Biomedical subjects

E Raman

Publications and source records attributed to E Raman.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2002

An energy-based beam hardening model in tomography.

As a consequence of the polychromatic x-ray source, used in micro-computer tomography (microCT) and in medical CT, the attenuation is no longer a linear function of absorber thickness. If this nonlinear beam hardening effect is not compensated, the reconstructed images will be corrupted by cupping artefacts. In this paper, a bimodal energy model for the detected energy spectrum is presented, which can be used for reduction of artefacts caused by beam hardening in well-specified conditions. Based on the combination of the spectrum of the source and the detector efficiency, the assumption is made that there are two dominant energies which can describe the system. The validity of the proposed model is examined by fitting the model to the experimental datapoints obtained on a microtomograph for different materials and source voltages.

Algorithms↗

PubMed2002

In-vivo non-invasive study of the thermoregulatory function of the blood vessels in the rat tail using magnetic resonance angiography.

In rats, a significant portion of total body heat loss occurs through sympathetically mediated changes in tail blood flow, making the rat tail a convenient model to study vasomotor activity during thermoregulation. Our aim was to perform a non-invasive study of the mechanisms of blood vessel control in the rat tail upon increasing body temperature. In anaesthetized rats, blood vessel temperature was monitored using non-invasive thermistors positioned on the skin surface, covering the ventral artery (Ta) and lateral vein (Tv), and changes in blood vessel size were measured using in-vivo magnetic resonance angiography (MRA). Two important regions of the tail (base and middle) were studied during a gradual rise of rectal temperature (Tr) from 37 to 40 degrees C. MRA data show that increasing Tr causes increased diameter of both arteries and veins of the tail, that venous diameter changes are greater than arterial diameter changes, and that diameter changes of both types of vessel are greater at the base of the tail than in the middle. Temperature data allowed calculation of (Ta - Tv), which we used as an index of flow through arteriovenous anastomoses (AVAs). The data suggest that AVAs near the base of the tail are important in heat exchange, and that they remain open only for Tr values between 38 and 39 degrees C.

Animals↗

PubMed1997

Watershed-based segmentation of 3D MR data for volume quantization.

The aim of this work is the development of a semiautomatic segmentation technique for efficient and accurate volume quantization of Magnetic Resonance (MR) data. The proposed technique uses a 3D variant of Vincent and Soilles immersion-based watershed algorithm that is applied to the gradient magnitude of the MR data and that produces small volume primitives. The known drawback of the watershed algorithm, oversegmentation, is strongly reduced by a priori application of a 3D adaptive anisotropic diffusion filter to the MR data. Furthermore, oversegmentation is a posteriori reduced by properly merging small volume primitives that have similar gray level distributions. The outcome of the proceeding image processing steps is presented to the user for manual segmentation. Through selection of volume primitives, the user quickly segments of first slice, which contains the object of interest. Afterwards, the subsequent slices are automatically segmented by extrapolation. Segmentation results are contingently manually corrected. The proposed segmentation technique is tested on phantom objects, where segmentation errors less than 2% are observed. In addition, the technique is demonstrated on 3D MR data of the mouse head from which the cerebellum is extracted. Volumes of the mouse cerebellum and the mouse brains in toto are calculated.

Algorithms↗

PubMed1996

Quantification and improvement of the signal-to-noise ratio in a magnetic resonance image acquisition procedure.

A procedure is developed to quantify and improve the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of magnetic resonance images. The image SNR is quantified using the correlation function of two independent acquisitions of an image. To test the performance of the quantification, SNR measurement data are fitted to theoretically expected curves. The proposed correlation technique is also used to improve the SNR by estimating the amplitude of the signal spectrum. The technique is applied to a set of MR images, and its performance in terms of gain in SNR, contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR), and resolution loss is compared to that of classical noise filters. The SNR as well as the CNR is improved significantly with minor loss of resolution. Finally, it is shown that the correlation technique can be implemented in a highly efficient way in almost any acquisition procedure of a magnetic resonance imaging system.

Image Processing, Computer-Assisted↗