Haiyan Wang

A Probabilistic Patch-Based Label Fusion Model for Multi-Atlas Segmentation With Registration Refinement: Application to Cardiac MR Images

The evaluation of ventricular function is important for the diagnosis of cardiovascular diseases. It typically involves measurement of the left ventricular (LV) mass and LV cavity volume. Manual delineation of the myocardial contours is time-consuming and dependent on the subjective experience of the expert observer. In this paper, a multi-atlas method is proposed for cardiac magnetic resonance (MR) image segmentation. The proposed method is novel in two aspects. First, it formulates a patch-based label fusion model in a Bayesian framework. Second, it improves image registration accuracy by utilizing label information, which leads to improvement of segmentation accuracy. The proposed method was evaluated on a cardiac MR image set of 28 subjects. The average Dice overlap metric of our segmentation is 0.92 for the LV cavity, 0.89 for the right ventricular cavity and 0.82 for the myocardium. The results show that the proposed method is able to provide accurate information for clinical diagnosis.

Benchmarking framework for myocardial tracking and deformation algorithms: An open access database

In this paper we present a benchmarking framework for the validation of cardiac motion analysis algorithms. The reported methods are the response to an open challenge that was issued to the medical imaging community through a MICCAI workshop. The database included magnetic resonance (MR) and 3D ultrasound (3DUS) datasets from a dynamic phantom and 15 healthy volunteers. Participants processed 3D tagged MR datasets (3DTAG), cine steady state free precession MR datasets (SSFP) and 3DUS datasets, amounting to 1158 image volumes. Ground-truth for motion tracking was based on 12 landmarks (4 walls at 3 ventricular levels). They were manually tracked by two observers in the 3DTAG data over the whole cardiac cycle, using an in-house application with 4D visualization capabilities. The median of the inter-observer variability was computed for the phantom dataset (0.77 mm) and for the volunteer datasets (0.84 mm). The ground-truth was registered to 3DUS coordinates using a point based similarity transform. Four institutions responded to the challenge by providing motion estimates for the data: Fraunhofer MEVIS (MEVIS), Bremen, Germany; Imperial College London - University College London (IUCL), UK; Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), Barcelona, Spain; Inria-Asclepios project (INRIA), France. Details on the implementation and evaluation of the four methodologies are presented in this manuscript. The manually tracked landmarks were used to evaluate tracking accuracy of all methodologies. For 3DTAG, median values were computed over all time frames for the phantom dataset (MEVIS=1.20mm, IUCL=0.73 mm, UPF=1.10mm, INRIA=1.09 mm) and for the volunteer datasets (MEVIS=1.33 mm, IUCL=1.52 mm, UPF=1.09 mm, INRIA=1.32 mm). For 3DUS, median values were computed at end diastole and end systole for the phantom dataset (MEVIS=4.40 mm, UPF=3.48 mm, INRIA=4.78 mm) and for the volunteer datasets (MEVIS=3.51 mm, UPF=3.71 mm, INRIA=4.07 mm). For SSFP, median values were computed at end diastole and end systole for the phantom dataset(UPF=6.18 mm, INRIA=3.93 mm) and for the volunteer datasets (UPF=3.09 mm, INRIA=4.78 mm). Finally, strain curves were generated and qualitatively compared. Good agreement was found between the different modalities and methodologies, except for radial strain that showed a high variability in cases of lower image quality.

A Comprehensive Cardiac Motion Estimation Framework Using Both Untagged and 3-D Tagged MR Images Based on Nonrigid Registration

In this paper, we present a novel technique based on nonrigid image registration for myocardial motion estimation using both untagged and 3-D tagged MR images. The novel aspect of our technique is its simultaneous usage of complementary information from both untagged and 3-D tagged MR images. To estimate the motion within the myocardium, we register a sequence of tagged and untagged MR images during the cardiac cycle to a set of reference tagged and untagged MR images at end-diastole. The similarity measure is spatially weighted to maximize the utility of information from both images. In addition, the proposed approach integrates a valve plane tracker and adaptive incompressibility into the framework. We have evaluated the proposed approach on 12 subjects. Our results show a clear improvement in terms of accuracy compared to approaches that use either 3-D tagged or untagged MR image information alone. The relative error compared to manually tracked landmarks is less than 15% throughout the cardiac cycle. Finally, we demonstrate the automatic analysis of cardiac function from the myocardial deformation fields.

Temporal sparse free-form deformations

FFD represent a widely used model for the non-rigid registration of medical images. The balance between robustness to noise and accuracy in modelling localised motion is typically controlled by the control point grid spacing and the amount of regularisation. More recently, TFFD have been proposed which extend the FFD approach in order to recover smooth motion from temporal image sequences. In this paper, we revisit the classic FFD approach and propose a sparse representation using the principles of compressed sensing. The sparse representation can model both global and local motion accurately and robustly. We view the registration as a deformation reconstruction problem. The deformation is reconstructed from a pair of images (or image sequences) with a sparsity constraint applied to the parametric space. Specifically, we introduce sparsity into the deformation via L1 regularisation, and apply a bending energy regularisation between neighbouring control points within each level to encourage a grouped sparse solution. We further extend the sparsity constraint to the temporal domain and propose a TSFFD which can capture fine local details such as motion discontinuities in both space and time without sacrificing robustness. We demonstrate the capabilities of the proposed framework to accurately estimate deformations in dynamic 2D and 3D image sequences. Compared to the classic FFD and TFFD approach, a significant increase in registration accuracy can be observed in natural images as well as in cardiac images.

Registration using sparse free-form deformations

Non-rigid image registration using free-form deformations (FFD) is a widely used technique in medical image registration. The balance between robustness and accuracy is controlled by the control point grid spacing and the amount of regularization. In this paper, we revisit the classic FFD registration approach and propose a sparse representation for FFDs using the principles of compressed sensing. The sparse free-form deformation model (SFFD) can capture fine local details such as motion discontinuities without sacrificing robustness. We demonstrate the capabilities of the proposed framework to accurately estimate smooth as well as discontinuous deformations in 2D and 3D image sequences. Compared to the classic FFD approach, a significant increase in registration accuracy can be observed in natural images (61%) as well as in cardiac MR images (53%) with discontinuous motions.

Automatic Segmentation of Different Pathologies from Cardiac Cine MRI Using Registration and Multiple Component EM Estimation

In this paper, we develop a framework for the automatic detection and segmentation of the ventricle and myocardium from multislice, short-axis cine MR images. The segmentation framework has the ability to deal with large shape variability of the heart, poorly defined boundaries and abnormal intensity distribution of the myocardium (e.g. due to infarcts). We integrate a series of state-of-the-art techniques into a fully automatic workflow, including a detection algorithm for the LV, atlas-based segmentation, and intensity-based refinement using a Gaussian mixture model that is optimized using the Expectation Maximization (EM) algorithm and the graph cut algorithm. We evaluate this framework on three different patient groups, one with infarction, one with left ventricular hypertrophy (both are common result of cardiovascular diseases) and another group of subjects with normal heart anatomy. Results indicate that the proposed method is capable of producing segmentation results that show good robustness and high accuracy (Dice 0.908 ± 0.025 for the endocardial and 0.946 ± 0.016 for the epicardial segmentations) across all patient groups with and without pathology.

A multi-image graph cut approach for cardiac image segmentation and uncertainty estimation

Registration and segmentation uncertainty may be important information to convey to a user when automatic image analysis is performed. Uncertainty information may be used to provide additional diagnostic information to traditional analysis of cardiac function. In this paper, we develop a framework for the automatic segmentation of the cardiac anatomy from multiple MR images. We also define the registration and segmentation uncertainty and explore its use for diagnostic purposes. Our framework uses cardiac MR image sequences that are widely available in clinical practice. We improve the performance of the cardiac segmentation algorithms by combining information from multiple MR images using a graph-cut based segmentation. We evaluate this framework on images from 32 subjects: 13 patients with ischemic cardiomyopathy, 14 patients with dilated cardiomyopathy and 5 normal volunteers. Our results indicate that the proposed method is capable of producing segmentation results with very high robustness and high accuracy with minimal user interaction across all subject groups. We also show that registration and segmentation uncertainties are good indicators for segmentation failures as well as good predictors for the functional abnormality of the subject.

Automatic detection of coronary stent struts in intravascular OCT imaging

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a light-based, high resolution imaging technique to guide stent deployment procedure for stenosis. OCT can accurately differentiate the most superficial layers of the vessel wall as well as stent struts and the vascular tissue surrounding them. In this paper, we automatically detect the struts of coronary stents present in OCT sequences. We propose a novel method to detect the strut shadow zone and accurately segment and reconstruct the strut in 3D. The estimation of the position of the strut shadow zone is the key requirement which enables the strut segmentation. After identification of the shadow zone we use probability map to estimate stent strut positions. This method can be applied to cross-sectional OCT images to detect the struts. Validation is performed using simulated data as well as in four in-vivo OCT sequences and the accuracy of strut detection is over 90%. The comparison against manual expert segmentation demonstrates that the proposed strut identification is robust and accurate.

Multi-atlas based neointima segmentation in intravascular coronary OCT

Neointima thickening plays a decisive role in coronary restenosis after stenting. The aim of this study is to detect neointima tissue in intravascular optical coherence tomography (IVOCT) sequences. We developed a multi-atlas based segmentation method to detect neointima without stent struts locations. The atlases are selected by measurements of stenosis and a similarity metric. The probability map is then used to estimate neointima label in the unseen image. To account for the registration errors, a patch-based label fusion approach is applied. Validation is performed using 18 typical in-vivo IVOCT sequences. The comparison against manual expert segmentation and other fusion approaches demonstrates that the proposed neointima identification is robust and accurate.

Landmark detection and coupled patch registration for cardiac motion tracking

Increasing attention has been focused on the estimation of the deformation of the endocardium to aid the diagnosis of cardiac malfunction. Landmark tracking can provide sparse, anatomically relevant constraints to help establish correspondences between images being tracked or registered. However, landmarks on the endocardium are often characterized by ambiguous appearance in cardiac MR images which makes the extraction and tracking of these landmarks problematic. In this paper we propose an automatic framework to select and track a sparse set of distinctive landmarks in the presence of relatively large deformations in order to capture the endocardial motion in cardiac MR sequences. To achieve this a sparse set of the landmarks is identified using an entropy-based approach. In particular we use singular value decomposition (SVD) to reduce the search space and localize the landmarks with relatively large deformation across the cardiac cycle. The tracking of the sparse set of landmarks is performed simultaneously by optimizing a two-stage Markov Random Field (MRF) model. The tracking result is further used to initialize registration based dense motion tracking. We have applied this framework to extract a set of landmarks at the endocardial border of the left ventricle in MR image sequences from 51 subjects. Although the left ventricle undergoes a number of different deformations, we show how the radial, longitudinal motion and twisting of the endocardial surface can be captured by the proposed approach. Our experiments demonstrate that motion tracking using sparse landmarks can outperform conventional motion tracking by a substantial amount, with improvements in terms of tracking accuracy of 20:8% and 19:4% respectively.