140 research outputs found
A Deep Learning Framework for Unsupervised Affine and Deformable Image Registration
Image registration, the process of aligning two or more images, is the core
technique of many (semi-)automatic medical image analysis tasks. Recent studies
have shown that deep learning methods, notably convolutional neural networks
(ConvNets), can be used for image registration. Thus far training of ConvNets
for registration was supervised using predefined example registrations.
However, obtaining example registrations is not trivial. To circumvent the need
for predefined examples, and thereby to increase convenience of training
ConvNets for image registration, we propose the Deep Learning Image
Registration (DLIR) framework for \textit{unsupervised} affine and deformable
image registration. In the DLIR framework ConvNets are trained for image
registration by exploiting image similarity analogous to conventional
intensity-based image registration. After a ConvNet has been trained with the
DLIR framework, it can be used to register pairs of unseen images in one shot.
We propose flexible ConvNets designs for affine image registration and for
deformable image registration. By stacking multiple of these ConvNets into a
larger architecture, we are able to perform coarse-to-fine image registration.
We show for registration of cardiac cine MRI and registration of chest CT that
performance of the DLIR framework is comparable to conventional image
registration while being several orders of magnitude faster.Comment: Accepted: Medical Image Analysis - Elsevie
Automatic Segmentation of the Left Ventricle in Cardiac CT Angiography Using Convolutional Neural Network
Accurate delineation of the left ventricle (LV) is an important step in
evaluation of cardiac function. In this paper, we present an automatic method
for segmentation of the LV in cardiac CT angiography (CCTA) scans. Segmentation
is performed in two stages. First, a bounding box around the LV is detected
using a combination of three convolutional neural networks (CNNs).
Subsequently, to obtain the segmentation of the LV, voxel classification is
performed within the defined bounding box using a CNN. The study included CCTA
scans of sixty patients, fifty scans were used to train the CNNs for the LV
localization, five scans were used to train LV segmentation and the remaining
five scans were used for testing the method. Automatic segmentation resulted in
the average Dice coefficient of 0.85 and mean absolute surface distance of 1.1
mm. The results demonstrate that automatic segmentation of the LV in CCTA scans
using voxel classification with convolutional neural networks is feasible.Comment: This work has been published as: Zreik, M., Leiner, T., de Vos, B.
D., van Hamersvelt, R. W., Viergever, M. A., I\v{s}gum, I. (2016, April).
Automatic segmentation of the left ventricle in cardiac CT angiography using
convolutional neural networks. In Biomedical Imaging (ISBI), 2016 IEEE 13th
International Symposium on (pp. 40-43). IEE
Automatic calcium scoring in low-dose chest CT using deep neural networks with dilated convolutions
Heavy smokers undergoing screening with low-dose chest CT are affected by
cardiovascular disease as much as by lung cancer. Low-dose chest CT scans
acquired in screening enable quantification of atherosclerotic calcifications
and thus enable identification of subjects at increased cardiovascular risk.
This paper presents a method for automatic detection of coronary artery,
thoracic aorta and cardiac valve calcifications in low-dose chest CT using two
consecutive convolutional neural networks. The first network identifies and
labels potential calcifications according to their anatomical location and the
second network identifies true calcifications among the detected candidates.
This method was trained and evaluated on a set of 1744 CT scans from the
National Lung Screening Trial. To determine whether any reconstruction or only
images reconstructed with soft tissue filters can be used for calcification
detection, we evaluated the method on soft and medium/sharp filter
reconstructions separately. On soft filter reconstructions, the method achieved
F1 scores of 0.89, 0.89, 0.67, and 0.55 for coronary artery, thoracic aorta,
aortic valve and mitral valve calcifications, respectively. On sharp filter
reconstructions, the F1 scores were 0.84, 0.81, 0.64, and 0.66, respectively.
Linearly weighted kappa coefficients for risk category assignment based on per
subject coronary artery calcium were 0.91 and 0.90 for soft and sharp filter
reconstructions, respectively. These results demonstrate that the presented
method enables reliable automatic cardiovascular risk assessment in all
low-dose chest CT scans acquired for lung cancer screening
CNN-based Landmark Detection in Cardiac CTA Scans
Fast and accurate anatomical landmark detection can benefit many medical
image analysis methods. Here, we propose a method to automatically detect
anatomical landmarks in medical images. Automatic landmark detection is
performed with a patch-based fully convolutional neural network (FCNN) that
combines regression and classification. For any given image patch, regression
is used to predict the 3D displacement vector from the image patch to the
landmark. Simultaneously, classification is used to identify patches that
contain the landmark. Under the assumption that patches close to a landmark can
determine the landmark location more precisely than patches farther from it,
only those patches that contain the landmark according to classification are
used to determine the landmark location. The landmark location is obtained by
calculating the average landmark location using the computed 3D displacement
vectors. The method is evaluated using detection of six clinically relevant
landmarks in coronary CT angiography (CCTA) scans: the right and left ostium,
the bifurcation of the left main coronary artery (LM) into the left anterior
descending and the left circumflex artery, and the origin of the right,
non-coronary, and left aortic valve commissure. The proposed method achieved an
average Euclidean distance error of 2.19 mm and 2.88 mm for the right and left
ostium respectively, 3.78 mm for the bifurcation of the LM, and 1.82 mm, 2.10
mm and 1.89 mm for the origin of the right, non-coronary, and left aortic valve
commissure respectively, demonstrating accurate performance. The proposed
combination of regression and classification can be used to accurately detect
landmarks in CCTA scans.Comment: This work was submitted to MIDL 2018 Conferenc
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