A multi‐modal,multi‐atlas‐based approach for Alzheimer detection via machine learning

The use of biomarkers for early detection of Alzheimer's disease (AD) improves the accuracy of imaging‐based prediction of AD and its prodromal stage that is mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Brain parcellation‐based computer‐aided methods for detecting AD and MCI segregate the brain in different anatomical regions and use their features to predict AD and MCI. Brain parcellation generally is carried out based on existing anatomical atlas templates, which vary in the boundaries and number of anatomical regions. This works considers dividing the brain based on different atlases and combining the features extracted from these anatomical parcellations for a more holistic and robust representation. We collected data from the ADNI database and divided brains based on two well‐known atlases: LONI Probabilistic Brain Atlas (LPBA40) and Automated Anatomical Labeling (AAL). We used baselines images of structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and ¹⁸F‐fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (FDG‐PET) to calculate average gray‐matter density and average relative cerebral metabolic rate for glucose in each region. Later, we classified AD, MCI and cognitively normal (CN) subjects using the individual features extracted from each atlas template and the combined features of both atlases. We reduced the dimensionality of individual and combined features using principal component analysis, and used support vector machines for classification. We also ranked features mostly involved in classification to determine the importance of brain regions for accurately classifying the subjects. Results demonstrated that features calculated from multiple atlases lead to improved performance compared to those extracted from one atlas only.     

Alzheimer disease classification using KPCA,LDA, and multi‐kernel learning SVM

Early diagnosis of Alzheimer disease (AD) and mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is always useful. Preventive measures might have an impact on reducing AD risk factors. Structural magnetic resonance (MR) imaging, one of the vital sensitive biomarkers for cerebral atrophy in the brain, is used to extract volumetric feature by FreeSurfer and the CIVET toolbox. All of the structural magnetic resonance imaging (s‐MRI) data that we used were downloaded from the Alzheimer's disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) database (adni.loni.usc.edu) of imaging data. This novel approach is applied for the diagnosis of AD and MCI from healthy controls (HCs) combining extracted features with the MMSE (mini‐mental state examination) scores, applying a two sample t‐test to select a subset of features. The subset of features is fed to kernel principal component analysis (KPCA) module to project data onto the reduced principal component coefficients at higher dimensional kernel space to increase the linear separability. Then, the kernel PCA coefficients are projected into the more efficient linear discriminant space using linear discriminant analysis. A multi‐kernel learning support vector machine (SVM) is used on newly projected data for stratification of AD and MCI from HCs. Using this approach, we obtain 93.85% classification accuracy when detecting AD from HCs for segmented volumetric features (using FreeSurfer) with high sensitivity and specificity. When distinguishing MCI from HCs and AD using volumetric features after subcortical segmentation, the detection rate reaches 86.54% and 75.12%, respectively.     

Analysis and classification of malignancy in pancreatic magnetic resonance images using neural network techniques

Computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) is a computerized way of detecting tumors in MR images. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has been generally used in the diagnosis and detection of pancreatic tumors. In a medical imaging system, soft tissue contrast and noninvasiveness are clear preferences of MRI. Inaccurate detection of tumor and long time consumption are the disadvantages of MRI. Computerized classifiers can greatly renew the diagnosis activity, in terms of both accuracy and time necessity by normal and abnormal images, automatically. This article presents an intelligent, automatic, accurate, and robust method to classify human pancreas MRI images as normal or abnormal in terms of pancreatic tumor. It represents the response of artificial neural network (ANN) and support vector machine (SVM) techniques for pancreatic tumor classification. For this, we extract features from MR images of pancreas using the GLCM method and select the best features using JAFER algorithm. These features are analyzed by five classification techniques: ANN BP, ANN RBF, SVM Linear, SVM Poly, and SVM RBF. We compare the results with benchmark data set of MR brain images. The analytical outcome presents that the two best features used to classify the MR images using ANN BP technique have 98% classification accuracy.     

An improved machine learning technique based on downsized KPCA for Alzheimer's disease classification

Alzheimer's disease (AD), a neurodegenerative disorder, is a very serious illness that cannot be cured, but the early diagnosis allows precautionary measures to be taken. The current used methods to detect Alzheimer's disease are based on tests of cognitive impairment, which does not provide an exact diagnosis before the patient passes a moderate stage of AD. In this article, a novel classifier of brain magnetic resonance images (MRI) based on the new downsized kernel principal component analysis (DKPCA) and multiclass support vector machine (SVM) is proposed. The suggested scheme classifies AD MRIs. First, a multiobjective optimization technique is used to determine the optimal parameter of the kernel function in order to ensure good classification results and to minimize the number of retained principle components simultaneously. The optimal parameter is used to build the optimized DKPCA model. Second, DKPCA is applied to normalized features. Downsized features are then fed to the classifier to output the prediction. To validate the effectiveness of the proposed method, DKPCA was tested using synthetic data to demonstrate its efficiency on dimensionality reduction, then the DKPCA based technique was tested on the OASIS MRI database and the results were satisfactory compared to conventional approaches.     

Dual‐Modal NIR‐Fluorophore Conjugated Magnetic Nanoparticle for Imaging Amyloid‐β Species In Vivo

Senile plaques, the extracellular deposit of amyloid‐β (Aβ) peptides, are one of the neuropathological hallmarks found in Alzheimer's disease (AD) brain. The current method of brain imaging of amyloid plaques based on positron emission tomography (PET) is expensive and invasive with low spatial resolution. Thus, the development of sensitive and nonradiative amyloid‐β (Aβ)‐specific contrast agents is highly important and beneficial to achieve early AD detection, monitor the disease progression, and evaluate the effectiveness of potential AD drugs. Here a neuroprotective dual‐modal nanoprobe developed by integrating highly Aβ‐specific and turn‐on fluorescence cyanine sensors with superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles as an effective near‐infrared imaging (NIRI)/magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) contrast agent for imaging of Aβ species in vivo is reported. This Aβ‐specific probe is found not only nontoxic and noninvasive, but also highly blood brain barrier permeable. It also shows a potent neuroprotective effect against Aβ‐induced toxicities. This nanoprobe is successfully applied for in vivo fluorescence imaging with high sensitivity and selectivity to Aβ species, and MRI with high spatial resolution in an APP/PS1 transgenic mice model. Its potential as a powerful in vivo dual‐modal imaging tool for early detection and diagnosis of AD in humans is affirmed.     

MRI brain segmentation in combination of clustering methods with Markov random field

Medical image segmentation is a preliminary stage of inclusion in identification tools. The correct segmentation of brain Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) images is crucial for an accurate detection of the disease diagnosis. Due to in‐homogeneity, low distinction and noise the segmentation of the brain MRI images is treated as the most challenging task. In this article, we proposed hybrid segmentation, by combining the clustering methods with Hidden Markov Random Field (HMRF) technique. This aims to decrease the computational load and improves the runtime of segmentation method, as MRF methodology is used in post‐processing the images. Its evaluation has performed on real imaging data, resulting in the classification of brain tissues with dice similarity metric. These results indicate the improvement in performance of the proposed method with various noise levels, compared with existing algorithms. In implementation, selection of clustering method provides better results in the segmentation of MRI brain images.     

A hybrid PET‐MRI: An integrated molecular‐genetic imaging system with HRRT‐PET and 7.0‐T MRI

A PET‐MRI fusion system is developed for molecular‐genetic imaging. The purpose of the system is to obtain images of the in‐vivo human brain using two high‐end imaging devices, an advanced PET and an ultrahigh‐field MRI. These are the HRRT‐PET, a high‐resolution research tomograph dedicated to brain imaging on the molecular level, and the 7.0‐T MRI, an ultrahigh field version used for morphological imaging. HRRT‐PET delivers high‐resolution molecular imaging with a resolution down to 2.5 mm FWHM, which is currently the highest spatial resolution available for the observation of the human brain's molecular activities, including enzymes and receptors, which are manipulated genetically, such as reporter genes and probes. The 7.0‐T MRI began to reveal submillimeter resolution images of the cortical as well as deep brain areas, down to 250 μm, which allows us to visualize the fine details of the cortical and brainstem areas, including the line of Gennari in the visual cortex and the corticospinal tracts in the pontine area. The current PET‐MRI fusion imaging system produces the highest quality images of molecular and genetic activities of the human brain in vivo. It is starting to provide many answers to the key questions about the neurological diseases. Some of these start providing answers to many cognitive neuroscience problems with clear molecular and genetic bases. There is great potential in the PET‐MRI for early diagnosis of cancers as well as other neurological diseases, which we were previously unable to diagnose, such as microscopic molecular changes that occur in Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Imaging Syst Technol, 17, 252–265, 2007     

Aortic Dissection Diagnosis Based on Sequence Information andDeepLearning

Aortic dissection (AD) is one of the most serious diseases with high mortality, and its diagnosis mainly depends on computed tomography (CT) results. Most existing automatic diagnosis methods of AD are only suitable for AD recognition, which usually require preselection of CT images and cannot be further classified to different types. In this work, we constructed a dataset of 105 cases with a total of 49021 slices, including 31043 slices expert-level annotation and proposed a two-stage AD diagnosis structure based on sequence information and deep learning. The proposed region of interest (RoI) extraction algorithm based on sequence information (RESI) can realize high-precision for RoI identification in the first stage. Then DenseNet-121 is applied for further diagnosis. Specially, the proposed method can judge the type of AD without preselection of CT images. The experimental results show that the accuracy of Stanford typing classification of AD is 89.19%, and the accuracy at the slice-level reaches 97.41%, which outperform the state-of-art methods. It can provide important decision-making information for the determination of further surgical treatment plan for patients.     

A Novel Hybrid Machine Learning Approach for Classification of Brain Tumor Images

Abnormal growth of brain tissues is the real cause of brain tumor. Strategy for the diagnosis of brain tumor at initial stages is one of the key step for saving the life of a patient. The manual segmentation of brain tumor magnetic resonance images (MRIs) takes time and results vary significantly in low-level features. To address this issue, we have proposed a ResNet-50 feature extractor depended on multilevel deep convolutional neural network (CNN) for reliable images segmentation by considering the low-level features of MRI. In this model, we have extracted features through ResNet-50 architecture and fed these feature maps to multi-level CNN model. To handle the classification process, we have collected a total number of 2043 MRI patients of normal, benign, and malignant tumor. Three model CNN, multi-level CNN, and ResNet-50 based multi-level CNN have been used for detection and classification of brain tumors. All the model results are calculated in terms of various numerical values identified as precision (P), recall (R), accuracy (Acc) and f1-score (F1-S). The obtained average results are much better as compared to already existing methods. This modified transfer learning architecture might help the radiologists and doctors as a better significant system for tumor diagnosis.     

A geometric flow-based approach for diffusion tensor image segmentation

Diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging (DT-MRI, shortened as DTI) produces, from a set of diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance images, tensor-valued images where each voxel is assigned a 3x3 symmetric, positive-definite matrix. This tensor is simply the covariance matrix of a local Gaussian process with zero mean, modelling the average motion of water molecules. We propose a three-dimensional geometric flow-based model to segment the main core of cerebral white matter fibre tracts from DTI. The segmentation is carried out with a front propagation algorithm. The front is a three-dimensional surface that evolves along its normal direction with speed that is proportional to a linear combination of two measures: a similarity measure and a consistency measure. The similarity measure computes the similarity of the diffusion tensors at a voxel and its neighbouring voxels along the normal to the front; the consistency measure is able to speed up the propagation at locations where the evolving front is more consistent with the diffusion tensor field, to remove noise effect to some extent, and thus to improve results. We validate the proposed model and compare it with some other methods using synthetic and human brain DTI data; experimental results indicate that the proposed model improves the accuracy and efficiency in segmentation.     

Comparative analysis of Alzheimer's disease classification by CDR level using CNN,feature selection,and machine-learning techniques

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of brain needs an impeccable analysis to investigate all its structure and pattern. This analysis may be a sharp visual analysis by an experienced medical professional or by a computer aided diagnosis system that can help to predict, what may be the recent condition. Similarly, on the basis of various information and technique, a system can be designed to detect whether a patient is prone to Alzheimer's disease or not. And this task of detection of abnormalities at an initial stage from brain MRI is a major challenge in the field of neurosciences. The main idea behind our research is to utilize the deep layers feature extraction benefited from deep neural network architecture, without extensive hardware resource training, and classifying the image on a basis of simple machine-learning algorithm with selected best features in order to reduce work load, classification error and hardware utilization time. We have utilized convolution neural network (CNN) layer using similar architecture like that of Alexnet with some parametric change, for the automatic extraction of features of images obtained from slice extraction of whole brain MRI whereas 13 manual features based on gray level co-occurrence matrix were also extracted to test the impact of this features on ranking. If we had only classified using CNN network, the misclassification rate was much higher. So, feature selection is achieved with feature ranking algorithms like Mutinffs, ReliefF, Laplacian and UDFS and so on and also tested with different machine-learning techniques like Support Vector Machine, K-Nearest Neighbor and Subspace Ensemble under different testing condition. The performance of the result is satisfactory with classification accuracy around 98% to 99% with 7:3 ratio of random holdout partition of training to testing image sets and also with fivefolds of cross-validation on the same set using a standardized template.     

An improved fast marching method and its application in Alzheimer's disease

Magnetic resonance diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) provides a noninvasive approach to characterize the fiber pathways in the human brain. Among the fiber tractography algorithms in DTI analysis, the fast marching (FM) method has been widely used in quantitatively analyzing the structural connectivity of the fibers and their changes. However, standard FM only considers the similarity and the principal direction information conveyed by two neighboring voxels. It may have poor tracking performance when image noise and fiber crossing are present. To solve this problem, we introduced an improved FM method employing a memory factor (MFFM) to better characterize the directionality of fiber propagation. Simulation showed that MFFM yields higher tracking accuracy, lower computational load, and better antinoise/crossing performance compared with standard FM. Finally, we applied MFFM to Alzheimer's disease (AD) DTI data to explore the impaired regional connectivity of fiber structure. The results augment the knowledge of the pathological alteration of white matter in AD. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Imaging Syst Technol, 23, 346–352, 2013     

Compatible abnormality detection technique for CT and MRI brain images

Abstract

An automated computerised tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) brain images are used to perform an efficient classification. The proposed technique consists of three stages, namely, pre-processing, feature extraction and classification. Initially, pre-processing is performed to remove the noise from the medical MRI images. Then, in the feature extraction stage, the features that are related with MRI and CT images are extracted and these extracted features which are given to the Feed Forward Back-propagation Neural Network (FFBNN) is exploited in order to classify the brain MRI and CT images into two types: normal and abnormal. The FFBNN is well trained by the extracted features and uses the unknown medical brain MRI images for classification in order to achieve better classification performance. The proposed method is validated by various MRI and CT scan images. A classification with an accomplishment of 96% and 70% has been obtained by the proposed FFBNN classifier. This achievement shows the effectiveness of the proposed brain image classification technique when compared with other recent research works.     

A comprehensive review: Segmentation of MRI images—brain tumor

Segmentation of tumors in human brain aims to classify different abnormal tissues (necrotic core, edema, active cells) from normal tissues (cerebrospinal fluid, gray matter, white matter) of the brain. In existence, detection of abnormal tissues is easy for studying brain tumor, but reproducibility, characterization of abnormalities and accuracy are complicated in the process of segmentation. The magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)‐based segmentation of tumors in brain images is more enhancing and attracting in current years of research studies. It is due to non‐invasive examination and good contrast prone to soft tissues of images obtained from MRI modality. Medical approval of different segmentation techniques depends on the benchmark and simplicity of the method. This article incorporates both fully‐automatic and semi‐automatic methods for segmentation. The outlook study of this article is to provide the summary of most significant segmentation methods of tumors in brain using MRI. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Imaging Syst Technol, 26, 295–304, 2016     

Fitness adaptive deer hunting-based region growing and recurrent neural network for melanoma skin cancer detection

This proposal aims to enhance the accuracy of a dermoscopic skin cancer diagnosis with the aid of novel deep learning architecture. The proposed skin cancer detection model involves four main steps: (a) preprocessing, (b) segmentation, (c) feature extraction, and (d) classification. The dermoscopic images initially subjected to a preprocessing step that includes image enhancement and hair removal. After preprocessing, the segmentation of lesion is deployed by an optimized region growing algorithm. In the feature extraction phase, local features, color morphology features, and morphological transformation-based features are extracted. Moreover, the classification phase uses a modified deep learning algorithm by merging the optimization concept into recurrent neural network (RNN). As the main contribution, the region growing and RNN improved by the modified deer hunting optimization algorithm (DHOA) termed as Fitness Adaptive DHOA (FA-DHOA). Finally, the analysis has been performed to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.     

Identifying Materials of Photographic Images and Photorealistic Computer Generated Graphics Based on Deep CNNs

Currently, some photorealistic computer graphics are very similar to photographic images. Photorealistic computer generated graphics can be forged as photographic images, causing serious security problems. The aim of this work is to use a deep neural network to detect photographic images (PI) versus computer generated graphics (CG). In existing approaches, image feature classification is computationally intensive and fails to achieve real-time analysis. This paper presents an effective approach to automatically identify PI and CG based on deep convolutional neural networks (DCNNs). Compared with some existing methods, the proposed method achieves real-time forensic tasks by deepening the network structure. Experimental results show that this approach can effectively identify PI and CG with average detection accuracy of 98%.     

Improved fuzzy entropy clustering algorithm for MRI brain image segmentation

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) brain image segmentation is essential at preliminary stage in the neuroscience research and computer‐aided diagnosis. However, presence of noise and intensity inhomogeneity in MRI brain images leads to improper segmentation. The fuzzy entropy clustering (FEC) is often used to deal with noisy data. One major disadvantage of the FEC algorithm is that it does not consider the local spatial information. In this article, we have proposed an improved fuzzy entropy clustering (IFEC) algorithm by introducing a new fuzzy factor, which incorporates both local spatial and gray‐level information. The IFEC algorithm is insensitive to noise, preserves the image detail during clustering, and is free of parameter selection. The efficacy of IFEC algorithm is demonstrated by comparing it quantitatively with the state‐of‐the‐art segmentation approaches in terms of similarity index on publically available real and simulated MRI brain images.     

Efficient Deep CNN Model for COVID-19 Classification

Coronavirus (COVID-19) infection was initially acknowledged as a global pandemic in Wuhan in China. World Health Organization (WHO) stated that the COVID-19 is an epidemic that causes a 3.4% death rate. Chest X-Ray (CXR) and Computerized Tomography (CT) screening of infected persons are essential in diagnosis applications. There are numerous ways to identify positive COVID-19 cases. One of the fundamental ways is radiology imaging through CXR, or CT images. The comparison of CT and CXR scans revealed that CT scans are more effective in the diagnosis process due to their high quality. Hence, automated classification techniques are required to facilitate the diagnosis process. Deep Learning (DL) is an effective tool that can be utilized for detection and classification this type of medical images. The deep Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) can learn and extract essential features from different medical image datasets. In this paper, a CNN architecture for automated COVID-19 detection from CXR and CT images is offered. Three activation functions as well as three optimizers are tested and compared for this task. The proposed architecture is built from scratch and the COVID-19 image datasets are directly fed to train it. The performance is tested and investigated on the CT and CXR datasets. Three activation functions: Tanh, Sigmoid, and ReLU are compared using a constant learning rate and different batch sizes. Different optimizers are studied with different batch sizes and a constant learning rate. Finally, a comparison between different combinations of activation functions and optimizers is presented, and the optimal configuration is determined. Hence, the main objective is to improve the detection accuracy of COVID-19 from CXR and CT images using DL by employing CNNs to classify medical COVID-19 images in an early stage. The proposed model achieves a classification accuracy of 91.67% on CXR image dataset, and a classification accuracy of 100% on CT dataset with training times of 58 min and 46 min on CXR and CT datasets, respectively. The best results are obtained using the ReLU activation function combined with the SGDM optimizer at a learning rate of 10⁻⁵ and a minibatch size of 16.     

Multiclassifier for severity-level categorization of glioma tumors using multimodal magnetic resonance imaging brain images

Brain tumor segmentation and classification is a crucial challenge in diagnosing, planning, and treating brain tumors. This article proposes an automatic method that categorizes the severity level of the tumors to render an effective diagnosis. The proposed fractional Jaya optimizer-deep convolutional neural network undergoes the severity classification based on the features obtained from the segments of the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) images. The segments are obtained using the particle swarm optimization that ensures the optimal selection of the segments from the MRI image and yields the core tumor and the edema tumor regions. The experimentation using the BRATS database reveals that the proposed method acquired a maximal accuracy, specificity, and sensitivity of 0.9414, 0.9429, and 0.9708, respectively.