 skull images were evaluated using the proposed technique. The technique was found to be reliable and provided good accuracy in the symmetry planes. This new technique will be utilized for subsequent studies to evaluate diverse craniofacial reconstruction techniques

A study on the extraction of characteristics and the classification of invariant images through the rotation of an 3D industrial sensor

Neste trabalho, à discutido o problema de reconhecimento de objetos utilizando imagens extraÃdas de um sensor industrial 3D. NÃs nos concentramos em 9 extratores de caracterÃsticas, dos quais 7 sÃo baseados nos momentos invariantes (Hu, Zernike, Legendre, Fourier-Mellin, Tchebichef, Bessel-Fourier e Gaussian-Hermite), um outro à baseado na Transformada de Hough e o Ãltimo na anÃlise de componentes independentes, e, 4 classificadores, Naive Bayes, k-Vizinhos mais PrÃximos, MÃquina de Vetor de Suporte e Rede Neural Artificial-Perceptron Multi-Camadas. Para a escolha do melhor extrator de caracterÃsticas, foram comparados os seus desempenhos de classificaÃÃo em termos de taxa de acerto e de tempo de extraÃÃo, atravÃs do classificador k-Vizinhos mais PrÃximos utilizando distÃncia euclidiana. O extrator de caracterÃsticas baseado nos momentos de Zernike obteve as melhores taxas de acerto, 98.00%, e tempo relativamente baixo de extraÃÃo de caracterÃsticas, 0.3910 segundos. Os dados gerados a partir deste, foram apresentados a diferentes heurÃsticas de classificaÃÃo. Dentre os classificadores testados, o classificador k-Vizinhos mais PrÃximos, obteve a melhor taxa mÃdia de acerto, 98.00% e, tempo mÃdio de classificaÃÃo relativamente baixo, 0.0040 segundos, tornando-se o classificador mais adequado para a aplicaÃÃo deste estudo.In this work, the problem of recognition of objects using images extracted from a 3D industrial sensor is discussed. We focus in 9 feature extractors (where seven are based on invariant moments -Hu, Zernike, Legendre, Fourier-Mellin, Tchebichef, BesselâFourier and Gaussian-Hermite-, another is based on the Hough transform and the last one on independent component analysis), and 4 classifiers (Naive Bayes, k-Nearest Neighbor, Support Vector machines and Artificial Neural Network-Multi-Layer Perceptron). To choose the best feature extractor, their performance was compared in terms of classification accuracy rate and extraction time by the k-nearest neighbors classifier using euclidean distance. The feature extractor based on Zernike moments, got the best hit rates, 98.00 %, and relatively low time feature extraction, 0.3910 seconds. The data generated from this, were presented to different heuristic classification. Among the tested classifiers, the k-nearest neighbors classifier achieved the highest average hit rate, 98.00%, and average time of relatively low rank, 0.0040 seconds, thus making it the most suitable classifier for the implementation of this study

Development of a Convolutional Neural Network Based Skull Segmentation in MRI Using Standard Tesselation Language Models

Segmentation is crucial in medical imaging analysis to help extract regions of interest (ROI) from different imaging modalities. The aim of this study is to develop and train a 3D convolutional neural network (CNN) for skull segmentation in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). 58 gold standard volumetric labels were created from computed tomography (CT) scans in standard tessellation language (STL) models. These STL models were converted into matrices and overlapped on the 58 corresponding MR images to create the MRI gold standards labels. The CNN was trained with these 58 MR images and a mean ± standard deviation (SD) Dice similarity coefficient (DSC) of 0.7300 ± 0.04 was achieved. A further investigation was carried out where the brain region was removed from the image with the help of a 3D CNN and manual corrections by using only MR images. This new dataset, without the brain, was presented to the previous CNN which reached a new mean ± SD DSC of 0.7826 ± 0.03. This paper aims to provide a framework for segmenting the skull using CNN and STL models, as the 3D CNN was able to segment the skull with a certain precision