Region based techniques for segmentation of volumetric histo-pathological images

In this article we have presented the application of three region based segmentation techniques namely, seeded volume growing, constrained erosion-dilation techniques and 3-D watershed algorithm. The algorithms are suitably extended to apply on 3-D histo-pathological images. Suitable modifications and extension for each algorithm is done to obtain better segmentation. A quantitative as well as qualitative comparison of the three methods is presented. Modifications to these algorithms for obtaining better results are discussed. The modifications include, (1) design of adaptive similarity measures to control the seeded volume growing and (2) rule-based merging of the over-segmented cells in the case of the 3-D watershed algorithm. Some results and quantitative study is also presented.     

Self authenticating medical X-ray images for telemedicine applications

Multimedia Tools and Applications - Telemedicine focuses on sharing medical images over network among doctors for better consultation. Hence medical images must be protected from unwanted...     

医学图像自动多阈值分割

针对医学图像的自动多阚值分割问题,采用模糊C-均值(FCM)聚类法找到医学图像的不同组织和背景的聚类中心,再利用二雏直方图的方法,找到多阈值分割的各个阈值点进行分割.引用二维直方图的方法可以很好地保留目标的细节信息,更好地抑制噪声.     

Security of medical images for telemedicine: a systematic review

Multimedia Tools and Applications - Recently, there has been a rapid growth in the utilization of medical images in telemedicine applications. The authors in this paper presented a detailed...     

Registration and interactive planar segmentation for stereo images of polyhedral scenes

We introduce a two-step iterative segmentation and registration method to find coplanar surfaces among stereo images of a polyhedral environment. The novelties of this paper are: (i) to propose a user-defined initialization easing the image matching and segmentation, (ii) to incorporate color appearance and planar projection information into a Bayesian segmentation scheme, and (iii) to add consistency to the projective transformations related to the polyhedral structure of the scenes. The method utilizes an assisted Bayesian color segmentation scheme. The initial user-assisted segmentation is used to define search regions for planar homography image registration. The two reliable methods cooperate to obtain probabilities for coplanar regions with similar color information that are used to get a new segmentation by means of quadratic Markov measure fields (QMMF). We search for the best regions by iterating both steps: registration and segmentation.     

Graph-cut based interactive segmentation of 3D materials-science images

Segmenting materials’ images is a laborious and time-consuming process, and automatic image segmentation algorithms usually contain imperfections and errors. Interactive segmentation is a growing topic in the areas of image processing and computer vision, which seeks to find a balance between fully automatic methods and fully-manual segmentation processes. By allowing minimal and simplistic interaction from the user in an otherwise automatic algorithm, interactive segmentation is able to simultaneously reduce the time taken to segment an image while achieving better segmentation results. Given the specialized structure of materials’ images and level of segmentation quality required, we show an interactive segmentation framework for materials’ images that has three key contributions: (1) a multi-labeling approach that can handle a large number of structures while still quickly and conveniently allowing manual addition and removal of segments in real-time, (2) multiple extensions to the interactive tools which increase the simplicity of the interaction, and (3) a web interface for using the interactive tools in a client/server architecture. We show a full formulation of each of these contributions and example results from their application.     

A GPU framework for parallel segmentation of volumetric images using discrete deformable models

Despite the ability of current GPU processors to treat heavy parallel computation tasks, its use for solving medical image segmentation problems is still not fully exploited and remains challenging. A lot of difficulties may arise related to, for example, the different image modalities, noise and artifacts of source images, or the shape and appearance variability of the structures to segment. Motivated by practical problems of image segmentation in the medical field, we present in this paper a GPU framework based on explicit discrete deformable models, implemented over the NVidia CUDA architecture, aimed for the segmentation of volumetric images. The framework supports the segmentation in parallel of different volumetric structures as well as interaction during the segmentation process and real-time visualization of the intermediate results. Promising results in terms of accuracy and speed on a real segmentation experiment have demonstrated the usability of the system.     

基于运动估计的交互式医学图像序列分割

针对医学图像难以自动分割,而医学图像序列采用手工分割时工作量巨大、效率低的问题,提出了一种新的交互式图像序列分割方法.在计算机的辅助下,用手工精确地描画出第一幅图像中对象的边界轮廓.后续图像的分割曲线用运动估计的方法自动得到.每完成一幅图像的分割用户都可以检查分割效果,如果不满意则可用手工修正.这个过程重复进行,直到整个图像序列分割完毕.实验结果表明,该方法能精确、快速地实现医学图像序列的分割.     

Novel segmentation algorithm in segmenting medical images

The aim of this paper is to develop an effective fuzzy c-means (FCM) technique for segmentation of Magnetic Resonance Images (MRI) which is seriously affected by intensity inhomogeneities that are created by radio-frequency coils. The weighted bias field information is employed in this work to deal the intensity inhomogeneities during the segmentation of MRI. In order to segment the general shaped MRI dataset which is corrupted by intensity inhomogeneities and other artifacts, the effective objective function of fuzzy c-means is constructed by replacing the Euclidean distance with kernel-induced distance. In this paper, the initial cluster centers are assigned using the proposed center initialization algorithm for executing the effective FCM iteratively. To assess the performance of proposed method in comparison with other existed methods, experiments are performed on synthetic image, real breast and brain MRIs. The clustering results are validated using Silhouette accuracy index. The experimental results demonstrate that our proposed method is a promising technique for effective segmentation of medical images.     

改进的模糊C-均值算法在医学图像分割中的应用

针对随机选取聚类中心易使得迭代过程陷入局部最优解的缺点,提出了一种混合优化蚁群和动态模糊C-均值的图像分割方法,该方法利用蚁群算法较强处理局部极值的能力,并能动态确定聚类中心和数目.针对传统的分阶段结合遗传算法和蚁群算法的策略存在收敛速度慢,聚类精度差的问题,提出在整个优化过程综合遗传算法和蚁群算法,并在蚁群算法中引入拥挤度函数,利用遗传算法的快速性、全局收敛性提高了蚁群算法的收敛速度,同时利用蚁群算法的并行性和正反馈性提高了聚类的精确度.最后将该算法应用到医学图像分割,对比实验表明,混合算法具有很强的模糊边缘和微细边缘分割能力.     

Multi-level security of medical images based on encryption and watermarking for telemedicine applications

Multimedia Tools and Applications - In this paper, a robust and hybrid domain watermarking scheme is proposed for the security of medical images in telemedicine applications. The secret identity of...     

Software for interactive segmentation of the carotid artery from 3D black blood magnetic resonance images

A semiautomatic algorithm for segmenting organ surfaces from 3D medical images is presented in this work. The algorithm is based on a deformable model, and allows the user to initialize the model by combining and molding primitive shapes such as cylinders and spheres to form an initial approximate model of the organ surface. The initial model is automatically deformed to better fit organ boundaries. The algorithm was applied to segment the carotid bifurcation from 3D black blood magnetic resonance (MR) images of 5 subjects. The algorithm-segmented surfaces were compared to surfaces segmented manually by an experienced user. On average, approximately 3 min were required to segment an image using the algorithm, whereas 1h was required for manual segmentation. The average distance between corresponding points on the manually and algorithm-segmented surfaces was 0.37 mm, whereas the average maximum distance was 2.03 mm. Moreover, algorithm-segmented surfaces exhibited less intra-operator variability than those segmented manually.     

基于MRF的模糊聚类的二维直方图医学图像分割

针对医学图像分割,由于核磁共振成像的热/电噪声影响,采用马尔可夫随机场(MRF)作为先验模型提取出医学图像的后验能量场,然后采用模糊C-均值聚类法找到医学图像的不同组织和背景的聚类中心,再利用二维直方图的方法,找到多阈值分割的各个阈值点进行分割.实验结果表明,此算法能够充分考虑图像中像素的空间相关性,并且可以很好地抑制噪声,针对医学图像分割具有很好的稳健性.     

A VR-based volumetric medical image segmentation and visualization system with natural human interaction

Virtual Reality - Volume rendering produces informative two-dimensional (2D) images from a 3-dimensional (3D) volume. It highlights the region of interest and facilitates a good comprehension of...     

Effective and efficient crowd-assisted similarity retrieval of medical images in resource-constraint Mobile telemedicine systems

This paper presents an effective and efficient framework for Crowd-assisted Mobile Similarity Retrieval of the large-scale medical images in the resource-constraint mobile telemedicine systems (MTS), called the CMSR. The CMSR processing works as follows: when a user submits a retrieval medical image I_R, a buffer checking processing is first invoked to check if the full (or partial) retrieval results have been cached in the buffer previously. After that, a parallel image data filtering and refinement processing is conducted at a master node level. Finally, the candidate images are concurrently validated by a mCrowd system to derive an answer set that is transmitted to the retrieval node. To better facilitate the effective and efficient CMSR processing, three enabling techniques, i.e., category-based image data interleaving placement scheme, hindex-support image filtering algorithm and a kNN-based buffering scheme are developed. To improve the retrieval throughput, finally, we propose an extension of the CMSR method called mCMSR to optimize the multiple CMSRs. The experimental results show that the performances of the CMSR and the mCMSR methods are: 1) effective in improving the retrieval accuracy; 2) efficient in minimizing the response time by decreasing the network transmission cost while increasing the parallelism of I/O and CPU.

     

View suggestion for interactive segmentation of indoor scenes

Computational Visual Media - Point cloud segmentation is a fundamental problem. Due to the complexity of real-world scenes and the limitations of 3D scanners, interactive segmentation is currently...     

Contour segmentation in 2D ultrasound medical images with particle filtering

Object segmentation in medical images is an actively investigated research area. Segmentation techniques are a valuable tool in medical diagnostics for cancer tumours and cysts, for planning surgery operations and other medical treatment. In this paper, a Monte Carlo algorithm for extracting lesion contours in ultrasound medical images is proposed. An efficient multiple model particle filter for progressive contour growing (tracking) from a starting point is developed, accounting for convex, non-circular forms of delineated contour areas. The driving idea of the proposed particle filter consists in the incorporation of different image intensity inside and outside the contour into the filter likelihood function. The filter employs image intensity gradients as measurements and requires information about four manually selected points: a seed point, a starting point, arbitrarily selected on the contour, and two additional points, bounding the measurement formation area around the contour. The filter performance is studied by segmenting contours from a number of real and simulated ultrasound medical images. Accurate contour segmentation is achieved with the proposed approach in ultrasound images with a high level of speckle noise.     

对亮度不均匀性图像的活动轮廓线分割

基于区域的活动轮廓模型的基本思想是允许轮廓线形变以获得最小化的区域能量函数,由于通常依赖于每个待分割区域的亮度均匀性,因而不能正确分割亮度不均匀性图像.同时活动轮廓模型传统的基于水平集的数值解法运算速度慢,对初始条件敏感.提出一种基于可伸缩局部区域拟合能量的活动轮廓线模型及其全局凸分割方法,以图像的局部区域内亮度不均匀...     

A novel segmentation model for medical images with intensity inhomogeneity based on adaptive perturbation

In medical field, it remains challenging to accurately segment medical images due to low contrast, complex noises and intensity inhomogeneity. To overcome these obstacles, this paper provides a novel edge-based active contour model (ACM) for medical image segmentation. Specifically, an accurate regularization approach is presented to maintain the level set function with a signed distance property, which guarantees the stability of the evolution curve and the accuracy of the numerical computation. More significantly, an adaptive perturbation is integrated into the framework of the edge-based ACM. The perturbation technique can balance the stability of curve evolution and the accuracy of segmentation, which is key for segmenting medical images with intensity inhomogeneity. A number of experiments on both artificial and real medical images demonstrate that the proposed segmentation model outperforms state-of-the-art methods in terms of robustness to noise and segmentation accuracy.