Oriol Ramos Terrades, Albert Berenguel, & Debora Gil. (2020). A flexible outlier detector based on a topology given by graph communities.
Abstract: Outlier, or anomaly, detection is essential for optimal performance of machine learning methods and statistical predictive models. It is not just a technical step in a data cleaning process but a key topic in many fields such as fraudulent document detection, in medical applications and assisted diagnosis systems or detecting security threats. In contrast to population-based methods, neighborhood based local approaches are simple flexible methods that have the potential to perform well in small sample size unbalanced problems. However, a main concern of local approaches is the impact that the computation of each sample neighborhood has on the method performance. Most approaches use a distance in the feature space to define a single neighborhood that requires careful selection of several parameters. This work presents a local approach based on a local measure of the heterogeneity of sample labels in the feature space considered as a topological manifold. Topology is computed using the communities of a weighted graph codifying mutual nearest neighbors in the feature space. This way, we provide with a set of multiple neighborhoods able to describe the structure of complex spaces without parameter fine tuning. The extensive experiments on real-world data sets show that our approach overall outperforms, both, local and global strategies in multi and single view settings.
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Aura Hernandez-Sabate, Lluis Albarracin, & F. Javier Sanchez. (2020). Graph-Based Problem Explorer: A Software Tool to Support Algorithm Design Learning While Solving the Salesperson Problem. MATH - Mathematics, 1595.
Abstract: In this article, we present a sequence of activities in the form of a project in order to promote
learning on design and analysis of algorithms. The project is based on the resolution of a real problem, the salesperson problem, and it is theoretically grounded on the fundamentals of mathematical modelling. In order to support the students’ work, a multimedia tool, called Graph-based Problem Explorer (GbPExplorer), has been designed and refined to promote the development of computer literacy in engineering and science university students. This tool incorporates several modules to allow coding different algorithmic techniques solving the salesman problem. Based on an educational design research along five years, we observe that working with GbPExplorer during the project provides students with the possibility of representing the situation to be studied in the form of graphs and analyze them from a computational point of view.
Keywords: STEM education; Project-based learning; Coding; software tool
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Debora Gil, Jordi Gonzalez, & Gemma Sanchez (Eds.). (2007). Computer Vision: Advances in Research and Development. 2. Bellaterra (Spain): UAB.
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Aura Hernandez-Sabate, Debora Gil, Eduard Fernandez-Nofrerias, Petia Radeva, & Enric Marti. (2009). Approaching Artery Rigid Dynamics in IVUS. TMI - IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, 28(11), 1670–1680.
Abstract: Tissue biomechanical properties (like strain and stress) are playing an increasing role in diagnosis and long-term treatment of intravascular coronary diseases. Their assessment strongly relies on estimation of vessel wall deformation. Since intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) sequences allow visualizing vessel morphology and reflect its dynamics, this technique represents a useful tool for evaluation of tissue mechanical properties. Image misalignment introduced by vessel-catheter motion is a major artifact for a proper tracking of tissue deformation. In this work, we focus on compensating and assessing IVUS rigid in-plane motion due to heart beating. Motion parameters are computed by considering both the vessel geometry and its appearance in the image. Continuum mechanics laws serve to introduce a novel score measuring motion reduction in in vivo sequences. Synthetic experiments validate the proposed score as measure of motion parameters accuracy; whereas results in in vivo pullbacks show the reliability of the presented methodologies in clinical cases.
Keywords: Fourier analysis; intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) dynamics; longitudinal motion; quality measures; tissue deformation.
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Aura Hernandez-Sabate, Debora Gil, & Petia Radeva. (2005). A Deterministic-Statistical Strategy for Adventitia Segmentation in IVUS images.
Abstract: A useful tool for some specific studies in cardiac disease diagnosis is vessel plaque assessment by analysis of IVUS sequences. Manual detection of luminal (inner) and media-adventitia (external) vessel borders is the main activity of physicians in the process of lumen narrowing (plaque) quantification. Difficult definition of vessel border descriptors, as well as, shades, artifacts and blurred signal response due to ultrasound physical properties troubles automated adventitia segmentation. In order to efficiently approach such a complex problem, we propose blending advanced anisotropic filtering operators and statistical classification techniques into a vessel border modelling strategy. Our systematic statistical analysis shows that the reported adventitia detection achieves an accuracy in the range of inter-observer variability regardless of plaque nature, vessel geometry and incomplete vessel borders.
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Aura Hernandez-Sabate, Petia Radeva, Antonio Tovar, & Debora Gil. (2006). Vessel structures alignment by spectral analysis of ivus sequences. In Proc. of CVII, MICCAI Workshop (pp. 39–36). 1st International Wokshop on Computer Vision for Intravascular and Intracardiac Imaging (CVII’06). Copenhaguen (Denmark),.
Abstract: Three-dimensional intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) allows to visualize and obtain volumetric measurements of coronary lesions through an exploration of the cross sections and longitudinal views of arteries. However, the visualization and subsequent morpho-geometric measurements in IVUS longitudinal cuts are subject to distortion caused by periodic image/vessel motion around the IVUS catheter. Usually, to overcome the image motion artifact ECG-gating and image-gated approaches are proposed, leading to slowing the pullback acquisition or disregarding part of IVUS data. In this paper, we argue that the image motion is due to 3-D vessel geometry as well as cardiac dynamics, and propose a dynamic model based on the tracking of an elliptical vessel approximation to recover the rigid transformation and align IVUS images without loosing any IVUS data. We report an extensive validation with synthetic simulated data and in vivo IVUS sequences of 30 patients achieving an average reduction of the image artifact of 97% in synthetic data and 79% in real-data. Our study shows that IVUS alignment improves longitudinal analysis of the IVUS data and is a necessary step towards accurate reconstruction and volumetric measurements of 3-D IVUS.
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Aura Hernandez-Sabate, Debora Gil, J. Mauri, & Petia Radeva. (2006). Reducing cardiac motion in IVUS sequences. In Proceeding of Computers in Cardiology (Vol. 33, pp. 685–688).
Abstract: Cardiac vessel displacement is a main artifact in IVUS sequences. It hinders visualization of the main structures in an appropriate orientation and alignment and affects extracting vessel measurements. In this paper, we present a novel approach for image sequence alignment based on spectral analysis, which removes rigid dynamics, preserving at the same time the vessel geometry. First, we suppress the translation by taking, for each frame, the center of mass of the image as origin of coordinates. In polar coordinates with such point as origin, the rotation appears as a horizontal displacement. The translation induces a phase shift in the Fourier coefficients of two consecutive polar images. We estimate the phase by adjusting a regression plane to the phases of the principal frequencies. Experiments show that the presented strategy suppress cardiac motion regardless of the acquisition device. 1.
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Aura Hernandez-Sabate, Debora Gil, Petia Radeva, & E.N.Nofrerias. (2004). Anisotropic processing of image structures for adventitia detection in intravascular ultrasound images. In Proc. Computers in Cardiology (Vol. 31, pp. 229–232). Chicago (USA).
Abstract: The adventitia layer appears as a weak edge in IVUS images with a non-uniform grey level, which difficulties its detection. In order to enhance edges, we apply an anisotropic filter that homogenizes the grey level along the image significant structures (ridges, valleys and edges). A standard edge detector applied to the filtered image yields a set of candidate points prone to be unconnected. The final model is obtained by interpolating the former line segments along the tangent direction to the level curves of the filtered image with an anisotropic contour closing technique based on functional extension principles
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Sergio Vera, Debora Gil, Agnes Borras, F. Javier Sanchez, Frederic Perez, & Marius G. Linguraru. (2011). Computation and Evaluation of Medial Surfaces for Shape Representation of Abdominal Organs. In In H. Yoshida et al (Ed.), Workshop on Computational and Clinical Applications in Abdominal Imaging (Vol. 7029, pp. 223–230). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
Abstract: Medial representations are powerful tools for describing and parameterizing the volumetric shape of anatomical structures. Existing methods show excellent results when applied to 2D objects, but their quality drops across dimensions. This paper contributes to the computation of medial manifolds in two aspects. First, we provide a standard scheme for the computation of medial manifolds that avoid degenerated medial axis segments; second, we introduce an energy based method which performs independently of the dimension. We evaluate quantitatively the performance of our method with respect to existing approaches, by applying them to synthetic shapes of known medial geometry. Finally, we show results on shape representation of multiple abdominal organs, exploring the use of medial manifolds for the representation of multi-organ relations.
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Carles Sanchez, Debora Gil, Jorge Bernal, F. Javier Sanchez, Marta Diez-Ferrer, & Antoni Rosell. (2016). Navigation Path Retrieval from Videobronchoscopy using Bronchial Branches. In 19th International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention Workshops (Vol. 9401, pp. 62–70). LNCS.
Abstract: Bronchoscopy biopsy can be used to diagnose lung cancer without risking complications of other interventions like transthoracic needle aspiration. During bronchoscopy, the clinician has to navigate through the bronchial tree to the target lesion. A main drawback is the difficulty to check whether the exploration is following the correct path. The usual guidance using fluoroscopy implies repeated radiation of the clinician, while alternative systems (like electromagnetic navigation) require specific equipment that increases intervention costs. We propose to compute the navigated path using anatomical landmarks extracted from the sole analysis of videobronchoscopy images. Such landmarks allow matching the current exploration to the path previously planned on a CT to indicate clinician whether the planning is being correctly followed or not. We present a feasibility study of our landmark based CT-video matching using bronchoscopic videos simulated on a virtual bronchoscopy interactive interface.
Keywords: Bronchoscopy navigation; Lumen center; Brochial branches; Navigation path; Videobronchoscopy
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Carles Sanchez, Jorge Bernal, F. Javier Sanchez, Antoni Rosell, Marta Diez-Ferrer, & Debora Gil. (2015). Towards On-line Quantification of Tracheal Stenosis from Videobronchoscopy. IJCAR - International Journal of Computer Assisted Radiology and Surgery, 10(6), 935–945.
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Carles Sanchez, Debora Gil, R. Tazi, Jorge Bernal, Y. Ruiz, L. Planas, et al. (2015). Quasi-real time digital assessment of Central Airway Obstruction. In 3rd European congress for bronchology and interventional pulmonology ECBIP2015.
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Carles Sanchez, Jorge Bernal, F. Javier Sanchez, Marta Diez-Ferrer, Antoni Rosell, & Debora Gil. (2015). Towards On-line Quantification of Tracheal Stenosis from Videobronchoscopy. In 6th International Conference on Information Processing in Computer-Assisted Interventions IPCAI2015 (Vol. 10, pp. 935–945).
Abstract: PURPOSE:
Lack of objective measurement of tracheal obstruction degree has a negative impact on the chosen treatment prone to lead to unnecessary repeated explorations and other scanners. Accurate computation of tracheal stenosis in videobronchoscopy would constitute a breakthrough for this noninvasive technique and a reduction in operation cost for the public health service.
METHODS:
Stenosis calculation is based on the comparison of the region delimited by the lumen in an obstructed frame and the region delimited by the first visible ring in a healthy frame. We propose a parametric strategy for the extraction of lumen and tracheal ring regions based on models of their geometry and appearance that guide a deformable model. To ensure a systematic applicability, we present a statistical framework to choose optimal parametric values and a strategy to choose the frames that minimize the impact of scope optical distortion.
RESULTS:
Our method has been tested in 40 cases covering different stenosed tracheas. Experiments report a non- clinically relevant [Formula: see text] of discrepancy in the calculated stenotic area and a computational time allowing online implementation in the operating room.
CONCLUSIONS:
Our methodology allows reliable measurements of airway narrowing in the operating room. To fully assess its clinical impact, a prospective clinical trial should be done.
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Debora Gil, F. Javier Sanchez, Gloria Fernandez Esparrach, & Jorge Bernal. (2015). 3D Stable Spatio-temporal Polyp Localization in Colonoscopy Videos. In Computer-Assisted and Robotic Endoscopy. Revised selected papers of Second International Workshop, CARE 2015, Held in Conjunction with MICCAI 2015 (Vol. 9515, pp. 140–152). LNCS.
Abstract: Computational intelligent systems could reduce polyp miss rate in colonoscopy for colon cancer diagnosis and, thus, increase the efficiency of the procedure. One of the main problems of existing polyp localization methods is a lack of spatio-temporal stability in their response. We propose to explore the response of a given polyp localization across temporal windows in order to select
those image regions presenting the highest stable spatio-temporal response.
Spatio-temporal stability is achieved by extracting 3D watershed regions on the
temporal window. Stability in localization response is statistically determined by analysis of the variance of the output of the localization method inside each 3D region. We have explored the benefits of considering spatio-temporal stability in two different tasks: polyp localization and polyp detection. Experimental results indicate an average improvement of 21:5% in polyp localization and 43:78% in polyp detection.
Keywords: Colonoscopy, Polyp Detection, Polyp Localization, Region Extraction, Watersheds
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Aura Hernandez-Sabate, Debora Gil, Jaume Garcia, & Enric Marti. (2011). Image-based Cardiac Phase Retrieval in Intravascular Ultrasound Sequences. T-UFFC - IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics and Frequency Control, 58(1), 60–72.
Abstract: Longitudinal motion during in vivo pullbacks acquisition of intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) sequences is a major artifact for 3-D exploring of coronary arteries. Most current techniques are based on the electrocardiogram (ECG) signal to obtain a gated pullback without longitudinal motion by using specific hardware or the ECG signal itself. We present an image-based approach for cardiac phase retrieval from coronary IVUS sequences without an ECG signal. A signal reflecting cardiac motion is computed by exploring the image intensity local mean evolution. The signal is filtered by a band-pass filter centered at the main cardiac frequency. Phase is retrieved by computing signal extrema. The average frame processing time using our setup is 36 ms. Comparison to manually sampled sequences encourages a deeper study comparing them to ECG signals.
Keywords: 3-D exploring; ECG; band-pass filter; cardiac motion; cardiac phase retrieval; coronary arteries; electrocardiogram signal; image intensity local mean evolution; image-based cardiac phase retrieval; in vivo pullbacks acquisition; intravascular ultrasound sequences; longitudinal motion; signal extrema; time 36 ms; band-pass filters; biomedical ultrasonics; cardiovascular system; electrocardiography; image motion analysis; image retrieval; image sequences; medical image processing; ultrasonic imaging
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