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

Authors: Zhang, Ziqun | Zhang, Ran | Song, Zhijian

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: Skull defect reconstruction is an important aspect of surgical repair. Historically, a skull defect prosthesis was created by the mirroring technique, surface fitting, or formed templates. These methods are not based on the anatomy of the individual patient's skull, and therefore, the prosthesis cannot precisely correct the defect. This study presented a new hybrid level set model, taking into account both the global optimization region information and the local accuracy edge information, while avoiding re-initialization during the evolution of the level set function. Based on the new method, a skull defect was reconstructed, and the skull prosthesis was produced by …rapid prototyping technology. This resulted in a skull defect prosthesis that well matched the skull defect with excellent individual adaptation. Show more

Keywords: Skull defect, image segmentation, level set method, rapid prototyping

DOI: 10.3233/BME-141157

Citation: Bio-Medical Materials and Engineering, vol. 24, no. 6, pp. 3343-3351, 2014

Authors: Xia, Yong | Liu, Yixuan | Wang, Kuanquan

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: Having the ability to visualize the heart clearly and precisely would be beneficial for pathology research, presurgical planning, and clinical approaches. Multi-dimensional transfer functions were employed to improve the overall performance of images. To provide a satisfactory visualization quality on the shape and boundaries of the heart, a new hybrid transfer function combining structure size with gradient was designed to highlight the area of the heart. Initially, a histogram of gradient and histogram of size was computed and then classification was performed for providing the spatial information. Finally, several hybrid strategies were presented for the design of the transfer function, …including opacity and color. By experimental evaluation, the proposed hybrid transfer function visualized the cardiac outline and internal structure more clearly and easily. Show more

Keywords: visualization of heart, multi-dimensional transfer function, histogram of structure size, histogram of gradient

DOI: 10.3233/BME-141158

Citation: Bio-Medical Materials and Engineering, vol. 24, no. 6, pp. 3353-3359, 2014

Authors: Bao, Nan | Chen, Yu | Yue, Yong | Li, Hong | Cui, Zhiming | Zhuang, Jinfeng | Tian, Shi | Kang, Yan

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: The rigid registration is a key step of Image Guided Surgery (IGS), and the point-pair method is the main way used for registration. However the configuration of fiducial points has a great influence on the registration accuracy at the target point. Now almost all the optimization method of fiducial points configuration relies on the empirical simulation-based Fitzpatrick's target registration error (TRE). In this paper, a phantom and some markers were designed and some experiments were conducted to measure and compare the affecting factors on the registration. By the markers repeated selections, the fiducial location error (FLE) has a small deviation …of maximum 0.4 mm, and the average of the Fitzpatrick's TRE (F-TRE) has almost 86% proportion to the average of the actual TRE (A-TRE), but the standard deviation (STD) just has 7% proportion. Also, the experiment result showed that six fiducial markers already had the 86% accuracy, and spreading the fiducial markers led to 30% reduction in mean of A-TRE and 40% reduction in STD of A-TRE comparing with the centralized. Overall, to find a strategy of optimization, reducing the TRE has the great meaning to support safer and more accurate minimally IGS procedures. Show more

Keywords: Image guided surgery, target registration error, registration, fiducial markers, number and distribution

DOI: 10.3233/BME-141159

Citation: Bio-Medical Materials and Engineering, vol. 24, no. 6, pp. 3361-3371, 2014

Authors: Ji, Bing | Yang, Qing | Genever, Paul G. | Fagan, Michael J.

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: Multiple myeloma (MM)-induced bone disease is mortal for most MM patients. Bisphosphonates are first-line treatment for MM-induced bone disease, since it can inhibit osteoclast activity and the resultant bone resorption by suppressing the differentiation of osteoclast precursors into mature osteoclasts, promoting osteoclast apoptosis and disrupting osteoclast function. However, it is still unclear whether bisphosphonates have an anti-tumour effect. In our previous work, a computational model was built to simulate the pathology of MM-induced bone disease. This paper extends this proposed computational model to investigate the efficacy of bisphosphonates treatment and then clear the controversy of this therapy. The extended model …is validated through the good agreement between simulation results and experimental data. The simulation results suggest that bisphosphonates indeed have an anti-tumour effect. Show more

Keywords: Multiple myeloma, MM-induced bone disease, bisphosphonates, anti-tumour, computational model

DOI: 10.3233/BME-141160

Citation: Bio-Medical Materials and Engineering, vol. 24, no. 6, pp. 3373-3378, 2014

Authors: Wu, Yixiao | Yang, Ran | Jia, Sen | Li, Zhanjun | Zhou, Zhiyang | Lou, Ting

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: This work was aimed at studying the method of computer-aided diagnosis of early knee OA (OA: osteoarthritis). Based on the technique of MRI (MRI: Magnetic Resonance Imaging) T2 Mapping, through computer image processing, feature extraction, calculation and analysis via constructing a classifier, an effective computer-aided diagnosis method for knee OA was created to assist doctors in their accurate, timely and convenient detection of potential risk of OA. In order to evaluate this method, a total of 1380 data from the MRI images of 46 samples of knee joints were collected. These data were then modeled through linear regression on an …offline general platform by the use of the ImageJ software, and a map of the physical parameter T2 was reconstructed. After the image processing, the T2 values of ten regions in the WORMS (WORMS: Whole-organ Magnetic Resonance Imaging Score) areas of the articular cartilage were extracted to be used as the eigenvalues in data mining. Then,a RBF (RBF: Radical Basis Function) network classifier was built to classify and identify the collected data. The classifier exhibited a final identification accuracy of 75%, indicating a good result of assisting diagnosis. Since the knee OA classifier constituted by a weights-directly-determined RBF neural network didn't require any iteration, our results demonstrated that the optimal weights, appropriate center and variance could be yielded through simple procedures. Furthermore, the accuracy for both the training samples and the testing samples from the normal group could reach 100%. Finally, the classifier was superior both in time efficiency and classification performance to the frequently used classifiers based on iterative learning. Thus it was suitable to be used as an aid to computer-aided diagnosis of early knee OA. Show more

Keywords: Knee OA, MR T2 mapping, RBF neural network, computer-aided diagnosis

DOI: 10.3233/BME-141161

Citation: Bio-Medical Materials and Engineering, vol. 24, no. 6, pp. 3379-3388, 2014

Authors: Zhu, Lei | Zheng, Ran | Jin, Hai | Zhang, Qin | Zhang, Wei

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: Silicosis remains one of the most harmful occupational respiratory diseases. It threatens the workers exposed to dust environment. Chest radiograph is the main available image source for silicosis diagnosis according to the diagnostic criteria of pneumoconiosis (DCP). Automatic detection and recognition of silicosis in chest radiograph has great importance on aiding the process of silicosis diagnosis. This paper proposes a multi-scale opacity detection approach to detect all suspected opacities from the chest radiograph. A support vector machine (SVM) based computer-aided silicosis diagnosis is proposed to recognize silicosis opacity from a large amount of candidate regions, and gives processing result for …radiologist reference. Comprehensive experiments conducted on real world chest radiographs demonstrate that the proposed approach can reveal changes of silicosis pathology well, and it can be adopted as an effective tool for automatic silicosis diagnosis. Show more

Keywords: Silicosis, diagnostic criteria of pneumoconiosis, chest radiograph, support vector machine, silicosis pathology

DOI: 10.3233/BME-141162

Citation: Bio-Medical Materials and Engineering, vol. 24, no. 6, pp. 3389-3395, 2014

Authors: Li, Peng | Bi, Tingting | Huang, Jiuling | Li, Siben

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: The frequent occurrence of breast cancer and its serious consequences have attracted worldwide attention in recent years. Problems such as low rate of accuracy and poor self-adaptability still exist in traditional diagnosis. In order to solve these problems, an AdaBoost-SVM classification algorithm, combined with the cluster boundary sampling preprocessing techniques (CBS-AdaBoost-SVM), is proposed in this paper for the early diagnosis of breast cancer. The algorithm uses machine learning method to diagnose the unknown image data. Moreover, not all of the characteristics play positive roles for classification. To address this issue the paper delete redundant features by using Rough set attribute …reduction algorithm based on the genetic algorithm (GA). The effectiveness of the proposed methods are examined on DDSM by calculating its accuracy, confusion matrix, and receiver operating characteristic curves, which give important clues to the physicians for early diagnosis of breast cancer. Show more

Keywords: Computer-aided diagnosis, image data mining, support vector machine, clustering sampling

DOI: 10.3233/BME-141163

Citation: Bio-Medical Materials and Engineering, vol. 24, no. 6, pp. 3397-3404, 2014

Authors: Song, In-Uk | Kim, Joong-Seok | Chung, Sung-Woo | Lee, Kwang-Soo | Oh, Jin-Kyoung | Chung, Yong-An

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: Cognitive dysfunction is a common feature of Parkinson's disease (PD). Recent research has focused on the detection and management of subjective memory impairment (SMI) as the stage that precedes mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Nevertheless, few clinical studies have biomarkers of SMI in PD. Therefore, this study was designed to investigate differences in perfusion brain SPECT between PD with SMI (PD+SMI) and PD without SMI (PD-SMI) to identify a potential prodromal biomarker of progression to dementia in patients with PD. In this study, 30 PD patients with SMI and 24 PD patients without SMI have been recruited. All subjects underwent perfusion …brain SPECT and neuropsychological testing. Brain SPECT images were analyzed by using the SPM program and comparing between patients with PD+SMI and PD-SMI. The PD+SMI and PD-SMI groups did not differ in any neuropsychological tests, except for MMSE. Despite a significant difference in MMSE scores, all scores of both groups were in the normal range. Brain SPECT analysis of PD+SMI patients showed hypoperfusion in the frontal and inferior temporal regions, anterior cingulate and thalamus compared with PD-SMI patients. This pilot study investigated the role of decreased brain perfusion SPECT findings in PD+SMI patients compared with PD-SMI patients as a predictive biomarker of pre-dementia as the stage that precedes MCI in PD. Larger, prospective studies are warranted for further investigation of the pathophysiology of neuronal systems during cognitive decline. Show more

Keywords: Parkinson's disease, subjective memory impairment, perfusion SPECT

DOI: 10.3233/BME-141164

Citation: Bio-Medical Materials and Engineering, vol. 24, no. 6, pp. 3405-3410, 2014

Authors: Liu, Yubin | Li, Zhifang | Li, Hui | Yuan, Zhen

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: In this study, the change of tumors' chemical composition in the temperature range of 20~70°C is quantified for photothermal tumor therapy by photoacoustic spectroscopy (PAS) with the wavelengths of 700~1000 nm. Based on the measured photoacoustic signals, two absorption peaks at the wavelengths of 750nm and 950nm are identified. It is also observed that high temperature (>55°C) is able to induce the physical and chemical degeneration of tumors. According to the in vitro tests, a new chemical species, met-hemoglobin, which is absent in normal blood, is generated at high temperature with enhanced near-infrared absorption.

Keywords: PAS, photothermal therapy, photoacoustic signals, hemoglobin

DOI: 10.3233/BME-141165

Citation: Bio-Medical Materials and Engineering, vol. 24, no. 6, pp. 3411-3418, 2014

Authors: Bianchi, Mariana | Adur, Javier | Ruff, Silvana Y. | Izaguirre, María F. | Carvalho, Hernandes F. | Cesar, Carlos L. | Casco, Víctor H.

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: Murine induced colon cancer has been used to demonstrate that Second Harmonic Generation (SHG) microscopy images, combined with Two-Photon Excitation Fluorescence (TPEF) and specific quantization scoring methods allow distinguishing early alterations in colon mucosa. TPEF was used only to identified crypts and submucosa regions, whereas the image analysis was used to get quantitative data (Integrated Intensity and Aspect Ratio scoring) of different cancer stages. The submucosa amount of collagen fibers was significant and their orientation suffering proportional changes with the development of the pathological processes. Both after the fourth and eighth weeks after colon cancer induction, integrated intensity and aspect …ratio values have shown significant statistical differences compared with control samples. Thus, SHG microscopy has proved to be a useful quantitative tool to highlight early changes of submucosa and the progression of these through the cancer development. Show more

Keywords: Colon cancer, early detection, second harmonic generation, two-photon excitation fluorescence

DOI: 10.3233/BME-141166

Citation: Bio-Medical Materials and Engineering, vol. 24, no. 6, pp. 3419-3426, 2014