Dynamically learned PSO based neighborhood influenced fuzzy c-means for pre-treatment and post-treatment organ segmentation from CT images

Deep learning-aided 3D proxy-bridged region-growing framework for multi-organ segmentation

Accurate multi-organ segmentation in 3D CT images is imperative for enhancing computer-aided diagnosis and radiotherapy planning. However, current deep learning-based methods for 3D multi-organ segmentation face challenges such as the need for labor-intensive manual pixel-level annotations and high hardware resource demands, especially regarding GPU resources. To address these issues, we propose a 3D proxy-bridged region-growing framework specifically designed for the segmentation of the liver and spleen. Specifically, a key slice is selected from each 3D volume according to the corresponding intensity histogram. Subsequently, a deep learning model is employed to pinpoint the semantic central patch on this key slice, to calculate the growing seed. To counteract the impact of noise, segmentation of the liver and spleen is conducted on superpixel images created through proxy-bridging strategy. The segmentation process is then extended to adjacent slices by applying the same methodology iteratively, culminating in the comprehensive segmentation results. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed framework accomplishes segmentation of the liver and spleen with an average Dice Similarity Coefficient of approximately 0.93 and a Jaccard Similarity Coefficient of around 0.88. These outcomes substantiate the framework's capability to achieve performance on par with that of deep learning methods, albeit requiring less guidance information and lower GPU resources.

An enhanced ant colony optimizer with Cauchy-Gaussian fusion and novel movement strategy for multi-threshold COVID-19 X-ray image segmentation

The novel coronavirus pneumonia (COVID-19) is a respiratory disease of great concern in terms of its dissemination and severity, for which X-ray imaging-based diagnosis is one of the effective complementary diagnostic methods. It is essential to be able to separate and identify lesions from their pathology images regardless of the computer-aided diagnosis techniques. Therefore, image segmentation in the pre-processing stage of COVID-19 pathology images would be more helpful for effective analysis. In this paper, to achieve highly effective pre-processing of COVID-19 pathological images by using multi-threshold image segmentation (MIS), an enhanced version of ant colony optimization for continuous domains (MGACO) is first proposed. In MGACO, not only a new move strategy is introduced, but also the Cauchy-Gaussian fusion strategy is incorporated. It has been accelerated in terms of convergence speed and has significantly enhanced its ability to jump out of the local optimum. Furthermore, an MIS method (MGACO-MIS) based on MGACO is developed, where it applies the non-local means, 2D histogram as the basis, and employs 2D Kapur’s entropy as the fitness function. To demonstrate the performance of MGACO, we qualitatively analyze it in detail and compare it with other peers on 30 benchmark functions from IEEE CEC2014, which proves that it has a stronger capability of solving problems over the original ant colony optimization for continuous domains. To verify the segmentation effect of MGACO-MIS, we conducted a comparison experiment with eight other similar segmentation methods based on real pathology images of COVID-19 at different threshold levels. The final evaluation and analysis results fully demonstrate that the developed MGACO-MIS is sufficient to obtain high-quality segmentation results in the COVID-19 image segmentation and has stronger adaptability to different threshold levels than other methods. Therefore, it has been well-proven that MGACO is an excellent swarm intelligence optimization algorithm, and MGACO-MIS is also an excellent segmentation method.

Early Prediction of Cerebral Computed Tomography under Intelligent Segmentation Algorithm Combined with Serological Indexes for Hematoma Enlargement after Intracerebral Hemorrhage

The aim of this study was to explore the application value of brain computed tomography (CT) images under intelligent segmentation algorithm and serological indexes in the early prediction of hematoma enlargement in patients with intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH). Fuzzy C-means (FCM) intelligence segmentation algorithm was introduced, and 150 patients with early ICH were selected as the research objects. Patient cerebral CT images were intelligently segmented to assess the diagnostic value of this algorithm. According to different hematoma volumes during CT examination, patients were divided into observation group (hematoma enlargement occurred, n = 48) and control group (no hematoma enlargement occurred, n = 102). The predicative value of hematoma enlargement after ICH was investigated by assessing CT image quality and measuring intracerebral edema, hematoma volume, and serological indicators of the patients of the two groups. The results demonstrated that the sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of CT images processed by intelligence segmentation algorithm amounted to 0.894, 0.898, and 0.930, respectively. Besides, early edema enlargement and hematoma of patients in the observation group were more significant than those of patients in the control group. Relative edema volume was 0.912, which was apparently lower than that in the control group (1.017) (P < 0.05). In terms of CT signs of ICH patients, the incidence of blend sign, low density sign, and stroke of the observation group was evidently higher than those of the control group (P < 0.05). Besides, absolute lymphocyte count (ALC) and hemoglobin (HGB) concentration of the patients in the observation group were 6.23 × 109/L and 6.29 × 109/L, respectively, both of which were higher than those of the control group (6.08 × 109/L and 4.25 × 109/L). Neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio (NLR) was 0.99 × 109/L, which was apparently lower than that in the control group (1.43 × 109/L) (P < 0.05). To sum up, cerebral CT images processed by FCM algorithm showed good diagnostic effect on ICH and high clinical values in the early prediction of hematoma among ICH patients.

Enhanced Evolutionary Feature Selection and Ensemble Method for Cardiovascular Disease Prediction

Cardiovascular Disease (CVD) is one among the main factors for the increase in mortality rate worldwide. The analysis and prediction of this disease is yet a highly formidable task in medical data analysis. Recent advancements in technology such as Big Data, Artificial Intelligence and the need for automated models have paved the way for developing a more reliable and efficient model for predicting heart disease. Several researches have been carried out in predicting heart diseases but the focus on choosing the important attributes that play a significant role in predicting CVD is inadequate. Hence the choice of right features for the classification and the diagnosis of the heart disease is important. The core aim of this work is to identify and select the important features and machine learning methodologies that can enhance the prediction capability of the classification models for accurately predicting CVD. The results show that the proposed enhanced evolutionary feature selection with the hybrid ensemble model outperforms the existing approaches in terms of precision, recall and accuracy. The experimental outcomes show that the proposed approach attains the maximum classification accuracy of 93.65% for statlog dataset, 82.81% for SPECTF dataset and 84.95% for coronary heart disease dataset. The proposed classification model performance is demonstrated using ROC curve against state-of-the-art methods in machine learning.