PeMNet for Pectoral Muscle Segmentation

As an important imaging modality, mammography is considered to be the global gold standard for early detection of breast cancer. Computer-Aided (CAD) systems have played a crucial role in facilitating quicker diagnostic procedures, which otherwise could take weeks if only radiologists were involved. In some of these CAD systems, breast pectoral segmentation is required for breast region partition from breast pectoral muscle for specific analysis tasks. Therefore, accurate and efficient breast pectoral muscle segmentation frameworks are in high demand. Here, we proposed a novel deep learning framework, which we code-named PeMNet, for breast pectoral muscle segmentation in mammography images. In the proposed PeMNet, we integrated a novel attention module called the Global Channel Attention Module (GCAM), which can effectively improve the segmentation performance of Deeplabv3+ using minimal parameter overheads. In GCAM, channel attention maps (CAMs) are first extracted by concatenating feature maps after paralleled global average pooling and global maximum pooling operation. CAMs are then refined and scaled up by multi-layer perceptron (MLP) for elementwise multiplication with CAMs in next feature level. By iteratively repeating this procedure, the global CAMs (GCAMs) are then formed and multiplied elementwise with final feature maps to lead to final segmentation. By doing so, CAMs in early stages of a deep convolution network can be effectively passed on to later stages of the network and therefore leads to better information usage. The experiments on a merged dataset derived from two datasets, INbreast and OPTIMAM, showed that PeMNet greatly outperformed state-of-the-art methods by achieving an IoU of 97.46%, global pixel accuracy of 99.48%, Dice similarity coefficient of 96.30%, and Jaccard of 93.33%, respectively.

Segmentation of Pectoral Muscle in Mammograms Using Granular Computing

In this paper, pectoral muscle segmentation was performed to study the presence of malignancy in the pectoral muscle region in mammograms. A combined approach involving granular computing and layering was employed to locate the pectoral muscle in mammograms. In most cases, the pectoral muscle is found to be triangular in shape and hence, the ant colony optimization algorithm is employed to accurately estimate the pectoral muscle boundary. The proposed method works with the left mediolateral oblique (MLO) view of mammograms to avoid artifacts. For the right MLO view, the method automatically mirrors the image to the left MLO view. The performance of this method was evaluated using the standard mini MIAS dataset (mammographic image analysis society). The algorithm was tested on 322 images and the overall accuracy of the system was about 97.47 %. The method is robust with respect to the view, shape, size and reduces the processing time. The approach correctly identifies images when the pectoral muscle is completely absent.

Comparative Genome and Transcriptome Integration Studies Reveal the Mechanism of Pectoral Muscle Development and Function in Pigeons

Pigeon breed resources provide a genetic model for the study of phenomics. The pectoral muscles play a key role for the meat production performance of the meat pigeon and the athletic ability of the High flyers. Euro-pigeons and Silver King pigeons are commercial varieties that exhibit good meat production performance. In contrast to the domestication direction of meat pigeons, the traditional Chinese ornamental pigeon breed, High flyers, has a small and light body. Here, we investigate the molecular mechanism of the pectoral muscle development and function of pigeons using whole-genome and RNA sequencing data. The selective sweep analysis (FST and log2 (θπ ratio)) revealed 293 and 403 positive selection genes in Euro-pigeons and Silver King, respectively, of which 65 genes were shared. With the Silver King and Euro-pigeon as the control group, the High flyers were selected for 427 and 566 genes respectively. There were 673 differentially expressed genes in the breast muscle transcriptome between the commercial meat pigeons and ornamental pigeons. Pigeon genome selection signal combined with the breast muscle transcriptome revealed that six genes (SLC16A10, S100B, SYNE1, HECW2, CASQ2 and LOC110363470) from commercial varieties of pigeons and five genes (INSC, CALCB, ZBTB21, B2M and LOC110356506) from Chinese traditional ornamental pigeons were positively selected which were involved in pathways related to muscle development and function. This study provides new insights into the selection of different directions and the genetic mechanism related to muscle development in pigeons.

Correlations among Ultrasonographic, Physicochemical and Sensory Characteristics of Pectoralis Major Muscles in Turkeys Reared in a Sustainable Farming System

This study set out to examine associations among echotextural, physicochemical and sensory attributes of the pectoralis major muscles in 17-week-old organic turkeys (B.U.T. Big-6) varying in the amount of wheat and oat grain in daily feed rations (Group C: complete feed only; Group Exp1: 5–30% of wheat and 0–20% of oat; and Group Exp2: 5–50% of wheat and 0–50% of oat; n = 15 turkeys/group). Digital ultrasonograms of the left pectoral muscle in four different planes (longitudinal-L, transverse-T, and two oblique planes-O1 and O2) were obtained with a 5.0-MHz linear-array transducer just before slaughter. Mean numerical pixel intensity (MPI) and pixel heterogeneity (MPH) of the muscle parenchyma were computed using the ImageProPlus® analytical software. Ten significant correlations between echotextural attributes and various meat characteristics were recorded in Group C, one in Group Exp1, and eight in Group Exp2. When data were pooled for all birds studied, there were twelve significant correlations (p < 0.05); all but one correlation (between MPH and moisture) were for physical and sensory characteristics of meat samples. Computer-assisted analysis is a potential method to determine moisture as well as physical (e.g., coloration) and sensory (e.g., aroma) characteristics of pectoralis major muscles in organic turkeys.

Towards a Support System for Digital Mammogram Classification

Cancer is the illness of the 21th century. With the development of technology some of these lesions became curable, if they are in an early stage. Researchers involved with image processing started to conduct experiments in the field of medical imaging, which contributed to the appearance of systems that can detect and/or diagnose illnesses in an early stage. This paper’s aim is to create a similar system to help the detection of breast cancer. First, the region of interest is defined using filtering and two methods, Seeded Region Growing and Sliding Window Algorithm, to remove the pectoral muscle. The region of interest is segmented using k-means and further used together with the original image. Gray-Level Run-Length Matrix features (in four direction) are extracted from the image pairs. To filter the important features from resulting set Principal Component Analysis and a genetic algorithm based feature selection is used. For classification K-Nearest Neighbor, Support Vector Machine and Decision Tree classifiers are experimented. To train and test the system images of Mammographic Image Analysis Society are used. The best performance is achieved features for directions {45◦ , 90◦ , 135◦ }, applying GA feature selection and DT classification (with a maximum depth of 30). This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the different combinations of the algorithms mentioned above, where the best performence repored is 100% and 59.2% to train and test accuracies respectively.

The influence of the carnitine-containing complex on the morphostructure at the muscle tissue of Japanese quail

The quality of meat is determined by the set of nutrients that the poultry receives. It's possible to assess the effect of feed additives on poultry meat products by studying the morphostructure of muscle tissue. The carnitine-containing complex was administered to quails of the experimental groups throughout the entire growing period from 2 to 80 days of age. For groups 2 and 3, the drug was drunk for 5 consecutive days with a 10-day interval at a dose of 0.25 ml / l and 0.5 ml / l, respectively; 4 and 5 groups - at a dose of 0.25 ml / l and 0.5 ml / l for 5 days with a 5-day interval, group 1 served as a control and received clean drinking water. For morphological examination, samples of muscle tissues of the superficial pectoralis and biceps femoris were prepared according to a standard protocol, measurement and photographic documentation were performed, followed by statistical data processing. As a result, in the experimental groups, there was a tendency to an increase in the cross-sectional area of the muscle fiber of the superficial pectoral muscle, the fibers are more intensely colored, the nuclei are brightly basophilic, well contoured compared to the control. In the study of the biceps femoris in the experimental groups, an increase in the cross-sectional area of the muscle fiber and a decrease in the thickness of the internal perimisia between the beams of the 2nd order were also noted, which indicates a positive effect of the carnitine-containing complex on the development of muscle fibers of the pectoral and femoral muscles. In group 4, the cross-sectional area of the muscle fiber of the superficial pectoral muscle reached 431.67 mkm2, the thickness of the endomysium was 4.87 mkm, and the internal perimisia was 12.54 mkm; the cross-sectional area of the muscle fiber and the thickness of the internal perimisium of the biceps femoris reached 625.24 mkm2 and 31.02 mkm, which significantly distinguishes the development of the studied muscles from similar indicators in other groups of quails and allows us to recommend this scheme for growing quails and obtaining dietary products.

The quality of quail meat upon crossbreeding

The growing consumer demand for safe food offers great prospects for the production of quail meat. The progress in poultry farming is based on the use of hybrid breeds. This study was carried out at the Siberian Research Institute of Poultry (Omsk Region). Studied were the productivity and quality of quail meat of Japanese and Pharaoh breeds and their hybrid combinations (?Japanese×?Pharaoh and ?Pharaoh×?Japanese). Hybrid combinations had lower body weight than the Pharaoh breed (by 7.78-16.30%, p<0.05), but larger body weight than the Japanese breed (by 11.33-22.66%, p<0.05). The discrepancies in body weights are due to the weight of the pectorals, the share of which is 19.43-21.63% for males and 18.34-19.45% for females. The superficial pectoral muscle accounts for the bulk of the weight of the pectoral muscles (74.09-78.22%). The deep pectoral muscle accounts for 21.78-25.91%. The area of muscle fibers of the superficial pectoral muscle is 226-299 μm2, the area of deep pectoral muscle is 409-443 μm2. For hybrid combinations, the area of fibers of the superficial and deep pectorals depends on the male breed. The protein content in the pectoral muscles of the Pharaoh breed was higher than that of the Japanese by 1.01-1.02 g, but the fat content was lower by 0.24-0.96 g. In hybrids, the paternal form has an impact on the protein content in the pectoral muscles, and the maternal form has an impact on fat content.