Boosted learned kernels for data-driven vesselness measure

Common vessel centerline extraction methods rely on the computation of a measure providing the likeness of the local appearance of the data to a curvilinear tube-like structure. The most popular techniques rely on empirically designed (hand crafted) measurements as the widely used Hessian vesselness, the recent oriented flux tubeness or filters (e.g. the Gaussian matched filter) that are developed to respond to local features, without exploiting any context information nor the rich structural information embedded in the data. At variance with the previously proposed methods, we propose a completely data-driven approach for learning a vesselness measure from expert-annotated dataset. For each data point (voxel or pixel), we extract the intensity values in a neighborhood region, and estimate the discriminative convolutional kernel yielding a positive response for vessel data and negative response for non-vessel data. The process is iterated within a boosting framework, providing a set of linear filters, whose combined response is the learned vesselness measure. We show the results of the general-use proposed method on the DRIVE retinal images dataset, comparing its performance against the hessian-based vesselness, oriented flux antisymmetry tubeness, and vesselness learned with a probabilistic boosting tree or with a regression tree. We demonstrate the superiority of our approach that yields a vessel detection accuracy of 0.95, with respect to 0.92 (hessian), 0.90 (oriented flux) and 0.85 (boosting tree). © 2017 SPIE

Deep learning analysis of plasma emissions: A potential system for monitoring methane and hydrogen in the pyrolysis processes

The estimation of methane and hydrogen production as output from a pyrolysis reaction is paramount to monitor the process and optimize its parameters. In this study, we propose a novel experimental approach for monitoring methane pyrolysis reactions aimed at hydrogen production by quantifying methane and hydrogen output from the system. While we appreciate the complexity of molecular outputs from methane hydrolysis process, our primary approach is a simplified model considering detection of hydrogen and methane only which involves three steps: continuous gas sampling, feeding of the sample into an argon plasma, and employing deep learning model to estimate of the methane and hydrogen concentration from the plasma spectral emission. While our model exhibits promising performance, there is still significant room for improvement in accuracy, especially regarding hydrogen quantification in the presence of methane and other hydrogen bearing molecules. These findings present exciting prospects, and we will discuss future steps necessary to advance this concept, which is currently in its early stages of development

Detecting and Characterizing the Fabella with High Frame-Rate Ultrasound Imaging

The fabella is a sesamoid bone usually located in the tendon of the lateral head of the gastrocnemius muscle, behind the knee joint. Prevalence rates in human populations vary widely with an average of 42.5% people having a fabella. Clinically, it is associated with a number of knee ailments, most notably the osteoarthritis of the knee and generalized knee pain (i.e., fabella syndrome). As the function of the fabella remains unknown, the biomechanical consequences of fabella presence/absence can only be speculated. Successfully detecting the fabella, measuring its size and determining its shape, are off importance for clinical and evolutionary researchers. In this work, we compare plane wave imaging with conventional focused imaging and evaluate their performance for detecting and characterizing the fabella

Automatic classification of endoscopic images for premalignant conditions of the esophagus

Barrett’s esophagus (BE) is a precancerous complication of gastroesophageal reflux disease in which normal stratified squamous epithelium lining the esophagus is replaced by intestinal metaplastic columnar epithelium. Repeated endoscopies and multiple biopsies are often necessary to establish the presence of intestinal metaplasia. Narrow Band Imaging (NBI) is an imaging technique commonly used with endoscopies that enhances the contrast of vascular pattern on the mucosa. We present a computer-based method for the automatic normal/metaplastic classification of endoscopic NBI images. Superpixel segmentation is used to identify and cluster pixels belonging to uniform regions. From each uniform clustered region of pixels, eight features maximizing differences among normal and metaplastic epithelium are extracted for the classification step. For each superpixel, the three mean intensities of each color channel are firstly selected as features. Three added features are the mean intensities for each superpixel after separately applying to the red-channel image three different morphological filters (top-hatfiltering, entropy filtering and range filtering). The last two features require the computation of the Grey-Level Co-Occurrence Matrix (GLCM), and are re ective of the contrast and the homogeneity of each superpixel. The classification step is performed using an ensemble of 50 classification trees, with a 10-fold cross-validation scheme by training the classifier at each step on a random 70% of the images and testing on the remaining 30% of the dataset. Sensitivity and Specificity are respectively of 79.2% and 87.3%, with an overall accuracy of 83.9%. © 2016 SPIE

Is machine learning prediction of Aβ positivity consistent? An assessment of multiple datasets

Poster abstrac

Superpixel-based automatic segmentation of villi in confocal endomicroscopy

Confocal Laser Endomicroscopy (CLE) is a technique permitting on-site microscopy of the gastrointestinal mucosa after the application of a fluorescent agent, allowing the evaluation of mucosa alterations. These are used as features by skilled technicians to stage the severity of multiple diseases, celiac disease or irritable bowel syndrome among the others. We present an automatic method for villi detection from confocal endoscopy images, whose appearance changes with mucosal alterations. Superpixel segmentation, a well-known technique originating from computer vision, is used to identify and cluster together pixels belonging to uniform regions. Each image in the dataset is analyzed in a multiscale fashion (scale 1, 0.5 and 0.25). From each superpixel, 37 features are extracted at multiple image scales. Each superpixel is classified using a random forest, and a post-processing step is performed to refine the final output. Results in the test set (70 images, 30870 superpixels) show 85.87% accuracy, 92.88% sensitivity, 76.99% specificity in the superpixel space, and 86.36% of accuracy and 87.44% Dice score in the pixel domain. © 2016 IEEE

A possible new approach in the prediction of late gestational hypertension: The role of the fetal aortic intima-media thickness

The aim was to determine the predictive role of combined screening for late-onset gestational hypertension by fetal ultrasound measurements, third trimester uterine arteries (UtAs) Doppler imaging, and maternal history. This prospective study on singleton pregnancies was conducted at the tertiary center of Maternal and Fetal Medicine of the University of Padua during the period between January 2012 and December 2014. Ultrasound examination (fetal biometry, fetal wellbeing, maternal Doppler study, fetal abdominal aorta intima-media thickness [aIMT], and fetal kidney volumes), clinical data (mother age, prepregnancy body mass index [BMI], and parity), and pregnancy outcomes were collected. The P value <0.05 was defined significant considering a 2-sided alternative hypothesis. The distribution normality of variables were assessed using Kolmogorov-Smirnoff test. Data were presented by mean (±standard deviation), median and interquartile range, or percentage and absolute values. We considered data from 1381 ultrasound examinations at 29 to 32 weeks’ gestation, and in 73 cases late gestational hypertension developed after 34 weeks’ gestation. The final multivariate model found that fetal aIMT as well as fetal umbilical artery pulsatility index (PI), maternal age, maternal prepregnacy BMI, parity, and mean PI of maternal UtAs, assessed at ultrasound examination of 29 to 32 weeks’ gestation, were significant and independent predictors for the development of gestational hypertension after 34 weeks’ gestation. The area under the curve of the model was 81.07% (95% confidence interval, 75.83%-86.32%). A nomogram was developed starting from multivariate logistic regression coefficients. Late-gestational hypertension could be independently predicted by fetal aIMT assessment at 29 to 32 weeks’ gestation, ultrasound Doppler waveforms, and maternal clinical parameters. Copyright © 2017 the Author(s). Published by Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc

Single- and Multi-Distribution Dimensionality Reduction Approaches for a Better Data Structure Capturing

In recent years, the huge expansion of digital technologies has vastly increased the volume of data to be explored, such that reducing the dimensionality of data is an essential step in data exploration. The integrity of a dimensionality reduction technique relates to the goodness of maintaining the data structure. Dimensionality reduction techniques such as Principal Component Analyses (PCA) and Multidimensional Scaling (MDS) globally preserve the distance ranking at the expense of neglecting small-distance preservation. Conversely, the structure capturing of some other methods such as Isomap, Locally Linear Embedding (LLE), Laplacian Eigenmaps t-Stochastic Neighbour Embedding (t-SNE), Uniform Manifold Approximation and Projection (UMAP), and TriMap rely on the number of neighbours considered. This paper presents a dimensionality reduction technique, Same Degree Distribution (SDD) that does not rely on the number of neighbours, thanks to using degree-distributions in both high and low dimensional spaces. Degree-distribution is similar to Student-t distribution and is less expensive than Gaussian distribution. As such, it enables better global data preservation in less computational time. Moreover, to improve the data structure capturing, SDD has been extended to Multi-SDDs (MSDD), which employs various degree distributions on top of SDD. The proposed approach and its extension demonstrated a greater performance compared with eight other benchmark methods, tested in several popular synthetics and real datasets such as Iris, Breast Cancer, Swiss Roll, MNIST, and Make Blob evaluated by the co-ranking matrix and Kendall’s Tau coefficient. For further work, we aim to approximate the number of distributions and their degrees in relation to the given dataset. Reducing the computational complexity is another objective for further work

Cortical Bone Thickness Assessment from Multi-frequency Ultrasound RF Data using a Convolutional Architecture with Multi-head Attention

Cortical bone thickness is an important predictor of bone strength and fracture risk, and accurate classification is crucial for the diagnosis and treatment of osteoporosis. The thinning of the cortical layer, indicative of compromised bone microarchitecture due to imbalanced formation and loss, underscores its significance. Nonetheless, quantifying bone thickness is challenging due to the diverse skeletal sites and subject variations in bone structure and properties.A potential solution lies in multi-frequency ultrasound assessment of cortical bone, enabling comprehensive property characterization across varying wavelengths and penetration depths. This research strives to establish a robust methodology for evaluating cortical bone thickness by leveraging a convolutional model with an attention mechanism to analyse multi-frequency ultrasound data

Growth abnormalities of fetuses and infants

The objective of this special issue is to address recent research trends and developments about the advancements of image processing and vision in healthcare. A substantial number of papers were submitted, and after a thorough peer review process, some of these were selected to be included in this special issue. Growth abnormalities (either growth restriction or large for gestational age) during perinatal and postnatal life are a hot topic issue, since they are often linked to alteration of uterine environment caused by placental insufficiency, maternal metabolic syndrome, and in general under- or overnutrition of the fetus. These fetal abnormalities account for the leading causes of perinatal morbidity and mortality. Moreover, under the hypothesis of developmental origin of adult diseases, they bear consequences in later life, programming the infant physiology for a higher risk of noncommunicable diseases, cardiovascular adult diseases, and neurodevelopment delay. Low birth weight, caused either by preterm birth and/or by intrauterine growth restriction, is recently known to be associated with increased rates of cardiovascular disease and noninsulin dependent diabetes in adult life. The “developmental origins of adult disease” hypothesis, often called “the Barker hypothesis,” proposes that these diseases originate through adaptations of the fetus when it is undernourished. These adaptations may be cardiovascular, metabolic, or endocrine and they may permanently change the structure and function of the body, increasing coronary heart disease risk factors, such as hypertension, type 2 diabetes mellitus, insulin resistance, and hyperlipidaemia. This hypothesis originally involved from observation by Barker and colleagues that the regions in England with the highest rates of infant mortality in the early 20th century also had the highest rates of mortality from coronary heart disease decades later. As the most commonly registered cause of infant death at the start of 20th century was low birth weight, these observations led to the hypothesis that low birth weight babies who survived infancy and childhood might be at increased risk of coronary heart disease in later life. There is an increased evidence of the link between intrauterine and perinatal alterations and adult diseases. Although the main focus so far has been the timing of delivery and follow-up, the study of the pathophysiology and of possible recovery is of paramount importance and needs the contributions of physicians from several fields, biologists, bioinformaticians, and engineers