EEG电极与MRI头模型的配准方法

脑功能成像研究中,脑电信号与磁共振图像融合分析是一种重要的研究方法。在实现 事分析时首先要解决的问题是电极与头模型的配准,目前有三种基本的配准方法,基准点法、电极方法和表面配准法。本对这三种方法作了介绍,并对这三种方法的特点作了评述。     

基于三次样条层间插值的多模态医学图像配准

我们从PET-CT多模态图像序列的特点出发,提出了一种全新的图像配准及融合方法,它采用三次样条插值法对PET-CT图像进行层间插值,然后再利用最大互信息法进行配准,最后应用改进的主成分分析(PCA)法融合PET-CT图像用以增强PET显像效果,从而得到满意的配准以及融合结果。用三次样条插值法进行层间插值并恢复层间缺失图像的信息,弥补了现有配准方法的不足,提高了配准精度,使融合后的图像更加接近实际的物理断层。该方法已经成功应用于三维适形放疗(3D-CRT)系统的开发中。     

基于最大互信息的人脑MR-PET图像配准方法

利用最大互信息法进行多模医学图像配准近来成为医学图像处理领域的热点。MR和PET图像配准对研究神经组织的结构关系和引导神经外科手术有着重要的指导意义。本文描述了一种基于互信息的人脑MR－PET图像配准方法。我们将这种方法应用于图像的几何对准并给出了初步的评估结果。由于不需要对不同成像模式下的图像灰度间的关系作任何假设,最大互信息法是一种稳健性强,可广泛应用于基于体素的多模图像的配准方法。     

基于改进最大互信息法的MR切片图像配准

医学图像配准是医学图像处理分析的关键步骤,是医学图像融合首先要解决的问题。本研究的主要目的是实现帕金森患者深脑部刺激手术前后MR图像的配准。将互距离引入互信息测度,实现手术前后两组MR切片图像的对应匹配,然后将对应的两组MR切片系列重建三维图像,最后用Powell优化算法对重建的三维图像进行配准。通过术前术后MR三维图像的配准,可以定量的分析手术后植入电极和手术前丘脑底核的相对位置关系,从而实现对深脑部刺激手术质量的科学评估。     

基于MRI和CT图像配准的颅内电极定位方法

目的应用多模医学图像配准,在颅内电极埋置术后对颅内电极进行精确定位。方法通过对颅内电极埋置前的头颅MRI图像和埋置后头颅CT图像进行配准,利用医学影像配准与分割工具包(ITK),将颅内电极位置准确地定位在MRI图像上,以建立电极位置与大脑解剖结构的联系。结果经过对10组断层图像进行配准定位,差值图像显示匹配程度较好,专家目测融合效果较为精确。在普通PC机上,以笔者所采用的数据为例,设定优化器初始步长为1,松弛因子为0.6,最小步长为0.000 2,最大迭代次数为100,整个电极定位的操作过程时间不超过1 min。结论多模医学图像配准对颅内电极定位较为准确,为医生提供了更加直观和完善的信息。     

鼻咽癌调强适形放疗MRI-CT图像融合三种配准方法的精度比较

目的：探讨鼻咽癌调强适形放疗MRI-CT图像融合的配准方法。方法：16例首程治疗的鼻咽癌患者在获取CT及MRI图像后,分别采用互信息法（MI法）、外部标记法及MI＋标记＋手动微调的综合法三种方法行MRI-CT影像融合,由2位经验丰富的中高年资放疗科医师共同勾画鼻咽部GTV,分别单独根据CT图像、MRI图像及融合图像勾画GTVnxc、GTVnxm及GTVnxcm,然后对GTVnxc与GTVnxm分别进行与、或操作,生成新的靶区GTVnxc＆m,GTVnxc｜m,根据10组解剖标记x、y向位置差、靶区融合指数（FI）及中心距离和法Dtotal分别评价三种配准方法的融合精度,用单因素方差检验分析各组差异。结果：三种配准方法在10组解剖标记的x、y向总位置差分别为（3.05±1.22、2.71±1.01）,（2.05±0.55、1.8±0.5）,（0.86±0.12、1.01±0.13）,三者xy向都具有非常显著性差异（F=31.96,P〈0.001;F=26.991,P〈0.001）;FI值分别为（0.549±0.203、0.742±0.12、0.898±0.09）,三者具有非常显著性差异（F=23.03,P〈0.001）;Dtotal分别为（11.23±3.58、6.52±2.55、3.57±0.79）,三者具有非常显著性差异（F=31.96,P〈0.001）。结论：1.三种配准方法中综合法的融合精度最高,能基本满足临床的需要。2.在完全解决一致性体位的前提下,用MI＋外部标点法相结合的自动配准方法可避免人工干预,并且融合精度能完全满足临床的需要。     

一种用于医学图像配准的图像外边界的提取方法

医学图像配准是医学图像融合的第一步,而基于图像边界的配准方法对刚性物体图像（如人头颅骨的CT、MRI图像）来讲是一种较好的配准方法。本文给出了一种医学图像外边界的提取方法,它能够快速、准确地提取出CT、MRI等图像的外边界,为用边界法进行图像配准提供了保证。     

一种基于感兴趣点旋转不变性特征的图像配准新方法

目的:图像配准是图像处理领域重要的研究方向,是图像融合、图像重建和图像分析等研究的基础。在图像配准的主要方法中,基于图像特征的配准方法和基于图像灰度的配准方法各有优缺点,通过结合这两种方法的优点,我们提出了一种基于感兴趣点的旋转不变性特征图像配准的新方法。方法:首先利用Harris角点检测技术,提取模板图像和目标图像的感兴趣点。然后把感兴趣点的旋转不变形特征和灰度值组成图像的特征描述向量,并提出新的代价函数。最后采用分级优化的策略优化代价函数,在配准初期,采用显著的特征点进行配准,以保证配准的速度与鲁棒性,随后通过逐步增加特征点的数量,则保证了配准的精度。结果:为显示本文方法的优越性,实验利用本文方法和基于互信息的B样条方法分别对标准测试图像进行配准,实验结果表明,本文方法较基于互信息的B样条方法在配准精度上有明显提高。结论:本文方法在保持配准鲁棒性的前提下,获得了较高的配准精度。     

神经外科导航系统基于迭代局部最近点法技术的形态学三维数据场的快速配准与融合

目的：拟开发一种全自动快速配准技术,用于临床形态学三维数据场的配准与融合。方法：用本研究提出的基于迭代局部最近点法（ILCP）技术的形态学三维数据场的快速配准技术,用临床实际病例的CT、MRI图像进行配准实验。结果：实验得到了满意的全自动快速配准效果。结果显示ILCP法比普通ICP法快10-30倍,比最大互信息法快8～10倍;耗时可以为临床医生所接受。结论;所提出的方法是切实可行的,为进一步应用于临床打下了坚实的基础。     

医学图像弹性配准中弹性模型的建立

医学图像配准是医学图像处理中的一个重要研究课题，它是图像融合、图像与标准图谱的匹配、显微图像的重建等研究的基础。图像的配准方法有多种，它们可以分为刚性和弹性配准两大类。相对于刚性配准，弹性配准有着更高的精确性，而对于变形大的图像的配准，它是必须的。因此弹性配准的研究有着广泛的意义。本文根据图像的特征，结合弹性力学的理论和方法，建立了一种用于精确配准的弹性数学模型，并用这一模型进行图像的弹性配准，取得了较好的效果。     

Patient position verification using small IMRT fields

A commonly used approach to quantify and minimize patient setup errors is by using electronic portal imaging devices (EPIDs). The position of the tumor can be verified indirectly by matching the bony anatomy to a reference image containing the same structures. In this paper we present two off-line methods for detecting the position of the bony anatomy automatically, even if every single portal image of each segment of an IMRT treatment beam contains insufficient matching information. Extra position verification fields will no longer be necessary, which reduces the total dose to the patient. The first method, the stack matching method (SMM), stacks the portal image of each segment of a beam to a three dimensional (3D) volume, and this volume is subsequently used during the matching phase. The second method [the averaged projection matching method (APMM)], is a simplification of the first one, since the initially created volume is reduced again to a 2D artificial image, which speeds up the matching procedure considerably, without a significant loss of accuracy. Matching is based on normalized mutual information. We demonstrate our methods by comparing them to existing matching routines, such as matching based on the largest segment. Both phantom and patient experiments show that our methods are comparable with the results obtained from standard position verification methods. The matches are verified by means of visual inspection. Furthermore, we show that when a distinct area of 40-60 cm2 of the EPID is exposed during one treatment beam, both SMM and APMM are able to deliver a good matching result.     

HLA compatibility and organ transplant survival. Collaborative Transplant Study

The influence of HLA compatibility on organ transplant survival was analyzed in more than 150,000 recipients transplanted from 1987 to 1997 at transplant centers participating in the Collaborative Transplant Study. A statistically highly significant effect of HLA matching on graft and patient survival rates was found in the analysis of kidney transplants (P < 0.0001). Ten years after transplantation, the graft survival rate of first cadaver kidney transplants with a complete mismatch (6 HLA-A+B+DR mismatches) was 17% lower than that of grafts with no mismatch. During the first post-transplant year, the class II HLA-DR locus had a stronger impact than the class I HLA-A and HLA-B loci. During subsequent years, however, the influence on graft survival of the three loci was found to be equivalent and additive. For optimal graft outcome, compatibility at all three HLA loci is, therefore, desirable. The excellent correlation of HLA matching observed in recipients of cadaver kidneys with very short ischemic preservation (0-6 hours) or recipients of kidneys from living unrelated donors contradicts reports that short ischemia can eliminate the influence of matching. Although HLA has a significant effect on graft outcome regardless of the state of presensitization, the matching effect is potentiated in patients with highly reactive preformed lymphocytotoxic antibodies. Among first cadaver transplant recipients with an antibody reactivity against > 50% of the test panel, the difference in graft survival at 5 years between patients with 0 or 6 mismatches reached 30%. A collaborative project, in which molecular DNA typing methods were employed, showed that the correction of serological HLA typing errors by more accurate DNA typing results in a significantly improved HLA matching effect. Moreover, matching for the class II locus HLA-DP, a locus that can be typed reliably only by DNA methods, showed a significant effect in cadaver kidney retransplants, especially in the presence of preformed lymphocytotoxic antibodies. The analysis of heart transplants showed a highly significant impact of HLA compatibility on graft outcome (P < 0.0001). This result is of particular interest because donor hearts are not allocated according to the HLA match. A biasing influence of donor organ allocation (i.e. a preferential allocation of good matches to good risk recipients) can, therefore, be excluded. In liver transplantation, neither matching for HLA class I nor HLA class II could be shown to influence transplant outcome.     

29A microRNA expression profiling study of matching fresh frozen and formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded samples

The purpose of this study was to investigate the correlation between microRNA expression profiles from matching fresh frozen (FrFr) and formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded (FFPE) samples. We isolated RNA from eight different murine organs, each divided in half and prepared as either FrFr or FFPE samples. To evaluate the quality and reliability of the RNA isolations performed on the FFPE samples, we compared three different commercially available FFPE RNA preparation kits. The quality of the extracted RNA was analyzed on the Bioanalyzer from Agilent, and the microRNA expression profiling was carried out using the LNA-based miRCURY microarray platform.
Our studies show that despite a high degree of RNA degradation predominantly in the FFPE samples, we get an excellent correlation between the matching FrFr and FFPE samples. Thus, for two out of three extraction methods the correlation coefficient (R²) was above 0.95 in all eight murine organs.     

A New Fast Fractal Modeling Approach for the Detection of Microcalcifications in Mammograms

In this paper, a novel fast method for modeling mammograms by deterministic fractal coding approach to detect the presence of microcalcifications, which are early signs of breast cancer, is presented. The modeled mammogram obtained using fractal encoding method is visually similar to the original image containing microcalcifications, and therefore, when it is taken out from the original mammogram, the presence of microcalcifications can be enhanced. The limitation of fractal image modeling is the tremendous time required for encoding. In the present work, instead of searching for a matching domain in the entire domain pool of the image, three methods based on mean and variance, dynamic range of the image blocks, and mass center features are used. This reduced the encoding time by a factor of 3, 89, and 13, respectively, in the three methods with respect to the conventional fractal image coding method with quad tree partitioning. The mammograms obtained from The Mammographic Image Analysis Society database (ground truth available) gave a total detection score of 87.6%, 87.6%, 90.5%, and 87.6%, for the conventional and the proposed three methods, respectively.     

Novel phenotype–disease matching tool for rare genetic diseases

PurposeTo improve the accuracy of matching rare genetic diseases based on patient’s phenotypes.MethodsWe introduce new methods to prioritize diagnosis of genetic diseases based on integrated semantic similarity (method 1) and ontological overlap (method 2) between the phenotypes expressed by a patient and phenotypes annotated to known diseases.ResultsWe evaluated the performance of our methods by two sets of simulated data and one set of patient’s data derived from electronic health records. We demonstrated that the two methods achieved significantly improved performance compared with previous methods in correctly prioritizing candidate diseases in all of the three sets. Our methods are freely available as a web application (https://gddp.research.cchmc.org/) to aid diagnosis of genetic diseases.ConclusionOur methods can capture the diagnostic information embedded in the phenotype ontology, consider all phenotypes exhibited by a patient, and are more robust than the existing methods when phenotypes are incorrectly or imprecisely specified. These methods can assist the diagnosis of rare genetic diseases and help the interpretation of the results of DNA tests.     

Evaluation of matched control algorithms in EHR-based phenotyping studies: A case study of inflammatory bowel disease comorbidities

The success of many population studies is determined by proper matching of cases to controls. Some of the confounding and bias that afflict electronic health record (EHR)-based observational studies may be reduced by creating effective methods for finding adequate controls. We implemented a method to match case and control populations to compensate for sparse and unequal data collection practices common in EHR data. We did this by matching the healthcare utilization of patients after observing that more complete data was collected on high healthcare utilization patients vs. low healthcare utilization patients. In our results, we show that many of the anomalous differences in population comparisons are mitigated using this matching method compared to other traditional age and gender-based matching. As an example, the comparison of the disease associations of ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease show differences that are not present when the controls are chosen in a random or even a matched age/gender/race algorithm. In conclusion, the use of healthcare utilization-based matching algorithms to find adequate controls greatly enhanced the accuracy of results in EHR studies. Full source code and documentation of the control matching methods is available at https://community.i2b2.org/wiki/display/conmat/.     

Event-related potential correlates of perceptual and functional categories: comparison between stimuli matching by identity and equivalence

Event-related potentials (ERPs) correlates of two test criteria of an abstract category task were dissociated. In a stimulus equivalence task, 10 subjects observed pairs of figures presented serially in three conditions: reflexivity (generalized identity), equivalence (arbitrary derived relations from a previous training), and unrelated pairs. They were instructed to decide whether the second item in a pair matched or mismatched the first one. Participants' performance in reflexivity matching tests was faster and more accurate than in equivalence matching or mismatching responses. In the three conditions, an occipital P2, a frontal N2 and a parietal P3 ERP component were elicited. The earlier components P2 and N2 exhibited reflexivity matching effects, while the later component (P3) exhibited the only equivalence matching effect. In addition, the subtracted ERP components from unrelated minus identity and unrelated minus equivalence trials were computed within two time windows: 150-250ms (dN300) and 350-450ms (dN400). While both dN300 waves were not significantly different, the comparison of both dN400 waves showed statistical differences. Correlates of partially perceptual (but contextually abstract) concepts are elicited earlier than those of pure abstract concepts. These ERPs correlates of stimulus equivalence relation tests of semantic categories are in concordance with the behavioral data.     

Development and evaluation of a three-dimensional hyperthermia applicator with Water-COated Antennas (WACOA)

A novel twelve-channel three-dimensional (3-D) hyperthermia applicator has been developed and evaluated, which consists of twelve separate WAter COated Antenna (WACOA) modules. The modules are arranged in three transversal antenna rings (sub-arrays) and are placed into an acrylic applicator frame as cartridge-like elements in a staggered arrangement. The operating frequency is 100 MHz. For the design of the applicator, the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method was used. The applicator's dimensions allow its placement into the gantry of a magnetic resonance (MR) tomograph. The WACOA modules are designed as MR-compatible specially shaped metallic cylindrical dipole structures that are placed into hermetically closed water-filled cassettes. Due to the design of the dipole structures, only a conventional coaxial feed circuitry is needed, and no external impedance matching networks are necessary. Instead, fine on-line impedance matching is realized using adjustable tuning rods and matching rings, both elements being parts of the radiating antenna structure. Experimental and numerical evaluations demonstrate a good stability of impedance matching, a low inter-channel coupling of less than -20 dB, and a good ability of field pattern steering.     

Tissue typing in support of unrelated hematopoietic cell transplantation

The success of unrelated hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) for the treatment of hematologic malignancies has closely paralleled development of robust typing methods for comprehensive and precise donor-recipient matching. The application of molecular methods in clinical research has led to a more complete understanding of the immunogenetic barriers involving host-vs-graft (HVG) and graft-vs-host (GVH) reactions. Along with the development of less toxic transplant regimens, advances in the prevention and treatment of graft-vs-host disease (GVHD) and in the supportive care of the transplant recipient, improved HLA matching of potential unrelated donors has led to clinical results that begin to compare favorably with that of HLA-identical sibling transplants.