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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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F.Guirado, Ana Ripoll, C.Roig, Aura Hernandez-Sabate, & Emilio Luque. (2006). "Exploiting Throughput for Pipeline Execution in Streaming Image Processing Applications " In UAB, E. N. W, & et al. (Eds.), Euro-Par 2006 Parallel Processing (Vol. 4128, pp. 1095–1105). Lecture Notes In Computer Science. Dresden, Germany (European Union): Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.
Abstract: There is a large range of image processing applications that act on an input sequence of image frames that are continuously received. Throughput is a key performance measure to be optimized when execu- ting them. In this paper we propose a new task replication methodology for optimizing throughput for an image processing application in the field of medicine. The results show that by applying the proposed methodo- logy we are able to achieve the desired throughput in all cases, in such a way that the input frames can be processed at any given rate.
Keywords: 12th International Euro–Par Conference
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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, Josefina 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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Debora Gil, Oriol Rodriguez-Leor, Petia Radeva, & Aura Hernandez-Sabate. (2007). "Assessing Artery Motion Compensation in IVUS " In Computer Analysis Of Images And Patterns (Vol. 4673, pp. 213–220). Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Heidelberg: Springerlink.
Abstract: Cardiac dynamics suppression is a main issue for visual improvement and computation of tissue mechanical properties in IntraVascular UltraSound (IVUS). Although in recent times several motion compensation techniques have arisen, there is a lack of objective evaluation of motion reduction in in vivo pullbacks. We consider that the assessment protocol deserves special attention for the sake of a clinical applicability as reliable as possible. Our work focuses on defining a quality measure and a validation protocol assessing IVUS motion compensation. On the grounds of continuum mechanics laws we introduce a novel score measuring motion reduction in in vivo sequences. Synthetic experiments validate the proposed score as measure of motion parameters accuracy; while results in in vivo pullbacks show its reliability in clinical cases.
Keywords: validation standards; quality measures; IVUS motion compensation; conservation laws; Fourier development
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Aura Hernandez-Sabate, Debora Gil, & Albert Teis. (2007). "How Do Conservation Laws Define a Motion Suppression Score in In-Vivo Ivus Sequences? " In Proc. IEEE Ultrasonics Symp (pp. 2231–2234).
Abstract: Evaluation of arterial tissue biomechanics for diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular diseases is an active research field in the biomedical imaging processing area. IntraVascular UltraSound (IVUS) is a unique tool for such assessment since it reflects tissue morphology and deformation. A proper quantification and visualization of both properties is hindered by vessel structures misalignments introduced by cardiac dynamics. This has encouraged development of IVUS motion compensation techniques. However, there is a lack of an objective evaluation of motion reduction ensuring a reliable clinical application This work reports a novel score, the Conservation of Density Rate (CDR), for validation of motion compensation in in-vivo pullbacks. Synthetic experiments validate the proposed score as measure of motion parameters accuracy; while results in in vivo pullbacks show its reliability in clinical cases.
Keywords: validation standards; IVUS motion compensation; conservation laws.
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Aura Hernandez-Sabate, David Rotger, & Debora Gil. (2008). "Image-based ECG sampling of IVUS sequences " In Proc. IEEE Ultrasonics Symp. IUS 2008 (pp. 1330–1333).
Abstract: Longitudinal motion artifacts in IntraVascular UltraSound (IVUS) sequences hinders a properly 3D reconstruction and vessel measurements. Most of current techniques base on the ECG signal to obtain a gated pullback without the longitudinal artifact by using a specific hardware or the ECG signal itself. The potential of IVUS images processing for phase retrieval still remains little explored. In this paper, we present a fast forward image-based algorithm to approach ECG sampling. Inspired on the fact that maximum and minimum lumen areas are related to end-systole and end-diastole, our cardiac phase retrieval is based on the analysis of tissue density of mass along the sequence. The comparison between automatic and manual phase retrieval (0.07 ± 0.07 mm. of error) encourages a deep validation contrasting with ECG signals.
Keywords: Longitudinal Motion; Image-based ECG-gating; Fourier analysis
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Enric Marti, Jaume Rocarias, Ricardo Toledo, & Aura Hernandez-Sabate. (2009). "Caronte: plataforma Moodle con gestion flexible de grupos. Primeras experiencias en asignaturas de Ingenieria Informatica ".
Abstract: En este artículo se presenta Caronte, entorno LMS (Learning Management System) basado en Moodle. Una característica importante del entorno es la gestión flexible de grupos en una asignatura. Entendemos por grupo un conjunto de alumnos que realizan un trabajo y uno de ellos entrega la actividad propuesta (práctica, encuesta, etc.) en representación del grupo. Hemos trabajado en la confección de estos grupos, implementando un sistema de inscripción por contraseña.
Caronte ofrece un conjunto de actividades basadas en este concepto de grupo: encuestas, tareas (entrega de trabajos o prácticas), encuestas de autoevaluación y cuestionarios, entre otras.
Basada en nuestra actividad de encuesta, hemos definido una actividad de Control, que permite un cierto feedback electrónico del profesor sobre la actividad de los alumnos.
Finalmente, se presenta un resumen de las experiencias de uso de Caronte sobre asignaturas de Ingeniería Informática en el curso 2007-08.
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Debora Gil, Aura Hernandez-Sabate, Mireia Burnat, Steven Jansen, & Jordi Martinez-Vilalta. (2009). "Structure-Preserving Smoothing of Biomedical Images " In 13th International Conference on Computer Analysis of Images and Patterns (Vol. 5702, pp. 427–434). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
Abstract: Smoothing of biomedical images should preserve gray-level transitions between adjacent tissues, while restoring contours consistent with anatomical structures. Anisotropic diffusion operators are based on image appearance discontinuities (either local or contextual) and might fail at weak inter-tissue transitions. Meanwhile, the output of block-wise and morphological operations is prone to present a block structure due to the shape and size of the considered pixel neighborhood. In this contribution, we use differential geometry concepts to define a diffusion operator that restricts to image consistent level-sets. In this manner, the final state is a non-uniform intensity image presenting homogeneous inter-tissue transitions along anatomical structures, while smoothing intra-structure texture. Experiments on different types of medical images (magnetic resonance, computerized tomography) illustrate its benefit on a further process (such as segmentation) of images.
Keywords: non-linear smoothing; differential geometry; anatomical structures segmentation; cardiac magnetic resonance; computerized tomography.
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Aura Hernandez-Sabate. (2009). "Exploring Arterial Dynamics and Structures in IntraVascular Ultrasound Sequences " (Debora Gil, Ed.). Ph.D. thesis, Ediciones Graficas Rey, .
Abstract: Cardiovascular diseases are a leading cause of death in developed countries. Most of them are caused by arterial (specially coronary) diseases, mainly caused by plaque accumulation. Such pathology narrows blood flow (stenosis) and affects artery bio- mechanical elastic properties (atherosclerosis). In the last decades, IntraVascular UltraSound (IVUS) has become a usual imaging technique for the diagnosis and follow up of arterial diseases. IVUS is a catheter-based imaging technique which shows a sequence of cross sections of the artery under study. Inspection of a single image gives information about the percentage of stenosis. Meanwhile, inspection of longitudinal views provides information about artery bio-mechanical properties, which can prevent a fatal outcome of the cardiovascular disease. On one hand, dynamics of arteries (due to heart pumping among others) is a major artifact for exploring tissue bio-mechanical properties. On the other one, manual stenosis measurements require a manual tracing of vessel borders, which is a time-consuming task and might suffer from inter-observer variations. This PhD thesis proposes several image processing tools for exploring vessel dy- namics and structures. We present a physics-based model to extract, analyze and correct vessel in-plane rigid dynamics and to retrieve cardiac phase. Furthermore, we introduce a deterministic-statistical method for automatic vessel borders detection. In particular, we address adventitia layer segmentation. An accurate validation pro- tocol to ensure reliable clinical applicability of the methods is a crucial step in any proposal of an algorithm. In this thesis we take special care in designing a valida- tion protocol for each approach proposed and we contribute to the in vivo dynamics validation with a quantitative and objective score to measure the amount of motion suppressed.
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