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Enric Marti, Carme Julia, & Debora Gil. (2006). "A PBL Experience in the Teaching of Computer Graphics " . Computer Graphics Forum, 25(1), 95–103.
Abstract: Project-Based Learning (PBL) is an educational strategy to improve student’s learning capability that, in recent years, has had a progressive acceptance in undergraduate studies. This methodology is based on solving a problem or project in a student working group. In this way, PBL focuses on learning the necessary tools to correctly find a solution to given problems. Since the learning initiative is transferred to the student, the PBL method promotes students own abilities. This allows a better assessment of the true workload that carries out the student in the subject. It follows that the methodology conforms to the guidelines of the Bologna document, which quantifies the student workload in a subject by means of the European credit transfer system (ECTS). PBL is currently applied in undergraduate studies needing strong practical training such as medicine, nursing or law sciences. Although this is also the case in engineering studies, amazingly, few experiences have been reported. In this paper we propose to use PBL in the educational organization of the Computer Graphics subjects in the Computer Science degree. Our PBL project focuses in the development of a C++ graphical environment based on the OpenGL libraries for visualization and handling of different graphical objects. The starting point is a basic skeleton that already includes lighting functions, perspective projection with mouse interaction to change the point of view and three predefined objects. Students have to complete this skeleton by adding their own functions to solve the project. A total number of 10 projects have been proposed and successfully solved. The exercises range from human face rendering to articulated objects, such as robot arms or puppets. In the present paper we extensively report the statement and educational objectives for two of the projects: solar system visualization and a chess game. We report our earlier educational experience based on the standard classroom theoretical, problem and practice sessions and the reasons that motivated searching for other learning methods. We have mainly chosen PBL because it improves the student learning initiative. We have applied the PBL educational model since the beginning of the second semester. The student’s feedback increases in his interest for the subject. We present a comparative study of the teachers’ and students’ workload between PBL and the classic teaching approach, which suggests that the workload increase in PBL is not as high as it seems.
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Debora Gil, & Petia Radeva. (2003)." Curvature based Distance Maps" . Computer Vision Center.
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Debora Gil. (2002)." Regularized Curvature Flow" . Computer Vision Centre.
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Debora Gil. (2004). "Geometric Differential Operators for Shape Modelling " (Jordi Saludes i Closa, & Petia Radeva, Eds.). Ph.D. thesis, Ediciones Graficas Rey, Barcelona (Spain).
Abstract: Medical imaging feeds research in many computer vision and image processing fields: image filtering, segmentation, shape recovery, registration, retrieval and pattern matching. Because of their low contrast changes and large variety of artifacts and noise, medical imaging processing techniques relying on an analysis of the geometry of image level sets rather than on intensity values result in more robust treatment. From the starting point of treatment of intravascular images, this PhD thesis ad- dresses the design of differential image operators based on geometric principles for a robust shape modelling and restoration. Among all fields applying shape recovery, we approach filtering and segmentation of image objects. For a successful use in real images, the segmentation process should go through three stages: noise removing, shape modelling and shape recovery. This PhD addresses all three topics, but for the sake of algorithms as automated as possible, techniques for image processing will be designed to satisfy three main principles: a) convergence of the iterative schemes to non-trivial states avoiding image degeneration to a constant image and representing smooth models of the originals; b) smooth asymptotic behav- ior ensuring stabilization of the iterative process; c) fixed parameter values ensuring equal (domain free) performance of the algorithms whatever initial images/shapes. Our geometric approach to the generic equations that model the different processes approached enables defining techniques satisfying all the former requirements. First, we introduce a new curvature-based geometric flow for image filtering achieving a good compromise between noise removing and resemblance to original images. Sec- ond, we describe a new family of diffusion operators that restrict their scope to image level curves and serve to restore smooth closed models from unconnected sets of points. Finally, we design a regularization of snake (distance) maps that ensures its smooth convergence towards any closed shape. Experiments show that performance of the techniques proposed overpasses that of state-of-the-art algorithms.
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David Roche, Debora Gil, & Jesus Giraldo. (2013). "Multiple active receptor conformation, agonist efficacy and maximum effect of the system: the conformation-based operational model of agonism, " . Drug Discovery Today, 18(7-8), 365–371.
Abstract: The operational model of agonism assumes that the maximum effect a particular receptor system can achieve (the Em parameter) is fixed. Em estimates are above but close to the asymptotic maximum effects of endogenous agonists. The concept of Em is contradicted by superagonists and those positive allosteric modulators that significantly increase the maximum effect of endogenous agonists. An extension of the operational model is proposed that assumes that the Em parameter does not necessarily have a single value for a receptor system but has multiple values associated to multiple active receptor conformations. The model provides a mechanistic link between active receptor conformation and agonist efficacy, which can be useful for the analysis of agonist response under different receptor scenarios.
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Ferran Poveda, Debora Gil, Enric Marti, Albert Andaluz, Manel Ballester, & Francesc Carreras Costa. (2013). "Helical structure of the cardiac ventricular anatomy assessed by Diffusion Tensor Magnetic Resonance Imaging multi-resolution tractography " . Revista Española de Cardiología, 66(10), 782–790.
Abstract: Deep understanding of myocardial structure linking morphology and function of the heart would unravel crucial knowledge for medical and surgical clinical procedures and studies. Several conceptual models of myocardial fiber organization have been proposed but the lack of an automatic and objective methodology prevented an agreement. We sought to deepen in this knowledge through advanced computer graphic representations of the myocardial fiber architecture by diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging (DT-MRI).
We performed automatic tractography reconstruction of unsegmented DT-MRI canine heart datasets coming from the public database of the Johns Hopkins University. Full scale tractographies have been build with 200 seeds and are composed by streamlines computed on the vectorial field of primary eigenvectors given at the diffusion tensor volumes. Also, we introduced a novel multi-scale visualization technique in order to obtain a simplified tractography. This methodology allowed to keep the main geometric features of the fiber tracts, making easier to decipher the main properties of the architectural organization of the heart.
On the analysis of the output from our tractographic representations we found exact correlation with low-level details of myocardial architecture, but also with the more abstract conceptualization of a continuous helical ventricular myocardial fiber array.
Objective analysis of myocardial architecture by an automated method, including the entire myocardium and using several 3D levels of complexity, reveals a continuous helical myocardial fiber arrangement of both right and left ventricles, supporting the anatomical model of the helical ventricular myocardial band described by Torrent-Guasp.
Keywords: Heart;Diffusion magnetic resonance imaging;Diffusion tractography;Helical heart;Myocardial ventricular band.
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Juan Borrego-Carazo, Carles Sanchez, David Castells, Jordi Carrabina, & Debora Gil. (2023). "BronchoPose: an analysis of data and model configuration for vision-based bronchoscopy pose estimation " . Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine, 228, 107241.
Abstract: Vision-based bronchoscopy (VB) models require the registration of the virtual lung model with the frames from the video bronchoscopy to provide effective guidance during the biopsy. The registration can be achieved by either tracking the position and orientation of the bronchoscopy camera or by calibrating its deviation from the pose (position and orientation) simulated in the virtual lung model. Recent advances in neural networks and temporal image processing have provided new opportunities for guided bronchoscopy. However, such progress has been hindered by the lack of comparative experimental conditions.
In the present paper, we share a novel synthetic dataset allowing for a fair comparison of methods. Moreover, this paper investigates several neural network architectures for the learning of temporal information at different levels of subject personalization. In order to improve orientation measurement, we also present a standardized comparison framework and a novel metric for camera orientation learning. Results on the dataset show that the proposed metric and architectures, as well as the standardized conditions, provide notable improvements to current state-of-the-art camera pose estimation in video bronchoscopy.
Keywords: Videobronchoscopy guiding; Deep learning; Architecture optimization; Datasets; Standardized evaluation framework; Pose estimation
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Debora Gil, Sergio Vera, Agnes Borras, Albert Andaluz, & Miguel Angel Gonzalez Ballester. (2017). "Anatomical Medial Surfaces with Efficient Resolution of Branches Singularities " . Medical Image Analysis, 35, 390–402.
Abstract: Medial surfaces are powerful tools for shape description, but their use has been limited due to the sensibility existing methods to branching artifacts. Medial branching artifacts are associated to perturbations of the object boundary rather than to geometric features. Such instability is a main obstacle for a condent application in shape recognition and description. Medial branches correspond to singularities of the medial surface and, thus, they are problematic for existing morphological and energy-based algorithms. In this paper, we use algebraic geometry concepts in an energy-based approach to compute a medial surface presenting a stable branching topology. We also present an ecient GPU-CPU implementation using standard image processing tools. We show the method computational eciency and quality on a custom made synthetic database. Finally, we present some results on a medical imaging application for localization of abdominal pathologies.
Keywords: Medial Representations; Shape Recognition; Medial Branching Stability ; Singular Points
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Debora Gil, & Petia Radeva. (2006). "Inhibition of false landmarks " . Pattern Recognition Letters, 27(9), 1022–1030.
Abstract: Corners and junctions are landmarks characterized by the lack of differentiability in the unit tangent to the image level curve. Detectors based on differential operators are not, by their own definition, the best posed as they require a higher degree of differentiability to yield a reliable response. We argue that a corner detector should be based on the degree of continuity of the tangent vector to the image level sets, work on the image domain and need no assumptions on neither the image local structure nor the particular geometry of the corner/junction. An operator measuring the degree of differentiability of the projection matrix on the image gradient fulfills the above requirements. Because using smoothing kernels leads to corner misplacement, we suggest an alternative fake response remover based on the receptive field inhibition of spurious details. The combination of both orientation discontinuity detection and noise inhibition produce our inhibition orientation energy (IOE) landmark locator.
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Aura Hernandez-Sabate, Monica Mitiko, Sergio Shiguemi, & Debora Gil. (2010). "A validation protocol for assessing cardiac phase retrieval in IntraVascular UltraSound " In Computing in Cardiology (Vol. 37, pp. 899–902). IEEE.
Abstract: A good reliable approach to cardiac triggering is of utmost importance in obtaining accurate quantitative results of atherosclerotic plaque burden from the analysis of IntraVascular UltraSound. Although, in the last years, there has been an increase in research of methods for retrospective gating, there is no general consensus in a validation protocol. Many methods are based on quality assessment of longitudinal cuts appearance and those reporting quantitative numbers do not follow a standard protocol. Such heterogeneity in validation protocols makes faithful comparison across methods a difficult task. We propose a validation protocol based on the variability of the retrieved cardiac phase and explore the capability of several quality measures for quantifying such variability. An ideal detector, suitable for its application in clinical practice, should produce stable phases. That is, it should always sample the same cardiac cycle fraction. In this context, one should measure the variability (variance) of a candidate sampling with respect a ground truth (reference) sampling, since the variance would indicate how spread we are aiming a target. In order to quantify the deviation between the sampling and the ground truth, we have considered two quality scores reported in the literature: signed distance to the closest reference sample and distance to the right of each reference sample. We have also considered the residuals of the regression line of reference against candidate sampling. The performance of the measures has been explored on a set of synthetic samplings covering different cardiac cycle fractions and variabilities. From our simulations, we conclude that the metrics related to distances are sensitive to the shift considered while the residuals are robust against fraction and variabilities as far as one can establish a pair-wise correspondence between candidate and reference. We will further investigate the impact of false positive and negative detections in experimental data.
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