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Oriol Rodriguez-Leor, Josefina Mauri, Eduard Fernandez-Nofrerias, M. Gomez, Antonio Tovar, L. Cano, et al. (2002)." Ecografia Intracoronaria: Segmentacio Automatica de area de la llum" . Revista Societat Catalana de Cardiologia, 4(4), 42.
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Debora Gil, & Petia Radeva. (2004). "A Regularized Curvature Flow Designed for a Selective Shape Restoration " . IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, 13, 1444–1458.
Abstract: Among all filtering techniques, those based exclu- sively on image level sets (geometric flows) have proven to be the less sensitive to the nature of noise and the most contrast preserving. A common feature to existent curvature flows is that they penalize high curvature, regardless of the curve regularity. This constitutes a major drawback since curvature extreme values are standard descriptors of the contour geometry. We argue that an operator designed with shape recovery purposes should include a term penalizing irregularity in the curvature rather than its magnitude. To this purpose, we present a novel geometric flow that includes a function that measures the degree of local irregularity present in the curve. A main advantage is that it achieves non-trivial steady states representing a smooth model of level curves in a noisy image. Performance of our approach is compared to classical filtering techniques in terms of quality in the restored image/shape and asymptotic behavior. We empirically prove that our approach is the technique that achieves the best compromise between image quality and evolution stabilization.
Keywords: Geometric flows, nonlinear filtering, shape recovery.
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Jaume Garcia, Debora Gil, Sandra Pujades, & Francesc Carreras. (2008). "Valoracion de la Funcion del Ventriculo Izquierdo mediante Modelos Regionales Hiperparametricos " . Revista Española de Cardiologia, 61(3), 79.
Abstract: La mayoría de la enfermedades cardiovasculares afectan a las propiedades contráctiles de la banda ventricular helicoidal. Esto se refleja en una variación del comportamiento normal de la función ventricular. Parámetros locales tales como los strains, o la deformación experimentada por el tejido, son indicadores capaces de detectar anomalías funcionales en territorios específicos. A menudo, dichos parámetros son considerados de forma separada. En este trabajo presentamos un marco computacional (el Dominio Paramétrico Normalizado, DPN) que permite integrarlos en hiperparámetros funcionales y estudiar sus rangos de normalidad. Dichos rangos permiten valorar de forma objetiva la función regional de cualquier nuevo paciente. Para ello, consideramos secuencias de resonancia magnética etiquetada a nivel basal, medio y apical. Los hiperparámetros se obtienen a partir del movimiento intramural del VI estimado mediante el método Harmonic Phase Flow. El DPN se define a partir de en una parametrización del Ventrículo Izquierdo (VI) en sus coordenadas radiales y circunferencial basada en criterios anatómicos. El paso de los hiperparámetros al DPN hace posible la comparación entre distintos pacientes. Los rangos de normalidad se definen mediante análisis estadístico de valores de voluntarios sanos en 45 regiones del DPN a lo largo de 9 fases sistólicas. Se ha usado un conjunto de 19 (14 H; E: 30.7±7.5) voluntarios sanos para crear los patrones de normalidad y se han validado usando 2 controles sanos y 3 pacientes afectados de contractilidad global reducida. Para los controles los resultados regionales se han ajustado dentro de la normalidad, mientras que para los pacientes se han obtenido valores anormales en las zonas descritas, localizando y cuantificando así el diagnóstico empírico.
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Jaume Garcia, Debora Gil, Sandra Pujades, & Francesc Carreras. (2008). "A Variational Framework for Assessment of the Left Ventricle Motion " . International Journal Mathematical Modelling of Natural Phenomena, 3(6), 76–100.
Abstract: Impairment of left ventricular contractility due to cardiovascular diseases is reflected in left ventricle (LV) motion patterns. An abnormal change of torsion or long axis shortening LV values can help with the diagnosis and follow-up of LV dysfunction. Tagged Magnetic Resonance (TMR) is a widely spread medical imaging modality that allows estimation of the myocardial tissue local deformation. In this work, we introduce a novel variational framework for extracting the left ventricle dynamics from TMR sequences. A bi-dimensional representation space of TMR images given by Gabor filter banks is defined. Tracking of the phases of the Gabor response is combined using a variational framework which regularizes the deformation field just at areas where the Gabor amplitude drops, while restoring the underlying motion otherwise. The clinical applicability of the proposed method is illustrated by extracting normality models of the ventricular torsion from 19 healthy subjects.
Keywords: Key words: Left Ventricle Dynamics, Ventricular Torsion, Tagged Magnetic Resonance, Motion Tracking, Variational Framework, Gabor Transform.
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Debora Gil, Jose Maria-Carazo, & Roberto Marabini. (2006). "On the nature of 2D crystal unbending " . Journal of Structural Biology, 156(3), 546–555.
Abstract: Crystal unbending, the process that aims to recover a perfect crystal from experimental data, is one of the more important steps in electron crystallography image processing. The unbending process involves three steps: estimation of the unit cell displacements from their ideal positions, extension of the deformation field to the whole image and transformation of the image in order to recover an ideal crystal. In this work, we present a systematic analysis of the second step oriented to address two issues. First, whether the unit cells remain undistorted and only the distance between them should be changed (rigid case) or should be modified with the same deformation suffered by the whole crystal (elastic case). Second, the performance of different extension algorithms (interpolation versus approximation) is explored. Our experiments show that there is no difference between elastic and rigid cases or among the extension algorithms. This implies that the deformation fields are constant over large areas. Furthermore, our results indicate that the main source of error is the transformation of the crystal image.
Keywords: Electron microscopy
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Debora Gil, Aura Hernandez-Sabate, Oriol Rodriguez, Josepa Mauri, & Petia Radeva. (2006). "Statistical Strategy for Anisotropic Adventitia Modelling in IVUS " . IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, 25(6), 768–778.
Abstract: Vessel plaque assessment by analysis of intravascular ultrasound sequences is a useful tool for cardiac disease diagnosis and intervention. Manual detection of luminal (inner) and mediaadventitia (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 trouble 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 interobserver variability regardless of plaque nature, vessel geometry, and incomplete vessel borders. Index Terms–-Anisotropic processing, intravascular ultrasound (IVUS), vessel border segmentation, vessel structure classification.
Keywords: Corners; T-junctions; Wavelets
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Debora Gil, & Petia Radeva. (2005). "Extending anisotropic operators to recover smooth shapes " . Computer Vision and Image Understanding, 99(1), 110–125.
Abstract: Anisotropic differential operators are widely used in image enhancement processes. Recently, their property of smoothly extending functions to the whole image domain has begun to be exploited. Strong ellipticity of differential operators is a requirement that ensures existence of a unique solution. This condition is too restrictive for operators designed to extend image level sets: their own functionality implies that they should restrict to some vector field. The diffusion tensor that defines the diffusion operator links anisotropic processes with Riemmanian manifolds. In this context, degeneracy implies restricting diffusion to the varieties generated by the vector fields of positive eigenvalues, provided that an integrability condition is satisfied. We will use that any smooth vector field fulfills this integrability requirement to design line connection algorithms for contour completion. As application we present a segmenting strategy that assures convergent snakes whatever the geometry of the object to be modelled is.
Keywords: Contour completion; Functional extension; Differential operators; Riemmanian manifolds; Snake segmentation
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Debora Gil, & Petia Radeva. (2004). "Shape Restoration via a Regularized Curvature Flow " . Journal of Mathematical Imaging and Vision, 21(3), 205–223.
Abstract: Any image filtering operator designed for automatic shape restoration should satisfy robustness (whatever the nature and degree of noise is) as well as non-trivial smooth asymptotic behavior. Moreover, a stopping criterion should be determined by characteristics of the evolved image rather than dependent on the number of iterations. Among the several PDE based techniques, curvature flows appear to be highly reliable for strongly noisy images compared to image diffusion processes.
In the present paper, we introduce a regularized curvature flow (RCF) that admits non-trivial steady states. It is based on a measure of the local curve smoothness that takes into account regularity of the curve curvature and serves as stopping term in the mean curvature flow. We prove that this measure decreases over the orbits of RCF, which endows the method with a natural stop criterion in terms of the magnitude of this measure. Further, in its discrete version it produces steady states consisting of piece-wise regular curves. Numerical experiments made on synthetic shapes corrupted with different kinds of noise show the abilities and limitations of each of the current geometric flows and the benefits of RCF. Finally, we present results on real images that illustrate the usefulness of the present approach in practical applications.
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Debora Gil, Oriol Rodriguez-Leor, Petia Radeva, & Josepa Mauri. (2008). "Myocardial Perfusion Characterization From Contrast Angiography Spectral Distribution " . IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, 27(5), 641–649.
Abstract: Despite recovering a normal coronary flow after acute myocardial infarction, percutaneous coronary intervention does not guarantee a proper perfusion (irrigation) of the infarcted area. This damage in microcirculation integrity may detrimentally affect the patient survival. Visual assessment of the myocardium opacification in contrast angiography serves to define a subjective score of the microcirculation integrity myocardial blush analysis (MBA). Although MBA correlates with patient prognosis its visual assessment is a very difficult task that requires of a highly expertise training in order to achieve a good intraobserver and interobserver agreement. In this paper, we provide objective descriptors of the myocardium staining pattern by analyzing the spectrum of the image local statistics. The descriptors proposed discriminate among the different phenomena observed in the angiographic sequence and allow defining an objective score of the myocardial perfusion.
Keywords: Contrast angiography; myocardial perfusion; spectral analysis.
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Ole Larsen, Petia Radeva, & Enric Marti. (1995). "Bounds on the optimal elasticity parameters for a snake " . Image Analysis and Processing, , 37–42.
Abstract: This paper develops a formalism by which an estimate for the upper and lower bounds for the elasticity parameters for a snake can be obtained. Objects different in size and shape give rise to different bounds. The bounds can be obtained based on an analysis of the shape of the object of interest. Experiments on synthetic images show a good correlation between the estimated behaviour of the snake and the one actually observed. Experiments on real X-ray images show that the parameters for optimal segmentation lie within the estimated bounds.
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