The Effect of Training Sample Size on the Prediction of White Matter Hyperintensity Volume in a Healthy Population Using BIANCA

Introduction: White matter hyperintensities of presumed vascular origin (WMH) are an important magnetic resonance imaging marker of cerebral small vessel disease and are associated with cognitive decline, stroke, and mortality. Their relevance in healthy individuals, however, is less clear. This is partly due to the methodological challenge of accurately measuring rare and small WMH with automated segmentation programs. In this study, we tested whether WMH volumetry with FMRIB software library v6.0 (FSL; https://fsl.fmrib.ox.ac.uk/fsl/fslwiki) Brain Intensity AbNormality Classification Algorithm (BIANCA), a customizable and trainable algorithm that quantifies WMH volume based on individual data training sets, can be optimized for a normal aging population.Methods: We evaluated the effect of varying training sample sizes on the accuracy and the robustness of the predicted white matter hyperintensity volume in a population (n = 201) with a low prevalence of confluent WMH and a substantial proportion of participants without WMH. BIANCA was trained with seven different sample sizes between 10 and 40 with increments of 5. For each sample size, 100 random samples of T1w and FLAIR images were drawn and trained with manually delineated masks. For validation, we defined an internal and external validation set and compared the mean absolute error, resulting from the difference between manually delineated and predicted WMH volumes for each set. For spatial overlap, we calculated the Dice similarity index (SI) for the external validation cohort.Results: The study population had a median WMH volume of 0.34 ml (IQR of 1.6 ml) and included n = 28 (18%) participants without any WMH. The mean absolute error of the difference between BIANCA prediction and manually delineated masks was minimized and became more robust with an increasing number of training participants. The lowest mean absolute error of 0.05 ml (SD of 0.24 ml) was identified in the external validation set with a training sample size of 35. Compared to the volumetric overlap, the spatial overlap was poor with an average Dice similarity index of 0.14 (SD 0.16) in the external cohort, driven by subjects with very low lesion volumes.Discussion: We found that the performance of BIANCA, particularly the robustness of predictions, could be optimized for use in populations with a low WMH load by enlargement of the training sample size. Further work is needed to evaluate and potentially improve the prediction accuracy for low lesion volumes. These findings are important for current and future population-based studies with the majority of participants being normal aging people.

Crack Detection Method of Sleeper Based on Cascade Convolutional Neural Network

This work presents a new method for sleeper crack identification based on cascade convolutional neural network (CNN) to address the problem of low efficiency and poor accuracy in the traditional detection method of sleeper crack identification. The proposed algorithm mainly includes improved You Only Look Once version 3 (YOLOv3) and the crack recognition network, where the crack recognition network includes two modules, the crack encoder-decoder network (CEDNet) and the crack residual refinement network (CRRNet). The improved YOLOv3 network is used to identify and locate cracks on sleepers and segment them after the sleeper on the ballast bed is extracted by using the gray projection method. The sleeper is inputted into CEDNet for crack feature extraction to predict the coarse crack saliency map. The prediction graph is inputted into CRRNet to improve its edge information and local region to achieve optimization. The accuracy of the crack identification model is improved by using a mixed loss function of binary cross-entropy (BCE), structural similarity index measure (SSIM), and intersection over union (IOU). Results show that this method can accurately detect the sleeper crack image. During object detection, the proposed method is compared with YOLOv3 in terms of directly locating sleeper cracks. It has an accuracy of 96.3%, a recall rate of 91.2%, a mean average precision (mAP) of 91.5%, and frames per second (FPS) of 76.6/s. In the crack extraction part, the F-weighted is 0.831, mean absolute error (MAE) is 0.0157, and area under the curve (AUC) is 0.9453. The proposed method has better recognition, higher efficiency, and robustness compared with the other network models.

Master Frame Extraction of Fetal Cardiac Images Using B Mode Ultrasound Images

Fetal Echocardiography is used for monitoring the fetal heart and for detection of Congenital Heart Disease (CHD). It is well known that fetal cardiac four chamber view has been widely used for preliminary examination for the detection of CHD. The end diastole frame is generally used for the analysis of the fetal cardiac chambers which is manually picked by the clinician during examination/screening. This method is subjected to intra and inter observer errors and also time consuming. The proposed study aims to automate this process by determining the frame, referred to as the Master frame from the cine loop sequences that can be used for the analysis of the fetal heart chambers instead of the clinically chosen diastole frame. The proposed framework determines the correlation between the reference (first) frame with the successive frames to identify one cardiac cycle. Then the Master frame is formed by superimposing all the frames belonging to one cardiac cycle. The master frame is then compared with the clinically chosen diastole frame in terms of fidelity metrics such as Dice coefficient, Hausdorff distance, mean square error and structural similarity index. The average value of the fidelity metrics considering the dataset used for this study 0.73 for Dice, 13.94 for Hausdorff distance, 0.99 for Structural Similarity Index and 0.035 for mean square error confirms the suitability of the proposed master frame extraction thereby avoiding manual intervention by the clinician. .

A Novel Approach towards Automatic Contour Identification of Jaw Cysts from Digital Panoramic Radiographs to improvise the Treatment planning

Panoramic dental x-ray, a two-dimensional dental x-ray that captures the entire mouth in a single image, is used for the initial screening of various dental anomalies. One such is Jaw bone cyst, which, if not identified earlier, may lead to complications which in turn may lead to disfigurement and loss of function. Hence processing of radiographic images plays a vital role in identifying and locating the cystic region and extracting related features to assist clinical experts in further analysis. Objective: To develop an application of active contour model, known as Geodesic Active Contour, to generate Panoramic Dental X-Ray, a single 2 D X-ray image of the entire mouth highlighting the dental specifications. Methods: The process involves the image conversion from the OPG image into grayscale, Contrast adjustment using intensity level slicing, edge smoothing, segmentation, and cyst segmentation by Morphological Geodesic Active Contour to obtain the results. Hence processing of radiographic images plays a vital role in identifying and locating the cystic region. It is crucial in extracting related features to assist clinical experts in further analysis. Conclusion: When efficient and accurate diagnostic methods exist, the treatment and cure become easy and concrete. Based on the morphological snake and level sets, it aims at identifying the boundary by minimizing the energy. Results: Using the structural similarity index, an accuracy of 97.6% is obtained. Advances in Knowledge: This process is advantageous as it is simpler, faster, and does not suffer from instability problems. Morphological methods improve their functional gradient descent by improving stability and speed. The hysteresis algorithm exhibits better edge detection performance, a significant reduction in computational time and scalability.

LSB-based pre-embedding video steganography with rotating & shifting poly-pattern block matrix

Background In terms of data-hiding areas, video steganography is more advantageous compared to other steganography techniques since it uses video as its cover medium. For any video steganography, the good trade-off among robustness, imperceptibility, and payload must be created and maintained. Even though it has the advantage of capacity, video steganography has the robustness problem especially regarding spatial domain is used to implement it. Transformation operations and statistical attacks can harm secret data. Thus, the ideal video steganography technique must provide high imperceptibility, high payload, and resistance towards visual, statistical and transformation-based steganalysis attacks. Methods One of the most common spatial methods for hiding data within the cover medium is the Least Significant Bit (LSB) method. In this study, an LSB-based video steganography application that uses a poly-pattern key block matrix (KBM) as the key was proposed. The key is a 64 × 64 pixel block matrix that consists of 16 sub-pattern blocks with a pixel size of 16 × 16. To increase the security of the proposed approach, sub-patterns in the KBM are allowed to shift in four directions and rotate up to 270° depending on the user preference and logical operations. For additional security XOR and AND logical operations were used to determine whether to choose the next predetermined 64 × 64 pixel block or jump to another pixel block in the cover video frame to place a KBM to embed the secret data. The fact that the combination of variable KBM structure and logical operator for the secret data embedding distinguishes the proposed algorithm from previous video steganography studies conducted with LSB-based approaches. Results Mean Squared Error (MSE), Structural Similarity Index (SSIM) and Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) parameters were calculated for the detection of the imperceptibility (or the resistance against visual attacks ) of the proposed algorithm. The proposed algorithm obtained the best MSE, SSIM and PSNR parameter values based on the secret message length as 0.00066, 0.99999, 80.01458 dB for 42.8 Kb of secret message and 0.00173, 0.99999, 75.72723 dB for 109 Kb of secret message, respectively. These results are better than the results of classic LSB and the studies conducted with LSB-based video steganography approaches in the literature. Since the proposed system allows an equal amount of data embedding in each video frame the data loss will be less in transformation operations. The lost data can be easily obtained from the entire text with natural language processing. The variable structure of the KBM, logical operators and extra security preventions makes the proposed system be more secure and complex. This increases the unpredictability and resistance against statistical attacks. Thus, the proposed method provides high imperceptibility and resistance towards visual, statistical and transformation-based attacks while acceptable even high payload.

A Novel Image Processing Methodology for X-ray Image Compression and Enhancement

Currently, there a growing demand of data produced and stored in clinical domains. Therefore, for effective dealings of massive sets of data, a fusion methodology needs to be analyzed by considering the algorithmic complexities. For effective minimization of the severance of image content, hence minimizing the capacity to store and communicate data in optimal forms, image processing methodology has to be involved. In that case, in this research, two compression methodologies: lossy compression and lossless compression were utilized for the purpose of compressing images, which maintains the quality of images. Also, a number of sophisticated approaches to enhance the quality of the fused images have been applied. The methodologies have been assessed and various fusion findings have been presented. Lastly, performance parameters were obtained and evaluated with respect to sophisticated approaches. Structure Similarity Index Metric (SSIM), Mean Squared Error (MSE), Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) are the metrics, which were utilized for the sample clinical pictures. Critical analysis of the measurement parameters shows higher efficiency compared to numerous image processing methods. This research draws understanding to these approaches and enables scientists to choose effective methodologies of a particular application.

On the self-similarity index of 𝑝-adic analytic pro-𝑝 groups

Let 𝑝 be a prime. We say that a pro-𝑝 group is self-similar of index p k p^{k} if it admits a faithful self-similar action on a p k p^{k} -ary regular rooted tree such that the action is transitive on the first level. The self-similarity index of a self-similar pro-𝑝 group 𝐺 is defined to be the least power of 𝑝, say p k p^{k} , such that 𝐺 is self-similar of index p k p^{k} . We show that, for every prime p ⩾ 3 p\geqslant 3 and all integers 𝑑, there exist infinitely many pairwise non-isomorphic self-similar 3-dimensional hereditarily just-infinite uniform pro-𝑝 groups of self-similarity index greater than 𝑑. This implies that, in general, for self-similar 𝑝-adic analytic pro-𝑝 groups, one cannot bound the self-similarity index by a function that depends only on the dimension of the group.

The Effect of 3D Image Virtual Reconstruction Based on Visual Communication

Considering the problems of poor effect, long reconstruction time, large mean square error (MSE), low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and structural similarity index (SSIM) of traditional methods in three-dimensional (3D) image virtual reconstruction, the effect of 3D image virtual reconstruction based on visual communication is proposed. Using the distribution set of 3D image visual communication feature points, the feature point components of 3D image virtual reconstruction are obtained. By iterating the 3D image visual communication information, the features of 3D image virtual reconstruction in visual communication are decomposed, and the 3D image visual communication model is constructed. Based on the calculation of the difference of 3D image texture feature points, the spatial position relationship of 3D image feature points after virtual reconstruction is calculated to complete the texture mapping of 3D image. The deep texture feature points of 3D image are extracted. According to the description coefficient of 3D image virtual reconstruction in visual communication, the virtual reconstruction results of 3D image are constrained. The virtual reconstruction algorithm of 3D image is designed to realize the virtual reconstruction of 3D image. The results show that when the number of samples is 200, the virtual reconstruction time of this paper method is 2.1 s, and the system running time is 5 s; the SNR of the virtual reconstruction is 35.5 db. The MSE of 3D image virtual reconstruction is 3%, and the SSIM of virtual reconstruction is 1.38%, which shows that this paper method can effectively improve the ability of 3D image virtual reconstruction.

Metaheuristic Algorithms Applied to Color Image Segmentation on HSV Space

In this research, we propose an unsupervised method for segmentation and edge extraction of color images on the HSV space. This approach is composed of two different phases in which are applied two metaheuristic algorithms, respectively the Firefly (FA) and the Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) algorithms. In the first phase, we performed a pixel-based segmentation on each color channel, applying the FA algorithm and the Gaussian Mixture Model. The FA algorithm automatically detects the number of clusters, given by histogram maxima of each single-band image. The detected maxima define the initial means for the parameter estimation of the GMM. Applying the Bayes’ rule, the posterior probabilities of the GMM can be used for assigning pixels to clusters. After processing each color channel, we recombined the segmented components in the final multichannel image. A further reduction in the resultant cluster colors is obtained using the inner product as a similarity index. In the second phase, once we have assigned all pixels to the corresponding classes of the HSV space, we carry out the second step with a region-based segmentation applied to the corresponding grayscale image. For this purpose, the bioinspired Artificial Bee Colony algorithm is performed for edge extraction.