Informatica

An image or volume of interest in positron emission tomography (PET) is reconstructed from gamma rays emitted from a radioactive tracer, which are then captured and used to estimate the tracer’s location. The image or volume of interest is reconstructed by estimating the pixel or voxel values on a grid determined by the scanner. Such an approach is usually associated with limited resolution of the reconstruction, high computational complexity due to slow convergence and noisy results.

Computed tomography coronary angiography (CTCA) is a non-invasive, powerful image processing technique for assessing coronary artery disease. The aim of the paper is to evaluate the diagnostic role of CTCA using optimal scanning parameters and to investigate the effect of low kilovoltage CTCA on the qualitative and quantitative image parameters and radiation dose in overweight and obese patients. Consolidation of knowledge in medicine and image processing was used to achieve the aim, and performance was evaluated in a clinical setting. Elevated body mass index is one of the factors causing increased radiation dose to patients. This study examined the feasibility of 80-kV and 100-kV CTCA in overweight and obese adult patients, comparing radiation doses and image quality versus standardized 100-kV protocols in the group of overweight patients and 120-kV CTCA in the group of obese patients. Qualitative and quantitative image parameters were determined in proximal and distal segments of the coronary arteries. Quantitative assessment was determined by the contrast-to-noise ratio and signal-to-noise ratio. The results of the study showed that in overweight and obese patients, the low dose protocol affords radiation dose reduction of 35% and 41%, respectively. Image quality was found to be diagnostically acceptable in all cases.

Radiologists need to find a position of a slice of one computed tomography (CT) scan in another scan. The image registration is a technique used to transform several images into one coordinate system and to compare them. Such transversal plane images obtained by CT scans are considered, where ribs are visible, but it does not lessen the significance of our work because many important internal organs are located here: liver, heart, stomach, pancreas, lungs, etc. The new method is developed for registration based on the mathematical model describing the rib-bounded contour. Parameters of the mathematical model and of distribution of the bone tissue on the CT scan slice form a set of features describing a particular slice. The registration method applies translation, rotation, and scaling invariances. Several strategies of translation invariance and options of the unification of scales are proposed. The method is examined on real CT scans seeking for its best performance.

The paper considers application of stochastic optimization to system of automatic recognition of ischemic stroke area on computed tomography (CT) images. The algorithm of recognition depends on five inputs that influence the results of automatic detection. The quality of recognition is measured by size of conjunction of ethalone image and the image calculated by the program of automatic detection. The method of Simultaneous Perturbation Stohastic Approximation algorithm with the Metropolis rule has been applied to the optimization of the quality of image recognition. The Monte-Carlo simulation experiment was performed in order to evaluate the properties of developed algorithm.

The two major Markov Random Fields (MRF) based algorithms for image segmentation are the Simulated Annealing (SA) and Iterated Conditional Modes (ICM). In practice, compared to the SA, the ICM provides reasonable segmentation and shows robust behavior in most of the cases. However, the ICM strongly depends on the initialization phase.