Faculty Publications
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Item Enhancement and bias removal of optical coherence tomography images: An iterative approach with adaptive bilateral filtering(Elsevier Ltd, 2016) Sudeep, P.V.; Issac Niwas, S.; Ponnusamy, P.; Rajan, J.; Xiaojun, Y.; Wang, X.; Luo, Y.; Liu, L.Optical coherence tomography (OCT) has continually evolved and expanded as one of the most valuable routine tests in ophthalmology. However, noise (speckle) in the acquired images causes quality degradation of OCT images and makes it difficult to analyze the acquired images. In this paper, an iterative approach based on bilateral filtering is proposed for speckle reduction in multiframe OCT data. Gamma noise model is assumed for the observed OCT image. First, the adaptive version of the conventional bilateral filter is applied to enhance the multiframe OCT data and then the bias due to noise is reduced from each of the filtered frames. These unbiased filtered frames are then refined using an iterative approach. Finally, these refined frames are averaged to produce the denoised OCT image. Experimental results on phantom images and real OCT retinal images demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed filter. © 2016 Elsevier Ltd.Item Carotid inter-adventitial diameter is more strongly related to plaque score than lumen diameter: An automated tool for stroke analysis(John Wiley and Sons Inc. P.O.Box 18667 Newark NJ 07191-8667, 2016) Saba, L.; Araki, T.; Krishna Kumar, P.; Rajan, J.; Lavra, F.; Ikeda, N.; Sharma, A.M.; Shafique, S.; Nicolaïdes, A.; Laird, J.R.; Gupta, A.; Suri, J.S.Purpose: To compare the strength of correlation between automatically measured carotid lumen diameter (LD) and interadventitial diameter (IAD) with plaque score (PS). Methods: Retrospective study on a database of 404 common carotid artery B-mode sonographic images from 202 diabetic patients. LD and IAD were computed automatically using an advanced computerized edge detection method and compared with two distinct manual measurements. PS was computed by adding the maximal thickness in millimeters of plaques in segments taken from the internal carotid artery, bulb, and common carotid artery on both sides. Results: The coefficient of correlation was 0.19 (p < 0.007) between LD and PS, and 0.25 (p < 0.0006) between IAD and PS. After excluding 10 outliers, coefficient of correlation was 0.25 (p < 0.0001) between LD and PS, and 0.38 (p < 0.0001) between IAD and PS. The precision of merit of automated versus the two manual measurements was 96.6% and 97.2% for LD, and 97.7% and 98.1%, for IAD, respectively. Conclusions: Our automated measurement system gave satisfying results in comparison with manual measurements. Carotid IAD was more strongly correlated to PS than carotid LD in this population sample of Japanese diabetic patients. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Item Two Automated Techniques for Carotid Lumen Diameter Measurement: Regional versus Boundary Approaches(Springer New York LLC barbara.b.bertram@gsk.com, 2016) Araki, T.; Kumar, P.K.; Suri, H.S.; Ikeda, N.; Gupta, A.; Saba, L.; Rajan, J.; Lavra, F.; Sharma, A.M.; Shafique, S.; Nicolaïdes, A.; Laird, J.R.; Suri, J.S.The degree of stenosis in the carotid artery can be predicted using automated carotid lumen diameter (LD) measured from B-mode ultrasound images. Systolic velocity-based methods for measurement of LD are subjective. With the advancement of high resolution imaging, image-based methods have started to emerge. However, they require robust image analysis for accurate LD measurement. This paper presents two different algorithms for automated segmentation of the lumen borders in carotid ultrasound images. Both algorithms are modeled as a two stage process. Stage one consists of a global-based model using scale-space framework for the extraction of the region of interest. This stage is common to both algorithms. Stage two is modeled using a local-based strategy that extracts the lumen interfaces. At this stage, the algorithm-1 is modeled as a region-based strategy using a classification framework, whereas the algorithm-2 is modeled as a boundary-based approach that uses the level set framework. Two sets of databases (DB), Japan DB (JDB) (202 patients, 404 images) and Hong Kong DB (HKDB) (50 patients, 300 images) were used in this study. Two trained neuroradiologists performed manual LD tracings. The mean automated LD measured was 6.35 ± 0.95 mm for JDB and 6.20 ± 1.35 mm for HKDB. The precision-of-merit was: 97.4 % and 98.0 % w.r.t to two manual tracings for JDB and 99.7 % and 97.9 % w.r.t to two manual tracings for HKDB. Statistical tests such as ANOVA, Chi-Squared, T-test, and Mann-Whitney test were conducted to show the stability and reliability of the automated techniques. © 2016, Springer Science+Business Media New York.Item Recent Advancements in Retinal Vessel Segmentation(Springer New York LLC barbara.b.bertram@gsk.com, 2017) Srinidhi, C.L.; Aparna., P.; Rajan, J.Retinal vessel segmentation is a key step towards the accurate visualization, diagnosis, early treatment and surgery planning of ocular diseases. For the last two decades, a tremendous amount of research has been dedicated in developing automated methods for segmentation of blood vessels from retinal fundus images. Despite the fact, segmentation of retinal vessels still remains a challenging task due to the presence of abnormalities, varying size and shape of the vessels, non-uniform illumination and anatomical variability between subjects. In this paper, we carry out a systematic review of the most recent advancements in retinal vessel segmentation methods published in last five years. The objectives of this study are as follows: first, we discuss the most crucial preprocessing steps that are involved in accurate segmentation of vessels. Second, we review most recent state-of-the-art retinal vessel segmentation techniques which are classified into different categories based on their main principle. Third, we quantitatively analyse these methods in terms of its sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, area under the curve and discuss newly introduced performance metrics in current literature. Fourth, we discuss the advantages and limitations of the existing segmentation techniques. Finally, we provide an insight into active problems and possible future directions towards building successful computer-aided diagnostic system. © 2017, Springer Science+Business Media New York.Item Accurate lumen diameter measurement in curved vessels in carotid ultrasound: an iterative scale-space and spatial transformation approach(Springer Verlag service@springer.de, 2017) Krishna Kumar, P.; Araki, T.; Rajan, J.; Saba, L.; Lavra, F.; Ikeda, N.; Sharma, A.M.; Shafique, S.; Nicolaïdes, A.; Laird, J.R.; Gupta, A.; Suri, J.S.Monitoring of cerebrovascular diseases via carotid ultrasound has started to become a routine. The measurement of image-based lumen diameter (LD) or inter-adventitial diameter (IAD) is a promising approach for quantification of the degree of stenosis. The manual measurements of LD/IAD are not reliable, subjective and slow. The curvature associated with the vessels along with non-uniformity in the plaque growth poses further challenges. This study uses a novel and generalized approach for automated LD and IAD measurement based on a combination of spatial transformation and scale-space. In this iterative procedure, the scale-space is first used to get the lumen axis which is then used with spatial image transformation paradigm to get a transformed image. The scale-space is then reapplied to retrieve the lumen region and boundary in the transformed framework. Then, inverse transformation is applied to display the results in original image framework. Two hundred and two patients’ left and right common carotid artery (404 carotid images) B-mode ultrasound images were retrospectively analyzed. The validation of our algorithm has done against the two manual expert tracings. The coefficient of correlation between the two manual tracings for LD was 0.98 (p < 0.0001) and 0.99 (p < 0.0001), respectively. The precision of merit between the manual expert tracings and the automated system was 97.7 and 98.7%, respectively. The experimental analysis demonstrated superior performance of the proposed method over conventional approaches. Several statistical tests demonstrated the stability and reliability of the automated system. © 2016, International Federation for Medical and Biological Engineering.Item A benchmark study of automated intra-retinal cyst segmentation algorithms using optical coherence tomography B-scans(Elsevier Ireland Ltd, 2018) Girish, G.N.; Anima, V.A.; Kothari, A.R.; Sudeep, P.V.; Roychowdhury, S.; Rajan, J.(Background and objectives) Retinal cysts are formed by accumulation of fluid in the retina caused by leakages from inflammation or vitreous fractures. Analysis of the retinal cystic spaces holds significance in detection and treatment of several ocular diseases like age-related macular degeneration, diabetic macular edema etc. Thus, segmentation of intra-retinal cysts and quantification of cystic spaces are vital for retinal pathology and severity detection. In the recent years, automated segmentation of intra-retinal cysts using optical coherence tomography B-scans has gained significant importance in the field of retinal image analysis. The objective of this paper is to compare different intra-retinal cyst segmentation algorithms for comparative analysis and benchmarking purposes. (Methods) In this work, we employ a modular approach for standardizing the different segmentation algorithms. Further, we analyze the variations in automated cyst segmentation performances and method scalability across image acquisition systems by using the publicly available cyst segmentation challenge dataset (OPTIMA cyst segmentation challenge). (Results) Several key automated methods are comparatively analyzed using quantitative and qualitative experiments. Our analysis demonstrates the significance of variations in signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), retinal layer morphology and post-processing steps on the automated cyst segmentation processes. (Conclusion) This benchmarking study provides insights towards the scalability of automated processes across vendor-specific imaging modalities to provide guidance for retinal pathology diagnostics and treatment processes. © 2017 Elsevier B.V.Item Segmentation of intra-retinal cysts from optical coherence tomography images using a fully convolutional neural network model(Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc., 2019) Girish, G.N.; Thakur, B.; Chowdhury, S.R.; Kothari, A.R.; Rajan, J.Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is an imaging modality that is used extensively for ophthalmic diagnosis, near-histological visualization, and quantification of retinal abnormalities such as cysts, exudates, retinal layer disorganization, etc. Intra-retinal cysts (IRCs) occur in several macular disorders such as, diabetic macular edema, retinal vascular disorders, age-related macular degeneration, and inflammatory disorders. Automated segmentation of IRCs poses challenges owing to variations in the acquisition system scan intensities, speckle noise, and imaging artifacts. Several segmentation methods have been proposed in the literature for IRC segmentation on vendor-specific OCT images that lack generalizability across imaging systems. In this paper, we propose a fully convolutional network (FCN) model for vendor-independent IRC segmentation. The proposed method counteracts image noise variabilities and trains FCN models on OCT sub-images from the OPTIMA cyst segmentation challenge dataset (with four different vendor-specific images, namely, Cirrus, Nidek, Spectralis, and Topcon). Further, optimal data augmentation and model hyperparametrization are shown to prevent over-fitting for IRC area segmentation. The proposed method is evaluated on the test dataset with a recall/precision rate of 0.66/0.79 across imaging vendors. The Dice correlation coefficient of the proposed method outperforms that of the published algorithms in the OPTIMA cyst segmentation challenge with a Dice rate of 0.71 across the vendors. © 2013 IEEE.Item Automatic detection and localization of Focal Cortical Dysplasia lesions in MRI using fully convolutional neural network(Elsevier Ltd, 2019) Bijay Dev, K.M.; Pawan, P.S.; Niyas, S.; Vinayagamani, S.; Kesavadas, C.; Rajan, J.Focal cortical dysplasia (FCD) is the leading cause of drug-resistant epilepsy in both children and adults. At present, the only therapeutic approach in patients with drug-resistant epilepsy is surgery. Hence, the quantification of FCD via non-invasive imaging techniques helps physicians to decide on surgical interventions. The properties like non-invasiveness and capability to produce high-resolution images makes magnetic resonance imaging an ideal tool for detecting the FCD to an extent. The FCD lesions vary in size, shape, and location for different patients and make the manual detection time consuming and sensitive to the experience of the observer. Automatic segmentation of FCD lesions is challenging due to the difference in signal strength in images acquired with different machines, noise, and other kinds of distortions such as motion artifacts. Most of the methods proposed in the literature use conventional machine learning and image processing techniques in which their accuracy relies on the trained features. Hence, feature extraction should be done more precisely which requires human expertise. The ability to learn the appropriate features/representations from the training data without any human interventions makes the convolutional neural network (CNN) the suitable method for addressing these drawbacks. As far as we are aware, this work is the first one to use a CNN based model to solve the aforementioned problem using only MRI FLAIR images. We customized the popular U-Net architecture and trained the proposed model from scratch (using MRI images acquired with 1.5T and 3T scanners). FCD detection rate (recall) of the proposed model is 82.5 (33/40 patients detected correctly). © 2019Item Stack generalized deep ensemble learning for retinal layer segmentation in Optical Coherence Tomography images(Elsevier Sp. z o.o., 2020) Anoop, B.N.; Pavan, R.; Girish, G.N.; Kothari, A.R.; Rajan, J.Segmentation of retinal layers is a vital and important step in computerized processing and the study of retinal Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) images. However, automatic segmentation of retinal layers is challenging due to the presence of noise, widely varying reflectivity of image components, variations in morphology and alignment of layers in the presence of retinal diseases. In this paper, we propose a Fully Convolutional Network (FCN) termed as DelNet based on a deep ensemble learning approach to selectively segment retinal layers from OCT scans. The proposed model is tested on a publicly available DUKE DME dataset. Comparative analysis with other state-of-the-art methods on a benchmark dataset shows that the performance of DelNet is superior to other methods. © 2020 Nalecz Institute of Biocybernetics and Biomedical Engineering of the Polish Academy of SciencesItem Multi-Res-Attention UNet: A CNN Model for the Segmentation of Focal Cortical Dysplasia Lesions from Magnetic Resonance Images(Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc., 2021) Thomas, E.; Pawan, S.J.; Kumar, S.; Horo, A.; Niyas, S.; Vinayagamani, S.; Kesavadas, C.; Rajan, J.In this work, we have focused on the segmentation of Focal Cortical Dysplasia (FCD) regions from MRI images. FCD is a congenital malformation of brain development that is considered as the most common causative of intractable epilepsy in adults and children. To our knowledge, the latest work concerning the automatic segmentation of FCD was proposed using a fully convolutional neural network (FCN) model based on UNet. While there is no doubt that the model outperformed conventional image processing techniques by a considerable margin, it suffers from several pitfalls. First, it does not account for the large semantic gap of feature maps passed from the encoder to the decoder layer through the long skip connections. Second, it fails to leverage the salient features that represent complex FCD lesions and suppress most of the irrelevant features in the input sample. We propose Multi-Res-Attention UNet; a novel hybrid skip connection-based FCN architecture that addresses these drawbacks. Moreover, we have trained it from scratch for the detection of FCD from 3 T MRI 3D FLAIR images and conducted 5-fold cross-validation to evaluate the model. FCD detection rate (Recall) of 92% was achieved for patient wise analysis. © 2013 IEEE.