This study presents a Stokes-Mueller polarimetry based imaging system for tissue characterization, specifically for distinguishing normal from cancer regions in ductal carcinoma samples. The fibrous structures present in the tissue enhances the contrast through the measurement of polarization signal, making it easier to analyze images in detail and higher classification accuracy [1].
Phonocardiogram (PCG) signals generated by the heart contain information about heart conditions. This review examines how PCG analysis identifies and diagnoses heart issues. We studied traditional signal processing and artificial intelligence techniques and provided a complete picture of the current state of this field. Adhering to the systematic review guidelines, our comprehensive review covers 103 studies from reputed journals. It includes Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL) techniques used to develop the computer-aided diagnostic tools using PCG signals. This review evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of various ML and DL methods, emphasizing their effectiveness in diagnosing several abnormalities. Additionally, we examine the obstacles and challenges limiting the widespread adoption of PCG-based diagnostic systems in clinical settings.We outline a plan for future research to develop improved versions of PCG analysis models. These models will be more robust, precise, and user-friendly. They will improve cardiovascular care by enabling machines to screen for problems automatically and intelligently.
Interaction of polarized light with healthy and abnormal regions of tissue reveals structural information associated with its pathological condition. Even a slight variation in structural alignment can induce a change in polarization property, which can play a crucial role in the early detection of abnormal tissue morphology. We propose a transmission-based Stokes-Mueller microscope for quantitative analysis of the microstructural properties of the tissue specimen. The Stokes-Mueller based polarization microscopy provides significant structural information of tissue through various polarization parameters such as degree of polarization (DOP), degree of linear polarization (DOLP), and degree of circular polarization (DOCP), anisotropy (r) and Mueller decomposition parameters such as diattenuation, retardance and depolarization. Further, by applying a suitable image processing technique such as Machine learning (ML) output images were analysed effectively. The support vector machine image classification model achieved 95.78% validation accuracy and 94.81% testing accuracy with polarization parameter dataset. The study's findings demonstrate the potential of Stokes-Mueller polarimetry in tissue characterization and diagnosis, providing a valuable tool for biomedical applications.
Artificial intelligence (AI) techniques are increasingly used in computer-aided diagnostic tools in medicine. These techniques can also help to identify hypertension (HTN) in its early stage, as it is a global health issue. Automated HTN detection uses socio-demographic, clinical data, and physiological signals. Additionally, signs of secondary HTN can also be identified using various imaging modalities. This systematic review examines related work on automated HTN detection. We identify datasets, techniques, and classifiers used to develop AI models from clinical data, physiological signals, and fused data (a combination of both). Image-based models for assessing secondary HTN are also reviewed. The majority of the reviewed studies have primarily utilized single-modality approaches, such as biological signals (e.g., electrocardiography, photoplethysmography), and medical imaging (e.g., magnetic resonance angiography, ultrasound). Surprisingly, only a small portion of the studies (22 out of 122) utilized a multi-modal fusion approach combining data from different sources. Even fewer investigated integrating clinical data, physiological signals, and medical imaging to understand the intricate relationships between these factors. Future research directions are discussed that could build better healthcare systems for early HTN detection through more integrated modeling of multi-modal data sources.
Ensemble models have emerged as a powerful technique for improving robustness in medical image segmentation. However, traditional ensembles suffer from limitations such as under-confidence and over-reliance on poor performing models. In this work, we introduce an Adaptive Uncertainty-based Ensemble (AUE) model for tumor segmentation in histopathological slides. Our approach leverages uncertainty estimates from Monte Carlo dropout during testing to dynamically select the optimal pair of models for each whole slide image. The AUE model combines predictions from the two most reliable models (K-Net, ResNeSt, Segformer, Twins), identified through uncertainty quantification, to enhance segmentation performance. We validate the AUE model on the ACDC@LungHP challenge dataset, systematically comparing it against state-of-the-art approaches. Results demonstrate that our uncertainty-guided ensemble achieves a mean Dice score of 0.8653 and outperforms traditional ensemble techniques and top-ranked methods from the challenge by over 3 %. Our adaptive ensemble approach provides accurate and reliable lung tumor delineation in histopathology images by managing model uncertainty.
The procedure for determining the cause of strokes makes heavy use of Computed Tomographic (CT) images. The existing methods try different Machine Learning (ML) based methods but haven’t so far explored the self-supervised learning approach. In this study we have showcased a simple technique for improving the feature representation generated using Deep Learning (DL) models through self-supervised technique. We utilized (triplet) loss for generating different embeddings for normal and acute stroke cases and developed a simple strategy to improve the same for better differentiability. We showcase this refining technique, which improves discriminability and able to classify using simple ML model. The results are tested against various DL models for better generality with the best begin ResNet101 with 95.16% accuracy. We also compared the results based on different levels of refinement based on their architecture. Hence, the proposed system can be used in hospitals to analyze brain CT images.
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a neurological condition that can cause severe physical and mental disabilities or death. One of the serious consequences of TBI is intracranial hematoma that can be diagnosed through early and proper analysis of the brain CT images. Proper estimation of hematoma volume is essential for envisaging the 30-day outcome. The Tada formula is the gold standard used by radiologists to quantify the hematoma volume in CT images which will provide accurate results only for symmetrical hematoma configurations. Manual volume assessment is further subjective and time-consuming, especially in real-time acute clinical care set-up. Hence a computer-aided scheme that uses image processing techniques for rapid, precise, and reliable assessment of hematoma volume is developed. The CT images are pre-processed using histogram equalization and gray matter is further extracted using thresholding and morphological operations. Then the hematoma regions are extracted using thresholding and the 3D hematoma volume for the entire CT scan is computed by multiplying the image width and the total area of hematoma in all CT images. The obtained hematoma volumes are clinically validated by radiologist and the proposed approach achieved an average accuracy of 89.51%. A 3D modeling of the hematoma regions in a CT scan was further generated to provide an extensive visual aid for improved hematoma interpretation and strategic analysis. The entire process of automated hematoma volume computation and generation of 3D volume in a CT scan took around 13 seconds using standalone system. The outcomes of the experiment show that the proposed method can be used as a medical support system for rapid and accurate diagnosis of hematoma.
The current work proposes an efficient assessment of hypertension (HTN) using a Directional-Guided Motion Sensitive (DGMS) descriptor and Machine Learning (ML) algorithm. The main objective of the proposed work is to automate the detection of HTN using ultrasound (US) images. The four-chamber US images from 70 healthy subjects and 70 HTN patients are collected. A novel pipelined architecture has been developed in two stages with four phases: preprocessing, feature extraction using DGMS descriptor, feature ranking and selection, and classification using shallow K-Nearest Neighbor classifier. The proposed model has achieved a classification accuracy of 98% using a set of prominent features, predominating the performance attained by other approaches. This study suggests US contains predictive signals even when standard measures are normal and lays the groundwork for artificial intelligence-assisted cardiac assessment to aid quicker, more objective diagnosis and earlier treatment. If further validated on additional diverse patient data, the technology could be integrated into clinics to enhance HTN detection through automated, early discernment of subtle manifestations missed by human eyes and traditional metrics.
Heart is an important and hardest working muscular organ of the human body. Inability of the heart to restore normal perfusion to the entire body refers to cardiac failure, which then with symptoms results in manifestation of congestive heart failure (CHF). Impairment in systolic function associated with chronic dilation of left ventricle is referred as dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM). The clinical examination, surface electrocardiogram (ECG), chest X-ray, blood markers and echocardiography play major role in the diagnosis of CHF. Though the ECG manifests chamber enlargement changes, it does not possess sensitive marker for the diagnosis of DCM, whereas echocardiographic assessment can effectively reveal the presence of asymptomatic DCM. This work proposes an automated screening method for classifying normal and CHF echocardiographic images affected due to DCM using variational mode decomposition technique. The texture features are extracted from variational mode decomposed image. These features are selected using particle swarm optimization and classified using support vector machine classifier with different kernel functions. We have validated our experiment using 300 four-chamber echocardiography images (150: normal, 150: CHF) obtained from 50 normal and 50 CHF patients. Our proposed approach yielded maximum average accuracy, sensitivity and specificity of 99.33%, 98.66% and 100%, respectively, using ten features. Thus, the developed diagnosis system can effectively detect CHF in its early stage using ultrasound images and aid the clinicians in their diagnosis.
Celiac Disease (CD) is a common ailment that affects approximately 1% of the world population. Automated CD detection can help experts during the diagnosis of this condition at an early stage and bring significant benefits to both patients and healthcare providers. For this purpose, scientists have created automatic and semi-automatic CD diagnostic support systems. In this study, we performed information extraction methods that were found useful for efforts to differentiate CD versus non-CD. To focus the review process, only methods for endoscopy, video capsule endoscopy (VCE) and biopsy image analyses were considered. As described herein, we have learned that statistical and non-linear methods are most important for information extraction. These information extraction tools might benefit clinical workflows by reducing intra- and inter-observer variability. However, bias, introduced by resolving design choices during the creation of diagnostic support systems, may limit the general validity of the performance results, impacting the transferability of study outcomes. Therefore, having am overview of information extraction tools. Together with their general and specific limitations, might be assistive in improving the information extraction process. We hope our review results will provide a foundation for the design of next-generation statistical and nonlinear methods that can be used in CD detection systems. We have also compared various review articles and discussed recommendations to improve CD diagnosis. From this review, it is evident that CD diagnosis is slowly moving away from conventional techniques towards advanced deep learning techniques.
Automated crowd behaviour analysis and monitoring is a challenging task due to the unpredictable nature of the crowd within a particular scene and across different scenes. The prior knowledge of the type of scene under consideration is a crucial mid-level information, which could be utilized to develop robust crowd behaviour analysis systems. In this paper, we propose an approach to automatically detect the type of a crowded scene based on the global motion patterns of the objects within the scene. Three different types of scenes whose global motion pattern characteristics vary from uniform to non-uniform are considered in this work, namely structured, semi-structured, and unstructured scenes, respectively. To capture the global motion pattern characteristics of an input crowd scene, we first extract the motion information in the form of trajectories using a key-point tracker and then compute the average angular orientation feature of each trajectory. This paper utilizes these angular features to introduce a novel feature vector, termed as Histogram of Angular Deviations (HAD), which depicts the distribution of the pair-wise angular deviation values for each trajectory vector. Since angular deviation information is resistant to changes in scene perspectives, we consider it as a key feature for distinguishing the scene types. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed HAD-based feature vector in classifying the crowded scenes, we build a crowd scene classification model by training the classical machine learning algorithms on the publicly available Collective Motion Database. The experimental results demonstrate the superior crowd classification performance of the proposed approach as compared to the existing methods. In addition to this, we propose a technique based on quantizing the angular deviation values to reduce the feature dimension and subsequently introduce a novel crowd scene structuredness index to quantify the structuredness of an input crowded scene based on its HAD.
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a burgeoning medical disorder across the world particularly among young adults and children. TBI can cause intracranial hematoma (ICH), a lethal condition which requires prompt and accurate interpretation of computed tomography (CT) images for timely diagnosis and treatment. Since manual detection of CT images is a tedious and operator-dependent task, a deep learning framework is proposed for locating and categorizing ICH for improved diagnostic performance. Firstly, the input images are processed by using various techniques such as local directional pattern, local binary pattern, and windowing. Then the single stage YOLOv5 object detection model with faster spatial pyramid pooling is applied to detect hematoma regions of various types in the brain. The proposed model using windowing approach realized an overall mAP of 0.969, precision of 0.945 and recall of 0.943. The experimental results from the research study demonstrated that the suggested framework can help radiologists in strategic decision-making and improve quality care to the patients.
Nearly 264 million people around the globe currently suffer from clinical depression, according to the World Health Organization. Although there are diagnostic techniques and treatments presently used by professionals, they are not always helpful. Herein, we suggest the use of advanced technological methods to diagnose depressed patients correctly. A machine learning approach is presented, which uses the electroencephalogram for diagnostics. The model extracts multiple features by applying a continuous wavelet transform (CWT) for each recording. These recordings are employed to train and test the model, with data gathered from 15 depressed and 15 normal patients. After the features are extracted from these recordings, it is organized into matrix form. The features are dimensionally reduced using kernel‐principal component analysis and principal component analysis techniques, ranked using Student's t ‐test, and then labelled as normal or depressed with various classifiers. Accuracies of 99.33% and 99.13% were achieved for the right and left hemispheres of the brain, respectively, and 99.26% for the combined hemispheres of the brain. As compared to the discrete and empirical wavelet transform feature extraction methods, the CWT attained the best results. A depression severity index was also developed, using two features for discriminating the classes: normal versus depressed.
Emotions have a significant impact on a person's behavior. Expression reflects how people perceive events, interactions, and judgment. It is possible to identify emotions and categorize them using several techniques, including electroencephalography (EEG) signals, gestures, facial expressions, speech patterns, etc. However, emotion recognition using physiological signals has gained popularity owing to its authenticity. In this study, 54 attributes were extracted from each EEG channel to gather emotional information. These attributes were then fed to multiple classifiers and the results were compared. The study attained a maximum accuracy of 89.52% for channel T7 - 24 using ensemble bagged tree classifiers.
Intracranial tumors arise from constituents of the brain and its meninges. Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most common adult primary intracranial neoplasm and is categorized as high‐grade astrocytoma according to the World Health Organization (WHO). The survival rate for 5 and 10 years after diagnosis is under 10%, contributing to its grave prognosis. Early detection of GBM enables early intervention, prognostication, and treatment monitoring. Computer‐aided diagnostics (CAD) is a computerized process that helps to differentiate between GBM and low‐grade gliomas (LGG), using the perceptible analysis of magnetic resonance (MR) of the brain. This study proposes a framework consisting of a feature fusion algorithm with cascaded autoencoders (CAEs), referred to as FFCAEs. Here we utilized two CAEs and extracted the relevant features from multiple CAEs. Inspired by the existing work on fusion algorithms, the obtained features are then fused by using a novel fusion algorithm. Finally, the resultant fused features are classified with the Softmax classifier to arrive at an average classification accuracy of 96.7%, which is 2.45% more than the previously best‐performing model. The method is shown to be efficacious thus, it can be useful as a utility program for doctors.
A brain tumor is an abnormal mass of tissue located inside the skull. In addition to putting pressure on the healthy parts of the brain, it can lead to significant health problems. Depending on the region of the brain tumor, it can cause a wide range of health issues. As malignant brain tumors grow rapidly, the mortality rate of individuals with this cancer can increase substantially with each passing week. Hence it is vital to detect these tumors early so that preventive measures can be taken at the initial stages. Computer-aided diagnostic (CAD) systems, in coordination with artificial intelligence (AI) techniques, have a vital role in the early detection of this disorder. In this review, we studied 124 research articles published from 2000 to 2022. Here, the challenges faced by CAD systems based on different modalities are highlighted along with the current requirements of this domain and future prospects in this area of research.
Polarized light interacts with healthy and abnormal tissue, revealing structural information linked to pathology. We propose application of machine learning to achieve automated, accurate classification of tissue images acquired from Stokes-Mueller polarization microscope.
Intracranial hematoma due to traumatic brain injury is a serious health concern with rates of morbidity and mortality that are increasing worldwide. Manual identification is slow, subject to observer variabilities, and the existing automated techniques for intracranial hematoma detection in non-contrast computed tomography images cannot effectively detect multiple lesions of irregular sizes and shapes. Therefore, a computer-aided system using different window settings, YOLOv5s, cascaded attention module, and spatial pyramid pooling-fast is proposed to detect hematoma types, namely acute intraparenchymal, intraventricular, subdural, epidural, subarachnoid, and chronic subdural. Firstly, the computed tomography images are pre-processed using a window-based stacking approach wherein a three-channel image is generated by stacking grayscale images obtained with the aid of multiple window settings, i.e, brain, bone, and subdural. Secondly, a cascaded attention module is constructed in the neck of the YOLOv5s model to improve its detection performance by placing the convolution block attention module in serial with the efficient channel attention module. The cascaded attention module enriches the feature representation of various hematoma types in complex backgrounds especially when they are small and inconspicuous. The spatial pyramid pooling is replaced by a spatial pyramid pooling-fast to reduce the computational parameters and accelerate the feature fusion ability. The proposed deep learning model is trained, validated, and tested with 15,921 images from the brain haemorrhage extended dataset and it achieved overall precision, recall, F1-score, and mean average precision at 0.5, and mean average precision at 0.5:0.95 of 0.935, 0.908, 0.921, 0.943 and 0.65 respectively. The experimental results show that in comparison to the original YOLOv5s model and state-of-the-art methods, the model was able to localize and classify the acute or chronic instances of five hematoma subtypes in an individual image with improved precision and recall values. Hence the proposed system can be used in hospitals for the early and accurate detection of hematoma.
One of the foremost causes of death in males worldwide is prostate cancer. The identification, detection and diagnosis of the same is very crucial in saving lives. In this paper, we present an efficient gland segmentation model using digital histopathology and deep learning. These methods have the potential to revolutionize medicine by identifying hidden patterns within the image. The recent improvements in data acquisition, processing and analysis of Deep Learning Models has made Artificial Intelligence driven healthcare a very lucrative area, in terms of data inference and delivering meaningful insights. This study presents an automated method for segmenting histopathological images of human prostate glands. The main focus is developing new methods for segmenting histopathological images of prostate gland using a multi-channel algorithm with an attention mechanism to detect important areas. We compare our results with a host of contemporary techniques and show that our method performs better at the segmentation task for histopathological imagery. Our method is able to delineate gland and background parts with an average Dice-coefficient of 0.9168. In this attention-based model we propose for semantic segmentation of prostate glands the potential to provide accurate segmentation versus tumor features, which has significant implications for medical screening applications.
Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) is a devastating and life-threatening medical condition that can result in long-term physical and mental disabilities and even death. Early and accurate detection of Intracranial Hemorrhage (ICH) in TBI is crucial for analysis and treatment, as the condition can deteriorate significantly with time. Hence, a rapid, reliable, and cost-effective computer-aided approach that can initially capture the hematoma features is highly relevant for real-time clinical diagnostics. In this study, the Gray Level Occurrence Matrix (GLCM), the Gray Level Run Length Matrix (GLRLM), and Hu moments are used to generate the texture features. The best set of discriminating features are obtained using various meta-heuristic algorithms, and these optimal features are subjected to different classifiers. The synthetic samples are generated using ADASYN to compensate for the data imbalance. The proposed CAD system attained 95.74% accuracy, 96.93% sensitivity, and 94.67% specificity using statistical and GLRLM features along with KNN classifier. Thus, the developed automated system can enhance the accuracy of hematoma detection, aid clinicians in the fast interpretation of CT images, and streamline triage workflow.