Diffusion tensor interpolation profile control using non-uniform motion on a Riemannian geodesic

Tensor interpolation is a key step in the processing algorithms of diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), such as registration and tractography. The diffusion tensor (DT) in biological tissues is assumed to be positive definite. However, the tensor interpolations in most clinical applications have used a Euclidian scheme that does not take this assumption into account. Several Rie-mannian schemes were developed to overcome this limitation. Although each of the Riemannian schemes uses different metrics, they all result in a ‘fixed’ interpolation profile that cannot adapt to a variety of diffusion patterns in biological tissues. In this paper, we propose a DT interpolation scheme to control the interpolation profile, and explore its feasibility in clinical applications. The profile controllability comes from the non-uniform motion of interpolation on the Riemannian geodesic. The interpolation experiment with medical DTI data shows that the profile control improves the interpolation quality by assessing the reconstruction errors with the determinant error, Euclidean norm, and Riemannian norm.

Automatic mass segmentation on mammograms combining random walks and active contour

Accurate mass segmentation on mammograms is a critical step in computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) systems. It is also a challenging task since some of the mass lesions are embedded in normal tissues and possess poor contrast or ambiguous margins. Besides, the shapes and densities of masses in mammograms are various. In this paper, a hybrid method combining a random walks algorithm and Chan-Vese (CV) active contour is proposed for automatic mass segmentation on mammograms. The data set used in this study consists of 1095 mass regions of interest (ROIs). First, the original ROI is preprocessed to suppress noise and surrounding tissues. Based on the preprocessed ROI, a set of seed points is generated for initial random walks segmentation. Afterward, an initial contour of mass and two probability matrices are produced by the initial random walks segmentation. These two probability matrices are used to modify the energy function of the CV model for prevention of contour leaking. Lastly, the final segmentation result is derived by the modified CV model, during which the probability matrices are updated by inserting several rounds of random walks. The proposed method is tested and compared with other four methods. The segmentation results are evaluated based on four evaluation metrics. Experimental results indicate that the proposed method produces more accurate mass segmentation results than the other four methods.