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At least 217 records · Page 12Linked to original sources

Determination of local polarization properties of biological samples in the presence of diattenuation by use of Mueller optical coherence tomography.

A unique feature of polarization-sensitive Mueller optical coherence tomography is that, by measuring Jones or Mueller matrices, it can reveal the complete polarization properties of biological samples, even in the presence of diattenuation. We map local polarization properties for the first time to our knowledge by using polar decomposition in combination with least-squares fitting to differentiate measured integrated Jones matrices with respect to depth. We also introduce the new concept of dual attenuation coefficients to characterize diattenuation per unit infinitesimal length in tissues. We experimentally verify the algorithm using measurements of a section of porcine tendon and the septum of a rat heart.

Algorithms↗

Prototype of dual energy x-ray tomodensimeter for lumbar spine bone mineral density measurement: choice of the reconstruction algorithm and first experimental results.

A dual-energy x-ray tomodensimeter adapted for the determination of bone mineral density (BMD) of the lumbar vertebrae has been directly developed from a typical dual-energy x-ray absorptiometer. This apparatus consists of two fundamental parts: a dual energy x-ray tube, and a multidetector made by an array of 24 NaI(T1) crystals. It provides both tomographic and non-tomographic (anteroposterior, lateral etc) measurement. The detection area is limited to 132 mm. In this condition, the choice of the best reconstruction algorithm in order to give a direct BDM is considered. Preliminary studies based on numerical simulated projections and hydroxyapatite phantoms demonstrated the superiority of algebraic reconstruction algorithms, such as conjugated gradient, in order to resolve the problems of (i) the impossibility of defining an internal calibration, and (ii) the potential for reconstruction errors due to the presence of bone structures located out of the detection area. The accuracy of BMD measurement is within 2%, with in vitro precision approximately 1%, and linearity characterized by a standard error of estimation (SEE) of 2 mg cm-3 in the range of lumbar BMD (less than 400 mg cm-3). Experimental data derived from two volunteers are presented.

Algorithms↗

The control of deliberate waiting strategies in a stop-signal task.

To inhibit an ongoing flow of thoughts or actions has been largely considered to be a crucial executive function, and the stop-signal paradigm makes inhibitory control measurable. Stop-signal tasks usually combine two concurrent tasks, i.e., manual responses to a primary task (go-task) are occasionally countermanded by a stimulus which signals participants to inhibit their response in that trial (stop-task). Participants are always instructed not to wait for the stop-signal, since waiting strategies cause the response times to be unstable, invalidating the data. The aim of the present study was to experimentally control the strategies of waiting deliberately for the stop-signal in a stop-task by means of an algorithm that measured the variation in the reaction times to go-stimuli on-line, and displayed a warning legend urging participants to be faster when their reaction times were more than two standard deviations of the mean. Thirty-four university students performed a stop-task with go- and stop-stimuli, both of which were delivered in the visual modality and were lateralized within the visual field. The participants were divided into two groups (group A, without the algorithm, vs group B, with the algorithm). Group B exhibited lower variability of reaction times to go-stimuli, whereas no significant between-group differences were found in any of the measures of inhibitory control, showing that the algorithm succeeded in controlling the deliberate waiting strategies. Differences between deliberate and unintentional waiting strategies, and anxiety as a probable factor responsible for individual differences in deliberate waiting behavior, are discussed.

Adolescent↗

Measurement of retinal vessel widths from fundus images based on 2-D modeling.

Changes in retinal vessel diameter are an important sign of diseases such as hypertension, arteriosclerosis and diabetes mellitus. Obtaining precise measurements of vascular widths is a critical and demanding process in automated retinal image analysis as the typical vessel is only a few pixels wide. This paper presents an algorithm to measure the vessel diameter to subpixel accuracy. The diameter measurement is based on a two-dimensional difference of Gaussian model, which is optimized to fit a two-dimensional intensity vessel segment. The performance of the method is evaluated against Brinchmann-Hansen's half height, Gregson's rectangular profile and Zhou's Gaussian model. Results from 100 sample profiles show that the presented algorithm is over 30% more precise than the compared techniques and is accurate to a third of a pixel.

Algorithms↗

[The comparison between approximate entropy and complexity in the study of sleep EEG].

The Paper introduces two algorithms as a complexity measure. One is the algorithm defined by Kaspar and Schuster, the other is a recently developed statistic quantifying regularity and complexity--Approximate entropy (ApEn). They have been applied for the study of sleep EEG. According to the laboratory application and comparison, the result shows that ApEn is a valued complexity measure.

Algorithms↗

Image-type dependent eigen-regions-of-interest define conspicuity operators for predicting human scanpath fixation.

Top-down informativeness elaboration and bottom-up conspicuity processing are intimately interconnected in visual perception. An internal cognitive model of the external world must necessarily control not only our recognition but also the scanpath sequence of eye movement/shift of attention jumps. A self-organizing process based on principal component analysis and scanpath experimental data are used in this paper to define spatial visual conspicuity from the eigen-features of the scanpath sequence image loci. Eight different classes of images are used as both training and testing set. We first demonstrate that cognitive-driven scanpath loci can be discriminated in terms of these bottom-up eigen conspicuity features. We can finally define a conspicuity processing algorithm and measure its ability to predict human scanpaths as evidenced by the positional similarity measure Sp. Some computer vision applications will also be discussed.

Algorithms↗

Optimal selection of metabolic fluxes for in vivo measurement. II. Application to Escherichia coli and hybridoma cell metabolism.

A method of analysis was presented in part I of this series for determining the fluxes in a biochemical network that are the optimal choices for experimental measurement. This algorithm is applied to two important biological models: Escherichia coli and a hybridoma cell line (167.4G5.3). Our results show that potentially poor choices for in vivo measurement of metabolic fluxes exist for both model systems. For the subset of reactions in E. coli that was studied, the condition number of the augmented stoichiometric matrix reveals that a 60-fold amplification of experimental error during computations is possible. The biochemical network of the hybridoma cell is more complex than the E. coli system, and thus results in much larger possible error amplification--up to 100,000-fold. The physiological situations appear to have sensitivities that are less than 1/4 to 1/10 of those estimated by the condition number, and the maximum sensitivities are proportional to the condition number. These maximum sensitivities calculated using estimates of the fluxes and the worst possible error vector are upper bounds on the system's actual sensitivity. By examining the effect of measurement error on the sensitivity, the most probable sensitivity is calculated. These results indicate that an approximate two-fold increase in sensitivity of the E. coli system is likely when the worst set of fluxes are measured rather than the best set. The most likely sensitivity of the hybridoma system can range three orders of magnitude, depending on the set of fluxes that are measured. The propagation of experimental error during computations can be diminished for both systems by increasing the number of flux measurements over and above the minimum number of experimental measurements. The findings from these two model systems indicate that the calculation of the condition number can be a useful method for efficient experimental design, and that the usefulness of this method increases as the order of the system increases.

Animals↗

Time-frequency detection and analysis of wheezes during forced exhalation.

The objective of the present work was to detect and analyze wheezes by means of a highly sensitive time-frequency algorithm. Automatic measurements were compared with clinical auscultation for forced exhalation segments from 1.2 to 0 liters/second (l/s). Sensitivities between 100% and 71%, as a function of flow level related to wheezing segments detection, were achieved. Time-frequency wheeze parameters were measured for the flow range from 1.2 to 0.2 l/s. Wheezes were detected in both analyzed groups; asthmatics (N = 16) and control subjects (N = 15). Significant differences between groups were found for the mean number of wheezes detected at basal condition (p = 0.0003). Frequency parameter differences were also significant (0.0112 < p < 0.0307). All these parameters were also studied after applying a bronchodilator drug (Terbutaline). Significant differences between patient groups were found when studying the changes in the number of wheezes for each patient (p = 0.0195). Finally, limited bandwidth parameters, which measure the bronchodilator response, were also studied.

Algorithms↗

Evaluation of semiautomated measurements of mesothelioma tumor thickness on CT scans.

RATIONALE AND OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the clinical acceptability of semiautomated methods for the measurement of mesothelioma tumor thickness in computed tomography (CT) scans. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A computer interface was developed to allow the acquisition of semiautomated mesothelioma tumor thickness measurements, which require the manual selection of a point along the outer margin of the tumor in a CT section. After application of an automated lung segmentation method, the computer automatically identifies a corresponding point along the inner margin of the tumor (as represented by the lung boundary), constructs a line segment between the manually selected outer tumor margin point and the computer-determined inner tumor margin point, and computes tumor thickness as the length of this line segment. Three radiologists and oncologists independently reviewed line segments representing the semiautomated measurements generated by three different algorithms at 134 measurement sites in the CT scans of 22 mesothelioma patients. The observers either accepted a measurement line segment or modified it through the interface. Differences between the initial semiautomated measurements and the measurements as modified by the observers were analyzed. RESULTS: The frequency with which observers accepted the semiautomated measurements without modification was as high as 86%. Of all measurements across all observers and methods (1,206 measurements), 89% were changed by 2 mm or less. CONCLUSION: We have developed semiautomated methods to measure mesothelioma tumor thickness. The potential of these methods has been demonstrated through an observer study. We expect these methods to become important tools for the efficient quantification of tumor extent.

Adult↗

Surface atrial frequency analysis in patients with atrial fibrillation: assessing the effects of linear left atrial ablation.

INTRODUCTION: Our group has shown previously that measurements of atrial frequency can be obtained from surface 12-lead ECG recordings of patients during atrial fibrillation (AF), using a combination of principal component and Fourier transform algorithms. Such measurements are reproducible over time and change with drug manipulation of the arrhythmia. AIMS: To determine whether linear left atrial ablation, using a combination of "roof" and "mitral isthmus" lines results in changes in surface atrial frequency during AF and to assess the contribution of each individual line when sited sequentially. METHODS AND RESULTS: Computerized recordings from 26 patients, who had undergone linear ablation procedures for AF, were reviewed. The atrial signal was extracted from the 12-lead ECG data by principal component analysis and the main frequency component identified using Fourier analysis. Atrial frequency before and after these two standard ablation lines was compared. Atrial frequency decreased significantly after the combination of roof and mitral isthmus lines (5.66 vs 5.15 Hz) and when either roof (5.61 vs 5.13 Hz) or mitral isthmus (5.89 vs 5.75 Hz) lines were sited first. However, only the roof line led to a significant reduction in atrial frequency when sited second (5.64 vs 5.49 Hz). CONCLUSIONS: Measurements of atrial frequency can be obtained from surface 12-lead ECG recordings during AF and change as predicted in response to linear left atrial ablation. This technique may be useful in assessing antiarrhythmic treatments for AF.

Adult↗

Boundary enhancement and speckle reduction for ultrasound images via salient structure extraction.

In this paper, we present an approach for medical ultrasound (US) image enhancement. It is based on a novel perceptual saliency measure which favors smooth, long curves with constant curvature. The perceptual salient boundaries of tissues in US images are enhanced by computing the saliency of directional vectors in the image space, via a local searching algorithm. Our measure is generally determined by curvature changes, intensity gradient and the interaction of neighboring vectors. To restrain speckle noise during the enhancement process, an adaptive speckle suspension term is also combined into the proposed saliency measure. The results obtained on both simulated images and medical US data reveal superior performance of the novel approach over a number of commonly used speckle filters. Applications of US image segmentation show that although the proposed algorithm cannot remove the speckle noise completely and may discard weak anatomical structures in some case, it still provides a considerable gain to US image processing for computer-aided diagnosis.

Algorithms↗

Evolutionary computation and multimodal search: a good combination to tackle molecular diversity in the field of peptide design.

The awesome degree of structural diversity accessible in peptide design has created a demand for computational resources that can evaluate a multitude of candidate structures. In our specific case, we translate the peptide design problem to an optimization problem, and use evolutionary computation (EC) in tandem with docking to carry out a combinatorial search. However, the use of EC in huge search spaces with different optima may pose certain drawbacks. For example, EC is prone to focus a search in the first good region found. This is a problem not only because of the undesirable and automatic rejection of potentially good search space regions, but also because the found solution may be extremely difficult to synthesize chemically or may even be a false docking positive. In order to avoid rejecting potentially good solutions and to maximize the molecular diversity of the search, we have implemented evolutionary multimodal search techniques, as well as the molecular diversity metric needed by the multimodal algorithms to measure differences between various regions of the search space.

Algorithms↗

Fully automated software to monitor wear in prosthetic knees using fluoroscopic images.

Total knee arthroplasty is now a widely accepted treatment for late-stage arthritis. Wear of the polyethylene layer in prosthetic knees is a known cause of implant failure. Early detection of wear may allow prediction of device failure. In this paper we describe a fully automated image processing algorithm to measure the minimum tibiofemoral joint space width (mJSW) for monitoring prosthesis wear radiographically. The femoral portion and tibial plate were automatically delineated and mJSW was calculated in each compartment. The software also delineated the tip of the prosthesis pin in order to make a magnification correction. The algorithm was tested with a set of triplicate acquisitions of 18 fluoroscopic knee images. The RMS standard deviation (RMSSD) for the triplicate measurements was calculated as a figure of merit. The RMSSD was 0.077 and 0.087 mm for the lateral and medial compartments. The computer successfully found the minimum JSW for both compartments in all 54 images. A single case (2% of total) required user interaction to correct for an obvious failure to delineate the prosthesis pin. We document a robust and precise tool for quantifying mJSW to monitor prosthesis wear.

Algorithms↗

web-based interactive data processing: application to stable isotope metrology.

To address a fundamental need in stable isotope metrology, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has established a web-based interactive data-processing system accessible through a common gateway interface (CGI) program on the internet site http://www. nist.gov/widps-co2. This is the first application of a web-based tool that improves the measurement traceability afforded by a series of NIST standard materials. Specifically, this tool promotes the proper usage of isotope reference materials (RMs) and improves the quality of reported data from extensive measurement networks. Through the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), we have defined standard procedures for stable isotope measurement and data-processing, and have determined and applied consistent reference values for selected NIST and IAEA isotope RMs. Measurement data of samples and RMs are entered into specified fields on the web-based form. These data are submitted through the CGI program on a NIST Web server, where appropriate calculations are performed and results returned to the client. Several international laboratories have independently verified the accuracy of the procedures and algorithm for measurements of naturally occurring carbon-13 and oxygen-18 abundances and slightly enriched compositions up to approximately 150% relative to natural abundances. To conserve the use of the NIST RMs, users may determine value assignments for a secondary standard to be used in routine analysis. Users may also wish to validate proprietary algorithms embedded in their laboratory instrumentation, or specify the values of fundamental variables that are usually fixed in reduction algorithms to see the effect on the calculations. The results returned from the web-based tool are limited in quality only by the measurements themselves, and further value may be realized through the normalization function. When combined with stringent measurement protocols, two- to threefold improvements have been realized in the reproducibility of carbon-13 and oxygen-18 determinations across laboratories.

Journal Article↗

Identification of sotalol-induced changes in repolarization with T wave area-based repolarization duration parameters.

In this study, we investigated the validity of T wave area-based parameters for the identification of drug-induced changes of repolarization. Based on electrocardiograms from 39 healthy patients, we computed the stability of repolarization measurements and compared the sotalol-induced repolarization changes when measured with area-based parameters and traditional QT interval techniques (manual and automatic). Also, we evaluated the effect of different types of heart rate correction on these repolarization measurements. The results show that the stability of the automatic repolarization measurements is higher when measured using computer algorithm than using manual QT measurement. By using a population-based heart rate correction, the area-based parameters reveal significant modification of the overall shape of the T wave in its early, middle, and final part. In conclusion, morphological parameters of T wave are able to identify the changes in repolarization interval induced by sotalol. These parameters are more stable and thus more reliable than the traditional QT interval measurements.

Electrocardiography↗

Noninvasive quantification of jeopardized myocardial mass in dogs using 2-dimensional echocardiography and thallium-201 tomography.

The evaluation of jeopardized myocardial mass is important in defining the effect of interventions during myocardial infarction. To quantitate the in vivo mass at risk, 2-dimensional echocardiography (2-D echo) and thallium-201 single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) was performed in 10 closed-chest dogs after circumflex coronary artery occlusion. The 2-D images were manually digitized to compute left ventricular (LV) mass using a modified Simpson's rule algorithm. This measure of LV mass correlated well with the actual LV mass (r = 0.97). Perfused myocardial mass was estimated from thallium SPECT images 4 hours after occlusion using a region-growing algorithm. After the dogs were killed, the jeopardized mass was outlined using a dual perfusion staining technique using triphenyltetrazolium chloride and Evans blue dye. The actual perfused mass was well estimated by the thallium images (r = 0.96). The noninvasively determined mass at risk was calculated as: 2-D mass--thallium SPECT mass, and correlated well with the pathologically determined mass at risk (r = 0.91). Thus, the jeopardized mass may be determined noninvasively by using 2-D echo and thallium-201 tomography. This approach may provide further information regarding the effect of intervention therapy on jeopardized myocardium.

Animals↗

A contact map matching approach to protein structure similarity analysis.

We modeled the problem of identifying how close two proteins are structurally by measuring the dissimilarity of their contact maps. These contact maps are colored images, in which the chromatic information encodes the chemical nature of the contacts. We studied two conceptually distinct image-processing algorithms to measure the dissimilarity between these contact maps; one was a content-based image retrieval method, and the other was based on image registration. In experiments with contact maps constructed from the protein data bank, our approach was able to identify, with greater than 80% precision, instances of monomers of apolipoproteins, globins, plastocyanins, retinol binding proteins and thioredoxins, among the monomers of Protein Data Bank Select. The image registration approach was only slightly more accurate than the content-based image retrieval approach.

Algorithms↗

A measure of the similarity of sets of sequences not requiring sequence alignment.

Determination of first- and second-order Markov chain homogeneity of sets of nuclear eukaryotic DNA sequences, both coding and noncoding, finds similarities imperceptible to the standard Needleman-Wunsch base matching or dot-matrix algorithms. These measures of the similarities of the distributions of adjacent pairs or triplets are in agreement with accepted evolutionary-tree topologies. Hierarchical clustering of the distributions of doublets of 30 miscellaneous coding sequences gives clusters in reasonable agreement with accepted biological classifications. In addition to similarity by homology, there is also observed similarity of disparate genes in the same organism--for example, all three disparate yeast genes (two enzymes and actin) form a well-distinguished cluster.

Animals↗