scholarly journals Application of components analysis in dynamic thermal breast imaging to identify pathophysiologic mechanisms of heat transfer

Author(s):  
Meir Gershenson

Using the Brazilian visual lab mastology data set containing dynamic thermograms, applying components analysis resulted in two corresponding images: 1. Slight decrease as function of rewarming (suggests correlation with the cancer generated heat), 2. Temperature increase as function of rewarming (suggests correlation with veins affected by vasomodulation). All components appear clear and distinct. Applying signal processing methods to the dynamic infrared data, we found distinct components with correspondence to understood physiologic processes. The cases shown are self-evident of the capability of the method but are lacking supporting ground truth that is unavailable with such a limited data set.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meir Gershenson

Using the Brazilian visual lab mastology data set containing dynamic thermograms, applying components analysis resulted in two corresponding images: 1. Slight decrease as function of rewarming (suggests correlation with the cancer generated heat), 2. Temperature increase as function of rewarming (suggests correlation with veins affected by vasomodulation). All components appear clear and distinct. Applying signal processing methods to the dynamic infrared data, we found distinct components with correspondence to understood physiologic processes. The cases shown are self-evident of the capability of the method but are lacking supporting ground truth that is unavailable with such a limited data set.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meir Gershenson ◽  
Jonathan P Gershenson

Significance: Of the most compelling unsolved issues in the paradigm to create success in the field of breast cancer infrared imaging is localization of direct internal heat of the tumor. The contribution of differential heat production related to metabolism versus perfusion is not understood. Previous work until now has not shown progress beyond identifying veins which are fed by the hot cancer. Employing signal analysis techniques, we probe important questions which may lead to further understanding pathophysiology of heat transfer occurring in the setting of malignancy. Aim: When using thermal imaging to detect breast cancer, the dominant heat signature is that of indirect heat transported in gradient away from the tumor location. Unprocessed images strikingly display vasculature which acts to direct excess heat superficially towards the skin surface before dissipating. In current clinical use, interpretation of thermogram images considers abnormal vascular patterns and overall temperature as indicators of disease. The goal of this work is to present a processing method for dynamic external stimulus thermogram images to isolate and separate the indirect vascular heat while revealing the desired direct heat from the tumor. Approach: In dynamic thermal imaging of the breast, a timed series of images are taken following application of external temperature stimulus (most often cooled air). While the tumor heat response is thought to be independent of the external stimulus, the secondary heat of the veins is known to be affected by vasomodulation. The recorded data is analyzed using independent component analysis (ICA) and principal component analysis (PCA) methods. ICA separates the image sequence into new independent images having a common characteristic time behavior. Resulting individual components are analyzed for correspondence to the presence or lack of vasomodulation. Results: Using the Brazilian visual lab mastology data set containing dynamic thermograms, applying components analysis resulted in three corresponding images: 1. Minimum change as a function of applied temperature or time (suggests correlation with the cancer generated heat), 2. Moderate temperature dependence (suggests correlation with veins affected by vasomodulation) and 3. Complex time behavior (suggests correlation with heat absorption due to high tumor perfusion). All components appear clear and distinct. Conclusions: Applying signal processing methods to the dynamic infrared data, we found three distinct components with correspondence to understood physiologic processes. The two cases shown are self-evident of the capability of the method but are lacking supporting ground truth that is unavailable with such a limited data set. Validation of this proposed paradigm and studying furthering clinical applications has potential to create significant achievement for IR modality in diagnostic imaging.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (10) ◽  
pp. 1157 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jorge Fuentes-Pacheco ◽  
Juan Torres-Olivares ◽  
Edgar Roman-Rangel ◽  
Salvador Cervantes ◽  
Porfirio Juarez-Lopez ◽  
...  

Crop segmentation is an important task in Precision Agriculture, where the use of aerial robots with an on-board camera has contributed to the development of new solution alternatives. We address the problem of fig plant segmentation in top-view RGB (Red-Green-Blue) images of a crop grown under open-field difficult circumstances of complex lighting conditions and non-ideal crop maintenance practices defined by local farmers. We present a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) with an encoder-decoder architecture that classifies each pixel as crop or non-crop using only raw colour images as input. Our approach achieves a mean accuracy of 93.85% despite the complexity of the background and a highly variable visual appearance of the leaves. We make available our CNN code to the research community, as well as the aerial image data set and a hand-made ground truth segmentation with pixel precision to facilitate the comparison among different algorithms.


2020 ◽  
Vol 499 (4) ◽  
pp. 5641-5652
Author(s):  
Georgios Vernardos ◽  
Grigorios Tsagkatakis ◽  
Yannis Pantazis

ABSTRACT Gravitational lensing is a powerful tool for constraining substructure in the mass distribution of galaxies, be it from the presence of dark matter sub-haloes or due to physical mechanisms affecting the baryons throughout galaxy evolution. Such substructure is hard to model and is either ignored by traditional, smooth modelling, approaches, or treated as well-localized massive perturbers. In this work, we propose a deep learning approach to quantify the statistical properties of such perturbations directly from images, where only the extended lensed source features within a mask are considered, without the need of any lens modelling. Our training data consist of mock lensed images assuming perturbing Gaussian Random Fields permeating the smooth overall lens potential, and, for the first time, using images of real galaxies as the lensed source. We employ a novel deep neural network that can handle arbitrary uncertainty intervals associated with the training data set labels as input, provides probability distributions as output, and adopts a composite loss function. The method succeeds not only in accurately estimating the actual parameter values, but also reduces the predicted confidence intervals by 10 per cent in an unsupervised manner, i.e. without having access to the actual ground truth values. Our results are invariant to the inherent degeneracy between mass perturbations in the lens and complex brightness profiles for the source. Hence, we can quantitatively and robustly quantify the smoothness of the mass density of thousands of lenses, including confidence intervals, and provide a consistent ranking for follow-up science.


2020 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryuho Kataoka

Abstract Statistical distributions are investigated for magnetic storms, sudden commencements (SCs), and substorms to identify the possible amplitude of the one in 100-year and 1000-year events from a limited data set of less than 100 years. The lists of magnetic storms and SCs are provided from Kakioka Magnetic Observatory, while the lists of substorms are obtained from SuperMAG. It is found that majorities of events essentially follow the log-normal distribution, as expected from the random output from a complex system. However, it is uncertain that large-amplitude events follow the same log-normal distributions, and rather follow the power-law distributions. Based on the statistical distributions, the probable amplitudes of the 100-year (1000-year) events can be estimated for magnetic storms, SCs, and substorms as approximately 750 nT (1100 nT), 230 nT (450 nT), and 5000 nT (6200 nT), respectively. The possible origin to cause the statistical distributions is also discussed, consulting the other space weather phenomena such as solar flares, coronal mass ejections, and solar energetic particles.


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