6 research outputs found
AiAReSeg: Catheter Detection and Segmentation in Interventional Ultrasound using Transformers
To date, endovascular surgeries are performed using the golden standard of
Fluoroscopy, which uses ionising radiation to visualise catheters and
vasculature. Prolonged Fluoroscopic exposure is harmful for the patient and the
clinician, and may lead to severe post-operative sequlae such as the
development of cancer. Meanwhile, the use of interventional Ultrasound has
gained popularity, due to its well-known benefits of small spatial footprint,
fast data acquisition, and higher tissue contrast images. However, ultrasound
images are hard to interpret, and it is difficult to localise vessels,
catheters, and guidewires within them. This work proposes a solution using an
adaptation of a state-of-the-art machine learning transformer architecture to
detect and segment catheters in axial interventional Ultrasound image
sequences. The network architecture was inspired by the Attention in Attention
mechanism, temporal tracking networks, and introduced a novel 3D segmentation
head that performs 3D deconvolution across time. In order to facilitate
training of such deep learning networks, we introduce a new data synthesis
pipeline that used physics-based catheter insertion simulations, along with a
convolutional ray-casting ultrasound simulator to produce synthetic ultrasound
images of endovascular interventions. The proposed method is validated on a
hold-out validation dataset, thus demonstrated robustness to ultrasound noise
and a wide range of scanning angles. It was also tested on data collected from
silicon-based aorta phantoms, thus demonstrated its potential for translation
from sim-to-real. This work represents a significant step towards safer and
more efficient endovascular surgery using interventional ultrasound.Comment: This work has been submitted to the IEEE for possible publicatio
INFLUENCE OF XYLENE ON THE TEXTURAL FEATURES OF THE HYBRID GEL MATERIALS
Contains special characters which cannot be displayed
Synthesis and characterization of sol-gel mesoporous organosilicas functionalized with amine groups
In this work we report on the synthesis of porous amine functionalized organosilica materials prepared by co-condensation of tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS) and bis-[3-(trimethoxyosilyl)propyl] amine (BTPA). The gels were prepared through a one-step sol-gel process catalyzed by the - NH- groups of BTPA. A block copolymer poly(ethylene glycol)-block-poly(propylene glycol)-block-poly(ethylene glycol) (P123) was employed as a porogen using the surfactant template method. The resultant materials have been characterized by nitrogen gas sorption, powder X-ray diffraction, FT-IR, SEM, Si-29 MAS NMR, C-13 CP MAS NMR and TG/DTA analysis. In order to examine the potential of these materials as adsorbents for heavy metals, Hg(II) adsorption experiments were also performed. The hybrids showed mesoporous disordered structure as evidenced by N2 adsorption-desorption isotherms and XRD patterns. Adsorption of Hg(II) ions from aqueous solutions showed high capacities suggesting that these materials could be used as adsorbents for Hg(II) ions in acid solutions. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved