Santiago Segui. (2011). Contributions to the Diagnosis of Intestinal Motility by Automatic Image Analysis (Jordi Vitria, Ed.). Ph.D. thesis, Ediciones Graficas Rey, .
Abstract: In the early twenty first century Given Imaging Ltd. presented wireless capsule endoscopy (WCE) as a new technological breakthrough that allowed the visualization of
the intestine by using a small, swallowed camera. This small size device was received
with a high enthusiasm within the medical community, and until now, it is still one
of the medical devices with the highest use growth rate. WCE can be used as a novel
diagnostic tool that presents several clinical advantages, since it is non-invasive and
at the same time it provides, for the first time, a full picture of the small bowel morphology, contents and dynamics. Since its appearance, the WCE has been used to
detect several intestinal dysfunctions such as: polyps, ulcers and bleeding. However,
the visual analysis of WCE videos presents an important drawback: the long time
required by the physicians for proper video visualization. In this sense and regarding
to this limitation, the development of computer aided systems is required for the extensive use of WCE in the medical community.
The work presented in this thesis is a set of contributions for the automatic image
analysis and computer-aided diagnosis of intestinal motility disorders using WCE.
Until now, the diagnosis of small bowel motility dysfunctions was basically performed
by invasive techniques such as the manometry test, which can only be conducted at
some referral centers around the world owing to the complexity of the procedure and
the medial expertise required in the interpretation of the results.
Our contributions are divided in three main blocks:
1. Image analysis by computer vision techniques to detect events in the endoluminal WCE scene. Several methods have been proposed to detect visual events
such as: intestinal contractions, intestinal content, tunnel and wrinkles;
2. Machine learning techniques for the analysis and the manipulation of the data
from WCE. These methods have been proposed in order to overcome the problems that the analysis of WCE presents such as: video acquisition cost, unlabeled data and large number of data;
3. Two different systems for the computer-aided diagnosis of intestinal motility
disorders using WCE. The first system presents a fully automatic method that
aids at discriminating healthy subjects from patients with severe intestinal motor disorders like pseudo-obstruction or food intolerance. The second system presents another automatic method that models healthy subjects and discriminate them from mild intestinal motility patients.
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Pierluigi Casale. (2011). Approximate Ensemble Methods for Physical Activity Recognition Applications (Oriol Pujol, & Petia Radeva, Eds.). Ph.D. thesis, Ediciones Graficas Rey, .
Abstract: The main interest of this thesis focuses on computational methodologies able to
reduce the degree of complexity of learning algorithms and its application to physical
activity recognition.
Random Projections will be used to reduce the computational complexity in Multiple Classifier Systems. A new boosting algorithm and a new one-class classification
methodology have been developed. In both cases, random projections are used for
reducing the dimensionality of the problem and for generating diversity, exploiting in
this way the benefits that ensembles of classifiers provide in terms of performances
and stability. Moreover, the new one-class classification methodology, based on an ensemble strategy able to approximate a multidimensional convex-hull, has been proved
to over-perform state-of-the-art one-class classification methodologies.
The practical focus of the thesis is towards Physical Activity Recognition. A new
hardware platform for wearable computing application has been developed and used
for collecting data of activities of daily living allowing to study the optimal features
set able to successful classify activities.
Based on the classification methodologies developed and the study conducted on
physical activity classification, a machine learning architecture capable to provide a
continuous authentication mechanism for mobile-devices users has been worked out,
as last part of the thesis. The system, based on a personalized classifier, states on
the analysis of the characteristic gait patterns typical of each individual ensuring an
unobtrusive and continuous authentication mechanism
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Simeon Petkov, Adriana Romero, Xavier Carrillo, Petia Radeva, & Carlo Gatta. (2012). Robust and accurate diaphragm border detection in cardiac X-Ray angiographies. In Statistical Atlases And Computational Models Of The Heart: Imaging and Modelling Challenges (Vol. 7746, pp. 225–234). LNCS.
Abstract: Workshop STACOM, dins del MICCAI
X-ray angiography is the most common imaging modality employed in the diagnosis of coronary diseases prior to or during a catheter-based intervention. The analysis of the patient X-Ray sequence can provide useful information about the degree of arterial stenosis, the myocardial perfusion and other clinical parameters. If the sequence has been acquired to evaluate the perfusion grade, the opacity due to the diaphragm could potentially hinder any kind of visual inspection and make more difficult a computer aided measurements. In this paper we propose an accurate and robust method to automatically identify the diaphragm border in each frame. Quantitative evaluation on a set of 11 sequences shows that the proposed algorithm outperforms previous methods.
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Francesco Ciompi, Simone Balocco, Carles Caus, Josepa Mauri, & Petia Radeva. (2013). Stent shape estimation through a comprehensive interpretation of intravascular ultrasound images. In 16th International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (Vol. 8150, pp. 345–352). LNCS. Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
Abstract: We present a method for automatic struts detection and stent shape estimation in cross-sectional intravascular ultrasound images. A stent shape is first estimated through a comprehensive interpretation of the vessel morphology, performed using a supervised context-aware multi-class classification scheme. Then, the successive strut identification exploits both local appearance and the defined stent shape. The method is tested on 589 images obtained from 80 patients, achieving a F-measure of 74.1% and an averaged distance between manual and automatic struts of 0.10 mm.
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Marina Alberti, Simone Balocco, Xavier Carrillo, Josefina Mauri, & Petia Radeva. (2013). Automatic non-rigid temporal alignment of IVUS sequences: method and quantitative validation. UMB - Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology, 39(9), 1698–712.
Abstract: Clinical studies on atherosclerosis regression/progression performed by intravascular ultrasound analysis would benefit from accurate alignment of sequences of the same patient before and after clinical interventions and at follow-up. In this article, a methodology for automatic alignment of intravascular ultrasound sequences based on the dynamic time warping technique is proposed. The non-rigid alignment is adapted to the specific task by applying it to multidimensional signals describing the morphologic content of the vessel. Moreover, dynamic time warping is embedded into a framework comprising a strategy to address partial overlapping between acquisitions and a term that regularizes non-physiologic temporal compression/expansion of the sequences. Extensive validation is performed on both synthetic and in vivo data. The proposed method reaches alignment errors of approximately 0.43 mm for pairs of sequences acquired during the same intervention phase and 0.77 mm for pairs of sequences acquired at successive intervention stages.
Keywords: Intravascular ultrasound; Dynamic time warping; Non-rigid alignment; Sequence matching; Partial overlapping strategy
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Adriana Romero, Simeon Petkov, Carlo Gatta, M.Sabate, & Petia Radeva. (2012). Efficient automatic segmentation of vessels. In 16th Conference on Medical Image Understanding and Analysis.
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Pedro Martins, Carlo Gatta, & Paulo Carvalho. (2012). Feature-driven Maximally Stable Extremal Regions. In 7th International Conference on Computer Vision Theory and Applications (pp. 490–497).
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Pedro Martins, Paulo Carvalho, & Carlo Gatta. (2012). Context Aware Keypoint Extraction for Robust Image Representation. In 23rd British Machine Vision Conference (100.pp. 1–100.12).
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Francesco Ciompi. (2012). Multi-Class Learning for Vessel Characterization in Intravascular Ultrasound (Petia Radeva, & Oriol Pujol, Eds.). Ph.D. thesis, Ediciones Graficas Rey, .
Abstract: In this thesis we tackle the problem of automatic characterization of human coronary vessel in Intravascular Ultrasound (IVUS) image modality. The basis for the whole characterization process is machine learning applied to multi-class problems. In all the presented approaches, the Error-Correcting Output Codes (ECOC) framework is used as central element for the design of multi-class classifiers.
Two main topics are tackled in this thesis. First, the automatic detection of the vessel borders is presented. For this purpose, a novel context-aware classifier for multi-class classification of the vessel morphology is presented, namely ECOC-DRF. Based on ECOC-DRF, the lumen border and the media-adventitia border in IVUS are robustly detected by means of a novel holistic approach, achieving an error comparable with inter-observer variability and with state of the art methods.
The two vessel borders define the atheroma area of the vessel. In this area, tissue characterization is required. For this purpose, we present a framework for automatic plaque characterization by processing both texture in IVUS images and spectral information in raw Radio Frequency data. Furthermore, a novel method for fusing in-vivo and in-vitro IVUS data for plaque characterization is presented, namely pSFFS. The method demonstrates to effectively fuse data generating a classifier that improves the tissue characterization in both in-vitro and in-vivo datasets.
A novel method for automatic video summarization in IVUS sequences is also presented. The method aims to detect the key frames of the sequence, i.e., the frames representative of morphological changes. This novel method represents the basis for video summarization in IVUS as well as the markers for the partition of the vessel into morphological and clinically interesting events.
Finally, multi-class learning based on ECOC is applied to lung tissue characterization in Computed Tomography. The novel proposed approach, based on supervised and unsupervised learning, achieves accurate tissue classification on a large and heterogeneous dataset.
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Marina Alberti, Simone Balocco, Xavier Carrillo, Josepa Mauri, & Petia Radeva. (2012). Automatic Non-Rigid Temporal Alignment of IVUS Sequences. In 15th International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (Vol. 1, pp. 642–650). Springer-Verlag Berlin, Heidelberg.
Abstract: Clinical studies on atherosclerosis regression/progression performed by Intravascular Ultrasound analysis require the alignment of pullbacks of the same patient before and after clinical interventions. In this paper, a methodology for the automatic alignment of IVUS sequences based on the Dynamic Time Warping technique is proposed. The method is adapted to the specific IVUS alignment task by applying the non-rigid alignment technique to multidimensional morphological signals, and by introducing a sliding window approach together with a regularization term. To show the effectiveness of our method, an extensive validation is performed both on synthetic data and in-vivo IVUS sequences. The proposed method is robust to stent deployment and post dilation surgery and reaches an alignment error of approximately 0.7 mm for in-vivo data, which is comparable to the inter-observer variability.
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Pedro Martins, Paulo Carvalho, & Carlo Gatta. (2012). Stable Salient Shapes. In International Conference on Digital Image Computing: Techniques and Applications.
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Simone Balocco, Carlo Gatta, Marina Alberti, Xavier Carrillo, Juan Rigla, & Petia Radeva. (2012). Relation between plaque type, plaque thickness, blood shear stress and plaque stress in coronary arteries assessed by X-ray Angiography and Intravascular Ultrasound. MEDPHYS - Medical Physics, 39(12), 7430–7445.
Abstract: PMID 23231293
PURPOSE:
Atheromatic plaque progression is affected, among others phenomena, by biomechanical, biochemical, and physiological factors. In this paper, the authors introduce a novel framework able to provide both morphological (vessel radius, plaque thickness, and type) and biomechanical (wall shear stress and Von Mises stress) indices of coronary arteries.
METHODS:
First, the approach reconstructs the three-dimensional morphology of the vessel from intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) and Angiographic sequences, requiring minimal user interaction. Then, a computational pipeline allows to automatically assess fluid-dynamic and mechanical indices. Ten coronary arteries are analyzed illustrating the capabilities of the tool and confirming previous technical and clinical observations.
RESULTS:
The relations between the arterial indices obtained by IVUS measurement and simulations have been quantitatively analyzed along the whole surface of the artery, extending the analysis of the coronary arteries shown in previous state of the art studies. Additionally, for the first time in the literature, the framework allows the computation of the membrane stresses using a simplified mechanical model of the arterial wall.
CONCLUSIONS:
Circumferentially (within a given frame), statistical analysis shows an inverse relation between the wall shear stress and the plaque thickness. At the global level (comparing a frame within the entire vessel), it is observed that heavy plaque accumulations are in general calcified and are located in the areas of the vessel having high wall shear stress. Finally, in their experiments the inverse proportionality between fluid and structural stresses is observed.
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Marina Alberti. (2013). Detection and Alignment of Vascular Structures in Intravascular Ultrasound using Pattern Recognition Techniques (Simone Balocco, & Petia Radeva, Eds.). Ph.D. thesis, Ediciones Graficas Rey, .
Abstract: In this thesis, several methods for the automatic analysis of Intravascular Ultrasound
(IVUS) sequences are presented, aimed at assisting physicians in the diagnosis, the assessment of the intervention and the monitoring of the patients with coronary disease.
The basis for the developed frameworks are machine learning, pattern recognition and
image processing techniques.
First, a novel approach for the automatic detection of vascular bifurcations in
IVUS is presented. The task is addressed as a binary classi cation problem (identifying bifurcation and non-bifurcation angular sectors in the sequence images). The
multiscale stacked sequential learning algorithm is applied, to take into account the
spatial and temporal context in IVUS sequences, and the results are re ned using
a-priori information about branching dimensions and geometry. The achieved performance is comparable to intra- and inter-observer variability.
Then, we propose a novel method for the automatic non-rigid alignment of IVUS
sequences of the same patient, acquired at dierent moments (before and after percutaneous coronary intervention, or at baseline and follow-up examinations). The
method is based on the description of the morphological content of the vessel, obtained by extracting temporal morphological pro les from the IVUS acquisitions, by
means of methods for segmentation, characterization and detection in IVUS. A technique for non-rigid sequence alignment – the Dynamic Time Warping algorithm -
is applied to the pro les and adapted to the speci c clinical problem. Two dierent robust strategies are proposed to address the partial overlapping between frames
of corresponding sequences, and a regularization term is introduced to compensate
for possible errors in the pro le extraction. The bene ts of the proposed strategy
are demonstrated by extensive validation on synthetic and in-vivo data. The results
show the interest of the proposed non-linear alignment and the clinical value of the
method.
Finally, a novel automatic approach for the extraction of the luminal border in
IVUS images is presented. The method applies the multiscale stacked sequential
learning algorithm and extends it to 2-D+T, in a rst classi cation phase (the identi-
cation of lumen and non-lumen regions of the images), while an active contour model
is used in a second phase, to identify the lumen contour. The method is extended
to the longitudinal dimension of the sequences and it is validated on a challenging
data-set.
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Juan Diego Gomez. (2009). Toward Robust Myocardial Blush Grade Estimation in Contrast Angiography (Vol. 134). Master's thesis, , Bellaterra, Barcelona.
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Michal Drozdzal. (2014). Sequential image analysis for computer-aided wireless endoscopy (Petia Radeva, Ed.). Ph.D. thesis, Ediciones Graficas Rey, .
Abstract: Wireless Capsule Endoscopy (WCE) is a technique for inner-visualization of the entire small intestine and, thus, offers an interesting perspective on intestinal motility. The two major drawbacks of this technique are: 1) huge amount of data acquired by WCE makes the motility analysis tedious and 2) since the capsule is the first tool that offers complete inner-visualization of the small intestine,the exact importance of the observed events is still an open issue. Therefore, in this thesis, a novel computer-aided system for intestinal motility analysis is presented. The goal of the system is to provide an easily-comprehensible visual description of motility-related intestinal events to a physician. In order to do so, several tools based either on computer vision concepts or on machine learning techniques are presented. A method for transforming 3D video signal to a holistic image of intestinal motility, called motility bar, is proposed. The method calculates the optimal mapping from video into image from the intestinal motility point of view.
To characterize intestinal motility, methods for automatic extraction of motility information from WCE are presented. Two of them are based on the motility bar and two of them are based on frame-per-frame analysis. In particular, four algorithms dealing with the problems of intestinal contraction detection, lumen size estimation, intestinal content characterization and wrinkle frame detection are proposed and validated. The results of the algorithms are converted into sequential features using an online statistical test. This test is designed to work with multivariate data streams. To this end, we propose a novel formulation of concentration inequality that is introduced into a robust adaptive windowing algorithm for multivariate data streams. The algorithm is used to obtain robust representation of segments with constant intestinal motility activity. The obtained sequential features are shown to be discriminative in the problem of abnormal motility characterization.
Finally, we tackle the problem of efficient labeling. To this end, we incorporate active learning concepts to the problems present in WCE data and propose two approaches. The first one is based the concepts of sequential learning and the second one adapts the partition-based active learning to an error-free labeling scheme. All these steps are sufficient to provide an extensive visual description of intestinal motility that can be used by an expert as decision support system.
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