Spatio-temporal tracking of myocardial deformations with a 4-D B-spline model from tagged MRI

Accurate delineation of the volumetric motion of the left ventricle (LV) of the heart from tagged magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is an important area of research. We have built a system that takes extracted tag line features from short axis (SA) and long axis (LA) image sequences as input and fits a four-dimensional (4-D) time-varying B-spline model to the data by simultaneously fitting the model knot solids to MRI frames via matching three sequences of solid knot planes to the LV tag planes for 4-D tracking. Important advantages of the model are that reconstruction of tag surfaces, three-dimensional (3-D) material point localization, as well as displacement reconstruction are all achieved in a single step. The generated 3-D displacement fields are validated with a cardiac motion simulator, and 3-D motion fields capturing in vivo deformations in a porcine model with posterolateral myocardial infarction are illustrated.     

Three-dimensional myocardial strain reconstruction from tagged MRI using a cylindrical B-spline model

In this paper, we present a new method for reconstructing three-dimensional (3-D) left ventricular myocardial strain from tagged magnetic resonance (MR) image data with a 3-D B-spline deformation model. The B-spline model is based on a cylindrical coordinate system that more closely fits the morphology of the myocardium than previously proposed Cartesian B-spline models and does not require explicit regularization. Our reconstruction method first fits a spatial coordinate B-spline displacement field to the tag line data. This displacement field maps each tag line point in the deformed myocardium back to its reference position (end-diastole). The spatial coordinate displacement field is then converted to material coordinates with another B-spline fit. Finally, strain is computed by analytically differentiating the material coordinate B-spline displacement field with respect to space. We tested our method with strains reconstructed from an analytically defined mathematical left ventricular deformation model and ten human imaging studies. Our results demonstrate that a quadratic cylindrical B-spline with a fixed number of control points can accurately fit a physiologically realistic range of deformations. The average 3-D reconstruction computation time is 20 seconds per time frame on a 450 MHz Sun Ultra80 workstation.     

Adaptive MLSE equalizers with parametric tracking for multipathfast-fading channels

We use the parametric channel identification algorithm proposed by Chen and Paulraj (see Proc. IEEE Vehicular Technology Conf., p.710-14, 1997) and by Chen, Kim and Liang (see IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol., p.1923-35, 1999) to adaptively track the fast-fading channels for the multichannel maximum likelihood sequence estimation (MLSE) equalizer using multiple antennas. Several commonly-used channel tracking schemes, decision-directed recursive least square (DD/RLS), per-survivor processing recursive least square (PSP/RLS) and other reduced-complexity MLSE algorithms are considered. An analytic lower bound for the multichannel MLSE equalizer with no channel mismatch in the time-varying specular multipath Rayleigh-fading channels is derived. Simulation results that illustrate the performance of the proposed algorithms working with various channel tracking schemes are presented, and then these results are compared with the analytic bit error rate (BER) lower bound and with the conventional MLSE equalizers directly tracking the finite impulse response (FIR) channel tap coefficients. We found that the proposed algorithm always performs better than the conventional adaptive MLSE algorithm, no matter what channel tracking scheme is used. However, which is the best tracking scheme to use depends on the scenario of the system     

利用B样条实现基于等高线的三维地形图

利用B样条曲线将等高线光栅图矢量化。根据B样条曲线插值公式得到等高线与纵横网格线的交点;根据这些史点的三维坐标值,利用线形插值分别得到纵横网格交点的高程,其均值作为网格变点的最终高程;最后利用OpenGL中的NURBS曲面接口生成三维地形图。该方法输入工作量小．数据存储量少。模拟效果较好。     

Three-dimensional surface reconstruction from multistatic SAR images

This paper discusses reconstruction of three-dimensional surfaces from multiple bistatic synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images. Techniques for surface reconstruction from multiple monostatic SAR images already exist, including interferometric processing and stereo SAR. We generalize these methods to obtain algorithms for bistatic interferometric SAR and bistatic stereo SAR. We also propose a framework for predicting the performance of our multistatic stereo SAR algorithm, and, from this framework, we suggest a metric for use in planning strategic deployment of multistatic assets.     

Band partitioning algorithm for surface reconstruction from planarcontours

A heuristic contour triangulation method is proposed for reconstructing a facet model from a set of wire-frame contours. The proposed band partitioning algorithm (BPA) compensates for the disadvantages of optimal and heuristic methods, and produces an improved reconstructed surface. Furthermore, the maximum deviation criterion in span selection prohibits drastic error propagation in the surface definition procedure. Experimental results show that the proposed method is very stable and efficient, making it suitable for a wide range of applications     

Microcomputer-based interactive tracking of blood cells atbiomaterial surfaces

A microcomputer-based system for analyzing the motion of human platelets and leukocytes at synthetic surfaces from a sequence of video frames on tape is described. The software is designed to provide convenient interaction with an operator to reduce the burden of manual analysis. In addition, the system computes and stores the cell movement data on disk for subsequent statistical analysis. Measurement include the number and nature of cell-to-surface collisions, residence times, and distances traveled.     

Vessel surface reconstruction with a tubular deformable model

Three-dimensional (3-D) angiographic methods are gaining acceptance for evaluation of atherosclerotic disease. However, measurement of vessel stenosis from 3-D angiographic methods can be problematic due to limited image resolution and contrast. We present a method for reconstructing vessel surfaces from 3-D angiographic methods that allows for objective measurement of vessel stenosis. The method is a deformable model that employs a tubular coordinate system. Vertex merging is incorporated into the coordinate system to maintain even vertex spacing and to avoid problems of self-intersection of the surface. The deformable model was evaluated on clinical magnetic resonance (MR) images of the carotid (n=6) and renal (n=2) arteries, on an MR image of a physical vascular phantom and on a digital vascular phantom. Only one gross error occurred for all clinical images. All reconstructed surfaces had a realistic, smooth appearance. For all segments of the physical vascular phantom, vessel radii from the surface reconstruction had an error of less than 0.2 of the average voxel dimension. Variability of manual initialization of the deformable model had negligible effect on the measurement of the degree of stenosis of the digital vascular phantom     

基于梯度场的紧致差分最小二乘面形重建算法

为快速准确根据测得的梯度场重建表面面形,针对基于最小二乘全局积分的重建技术,采用紧致差分算子建立全局最优化的代价函数以提高重建精度,将代价函数表示为Sylvester方程,利用Hessenberg-Schur算法求解,将常用最小二乘全局积分技术的空间和时间复杂度分别从O （N2）和O （N3）降低到O （N）和O （N3/2）。实验结果表明:采用四阶精度的紧致差分算子时,文中算法重建精度比高阶截断误差最小二乘积分法（HFLI）和全局最小二乘法（GLS）提高了一个数量级,采用六阶精度的紧致差分算子时重建精度比基于样条的最小二乘积分法（SLI）提高了一个数量级;鲁棒性优于GLS,弱于HFLI和SLI;重建速度显著优于HFLI和SLI,略优于GLS。     

Viewpoint invariant reconstruction of visible surfaces usingfirst-order regularisation

The application of a first-order regularisation technique to the problem of reconstruction of visible surfaces is described. The approach is a computationally efficient first-order method that achieves approximate invariance. The results indicate that the proposed method for surface reconstruction performs well on sparse noisy range data     

Segmenting and tracking fluorescent cells in dynamic 3-D microscopy with coupled active surfaces.

Cell migrations and deformations play essential roles in biological processes, such as parasite invasion, immune response, embryonic development, and cancer. We describe a fully automatic segmentation and tracking method designed to enable quantitative analyses of cellular shape and motion from dynamic three-dimensional microscopy data. The method uses multiple active surfaces with or without edges, coupled by a penalty for overlaps, and a volume conservation constraint that improves outlining of cell/cell boundaries. Its main advantages are robustness to low signal-to-noise ratios and the ability to handle multiple cells that may touch, divide, enter, or leave the observation volume. We give quantitative validation results based on synthetic images and show two examples of applications to real biological data.     

Pattern tracking and 3-D motion reconstruction of a rigid body from a 2-D image sequence

This paper presents an integrated method to identify an object pattern from an image, and track its movement over a sequence of images. The sequence of images comes from a single perspective video source, which is capturing data from a precalibrated scene. This information is used to reconstruct the scene in three-dimension (3-D) within a virtual environment where a user can interact and manipulate the system. The steps that are performed include the following: i) Identify an object pattern from a two-dimensional perspective video source. The user outlines the region of interest (ROI) in the initial frame; the procedure builds a refined mask of the dominant object within the ROI using the morphological watershed algorithm. ii) The object pattern is tracked between frames using object matching within the mask provided by the previous and next frame, computing the motion parameters. iii) The identified object pattern is matched with a library of shapes to identify a corresponding 3-D object. iv) A virtual environment is created to reconstruct the scene in 3-D using the 3-D object and the motion parameters. This method can be applied to real-life application problems, such as traffic management and material flow congestion analysis.     

Segmentation and tracking of migrating cells in videomicroscopy with parametric active contours: a tool for cell-based drug testing

This paper presents a segmentation and tracking method for quantitative analysis of cell dynamics from in vitro videomicroscopy data. The method is based on parametric active contours and includes several adaptations that address important difficulties of cellular imaging, particularly the presence of low-contrast boundary deformations known as pseudopods, and the occurence of multiple contacts between cells. First, we use an edge map based on the average intensity dispersion that takes advantage of relative background homogeneity to facilitate the detection of both pseudopods and interfaces between adjacent cells. Second, we introduce a repulsive interaction between contours that allows correct segmentation of objects in contact and overcomes the shortcomings of previously reported techniques to enforce contour separation. Our tracking technique was validated on a realistic data set by comparison with a manually defined ground-truth and was successfully applied to study the motility of amoebae in a biological research project.     

Patch-based reconstruction of surfaces undergoing different types of deformations

We deal with the reconstruction of surfaces that deform under a variety of conditions. The deformation can range from no extension to a certain degree of extensibility. The deformed surface is reconstructed from a single image, given a 3D reference shape. This shape corresponds to the undeformed state of the surface and can be computed using any appropriate technique. In particular, we use homographies defined from two views of the surface. To proceed with the 3D reconstruction of the deformed surface, we assume that the deformations are locally homogeneous and that the overall surface deformation can be obtained by combining the local homogeneous deformations. For this purpose, the surface is split into small patches. For each patch, a mapping between the undeformed and the deformed shapes is computed. The mapping is specified by using the quadratic deformation model Fayad et al. (Proceedings of British Machine Vision Conference (BMVC), 2004). As a result, given the undeformed shape, we define an optimization procedure whose goal is to estimate the 3D positions of deformed points in each image. The optimization is performed on each patch, independently of the others. The experimental results show that this approach allows precise reconstruction of a wide class of real deformations.     

A method for brain 3D surface reconstruction from MR images

Due to the encephalic tissues are highly irregular, three-dimensional （3D） modeling of brain always leads to compli- cated computing. In this paper, we explore an efficient method for brain surface reconstruction from magnetic reso- nance （MR） images of head, which is helpful to surgery planning and tumor localization. A heuristic algorithm is pro- posed foi＂ surface triangle mesh generation with preserved features, and the diagonal length is regarded as the heuristic information to optimize the shape of triangle. The experimental results show that our approach not only reduces the computational complexity, but also completes 3D visualization with good quality.     

位置和艏向角约束的非对角欠驱动USV轨迹跟踪

仅配备有纵向推进力和转船力矩装置的无人水面艇是典型的欠驱动系统,不能通过定常光滑反馈控制律镇定到平衡状态。本文针对一类惯性矩阵和阻尼矩阵非对角的欠驱动无人水面艇,设计了基于附加控制器和反步法的光滑时变跟踪控制律,在保证跟踪误差暂态性能的前提下,实现了曲线和直线情形下的轨迹跟踪。首先,通过状态变换将非对角模型转化为对角形式,并运用反馈线性化理论简化控制输入。其次,通过设计虚拟控制函数来镇定误差运动学方程,并通过引入障碍Lyapunov函数(BLF)来保证跟踪误差满足规定的性能。然后,通过在误差镇定函数中引入虚拟控制量解决了系统的欠驱动问题,稳定性分析表明本文控制策略能够保证闭环系统中的所有状态是一致最终有界的。最后,Matlab/Simulink仿真结果表明了该控制器的有效性。     

Semi-automatic tracking of myocardial motion in MR tagged images

Tissue tagging using magnetic resonance (MR) imaging has enabled quantitative noninvasive analysis of motion and deformation in vivo. One method for MR tissue tagging is Spatial Modulation of Magnetization (SPAMM). Manual detection and tracking of tissue tags by visual inspection remains a time-consuming and tedious process. The authors have developed an interactively guided semi-automated method of detecting and tracking tag intersections in cardiac MR images. A template matching approach combined with a novel adaptation of active contour modeling permits rapid analysis of MR images. The authors have validated their technique using MR SPAMM images of a silicone gel phantom with controlled deformations. Average discrepancy between theoretically predicted and semi-automatically selected tag intersections was 0.30 mm+/-0.17 [mean+/-SD, NS (P<0.05)]. Cardiac SPAMM images of normal volunteers and diseased patients also have been evaluated using the authors' technique.     

Application of autoregressive moving average parametric modeling in magnetic resonance image reconstruction

The modeling of data is an alternative to conventional use of the fast Fourier transform (FFT) algorithm in the reconstruction of magnetic resonance (MR) images. The application of the FFT leads to artifacts and resolution loss in the image associated with the effective window on the experimentally-truncated phase encoded MR data. The transient error modeling method treats the MR data as a subset of the transient response of an infinite impulse filter (H(z) = B(z)IA(z)). Thus, the data are approximated by a deterministic autoregressive moving average (ARMA) model. The algorithm for calculating the filter coefficients is described. It is demonstrated that using the filter coefficients to reconstruct the image removes the truncation artifacts and improves the resolution. However, determining the autoregressive (AR) portion of the ARMA filter by algorithms that minimize the forward and backward prediction errors (e.g., Burg) leads to significant image degradation. The moving average (MA) portion is determined by a computationally efficient method of solving a finite difference equation with initial values. Special features of the MR data are incorporated into the transient error model. The sensitivity to noise and the choice of the best model order are discussed. MR images formed using versions of the transient error reconstruction (TERE) method and the conventional FFT algorithm are compared using data from a phantom and a human subject. Finally, the computational requirements of the algorithm are addressed.     

NURBS曲面重构与点云-曲面误差分析

通过对某汽车零件进行光栅扫描、解相和去包裹处理,获取物体三维点云数据,对点云数据进行降噪、精简和网格化处理。然后根据点云曲率分布云图将点云数据分割成11块区域,首先对A区域点云数据进行曲面拟合,生成4×4阶均匀曲面,然后对其余分块点云数据分别进行曲面拟合,最后通过曲面延伸、拼接、倒角、修剪等处理,获取物体NURBS自由曲面,总体点云-曲面误差为0.2645 mm,并且曲面间符合G1相切连续和法向曲率连续,解决了在曲率较大的地方拟合误差较大的问题,提高了曲面的重构精度。     

Three-dimensional surface reconstruction and fluorescent visualization of cardiac activation

Optical imaging of transmembrane potentials in cardiac tissue is a rapidly growing technique in cardiac electrophysiology. Traditional studies typically use a monocular imaging setup, thus limiting investigation to a restricted region of tissue. However, studies of large-scale wavefront dynamics, especially those during fibrillation and defibrillation, would benefit from visualization of the entire epicardial surface. To solve this problem, a panoramic cardiac visualization algorithm was developed which performs the two tasks of reconstruction of the surface geometry of the heart, and representation of the panoramic fluorescence information as a texture mapping onto the geometry that was previously created. This system permits measurement of epicardial electrodynamics over a geometrically realistic representation of the actual heart being studied. To verify the accuracy of the algorithm, the procedure was applied to synthetic images of a patterned ball; further verification was provided by application of the algorithm to a model heart placed in the experimental setup. Both sets of images produced mean registration image errors on the order of 2 pixels, corresponding to roughly 3 mm on the geometry. We demonstrate the algorithm by visualizing epicardial wavefronts on an isolated, perfused rabbit heart.