June 26

Add to Calendar 2019-06-26 16:00:00 2019-06-26 17:00:00 America/New_York Generative modeling of medical images Probabilistic inference consists of estimating a probabilitydistribution based on a limited number of randomly sampledobservations. When these observations are images, Euclidean inference(assuming no prior covariance among voxels) often fails to estimate arepresentative distribution of the data. This problem can be overcomeby accounting for two characteristics of images: first, theirintrinsic smoothness, which is captured by a local covariance amongvoxels; and second, their topology, which captures the fact that theobjects represented in the images are invariant under some families oftransformations (e.g., multiplicative or additive changes ofappearance, affine or non-linear spatial deformations).In this talk I will show that a set of images can be described by amean and a distribution of transformations (of a given type), suchthat a single transformation from the distribution would map the meanimage to a sample from the set of images, and that the particulartransformation type depends on the nature of the variability to bemodeled. I will show two practical applications capitalizing on thisframework: the estimation of sensitivity fields in multi-coil MRacquisitions, and the estimation of brain templates in computationalanatomy. I will then show that by extending the model of priorcovariance from capturing local smoothness only, to having anon-stationary form, more structured deviations from the mean imagecan be captured. This concept will be applied to the estimation ofshape and appearance variability in the human brain. 32-D451

June 24

Add to Calendar 2019-06-24 10:00:00 2019-06-24 11:00:00 America/New_York Optimal transport Optimal transport is a mathematical theory linking probability togeometry. Originally proposed in operations research and mathematicaltheory, OT has experienced reinvigorated interest in machine learning,computer vision, graphics, and other applied disciplines thanks to newefficient algorithms and a variety of applications. In this tutorial,I will summarize the basic constructions in optimal transport theoryas well as algorithms for evaluating transport distances in practice.We will conclude by surveying a few of the many modern computationalapplications of optimal transport and some open problems in thisdiscipline. Emphasis will be put on developing intuition rather thanformalism. 32-D463 (Star)

May 09

Add to Calendar 2019-05-09 16:00:00 2019-05-09 17:00:00 America/New_York Recent advances in fetal imaging The talk will present recent work on fetal imaging at KCL where wehave been working to develop comprehensive techniques working acrossMRI modalities and seeking to address many challenges associated withmotion, field variations and efficiency by integrating MR physics,data correction strategies and image analysis. 32-D507

May 06

Add to Calendar 2019-05-06 15:00:00 2019-05-06 16:00:00 America/New_York On reconstruction, detection and segmentation with networks I will talk about three big problems in medical image analysis: MRIreconstruction, outlier detection and segmentation. The talk will bedivided in two parts. In the first part, I will describe probabilisticmodels that use priors learned through neural networks and apply themfor MRI reconstruction and outlier detection. Results will show thatprobabilistic models when used with appropriately strong priors canlead to competitive results in reconstruction and outlierdetection. In the second part, I will describe our efforts towardslearning segmentation models with as little as one labeled volumethrough optimized data augmentation. I will pose the trainingprocedure of a segmentation model as an optimization over segmentationand augmentation procedures. This joint view will lead to higheraccuracies compared to other augmentation and semi-supervised learningstrategies. 32-D407

April 08

Markerless high-frequency prospective motion correction for brain MRI

Robert Frost
Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Harvard Medical School
Add to Calendar 2019-04-08 15:00:00 2019-04-08 16:00:00 America/New_York Markerless high-frequency prospective motion correction for brain MRI Head motion during MRI of the brain is widely recognized as a majorproblem in both clinical practice and neuroimaging research. Smallmovements can easily cause artifacts when a single image is encodedover several minutes. If head motion can be measured during the scanthen corrections can be applied retrospectively to the k-space data,or if the tracking information is available quickly, the imageencoding can be adjusted in real-time to compensate for head motion,so that high-quality images are available immediately after the scan.This talk will: 1) show how head motion can be measured with the MRscanner or with cameras for prospective correction; and 2) presentrecent results using a commercial "markerless" face tracking system(TracInnovations, Denmark). External camera systems offer the benefitsof being independent of the scan and providing high-frequency motioninformation, however, usually some form of optical marker needs to beattached to the patient's head. The "markerless" 3D surface trackingtechnology is unique in that a marker is not required, making ithighly relevant from a workflow perspective, e.g. for use with youngchildren. We will demonstrate markerless prospective motioncorrection in high-isotropic-resolution anatomical scans as well aswidely-used clinical T2 and FLAIR MRI. Advantages of high-frequencycorrection every 50 ms during continuous head motion will also beshown. 32-D407

January 23

Add to Calendar 2019-01-23 16:00:00 2019-01-23 17:00:00 America/New_York Invariant Representations and the Scanner Problem Scanner bias is a known source of variation in modern multi-siteimaging studies. Current best practices all use forms of regression,covarying for site. In this talk I will describe an alternate methodthat instead exploits invariant representations and the dataprocessing inequality, with preliminary results on a multi-sitediffusion MRI dataset.Along the way I will describe recent results from our group onlearning such invariant representations in a variational setting(using VAE), implications for adversarial training schema, and otheruse cases of invariant representations, such as style transfer andfair representation. 32-D507

December 06

Add to Calendar 2018-12-06 16:00:00 2018-12-06 17:00:00 America/New_York Resolution Enhancement and Anti-aliasing in 3D and 2D MRI Resolution in MRI is often sacrificed in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)for faster imaging or higher signal to noise ratios. A common tradeoff isto acquire data with thicker through-plane resolution than in-planeresolution. In addition to the introduction of poor resolution in oneorientation, this strategy also tends to introduce aliasing and itsaccompanying high-frequency artifacts. In this talk, a new approach thatuses the presence of both low-res and high-res information as well asaliased and non-aliased information in these types of acquisitions toenhance resolution and reduce aliasing is described. The approach, basedon the use of a fully convolutional deep neural network trained on patchesfrom the image itself, does not require external atlases or the assumptionof self-similarity across spatial scales or across tissue contrasts. Thistalk provides some background and history on super-resolutionreconstruction and then presents the new algorithm, SMORE, along withseveral experiments to illustrate and quantify its performance. Overall,this approach opens up new opportunities for improved medical imageanalysis using existing data as well as new opportunities for fasterimaging. 32-D507

November 09

Add to Calendar 2018-11-09 11:00:00 2018-11-09 12:00:00 America/New_York AI in Medical Image Computing Increasing availability of medical imaging data with respect toquantity, resolution and modalities, pose challenges to traditionalprocessing and analysis methods. Large cohort studies such as theADNI, Human Connectome Project, UK Biobank, Rhineland studyetc. collect rich data on 10-thousands of individuals. In order toinvestigate etiology, progression, treatment, risk and preservingfactors of neurodegenerative diseases we need descriptive features,obtained by scalable automatic processing methods. Traditionalapproaches that depend on non-rigid atlas registration andsegmentation, however, are very slow (many hours up to a day for asingle image) and thus not efficient enough to handle big data orprovide quick results as needed in personalised medicine. We developfast AI methods for large multimodal datasets using deep learning thatcan process images in minutes rather than hours or days. We willdemonstrate results of full brain segmentation and corticalparcellation obtained in under 1 minute. We also use similar networkssuccessfully for fat segmentation in Dixon MRI. Furthermore, wedemonstrate that novel complex networks can be used to reconstructunder-sampled images from K-space (raw MRI) data efficiently. Finally,we will introduce advanced geometry-based features (e.g. shape andlateral asymmetry analysis) that are sensitive to early diseaseeffects. 32-397

November 02

AI-enabled Neurology

Jorge Cardoso
King's College London
Add to Calendar 2018-11-02 11:00:00 2018-11-02 12:00:00 America/New_York AI-enabled Neurology Recent developments in artificial intelligence and the availability oflarge scale medical imaging datasets allow us to learn how the humanbrain truly looks like from a biological, physiological, anatomicaland pathological point-of-view. This learning process can be furtheraugmented by diagnostic and radiological report data available inclinical systems, providing an integrated view of the humaninterpretation of medical imaging data. This talk will present howthese models can learn from big and unstructured data and then be usedas tools for precision medicine, where we aim to translate advancedimaging technologies and biomarkers to clinical practice in order tostreamline the clinical workflow and improve the quality of care. Thisprocess of technical translation requires deep algorithmic integrationinto the radiological workflow, fully automated image processing,quality control and assurance, extensive validation on clinical gradedata, and the deployment of an automated reporting system thatsummarizes a complex set of imaging biomarkers, highlighting thepresence of abnormalities. 32-D507

September 24

Add to Calendar 2018-09-24 15:00:00 2018-09-24 16:00:00 America/New_York Blood flow and solute transfer in feto-placental capillary networks Throughout the mammalian species, solute exchange takes place incomplex microvascular networks. In recent years, multi-scale modelshave proved successful in investigating the structure-functionrelationship of such networks in specific contexts. However, generalmethods for incorporating experimental data on complex, heterogeneouscapillary networks into whole-organ multi-scale models remainunder-developed. Here we introduce a theoretical framework, testedagainst image-based computations, for quantifying the transportcapacity of feto-placental capillary networks using experimentaldata. We find that solute transfer can be described using anear-universal physical scaling based on two non-dimensionalparameters (the diffusive capacity and a Damköhler number), which canbe extracted from microscopy images via standard computational andimage-analysis tools. 32-D507