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Debora Gil, & Petia Radeva. (2004). "Inhibition of False Landmarks " In J. V. et al (Ed.), Recent Advances in Artificial Intelligence Research and Development (pp. 233–244). Barcelona (Spain): IOS Press.
Abstract: 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. Its high sensitivity to changes in vector directions makes it suitable for landmark location in real images prone to need smoothing to reduce the impact of noise. 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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Debora Gil, & Petia Radeva. (2003)." Curvature based Distance Maps" . Computer Vision Center.
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Debora Gil, Petia Radeva, & J. Mauri. (2002). "Ivus Segmentation Via a Regularized Curvature Flow " In X Congreso Anual de la Sociedad Española de Ingeniería Biomédica CASEIB 2002 (pp. 133–136). Saragossa, Espanya.
Abstract: Cardiac diseases are diagnosed and treated through a study of the morphology and dynamics of cardiac arteries. In- travascular Ultrasound (IVUS) imaging is of high interest to physicians since it provides both information. At the current state-of-the-art in image segmentation, a robust detection of the arterial lumen in IVUS demands manual intervention or ECG-gating. Manual intervention is a tedious and time consuming task that requires experienced observers, meanwhile ECG-gating is an acquisition technique not available in all clinical centers. We introduce a parametric algorithm that detects the arterial luminal border in in vivo sequences. The method consist in smoothing the sequences’ level surfaces under a regularized mean curvature flow that admits non-trivial steady states. The flow is based on a measure of the surface local smoothness that takes into account regularity of the surface curvature.
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Debora Gil, Petia Radeva, Jordi Saludes, & J. Mauri. (2000). "Automatic Segmentation of Artery Wall in Coronary IVUS Images: A Probabilistic Approach " In International Conference on Pattern Recognition (Vol. 4, pp. 352–355).
Abstract: Intravascular ultrasound images represent a unique tool to analyze the morphology of arteries and vessels (plaques, restenosis, etc). The poor quality of these images makes unsupervised segmentation based on traditional segmentation algorithms (such as edge or ridge/valley detection) fail to achieve the expected results. In this paper we present a probabilistic flexible template to separate different regions in the image. In particular, we use elliptic templates to model and detect the shape of the vessel inner wall in IVUS images. We present the results of successful segmentation obtained from patients undergoing stent treatment. A physician team has validated these results.
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Debora Gil, Petia Radeva, Jordi Saludes, & J. Mauri. (2000). "Automatic Segmentation of Artery Wall in Coronary IVUS Images: a Probabilistic Approach " In Proceedings of CIC’2000. Cambridge, Massachussets.
Abstract: Intravascular ultrasound images represent a unique tool to analyze the morphology of arteries and vessels (plaques, restenosis, etc). The poor quality of these images makes unsupervised segmentation based on traditional segmentation algorithms (such as edge or ridge/valley detection) fail to achieve the expected results. In this paper we present a probabilistic flexible template to separate different regions in the image. In particular, we use elliptic templates to model and detect the shape of the vessel inner wall in IVUS images. We present the results of successful segmentation obtained from patients undergoing stent treatment. A physician team has validated these results.
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Debora Gil, Petia Radeva, & Fernando Vilariño. (2003). "Anisotropic Contour Completion " In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Image Processing. Barcelona, Spain.
Abstract: In this paper we introduce a novel application of the diffusion tensor for anisotropic image processing. The Anisotropic Contour Completion (ACC) we suggest consists in extending the characteristic function of the open curve by means of a degenerated diffusion tensor that prevents any diffusion in the normal direction. We show that ACC is equivalent to a dilation with a continuous elliptic structural element that takes into account the local orientation of the contours to be closed. Experiments on contours extracted from real images show that ACC produces shapes able to adapt to any curve in an active contour framework. 1.
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Debora Gil, Oriol Rodriguez-Leor, Petia Radeva, & J. 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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Aura Hernandez-Sabate, Debora Gil, Eduard Fernandez-Nofrerias, Petia Radeva, & Enric Marti. (2009). "Approaching Artery Rigid Dynamics in IVUS " . 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, Jaume Garcia, & Enric Marti. (2011). "Image-based Cardiac Phase Retrieval in Intravascular Ultrasound Sequences " . 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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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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