Miguel Tavares Coimbra

MPEG-7 Visual Descriptors—Contributions for Automated Feature Extraction in Capsule Endoscopy

Recent advances in miniaturization led to the development of what is now called the endoscopic capsule. This small device is swallowed by a patient and films the whole gastrointestinal tract, allowing the detection of abnormalities. Currently, a doctor typically needs up to two hours to analyze a full exam, so automation is desirable. This paper presents a methodology for measuring the potential of selected visual MPEG-7 descriptors for the task of specific medical event detection such as blood, ulcers. Experiments show that the best results are obtained by the Scalable Color and Homogenous Texture descriptors, especially if only relevant coefficients are used.

Heartbeat Classification Using Morphological and Dynamic Features of ECG Signals

In this paper, we propose a new approach for heartbeat classification based on a combination of morphological and dynamic features. Wavelet transform and independent component analysis (ICA) are applied separately to each heartbeat to extract morphological features. In addition, RR interval information is computed to provide dynamic features. These two different types of features are concatenated and a support vector machine classifier is utilized for the classification of heartbeats into one of 16 classes. The procedure is independently applied to the data from two ECG leads and the two decisions are fused for the final classification decision. The proposed method is validated on the baseline MIT-BIH arrhythmia database and it yields an overall accuracy (i.e., the percentage of heartbeats correctly classified) of 99.3% (99.7% with 2.4% rejection) in the “class-oriented” evaluation and an accuracy of 86.4% in the “subject-oriented” evaluation, comparable to the state-of-the-art results for automatic heartbeat classification.

Automated Topographic Segmentation and Transit Time Estimation in Endoscopic Capsule Exams

Endoscopic capsule is a recent medical technology with important clinical benefits but suffering from a practical handicap: long exam annotation times. This paper proposes and compares two approaches (Bayesian and support vector machines) that can be used to segment the gastrointestinal tract into its four major topographic areas, allowing the automatic estimation of the clinically relevant gastric and intestinal sections and corresponding transit times. According to medical specialists, this can reduce exam annotation times by up to 12% (15 min). This automatic tool has been integrated into our CapView annotation software that is currently being used by three medical institutions.

Investigation of human identification using two-lead Electrocardiogram (ECG) signals

In this paper, we investigate the applicability of Electrocardiogram (ECG) signals for human identification. Wavelet Transform (WT) and Independent Component Analysis (ICA) methods are applied to extract morphological features that appear to offer excellent discrimination among subjects. The proposed method is aimed at the two-lead ECG configuration that is routinely used in long-term continuous monitoring of heart activity. The information from the two ECG leads is fused to achieve improved subject identification. The proposed method was tested on three public ECG databases, namely, MIT-BIH Arrhythmias Database [1], Ml T-BIH Normal Sinus Rhythm Database [2] and Long-Term ST Database [3], in order to evaluate the proposed subject identification method on normal ECG signals as well as ECG signals with arrhythmias. Excellent rank-1 recognition rates (as high as 99.6%) were achieved based on single heartbeats. The proposed method exhibits good identification accuracies not just with the normal ECG signals, but also in the presence of various arrhythmias. This work adds to the growing evidence that ECG signals can be useful for human identification.

Arrhythmia detection and classification using morphological and dynamic features of ECG signals

Computer-assisted cardiac arrhythmia detection and classification can play a significant role in the management of cardiac disorders. In this paper, we propose a new approach for arrhythmia classification based on a combination of morphological and dynamic features. Wavelet Transform (WT) and Independent Component Analysis (ICA) are applied separately to each heartbeat to extract corresponding coefficients, which are categorized as ‘morphological’ features. In addition, RR interval information is also obtained characterizing the ‘rhythm’ around the corresponding heartbeat providing ‘dynamic’ features. These two different types of features are then concatenated and Support Vector Machine (SVM) is utilized for the classification of heartbeats into 15 classes. The procedure is applied to the data from two ECG leads independently and the two results are fused for the final decision. Compare the two classification results and the classification result is kept if the two are identical or the one with greater classification confidence is picked up if the two are inconsistent. The proposed method was tested over the entire MIT-BIH Arrhythmias Database [1] and it yields an overall accuracy of 99.66% on 85945 heartbeats, better than any other published results.

Invariant Gabor Texture Descriptors for Classification of Gastroenterology Images

Automatic classification of lesions for gastroenterology imaging scenarios poses novel challenges to computer-assisted decision systems, which are mostly attributed to the dynamics of the image acquisition conditions. Such challenges demand that automatic systems are able to give robust characterizations of tissues irrespective of camera rotation, zoom, and illumination gradients when viewing the inner surface of the gastrointestinal tract. In this paper, we study the invariance properties of Gabor filters and propose a novel descriptor, the autocorrelation Gabor features (AGF). We show that our proposed AGF is invariant to scale, rotation, and illumination changes in the images. We integrate these new features in a texton framework (Texton-AGF) to classify images from two complementary gastroenterology imaging scenarios (chromoendoscopy and narrow-band imaging) broadly into three different groups: normal, precancerous, and cancerous. Results show that they compare favorably to using state-of-the-art texture descriptors for both imaging modalities.

Topographic Segmentation and Transit Time Estimation for Endoscopic Capsule Exams

The endoscopic capsule is a recent medical technology with important clinical benefits but suffering from a practical handicap: long exam annotation times. This paper shows how support vector machines can be used to segment the gastrointestinal tract into its four major topographic areas, allowing the automatic estimation of the clinically relevant gastric and intestinal transit times. According to medical specialists, this can reduce exam annotation times by up to 12%

DigiScope — Unobtrusive collection and annotating of auscultations in real hospital environments

Digital stethoscopes are medical devices that can collect, store and sometimes transmit acoustic auscultation signals in a digital format. These can then be replayed, sent to a colleague for a second opinion, studied in detail after an auscultation, used for training or, as we envision it, can be used as a cheap powerful tool for screening cardiac pathologies. In this work, we present the design, development and deployment of a prototype for collecting and annotating auscultation signals within real hospital environments. Our main objective is not only pave the way for future unobtrusive systems for cardiac pathology screening, but more immediately we aim to create a repository of annotated auscultation signals for biomedical signal processing and machine learning research. The presented prototype revolves around a digital stethoscope that can stream the collected audio signal to a nearby tablet PC. Interaction with this system is based on two models: a data collection model adequate for the uncontrolled hospital environments of both emergency room and primary care, and a data annotation model for offline metadata input. A specific data model was created for the repository. The prototype has been deployed and is currently being tested in two Hospitals, one in Portugal and one in Brazil.

Heart sound segmentation of pediatric auscultations using wavelet analysis

Auscultation is widely applied in clinical activity, nonetheless sound interpretation is dependent on clinician training and experience. Heart sound features such as spatial loudness, relative amplitude, murmurs, and localization of each component may be indicative of pathology. In this study we propose a segmentation algorithm to extract heart sound components (S1 and S2) based on its time and frequency characteristics. This algorithm takes advantage of the knowledge of the heart cycle times (systolic and diastolic periods) and of the spectral characteristics of each component, through wavelet analysis. Data collected in a clinical environment, and annotated by a clinician was used to assess algorithms performance. Heart sound components were correctly identified in 99.5% of the annotated events. S1 and S2 detection rates were 90.9% and 93.3% respectively. The median difference between annotated and detected events was of 33.9 ms.

IDentifying cancer regions in vital-stained magnification endoscopy images using adapted color histograms

In-body imaging technologies such as vital-stained magnification endoscopy pose novel image processing challenges to computer-assisted decision systems given their unique visual characteristics such as reduced color spaces and natural textures. In this paper we will show the potential of using adapted color features combined with local binary patterns, a texture descriptor that has exhibited good adaptation to natural images, for classifying gastric regions into three groups: normal, pre-cancer and cancer lesions. Results exhibit 91% accuracy, confirming that specific research for in-body imaging could be the key for future computer assisted decision systems for medicine.