Bio-Medical Materials and Engineering - Volume 24, issue 6

Authors: Ergen, Burhan | Baykara, Muhammet

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: The developments of content based image retrieval (CBIR) systems used for image archiving are continued and one of the important research topics. Although some studies have been presented general image achieving, proposed CBIR systems for archiving of medical images are not very efficient. In presented study, it is examined the retrieval efficiency rate of spatial methods used for feature extraction for medical image retrieval systems. The investigated algorithms in this study depend on gray level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM), gray level run length matrix (GLRLM), and Gabor wavelet accepted as spatial methods. In the experiments, the database is built including hundreds …of medical images such as brain, lung, sinus, and bone. The results obtained in this study shows that queries based on statistics obtained from GLCM are satisfied. However, it is observed that Gabor Wavelet has been the most effective and accurate method. Show more

Keywords: Content-based image retrieval, GLCM, GLRLM, Gabor wavelet

DOI: 10.3233/BME-141127

Citation: Bio-Medical Materials and Engineering, vol. 24, no. 6, pp. 3055-3062, 2014

Authors: Yuan, Zhen | Ieong, Fong H. | Jiang, Huabei | Sobel, Eric S.

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: The goal of this study is to capture the quantitative optical features of degenerative finger joints based on x-ray aided three-dimensional (3D) diffuse optical tomography (DOT). It is anticipated that the fused imaging technique can be applied to identifying the significant differences between osteoarthritis (OA) and psoriatic arthritis (PA). For a case study, total 6 subjects were selected to study the distal interphalangeal (DIP) finger joints. 2 OA patients, 2 PA patients and 2 healthy subjects were examined clinically first. Their DIP finger joints were then scanned by the multimodality imaging method. Our findings suggested that the developed multimodality imaging …approach may aid to contradistinguish OA patients from PA patients with the healthy control, which is essential for a better diagnosis and treatment of inflammatory arthritis in humans. Show more

Keywords: diffuse optical tomography, osteoarthritis, psoriatic arthritis, x-ray

DOI: 10.3233/BME-141128

Citation: Bio-Medical Materials and Engineering, vol. 24, no. 6, pp. 3063-3071, 2014

Authors: Zhai, Yi | Wang, Yan | Wang, Zhaoqi | Liu, Yongji | Zhang, Lin | He, Yuanqing | Chang, Shengjiang

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: An achromatic element eliminating only longitudinal chromatic aberration (LCA) while maintaining transverse chromatic aberration (TCA) is established for the eye model, which involves the angle formed by the visual and optical axis. To investigate the impacts of higher-order aberrations on vision, the actual data of higher-order aberrations of human eyes with three typical levels are introduced into the eye model along visual axis. Moreover, three kinds of individual eye models are established to investigate the impacts of higher-order aberrations, chromatic aberration (LCA+TCA), LCA and TCA on vision under the photopic condition, respectively. Results show that for most human eyes, the …impact of chromatic aberration on vision is much stronger than that of higher-order aberrations, and the impact of LCA in chromatic aberration dominates. The impact of TCA is approximately equal to that of normal level higher-order aberrations and it can be ignored when LCA exists. Show more

Keywords: Visual optics, eye model, optical design, optical effects on vision, aberrations

DOI: 10.3233/BME-141129

Citation: Bio-Medical Materials and Engineering, vol. 24, no. 6, pp. 3073-3081, 2014

Authors: Chan, Yu-Chen

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: Although considerable attention has been paid to the cognitive structure of humor, its emotional structure tends to be overlooked. Humor is often associated with the single emotion of mirth or amusement, while other aspects of its rich emotional structure are ignored. The purpose of the present study was to explore this structure by analyzing the content of a Taiwanese corpus of 204 ‘negative’ jokes to identify the basic emotion was induced and the emotional shift pattern of the joke. Additionally, the corpus might be used to compare emotional reversal jokes (negative to positive emotion) and regular jokes (neutral to positive …emotion) as an aid when preparing materials for use in functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) investigations on the neural substrates of humor. In terms of basic emotions, 82 fear jokes, 61 disgust jokes, 42 sadness jokes and 19 anger jokes were found. The most common type of emotional shift was from negative to positive, with the punch lines of 114 jokes providing relief from the negative emotion by either diverting attention away from it or dissolving it entirely. Show more

Keywords: Joke corpus, emotional reversal, emotional shift pattern, negative joke, humor

DOI: 10.3233/BME-141130

Citation: Bio-Medical Materials and Engineering, vol. 24, no. 6, pp. 3083-3090, 2014

Authors: Yoo, Ie Ryung | Chung, Soo Kyo | Park, Hye Lim | Choi, Woo Hee | Kim, Young Kyoon | Lee, Kyo Young | Wang, Young-Pil

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: This paper aimed to evaluate the prognostic value of maximum standardized uptake value (SUVmax) and metabolic tumor volume (MTV) of the primary tumor on 18 F-FDG PET/CT scan in early stage non-small cell cancer (NSCLC) patients without lymph node (LN) metastasis. In the experiment, eighty NSCLC patients pathologically staged as T1N0 or T2N0 were included (M:F=50:30; mean age, 64.8 years). All patients had preoperative 18 F-FDG PET/CT scan and curative surgery. FDG uptake in the primary tumor was measured by SUVmax and MTV with various SUV threshold values. SUVmax, MTV of the primary tumor, age, tumor size, histology and differentiation …grade were analyzed for association with disease-free survival (DFS). The experimental results showed that the histology types included adenocarcinoma (n=58), squamous cell carcinoma (n=20), and others (n=2); Twenty-two (27.5%) of the 80 patients had a recurrence during follow-up at a median time of 29.1 months; The median SUVmax was 5.26, and the median MTV2.5 was 2.2 cm3 . Univariate analysis showed higher SUVmax (>4), greater MTV (MTV2.5 >4 cm3 ), and non-squamous histology were significantly associated with shorter period DFS (p=0.001, p=0.030 and p<0.001). In multivariate analysis, higher SUVmax (p=0.004) and adenocarcinoma histology (p=0.005) were associated with shorter DFS. Therefore, high SUVmax (>4) of the primary tumor on preoperative 18 F-FDG PET/CT scan is an independent prognostic factor of shorter DFS in early stage of NSCLC. Show more

Keywords: Non-small-cell lung cancer, PET/CT, standardized uptake value, metabolic tumor volume, early stage

DOI: 10.3233/BME-141131

Citation: Bio-Medical Materials and Engineering, vol. 24, no. 6, pp. 3091-3103, 2014

Authors: Fu, Jian | Yu, Guangyuan | Fan, Dekai

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: X-ray phase contrast computed tomography (CT) uses the phase shift that x-rays undergo when passing through matter, rather than their attenuation, as the imaging signal and may provide better image quality in soft-tissue and biomedical materials with low atomic number. Here a geometry-constraint-scan imaging technique for in-line phase contrast micro-CT is reported. It consists of two circular-trajectory scans with x-ray detector at different positions, the phase projection extraction method with the Fresnel free-propagation theory and the filter back-projection reconstruction algorithm. This method removes the contact-detector scan and the pure phase object assumption in classical in-line phase contrast Micro-CT. Consequently it …relaxes the experimental conditions and improves the image contrast. This work comprises a numerical study of this technique and its experimental verification using a biomedical composite dataset measured at an x-ray tube source Micro-CT setup. The numerical and experimental results demonstrate the validity of the presented method. It will be of interest for a wide range of in-line phase contrast Micro-CT applications in biology and medicine. Show more

Keywords: X-ray in-line phase contrast imaging, micro computed tomography, geometry-constraint scanning mode, reconstruction algorithm

DOI: 10.3233/BME-141132

Citation: Bio-Medical Materials and Engineering, vol. 24, no. 6, pp. 3105-3111, 2014

Authors: Cui, Xueli | Gao, Xin | Xia, Wei | Liu, Yangchuan | Liang, Zhiyuan

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: To build a patient specific respiratory motion model with a low dose, a novel method was proposed that uses a limited number of 3D lung CT volumes with an external respiratory signal. 4D lung CT volumes were acquired for patients with in vitro labeling on the upper abdominal surface. Meanwhile, 3D coordinates of in vitro labeling were measured as external respiratory signals. A sequential correspondence between the 4D lung CT and the external respiratory signal was built using the distance correlation method, and a 3D displacement for every registration control point in the CT volumes with respect to time can …be obtained by the 4D lung CT deformable registration. A temporal fitting was performed for every registration control point displacements and an external respiratory signal in the anterior-posterior direction respectively to draw their fitting curves. Finally, a linear regression was used to fit the corresponding samples of the control point displacement fitting curves and the external respiratory signal fitting curve to finish the pulmonary respiration modeling. Compared to a B-spline-based method using the respiratory signal phase, the proposed method is highly advantageous as it offers comparable modeling accuracy and target modeling error (TME); while at the same time, the proposed method requires 70% less 3D lung CTs. When using a similar amount of 3D lung CT data, the mean of the proposed method's TME is smaller than the mean of the PCA (principle component analysis)-based methods' TMEs. The results indicate that the proposed method is successful in striking a balance between modeling accuracy and number of 3D lung CT volumes. Show more

Keywords: Motion model, 4D lung CT, external respiratory signal, deformable registration, temporal fitting

DOI: 10.3233/BME-141133

Citation: Bio-Medical Materials and Engineering, vol. 24, no. 6, pp. 3113-3120, 2014

Authors: Shi, Han | Du, Dong | Su, Zhihong | Peng, Qiyu

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: Positron Emission Tomography (PET) systems using detectors with Depth of Interaction (DOI) capabilities could achieve higher spatial resolution and better image quality than those without DOI. Up till now, most DOI methods developed are not cost-efficient for a whole body PET system. In this paper, we present a DOI decoding method based on flood map for low-cost conventional block detector with four-PMT readout. Using this method, the DOI information can be directly extracted from the DOI-related crystal spot deformation in the flood map. GATE simulations are then carried out to validate the method, confirming a DOI sorting accuracy of 85.27%. …Therefore, we conclude that this method has the potential to be applied in conventional detectors to achieve a reasonable DOI measurement without dramatically increasing their complexity and cost of an entire PET system. Show more

Keywords: Positron emission tomography, depth of interaction, GATE simulation

DOI: 10.3233/BME-141134

Citation: Bio-Medical Materials and Engineering, vol. 24, no. 6, pp. 3121-3127, 2014

Authors: Qiao, Huiting | Wang, Libin | Li, Deyu | Wang, Daifa | Wang, Yu

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: Positron emission tomography (PET) has been widely used in early diagnosis of tumors. Though standardized uptake value (SUV) is a common diagnosis index for PET, it will be affected by the size of the tumor. To explore how the tumor size affects imaging diagnosis index, dynamic PET images were simulated to study the relationship between tumor size and the imaging diagnosis index. It was found that the SUV of the region of the tumor varied with scan time, and the SUV was always lower than the true value of tumor. Even more deviations were found in SUV with a reduced …tumor size. The diagnosis index SUVmax was more reliable than SUV, for it declined only when the volume of tumor was less than 3 mm3 . Therefore, the effect of tumor size on the SUV and SUVmax that are used as diagnosis indices in the early diagnosis of tumors should not be neglected. Show more

Keywords: Standardized uptake value, maximum standardized uptake value, positron emission tomography, tumor size, diagnosis

DOI: 10.3233/BME-141135

Citation: Bio-Medical Materials and Engineering, vol. 24, no. 6, pp. 3129-3136, 2014

Authors: Yong, Jin Rim | Qi, Shouliang | van Triest, Han J.W. | Kang, Yan | Qian, Wei

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: Extraction of lung tumors is a fundamental step for further quantitative analysis of the tumor, but is challenging for juxta-pleural tumors due to the adhesion to the pleurae. An automatic algorithm for segmentation of juxta-pleural tumors based on the analysis of the geometric and morphological features was proposed. Initially, the lung is extracted by means of thresholding using 2D Otsu's method. Next a center point is suggested to find a starting point and endpoint of outward facing pleura. A model based on the variation of incline angle was adopted to identify potentially affected regions, and to full segment juxta-pleural tumors. …The results were compared with the manual segmentation by two radiologists. Averaged for ten experimental datasets, the accuracy calculated by Dice index between the results of the algorithm and by the two radiologists is 91.2%. It indicates the proposed method has comparable accuracy with the experts (the inter-observer variability is 92.4%), but requests much less manual interactions. The proposed algorithm can be used for segmenting juxta-pleural tumors from CT images, and help improve the diagnosis, pre-operative planning and therapy response evaluation. Show more

Keywords: Juxta-pleural tumor segmentation, morphological analysis, incline angle

DOI: 10.3233/BME-141136

Citation: Bio-Medical Materials and Engineering, vol. 24, no. 6, pp. 3137-3144, 2014