Advanced MRI research and other imaging modalities may serve as biomarkers for the evaluation of traumatic brain injury (TBI) recovery. However, these advanced modalities typically require off-line processing which creates images that are incompatible with radiologist viewing software sold commercially. AGFA Impax is an example of such a picture archiving and communication system(PACS) that is used by many radiology departments in the United States Military Health System. By taking advantage of Impax’s use of the Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) standard, we developed a system that allows for advanced medical imaging to be incorporated into clinical PACS. Radiology research can now be conducted using existing clinical imaging display platforms resources in combination with image processingtechniques that are only available outside of the clinical scanning environment. We extracted the spatial and identification elements of theDICOM standard that are necessary to allow research images to be incorporatedinto a clinical radiology system, and developed a tool that annotates research images with the proper tags. This allows for the evaluation of imaging representations of biological markers that may be useful in theevaluation of TBI and TBI recovery.
Volumetric display of medical images is an increasingly relevant method for examining an imaging acquisition as the prevalence of thin-slice imaging increases in clinical studies. Current mouse and keyboard implementations for volumetric control provide neither the sensitivity nor specificity required to manipulate a volumetric display for efficient reading in a clinical setting. Solutions to efficient volumetric manipulation provide more sensitivity by removing the binary nature of actions controlled by keyboard clicks, but specificity is lost because a single action may change display in several directions. When specificity is then further addressed by re-implementing hardware binary functions through the introduction of mode control, the result is a cumbersome interface that fails to achieve the revolutionary benefit required for adoption of a new technology. We address the specificity versus sensitivity problem of volumetric interfaces by providing adaptive positional awareness to the volumetric control device by manipulating communication between hardware driver and existing software methods for volumetric display of medical images. This creates a tethered effect for volumetric display, providing a smooth interface that improves on existing hardware approaches to volumetric scene manipulation.
Monkeypox virus is an emerging zoonotic pathogen that results in up to 10% mortality in humans. Knowledge of clinical manifestations and temporal progression of monkeypox disease is limited to data collected from rare outbreaks in remote regions of Central and West Africa. Clinical observations show that monkeypox infection resembles variola infection. Given the limited capability to study monkeypox disease in humans, characterization of the disease in animal models is required. A previous work focused on the identification of inflammatory patterns using PET/CT image modality in two non-human primates previously inoculated with the virus. In this work we extended techniques used in computer-aided detection of lung tumors to identify inflammatory lesions from monkeypox virus infection and their progression using CT images. Accurate estimation of partial volumes of lung lesions via segmentation is difficult because of poor discrimination between blood vessels, diseased regions, and outer structures. We used hard C-means algorithm in conjunction with landmark based registration to estimate the extent of monkeypox virus induced disease before inoculation and after disease progression. Automated estimation is in close agreement with manual segmentation.
This work extends the multi-histogram volume rendering framework proposed by Kniss et al. [1] to provide rendering results based on the impression of overlaid triangles on a graph of image intensity versus gradient magnitude. The developed method of volume rendering allows for greater emphasis to boundary visualization while avoiding issues common in medical image acquisition. For example, partial voluming effects in computed tomography and intensity inhomogeneity of similar tissue types in magnetic resonance imaging introduce pixel values that will not reflect differing tissue types when a standard transfer function is applied to an intensity histogram. This new framework uses developing technology to improve upon the Kniss multi-histogram framework by using Java, the GPU, and MIPAV, an open-source medical image processing application, to allow multi-histogram techniques to be widely disseminated. The OpenGL view aligned texture rendering approach suffered from performance setbacks, inaccessibility, and usability problems. Rendering results can now be interactively compared with other rendering frameworks, surfaces can now be extracted for use in other programs, and file formats that are widely used in the field of biomedical imaging can be visualized using this multi-histogram approach. OpenCL and GLSL are used to produce this new multi-histogram approach, leveraging texture memory on the graphics processing unit of desktops to provide a new interactive method for visualizing biomedical images. Performance results for this method are generated and qualitative rendering results are compared. The resulting framework provides the opportunity for further applications in medical imaging, both in volume rendering and in generic image processing.
Accurate segmentation of prostate magnetic resonance images (MRI) is a challenging task due to the variable anatomical
structure of the prostate. In this work, two semi-automatic techniques for segmentation of T2-weighted MRI images of
the prostate are presented. Both models are based on 2D registration that changes shape to fit the prostate boundary
between adjacent slices. The first model relies entirely on registration to segment the prostate. The second model
applies Fuzzy-C means and morphology filters on top of the registration in order to refine the prostate boundary. Key to
the success of the two models is the careful initialization of the prostate contours, which requires specifying three
Volume of Interest (VOI) contours to each axial, sagittal and coronal image. Then, a fully automatic segmentation
algorithm generates the final results with the three images. The algorithm performance is evaluated with 45 MR image
datasets. VOI volume, 3D surface volume and VOI boundary masks are used to quantify the segmentation accuracy
between the semi-automatic and expert manual segmentations. Both models achieve an average segmentation accuracy
of 90%. The proposed registration guided segmentation model has been generalized to segment a wide range of T2-
weighted MRI prostate images.
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