Medical applications of image analysis with the Magiscan 2

The previous generation of image analysis machines were capable of processing and analyzing binary, i.e., black and white images, and making measurements and decisions thereon. The Magiscan 2, one of the new generation computers, is capable of analyzing gray-level images in a variety of sophisticated ways. Its uses in the medical application of image analysis are presented, as are the techniques used to analyze images in general. The two principal current medical uses are the automatic karyotyping of chromosomes and the automatic screening of cervical smears. Other applications discussed include three-dimensional reconstruction of structures from two-dimensional sections and the possibility of developing expert systems for medical diagnostics.     

Medical image registration using fuzzy theory

Mutual information (MI)-based registration, which uses MI as the similarity measure, is a representative method in medical image registration. It has an excellent robustness and accuracy, but with the disadvantages of a large amount of calculation and a long processing time. In this paper, by computing the medical image moments, the centroid is acquired. By applying fuzzy c-means clustering, the coordinates of the medical image are divided into two clusters to fit a straight line, and the rotation angles of the reference and floating images are computed, respectively. Thereby, the initial values for registering the images are determined. When searching the optimal geometric transformation parameters, we put forward the two new concepts of fuzzy distance and fuzzy signal-to-noise ratio (FSNR), and we select FSNR as the similarity measure between the reference and floating images. In the experiments, the Simplex method is chosen as multi-parameter optimisation. The experimental results show that this proposed method has a simple implementation, a low computational cost, a fast registration and good registration accuracy. Moreover, it can effectively avoid trapping into the local optima. It is adapted to both mono-modality and multi-modality image registrations.     

Medical image registration: a review

This paper presents a review of automated image registration methodologies that have been used in the medical field. The aim of this paper is to be an introduction to the field, provide knowledge on the work that has been developed and to be a suitable reference for those who are looking for registration methods for a specific application. The registration methodologies under review are classified into intensity or feature based. The main steps of these methodologies, the common geometric transformations, the similarity measures and accuracy assessment techniques are introduced and described.     

Medical image registration using fuzzy theory

Mutual information (MI)-based registration, which uses MI as the similarity measure, is a representative method in medical image registration. It has an excellent robustness and accuracy, but with the disadvantages of a large amount of calculation and a long processing time. In this paper, by computing the medical image moments, the centroid is acquired. By applying fuzzy c-means clustering, the coordinates of the medical image are divided into two clusters to fit a straight line, and the rotation angles of the reference and floating images are computed, respectively. Thereby, the initial values for registering the images are determined. When searching the optimal geometric transformation parameters, we put forward the two new concepts of fuzzy distance and fuzzy signal-to-noise ratio (FSNR), and we select FSNR as the similarity measure between the reference and floating images. In the experiments, the Simplex method is chosen as multi-parameter optimisation. The experimental results show that this proposed method has a simple implementation, a low computational cost, a fast registration and good registration accuracy. Moreover, it can effectively avoid trapping into the local optima. It is adapted to both mono-modality and multi-modality image registrations.     

High-resolution image analysis

In many departments of cytology, cytogenetics, hematology, and pathology, research projects using high-resolution computerized microscopy are now being mounted for computation of morphometric measurements on various structural components, as well as for determination of cellular DNA content. The majority of these measurements are made in a partially automated, computer-assisted mode, wherein there is strong interaction between the user and the computerized microscope. At the same time, full automation has been accomplished for both sample preparation and sample examination for clinical determination of the white blood cell differential count. At the time of writing, approximately 1,000 robot differential counting microscopes are in the field, analyzing images of human white blood cells, red blood cells, and platelets at the overall rate of about 100,000 slides per day. This mammoth through-put represents a major accomplishment in the application of machine vision to automated microscopy for hematology. In other areas of automated high-resolution microscopy, such as cytology and cytogenetics, no commercial instruments are available (although a few metaphase-finding machines are available and other new machines have been announced during the past year). This is a disappointing product, considering the nearly half century of research effort in these areas. This paper provides examples of the state of the art in automation of cell analysis for blood smears, cervical smears, and chromosome preparations. Also treated are new developments in multi-resolution automated microscopy, where images are now being generated and analyzed by a single machine over a range of 64:1 magnification and from 10,000 X 20,000 to 500 X 500 in total picture elements (pixels). Examples of images of human lymph node and liver tissue are presented. Semi-automated systems are not treated, although there is mention of recent research in the automation of tissue analysis.     

Morphometric requirements for image analysis and the IBAS interactive automatic image analysis system

The morphometric demands made on an image analysis system are discussed, as is the IBAS interactive automatic system, which meets those requirements. The modular design of the IBAS image analysis system, with its tailor-made processors for image processing, system control and pattern recognition, gives speed and flexibility. The IMAGE image analysis language guarantees user friendliness, and, last but not least, the enormous amount of software offers accurate, reproducible measurements and dedicated evaluation programs.     

Medical image registration using Edgeworth-based approximation of Mutual Information

We propose a new similarity measure for iconic medical image registration, an Edgeworth-based third order approximation of Mutual Information (MI) and named 3-EMI. Contrary to classical Edgeworth-based MI approximations, such as those proposed for independent component analysis, the 3-EMI measure is able to deal with potentially correlated variables. The performance of 3-EMI is then evaluated and compared with the Gaussian and B-Spline kernel-based estimates of MI, and the validation is leaded in three steps. First, we compare the intrinsic behavior of the measures as a function of the number of samples and the variance of an additive Gaussian noise. Then, they are evaluated in the context of multimodal rigid registration, using the RIRE data. We finally validate the use of our measure in the context of thoracic monomodal non-rigid registration, using the database proposed during the MICCAI EMPIRE10 challenge. The results show the wide range of clinical applications for which our measure can perform, including non-rigid registration which remains a challenging problem. They also demonstrate that 3-EMI outperforms classical estimates of MI for a low number of samples or a strong additive Gaussian noise. More generally, our measure gives competitive registration results, with a much lower numerical complexity compared to classical estimators such as the reference B-Spline kernel estimator, which makes 3-EMI a good candidate for fast and accurate registration tasks.     

Automated image analysis in autoradiography

Light microscope autoradiographs can be analysed with the aid of the Quantimet, a commercially available image scanning instrument. Standardization of the performance of the instrument was obtained by performing on-line data reduction and display with a small digital computer. The number of silver grains over individual cells can be rapidly and routinely determined, and excellent agreement can be achieved between visually determined and machine generated grain counts.     

Grid computing in image analysis

Diagnostic surgical pathology or tissue–based diagnosis still remains the most reliable and specific diagnostic medical procedure. The development of whole slide scanners permits the creation of virtual slides and to work on so-called virtual microscopes. In addition to interactive work on virtual slides approaches have been reported that introduce automated virtual microscopy, which is composed of several tools focusing on quite different tasks. These include evaluation of image quality and image standardization, analysis of potential useful thresholds for object detection and identification (segmentation), dynamic segmentation procedures, adjustable magnification to optimize feature extraction, and texture analysis including image transformation and evaluation of elementary primitives. Grid technology seems to possess all features to efficiently target and control the specific tasks of image information and detection in order to obtain a detailed and accurate diagnosis. Grid technology is based upon so-called nodes that are linked together and share certain communication rules in using open standards. Their number and functionality can vary according to the needs of a specific user at a given point in time. When implementing automated virtual microscopy with Grid technology, all of the five different Grid functions have to be taken into account, namely 1) computation services, 2) data services, 3) application services, 4) information services, and 5) knowledge services. Although all mandatory tools of automated virtual microscopy can be implemented in a closed or standardized open system, Grid technology offers a new dimension to acquire, detect, classify, and distribute medical image information, and to assure quality in tissue–based diagnosis.     

Medical image segmentation based on level set and isoperimetric constraint

Level set based methods are being increasingly used in image segmentation. In these methods, various shape constraints can be incorporated into the energy functionals to obtain the desired shapes of the contours represented by their zero level sets of functions. Motivated by the isoperimetric inequality in differential geometry, we propose a segmentation method in which the isoperimetric constrain is integrated into a level set framework to penalize the ratio of its squared perimeter to its enclosed area of an active contour. The new model can ensure the compactness of segmenting objects and complete missing or/and blurred parts of their boundaries simultaneously. The isoperimetric shape constraint is free of explicit expressions of shapes and scale-invariant. As a result, the proposed method can handle various objects with different scales and does not need to estimate parameters of shapes. Our method can segment lesions with blurred or/and partially missing boundaries in ultrasound, Computed Tomography (CT) and Magnetic Resonance (MR) images efficiently. Quantitative evaluation also confirms that the proposed method can provide more accurate segmentation than two well-known level set methods. Therefore, our proposed method shows potential of accurate segmentation of lesions for applying in diagnoses and surgical planning.     

Low level absorption microscope image analysis

Visual microscopy is of little help in the study of the distribution in cells or tissues of stains or natural pigments absorbing in the range below 20% (absorbance 0.1) and is useless below 10%. A TV-based microscopy system is described in which, by electronic contrast enhancement, such studies can be pursued down to the absorption range 2–4%. It especially aims at facilitating prescreening of very faintly stained cell preparations afterwards to be analysed cytochemically by different methods.     

Quantifying biofilm structure using image analysis

We have developed and implemented methods of extracting morphological features from images of biofilms in order to quantify the characteristics of the inherent heterogeneity. This is a first step towards quantifying the relationship between biofilm heterogeneity and the underlying processes, such as mass-transport dynamics, substrate concentrations, and species variations. We have examined two categories of features, areal, which quantify the relative magnitude of the heterogeneity and textural, which quantify the microscale structure of the heterogeneous elements. The feature set is not exhaustive and has been restricted to two-dimensional images to this point. Included in this paper are the methods used to extract the structural information and the algorithms used to quantify the data. The features discussed are porosity, fractal dimension, diffusional length, angular second moment, inverse difference moment and textural entropy. We have found that some features are better predictors of biofilm behavior than others and we discuss possible future directions for research in this area.     

Fluorescence-assisted image analysis of freshwater microalgae

We exploit a property of microalgae-that of their ability to autofluoresce when exposed to epifluorescence illumination-to tackle the problem of detecting and analysing microalgae in sediment samples containing complex scenes. We have added fluorescence excitation to the hardware portion of our microalgae image processing system. We quantitatively measured 120 characteristics of each object detected through fluorescence excitation, and used an optimized subset of these characteristics for later automated analysis and species classification. All specimens used for training and testing our system came from natural populations found in Lake Biwa, Japan. Without the use of fluorescence excitation, automated analysis of images containing algae specimens in sediment is near impossible. We also used fluorescence imaging to target microalgae in water samples containing large numbers of obtrusive nontargeted objects, which would otherwise slow processing speed and decrease species analysis and classification accuracy. Object drift problems associated with the necessity to use both a fluorescence and greyscale image of each microscope scene were solved using techniques such as template matching and a novel form of automated seeded region growing (SRG). Our system proved to be not only user-friendly, but also highly accurate in classifying two major genera of microalgae found in Lake Biwa-the cyanobacteria Anabaena spp. and Microcystis spp. Classification accuracy was measured to be over 97%.