No Arabic abstract
We propose a new algorithmic approach to the non-smooth and non-convex Potts problem (also called piecewise-constant Mumford-Shah problem) for inverse imaging problems. We derive a suitable splitting into specific subproblems that can all be solved efficiently. Our method does not require a priori knowledge on the gray levels nor on the number of segments of the reconstruction. Further, it avoids anisotropic artifacts such as geometric staircasing. We demonstrate the suitability of our method for joint image reconstruction and segmentation. We focus on Radon data, where we in particular consider limited data situations. For instance, our method is able to recover all segments of the Shepp-Logan phantom from $7$ angular views only. We illustrate the practical applicability on a real PET dataset. As further applications, we consider spherical Radon data as well as blurred data.
Oscillating Steady-State Imaging (OSSI) is a recent fMRI acquisition method that exploits a large and oscillating signal, and can provide high SNR fMRI. However, the oscillatory nature of the signal leads to an increased number of acquisitions. To improve temporal resolution and accurately model the nonlinearity of OSSI signals, we build the MR physics for OSSI signal generation as a regularizer for the undersampled reconstruction rather than using subspace models that are not well suited for the data. Our proposed physics-based manifold model turns the disadvantages of OSSI acquisition into advantages and enables joint reconstruction and quantification. OSSI manifold model (OSSIMM) outperforms subspace models and reconstructs high-resolution fMRI images with a factor of 12 acceleration and without spatial or temporal resolution smoothing. Furthermore, OSSIMM can dynamically quantify important physics parameters, including $R_2^*$ maps, with a temporal resolution of 150 ms.
We present a method and preliminary results of the image reconstruction in the Jagiellonian PET tomograph. Using GATE (Geant4 Application for Tomographic Emission), interactions of the 511 keV photons with a cylindrical detector were generated. Pairs of such photons, flying back-to-back, originate from e+e- annihilations inside a 1-mm spherical source. Spatial and temporal coordinates of hits were smeared using experimental resolutions of the detector. We incorporated the algorithm of the 3D Filtered Back Projection, implemented in the STIR and TomoPy software packages, which differ in approximation methods. Consistent results for the Point Spread Functions of ~5/7,mm and ~9/20, mm were obtained, using STIR, for transverse and longitudinal directions, respectively, with no time of flight information included.
Direct reconstruction methods have been developed to estimate parametric images directly from the measured PET sinograms by combining the PET imaging model and tracer kinetics in an integrated framework. Due to limited counts received, signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) and resolution of parametric images produced by direct reconstruction frameworks are still limited. Recently supervised deep learning methods have been successfully applied to medical imaging denoising/reconstruction when large number of high-quality training labels are available. For static PET imaging, high-quality training labels can be acquired by extending the scanning time. However, this is not feasible for dynamic PET imaging, where the scanning time is already long enough. In this work, we proposed an unsupervised deep learning framework for direct parametric reconstruction from dynamic PET, which was tested on the Patlak model and the relative equilibrium Logan model. The patients anatomical prior image, which is readily available from PET/CT or PET/MR scans, was supplied as the network input to provide a manifold constraint, and also utilized to construct a kernel layer to perform non-local feature denoising. The linear kinetic model was embedded in the network structure as a 1x1 convolution layer. The training objective function was based on the PET statistical model. Evaluations based on dynamic datasets of 18F-FDG and 11C-PiB tracers show that the proposed framework can outperform the traditional and the kernel method-based direct reconstruction methods.
We propose a new variational model for joint image reconstruction and motion estimation in spatiotemporal imaging, which is investigated along a general framework that we present with shape theory. This model consists of two components, one for conducting modified static image reconstruction, and the other performs sequentially indirect image registration. For the latter, we generalize the large deformation diffeomorphic metric mapping framework into the sequentially indirect registration setting. The proposed model is compared theoretically against alternative approaches (optical flow based model and diffeomorphic motion models), and we demonstrate that the proposed model has desirable properties in terms of the optimal solution. The theoretical derivations and efficient algorithms are also presented for a time-discretized scenario of the proposed model, which show that the optimal solution of the time-discretized version is consistent with that of the time-continuous one, and most of the computational components is the easy-implemented linearized deformation. The complexity of the algorithm is analyzed as well. This work is concluded by some numerical examples in 2D space + time tomography with very sparse and/or highly noisy data.
Morphological reconstruction (MR) is often employed by seeded image segmentation algorithms such as watershed transform and power watershed as it is able to filter seeds (regional minima) to reduce over-segmentation. However, MR might mistakenly filter meaningful seeds that are required for generating accurate segmentation and it is also sensitive to the scale because a single-scale structuring element is employed. In this paper, a novel adaptive morphological reconstruction (AMR) operation is proposed that has three advantages. Firstly, AMR can adaptively filter useless seeds while preserving meaningful ones. Secondly, AMR is insensitive to the scale of structuring elements because multiscale structuring elements are employed. Finally, AMR has two attractive properties: monotonic increasingness and convergence that help seeded segmentation algorithms to achieve a hierarchical segmentation. Experiments clearly demonstrate that AMR is useful for improving algorithms of seeded image segmentation and seed-based spectral segmentation. Compared to several state-of-the-art algorithms, the proposed algorithms provide better segmentation results requiring less computing time. Source code is available at https://github.com/SUST-reynole/AMR.