Accelerating B-spline interpolation on GPUs: Application to medical image registration

Chaotification of 1D Maps by Multiple Remainder Operator Additions—Application to B-Spline Curve Encryption

In this work, a chaotification technique is proposed for increasing the complexity of chaotic maps. The technique consists of adding the remainder of multiple scalings of the map’s value for the next iteration, so that the most- and least-significant digits are combined. By appropriate parameter tuning, the resulting map can achieve a higher Lyapunov exponent value, a result that was first proven theoretically and then showcased through numerical simulations for a collection of chaotic maps. As a proposed application of the transformed maps, the encryption of B-spline curves and patches was considered. The symmetric encryption consisted of two steps: a shuffling of the control point coordinates and an additive modulation. A transformed chaotic map was utilised to perform both steps. The resulting ciphertext curves and patches were visually unrecognisable compared to the plaintext ones and performed well on several statistical tests. The proposed work gives an insight into the potential of the remainder operator for chaotification, as well as the chaos-based encryption of curves and computer graphics.

Symmetric Diffeomorphic Image Registration with Multi-Label Segmentation Masks

Image registration aims to align two images through a spatial transformation. It plays a significant role in brain imaging analysis. In this research, we propose a symmetric diffeomorphic image registration model based on multi-label segmentation masks to solve the problems in brain MRI registration. We first introduce the similarity metric of the multi-label masks to the energy function, which improves the alignment of the brain region boundaries and the robustness to the noise. Next, we establish the model on the diffeomorphism group through the relaxation method and the inverse consistent constraint. The algorithm is designed through the local linearization and least-squares method. We then give spatially adaptive parameters to coordinate the descent of the energy function in different regions. The results show that our approach, compared with the mainstream methods, has better accuracy and noise resistance, and the transformations are more smooth and more reasonable.

Hardware Architectures for Real-Time Medical Imaging

Medical imaging is considered one of the most important advances in the history of medicine and has become an essential part of the diagnosis and treatment of patients. Earlier prediction and treatment have been driving the acquisition of higher image resolutions as well as the fusion of different modalities, raising the need for sophisticated hardware and software systems for medical image registration, storage, analysis, and processing. In this scenario and given the new clinical pipelines and the huge clinical burden of hospitals, these systems are often required to provide both highly accurate and real-time processing of large amounts of imaging data. Additionally, lowering the prices of each part of imaging equipment, as well as its development and implementation, and increasing their lifespan is crucial to minimize the cost and lead to more accessible healthcare. This paper focuses on the evolution and the application of different hardware architectures (namely, CPU, GPU, DSP, FPGA, and ASIC) in medical imaging through various specific examples and discussing different options depending on the specific application. The main purpose is to provide a general introduction to hardware acceleration techniques for medical imaging researchers and developers who need to accelerate their implementations.

Application of CT images based on the optimal atlas segmentation algorithm in the clinical diagnosis of Mycoplasma Pneumoniae Pneumonia in Children

Objective

Use of optimal Atlas segmentation algorithm to study the imaging signs of mycoplasma pneumonia with multi-slice spiral CT (HRCT), and to explore the value of HRCT in the diagnosis and efficacy in evaluation of mycoplasma pneumonia in children.

Methods

The study retrospectively analyzed 72 patients diagnosed with mycoplasma pneumonia in our hospital from January 2017 to January 2019. The imaging data and clinical data of 72 patients were collected. The optimal Atlas segmentation algorithm was used to analyze the characteristics of CT examination, and the value of CT in the diagnosis of mycoplasma pneumonia and the evaluation of curative effect was summarized.

Results

Among all patients, 37 cases were unilateral lesions, 35 cases were bilateral lesions, 19 cases were in the left upper lobe, 24 cases were in the left lower lobe, 21 cases were in the right upper lobe, 13 cases were in the right middle lobe, 25 The lesion was located in the right lower lobe. The main CT findings of the lesions before treatment were large patchy, spot-shaped shadows, and strip-shaped or ground-glass shadows. After treatment, the main CT findings of the lesions were reduced lesion density and reduced lesion range.

Conclusion

CT can clearly show the pulmonary lesions of mycoplasma pneumonia, and its unique imaging signs can improve the clinical diagnosis accuracy. In addition, CT scans can evaluate the treatment effect according to the changes in the characteristics of the lesion, which has important value for the evaluation of the effect for clinical diagnosis and efficacy evaluation of mycoplasma pneumonia.

Evaluation of a novel navigation platform for laparoscopic liver surgery with organ deformation compensation using injected fiducials

In laparoscopic liver resection, surgeons conventionally rely on anatomical landmarks detected through a laparoscope, preoperative volumetric images and laparoscopic ultrasound to compensate for the challenges of minimally invasive access. Image guidance using optical tracking and registration procedures is a promising tool, although often undermined by its inaccuracy. This study evaluates a novel surgical navigation solution that can compensate for liver deformations using an accurate and effective registration method. The proposed solution relies on a robotic C-arm to perform registration to preoperative CT/MRI image data and allows for intraoperative updates during resection using fluoroscopic images. Navigation is offered both as a 3D liver model with real-time instrument visualization, as well as an augmented reality overlay on the laparoscope camera view. Testing was conducted through a pre-clinical trial which included four porcine models. Accuracy of the navigation system was measured through two evaluation methods: liver surface fiducials reprojection and a comparison between planned and navigated resection margins. Target Registration Error with the fiducials evaluation shows that the accuracy in the vicinity of the lesion was 3.78±1.89 mm. Resection margin evaluations resulted in an overall median accuracy of 4.44 mm with a maximum error of 9.75 mm over the four subjects. The presented solution is accurate enough to be potentially clinically beneficial for surgical guidance in laparoscopic liver surgery.

Accelerating Chan-Vese model with cross-modality guided contrast enhancement for liver segmentation

Accurate and fast liver segmentation remains a challenging and important task for clinicians. Segmentation algorithms are slow and inaccurate due to noise and low quality images in computed tomography (CT) abdominal scans. Chan-Vese is an active contour based powerful and flexible method for image segmentation due to superior noise robustness. However, it is quite slow due to time-consuming partial differential equations, especially for large medical datasets. This can pose a problem for a real-time implementation of liver segmentation and hence, an efficient parallel implementation is highly desirable. Another important aspect is the contrast of CT liver images. Liver slices are sometimes very low in contrast which reduces the overall quality of liver segmentation. Hence, we implement cross-modality guided liver contrast enhancement as a pre-processing step to liver segmentation. GPU implementation of Chan-Vese improves average speedup by 99.811 (± 7.65) times and 14.647 (± 1.155) times with and without enhancement respectively in comparison with the CPU. Average dice, sensitivity and accuracy of liver segmentation are 0.656, 0.816 and 0.822 respectively on the original liver images and 0.877, 0.964 and 0.956 respectively on the enhanced liver images improving the overall quality of liver segmentation.

Fast parallel vessel segmentation

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE

Accurate and fast vessel segmentation from liver slices remain challenging and important tasks for clinicians. The algorithms from the literature are slow and less accurate. We propose fast parallel gradient based seeded region growing for vessel segmentation. Seeded region growing is tedious when the inter connectivity between the elements is unavoidable. Parallelizing region growing algorithms are essential towards achieving real time performance for the overall process of accurate vessel segmentation.

METHODS

The parallel implementation of seeded region growing for vessel segmentation is iterative and hence time consuming process. Seeded region growing is implemented as kernel termination and relaunch on GPU due to its iterative mechanism. The iterative or recursive process in region growing is time consuming due to intermediate memory transfers between CPU and GPU. We propose persistent and grid-stride loop based parallel approach for region growing on GPU. We analyze static region of interest of tiles on GPU for the acceleration of seeded region growing.

RESULTS

We aim fast parallel gradient based seeded region growing for vessel segmentation from CT liver slices. The proposed parallel approach is 1.9x faster compared to the state-of-the-art.

CONCLUSION

We discuss gradient based seeded region growing and its parallel implementation on GPU. The proposed parallel seeded region growing is fast compared to kernel termination and relaunch and accurate in comparison to Chan-Vese and Snake model for vessel segmentation.