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Biomedical subjects

Yongyue Zhang

Publications and source records attributed to Yongyue Zhang.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

Advances in functional and structural MR image analysis and implementation as FSL.

The techniques available for the interrogation and analysis of neuroimaging data have a large influence in determining the flexibility, sensitivity, and scope of neuroimaging experiments. The development of such methodologies has allowed investigators to address scientific questions that could not previously be answered and, as such, has become an important research area in its own right. In this paper, we present a review of the research carried out by the Analysis Group at the Oxford Centre for Functional MRI of the Brain (FMRIB). This research has focussed on the development of new methodologies for the analysis of both structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging data. The majority of the research laid out in this paper has been implemented as freely available software tools within FMRIB's Software Library (FSL).

Bayes Theorem↗

Accurate, robust, and automated longitudinal and cross-sectional brain change analysis.

Quantitative measurement of brain size, shape, and temporal change (for example, in order to estimate atrophy) is increasingly important in biomedical image analysis applications. New methods of structural analysis attempt to improve robustness, accuracy, and extent of automation. A fully automated method of longitudinal (temporal change) analysis, SIENA, was presented previously. In this paper, improvements to this method are described, and also an extension of SIENA to a new method for cross-sectional (single time point) analysis. The methods are fully automated, robust, and accurate: 0.15% brain volume change error (longitudinal): 0.5-1% brain volume accuracy for single-time point (cross-sectional). A particular advantage is the relative insensitivity to differences in scanning parameters. The methods provide easy manual review of their output by the automatic production of summary images which show the results of the brain extraction, registration, tissue segmentation, and final atrophy estimation.

Algorithms↗

Segmentation of ultrasound B-mode images with intensity inhomogeneity correction.

Displayed ultrasound (US) B-mode images often exhibit tissue intensity inhomogeneities dominated by nonuniform beam attenuation within the body. This is a major problem for intensity-based, automatic segmentation of video-intensity images because conventional threshold-based or intensity-statistic-based approaches do not work well in the presence of such image distortions. Time gain compensation (TGC) is typically used in standard US machines in an attempt to overcome this. However this compensation method is position-dependent which means that different tissues in the same TGC time-range (or corresponding depth range) will be, incorrectly, compensated by the same amount. Compensation should really be tissue-type dependent but automating this step is difficult. The main contribution of this paper is to develop a method for simultaneous estimation of video-intensity inhomogeities and segmentation of US image tissue regions. The method uses a combination of the maximum a posteriori (MAP) and Markov random field (MRF) methods to estimate the US image distortion field assuming it follows a multiplicative model while at the same time labeling image regions based on the corrected intensity statistics. The MAP step is used to estimate the intensity model parameters while the MRF step provides a novel way of incorporating the distributions of image tissue classes as a spatial smoothness constraint. We explain how this multiplicative model can be related to the ultrasonic physics of image formation to justify our approach. Experiments are presented on synthetic images and a gelatin phantom to evaluate quantitatively the accuracy of the method. We also discuss qualitatively the application of the method to clinical breast and cardiac US images. Limitations of the method and potential clinical applications are outlined in the conclusion.

Algorithms↗