Objective Stroke is the third leading cause of death worldwide,with the highest incidence in Asia,particularly in China,where smoking remains a major risk factor.The smoking prevalence in China is similar to that in A...Objective Stroke is the third leading cause of death worldwide,with the highest incidence in Asia,particularly in China,where smoking remains a major risk factor.The smoking prevalence in China is similar to that in Asia.Whether the risk estimates for smoking-related stroke in China and all Asian countries are still unknown which is worth evaluating.Thus,this study aims to compare the Relative Risk(RR)of smoking-attributed stroke among the Chinese and Asian populations.Methods A literature search was conducted from the inception to September 10,2022.Studies meeting the criteria were included.The articles were screened,and related information was extracted.Pooled RRs stratified by smoking status and sex were analyzed,including subgroup analyses for China,other Asian countries,and Asia overall.Finally,publication bias and sensitivity analyses were conducted.Results Thirty-seven articles on the Chinese population and 15 on other Asian populations were included,with a mean Newcastle-Ottawa scale(NOS)score of 7.25.About ever smokers,there had no statistical difference existed in both sexes and females between China and other Asian countries,while the RR of males in other Asian countries[2.31(1.38,3.86)]was higher than that in China[1.21(1.15,1.26)];further subgroup analysis indicated that other Asian countries had higher RR[3.76(3.02,4.67)]in the morbidity subgroup.The RRs of both sexes,males and females,between China and the whole of Asia were not statistically different.As for current and former smokers,no meaningful statistical difference was observed in the pooled RRs of both sexes,males and females,in China,other Asian countries,and all of Asia.Conclusion The RR of males ever smokers in China was smaller than that in other Asian countries due to the few articles of morbidity subgroup,but had no statistical difference with the whole of Asia;other groups of ever smokers,current smokers,and former smokers were not statistically significant with other Asian countries or the whole of Asia.展开更多
Population aging is one of the common challenges in the current world.As people age,the body’s tissues including cells,and molecules inevitably degrade,and their functions gradually decline,causing various age-relate...Population aging is one of the common challenges in the current world.As people age,the body’s tissues including cells,and molecules inevitably degrade,and their functions gradually decline,causing various age-related diseases like Alzheimer’s disease,osteoporosis,low immunity,glucose and lipid metabolism disorders,and cardiovascular diseases.With the continuous increase of the elderly population,the pressure on the medical industry is increasing.To lower the burden on the medical industry and increase the average age of the elderly,it is vital to explore effective anti-aging materials.Ginseng Radix et Rhizoma(Renshen),as a traditional and precious Chinese medicinal herb,is known as the“king of all herbs”.It is famous for its effects of“tonifying Qi,restoring pulse”(helping with the generation of Qi(the fundamental,vital energy that continuously flows within the body)and the circulation of blood)and strengthening the body,nourishing the spleen and lungs,generating fluids and nourishing blood,calming the mind and improving intelligence.Recently,its anti-aging effect has received increasing attention from modern scientific research.This study summarizes the pharmacological effects of the main active ingredients of Renshen(ginsenosides,polysaccharides,etc.)on resisting aging,including preventing neuroaging,suppressing skin aging,mitigating ovarian aging,inhibiting osteoporosis and arthritis,enhancing the immune system of the elderly,protecting the cardiovascular system,resisting aging-induced fatigue and exerting the anti-tumor effects.Through network pharmacology and molecular docking,the anti-aging active ingredients of Renshen were screened,and the key targets and pathways of anti-aging active ingredients in Renshen were determined.Using network pharmacology,totally 106 drug targets and 3,479 disease targets were screened,and 79 common targets between aging and Renshen were identified.Three core targets were identified in the PPI network,including TNF,AKT1,and IL-1β.Molecular docking was used to obtain further verification.This study emphasizes the potential of Renshen as a source of anti-aging activity,which can be developed into a novel drug for the treatment of age-related diseases.展开更多
BACKGROUND:Hemiplegia,a prevalent stroke-related condition,is often studied for motor dysfunction;however,spasticity remains under-researched.Abnormal muscle tone significantly hinders hemiplegic patients’walking rec...BACKGROUND:Hemiplegia,a prevalent stroke-related condition,is often studied for motor dysfunction;however,spasticity remains under-researched.Abnormal muscle tone significantly hinders hemiplegic patients’walking recovery.OBJECTIVE:To determine whether early suspension-protected training with a personal assistant machine for stroke patients enhances walking ability and prevents muscle spasms.METHODS:Thirty-two early-stage stroke patients from Shenzhen University General Hospital and the China Rehabilitation Research Center were randomly assigned to the experimental group(n=16)and the control group(n=16).Both groups underwent 4 weeks of gait training under the suspension protection system for 30 minutes daily,5 days a week.The experimental group used the personal assistant machine during training.Three-dimensional gait analysis(using the Cortex motion capture system),Brunnstrom staging,Fugl-Meyer Assessment for lower limb motor function,Fugl-Meyer balance function,and the modified Ashworth Scale were evaluated within 1 week before the intervention and after 4 weeks of intervention.RESULTS AND CONCLUSION:After the 4-week intervention,all outcome measures showed significant changes in each group.The experimental group had a small but significant increase in the modified Ashworth Scale score(P<0.05,d=|0.15|),while the control group had a large significant increase(P<0.05,d=|1.48|).The experimental group demonstrated greater improvements in walking speed(16.5 to 38.44 cm/s,P<0.05,d=|4.01|),step frequency(46.44 to 64.94 steps/min,P<0.05,d=|2.32|),stride length(15.50 to 29.81 cm,P<0.05,d=|3.44|),and peak hip and knee flexion(d=|1.82|to|2.17|).After treatment,the experimental group showed significantly greater improvements than the control group in walking speed(38.44 vs.26.63 cm/s,P<0.05,d=|2.75|),stride length,peak hip and knee flexion(d=|1.31|to|1.45|),step frequency(64.94 vs.59.38 steps/min,P<0.05,d=|0.85|),and a reduced support phase(bilateral:24.31%vs.28.38%,P<0.05,d=|0.88|;non-paretic:66.19%vs.70.13%,P<0.05,d=|0.94|).For early hemiplegia,personal assistant machine-assisted gait training under the suspension protection system helps establish a correct gait pattern,prevents muscle spasms,and improves motor function.展开更多
Segmenting the lesion regions from the ultrasound （US） images is an important step in the intra-operative planning of some computer-aided therapies. High-Intensity Focused Ultrasound （HIFU）, as a popular computer-...Segmenting the lesion regions from the ultrasound （US） images is an important step in the intra-operative planning of some computer-aided therapies. High-Intensity Focused Ultrasound （HIFU）, as a popular computer-aided therapy, has been widely used in the treatment of uterine fibroids. However, such segmentation in HIFU remains challenge for two reasons： （1） the blurry or missing boundaries of lesion regions in the HIFU images and （2） the deformation of uterine fibroids caused by the patient＇s breathing or an external force during the US imaging process, which can lead to complex shapes of lesion regions. These factors have prevented classical active contour-based segmentation methods from yielding desired results for uterine fibroids in US images. In this paper, a novel active contour-based segmentation method is proposed, which utilizes the correlation information of target shapes among a sequence of images as prior knowledge to aid the existing active contour method. This prior knowledge can be interpreted as a unsupervised clustering of shapes prior modeling. Meanwhile, it is also proved that the shapes correlation has the low-rank property in a linear space, and the theory of matrix recovery is used as an effective tool to impose the proposed prior on an existing active contour model. Finally, an accurate method is developed to solve the proposed model by using the Augmented Lagrange Multiplier （ALM）. Experimental results from both synthetic and clinical uterine fibroids US image sequences demonstrate that the proposed method can consistently improve the performance of active contour models and increase the robustness against missing or misleading boundaries, and can greatly improve the efficiency of HIFU therapy.展开更多
In this paper, we present an efficient approach for unsupervised segmentation of natural and textural images based on the extraction of image features and a fast active contour segmentation model. We address the probl...In this paper, we present an efficient approach for unsupervised segmentation of natural and textural images based on the extraction of image features and a fast active contour segmentation model. We address the problem of textures where neither the gray-level information nor the boundary information is adequate for object extraction. This is often the case of natural images composed of both homogeneous and textured regions. Because these images cannot be in general directly processed by the gray-level information, we propose a new texture descriptor which intrinsically defines the geometry of textures using semi-local image information and tools from differential geometry. Then, we use the popular Kullback-Leibler distance to design an active contour model which distinguishes the background and textures of interest. The existence of a minimizing solution to the proposed segmentation model is proven. Finally, a texture segmentation algorithm based on the Split-Bregrnan method is introduced to extract meaningful objects in a fast way. Promising synthetic and real-world results for gray-scale and color images are presented.展开更多
The aim of this work is to develop an improved region based active contour and dynamic programming based method for accurate segmentation of left ventricle （LV） from multi-slice cine short axis cardiac magnetic reso...The aim of this work is to develop an improved region based active contour and dynamic programming based method for accurate segmentation of left ventricle （LV） from multi-slice cine short axis cardiac magnetic resonance （MR） images. Intensity inhomogeneity and weak object boundaries present in MR images hinder the segmentation accuracy. The proposed active contour model driven by a local Gaussian distribution fitting （LGDF） energy and an auxiliary global intensity fitting energy improves the accuracy of endocardial boundary detection. The weightage of the global energy fitting term is dynamically adjusted using a spatially varying weight function. Dynamic programming scheme proposed for the segmentation of epicardium considers the myocardium probability map and a distance weighted edge map in the cost matrix. Radial distance weighted technique and conical geometry are employed for segmenting the basal slices with left ventricle outflow tract （LVOT） and most apical slices. The proposed method is validated on a public dataset comprising 45 subjects from medical image computing and computer assisted interventions （MICCAI） 2009 segmentation challenge. The average percentage of good endocardial and epicardial contours detected is about 99%, average perpendicular distance of the detected good contours from the manual reference contours is 1.95 mm, and the dice similarity coefficient between the detected contours and the reference contours is 0.91. Correlation coefficient and the coefficient of determination between the ejection fraction measurements from manual segmentation and the automated method are respectively 0.9781 and 0.9567, for LV mass these values are 0.9249 and 0.8554. Statistical analysis of the results reveals a good agreement between the clinical parameters determined manually and those estimated using the automated method.展开更多
Segmentation is the key step in auto-interpretation of high-resolution spaceborne synthetic aperture radar（SAR） images. A novel method is proposed based on integrating the geometric active contour（GAC） and the sup...Segmentation is the key step in auto-interpretation of high-resolution spaceborne synthetic aperture radar（SAR） images. A novel method is proposed based on integrating the geometric active contour（GAC） and the support vector machine（SVM）models. First, the images are segmented by using SVM and textural statistics. A likelihood measurement for every pixel is derived by using the initial segmentation. The Chan-Vese model then is modified by adding two items： the likelihood and the distance between the initial segmentation and the evolving contour. Experimental results using real SAR images demonstrate the good performance of the proposed method compared to several classic GAC models.展开更多
A fast two-stage geometric active contour algorithm for image segmentation is developed. First, the Eikonal equation problem is quickly solved using an improved fast sweeping method, and a criterion of local minimum o...A fast two-stage geometric active contour algorithm for image segmentation is developed. First, the Eikonal equation problem is quickly solved using an improved fast sweeping method, and a criterion of local minimum of area gradient (LMAG) is presented to extract the optimal arrival time. Then, the final time function is passed as an initial state to an area and length minimizing flow model, which adjusts the interface more accurately and prevents it from leaking. For object with complete and salient edge, using the first stage only is able to obtain an ideal result, and this results in a time complexity of O(M), where M is the number of points in each coordinate direction. Both stages are needed for convoluted shapes, but the computation cost can be drastically reduced. Efficiency of the algorithm is verified in segmentation experiments of real images with different feature.展开更多
Gradient vector flow （GVF） is an effective external force for active contours, but its iso- tropic nature handicaps its performance. The recently proposed gradient vector flow in the normal direction （NGVF） is ani...Gradient vector flow （GVF） is an effective external force for active contours, but its iso- tropic nature handicaps its performance. The recently proposed gradient vector flow in the normal direction （NGVF） is anisotropic since it only keeps the diffusion along the normal direction of the isophotes; however, it has difficulties forcing a snake into long, thin boundary indentations. In this paper, a novel external force for active contours called normally generalized gradient vector flow （NGGVF） is proposed, which generalizes the NGVF formulation to include two spatially varying weighting functions. Consequently, the proposed NGGVF snake is anisotropic and would improve ac- tive contour convergence into long, thin boundary indentations while maintaining other desirable properties of the NGVF snake, such as enlarged capture range, initialization insensitivity and good convergence at concavities. The advantages on synthetic and real images are demonstrated.展开更多
A B-spline active contour model based on finite element method is presented, into which the advantages of a B-spline active contour attributing to its fewer parameters and its smoothness is built accompanied with redu...A B-spline active contour model based on finite element method is presented, into which the advantages of a B-spline active contour attributing to its fewer parameters and its smoothness is built accompanied with reduced computational complexity and better numerical stability resulted from the finite element method. In this model, a cubic B-spline segment is taken as an element, and the finite element method is adopted to solve the energy minimization problem of the B-spline active contour, thus to implement image segmentation. Experiment results verify that this method is efficient for B-spline active contour, which attains stable, accurate and faster convergence.展开更多
MGAC (Motion Geometric Active Contours), a new variational framework of geometric active contours to track multiple nonrigid moving objects in the clutter background in image sequences is presented. This framework, in...MGAC (Motion Geometric Active Contours), a new variational framework of geometric active contours to track multiple nonrigid moving objects in the clutter background in image sequences is presented. This framework, incorporating with the motion edge information, consists of motion detection and tracking stages. At the motion detection stage, the motion edge map provides an approximate edge map of the moving objects. Then, a tracking stage, merely using the static edge information, is considered to improve the motion detection result. Force field regularization method is used to extend the capture range of the edge attraction force field in both stages. Experiments demonstrate that the proposed framework is valid for tracking multiple nonrigid objects in the clutter background.展开更多
Automatic interpretation of the images of colon cell biopsies requires automatic segmentation of these cells in the image obtained. The active contour method for image segmentation is a well known method for automatic...Automatic interpretation of the images of colon cell biopsies requires automatic segmentation of these cells in the image obtained. The active contour method for image segmentation is a well known method for automatic detection of the cell contour. However, the application of this method on colon cell images was not effective. In this paper, the authors have proposed a new technique to reduce the analysis time needed to detect cells in a given image. This technique is based on the active contour method but now using a progressive division of the dimensions of the image to achieve convergence. The model proposed succeeded in detecting cells whose boundaries are not necessarily defined by a gradient. The initial curve can be anywhere in the image, and interior contours can be automatically detected. The developed algorithm was successfully applied on textured multispectral images of three types of cells, including benign hyperplasia （BH）, intraepithelial neoplasia （IN）, and carcinoma （Ca） cells.展开更多
In this paper, we propose a fast centerline extraction method to be used for gradient and direction vector flow of active contours. The gradient and direction vector flow is a recently reported active contour model ca...In this paper, we propose a fast centerline extraction method to be used for gradient and direction vector flow of active contours. The gradient and direction vector flow is a recently reported active contour model capable of significantly improving the image segmentation performance especially for complex object shape, by seamlessly integrating gradient vector flow and prior directional information. Since the prior directional information is provided by manual line drawing, it can be inconvenient for inexperienced users who might have difficulty in finding the best place to draw the directional lines to achieve the best segmentation performance. This paper describes a method to overcome this problem by automatically extracting centerlines to guide the users for providing the right directional information. Experimental results on synthetic and real images demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed method.展开更多
Liver hydatid disease is a common parasitic disease in farm and pastoral areas, which seriously influences people's health. Based on CT imaging features of this disease, an iterative approach for liver segmentatio...Liver hydatid disease is a common parasitic disease in farm and pastoral areas, which seriously influences people's health. Based on CT imaging features of this disease, an iterative approach for liver segmentation and hydatid lesion extraction simultaneously is proposed. In each iteration, our algorithm consists of two main steps: 1) according to the user-defined pixel seeds in the liver and hydatid lesion, Gaussian probability model fitting and smoothed Bayesian classification are applied to get initial segmentation of liver and lesion; 2) the parametric active contour model using priori shape force field is adopted to refine initial segmentation. We make subjective and objective evaluation on the proposed algorithm validity by the experiments of liver and hydatid lesion segmentation on different patients' CT slices. In comparison with ground-truth manual segmentation results, the experimental results show the effectiveness of our method to segment liver and hydatid lesion.展开更多
In the present study, a generalized active contour model of gradient vector flow is combined with the video techniques of Argus system to delineate and track sequential nearshore wave crest profiles in the shoaling pr...In the present study, a generalized active contour model of gradient vector flow is combined with the video techniques of Argus system to delineate and track sequential nearshore wave crest profiles in the shoaling process, up to their breaking on the shoreline. Previous applications of active contour models to water wave problems are limited to controllable wave tank experiments. By contrast, our application in this study is in a nearshore field environment where oblique images obtained under natural and varying condition of ambient light are employed. Existing Argus techniques produce plane image data or time series data from a selected small subset of discrete pixels. By contrast, the active contour model produces line image data along continuous visible curves such as wave crest profiles. The combination of these two existing techniques, the active contour model and Argus methodologies, facilitates the estimates of the direction wave field and phase speeds within the whole area covered by camera. These estimates are useful for the purpose of inverse calculation of the water depth. Applications of the present techniques to Hsi-tzu bay where a beach restoration program is currently undertaken are illustrated. This extension of Argus video techniques provides new application of optical remote sensing to study the hydrodynamics and morphology of a nearshore environment.展开更多
A novel active contour model is proposed, which incorporates local information distributions in a fuzzy energy function to effectively deal with the intensity inhomogeneity. Moreover, the proposed model is convex with...A novel active contour model is proposed, which incorporates local information distributions in a fuzzy energy function to effectively deal with the intensity inhomogeneity. Moreover, the proposed model is convex with respect to the variable which is used for extracting the contour. This makes the model independent on the initial condition and suitable for an automatic segmentation. Furthermore, the energy function is minimized in a computationally efficient way by calculating the fuzzy energy alterations directly. Experiments are carried out to prove the performance of the proposed model over some existing methods. The obtained results confirm the efficiency of the method.展开更多
A novel segmentation method for medical image with intensity inhomogeneity is introduced.In the proposed active contour model,both region and gradient information are taken into consideration.The former,i.e.,region-ba...A novel segmentation method for medical image with intensity inhomogeneity is introduced.In the proposed active contour model,both region and gradient information are taken into consideration.The former,i.e.,region-based fitting energy,draws upon the region information and guarantees the accurate extraction of inhomogeneous image's local information.The latter,i.e.,an edge indicator,weights the length penalizing term to consider the gradient constrain.Moreover,signed distance penalizing term is also added to ensure accurate computation and avoid the time-consuming re-initialization of evolving level set function.Experiments for synthetic and real images demonstrate the feasibility and superiority of the proposed model.展开更多
The measurement of thickness of material removed between serial sections is a crucial step of three-dimensional reconstruction. Active contour model is an efficient method for contour detection of objects on an image....The measurement of thickness of material removed between serial sections is a crucial step of three-dimensional reconstruction. Active contour model is an efficient method for contour detection of objects on an image. Based on the segmentation of the FeAl/ZrO2 composite image by using adaptive threshold, the gradient vector flow (GVF) snake was used to detect the contour of the indent. The horizontal diagonal length and the vertical diagonal length of the indent contour were acquired by measuring the distance from the uppermost snaxel to the lowermost snaxel and that from the leftmost snaxel to the rightmost snaxel respectively. Then the final diagonal length was gotten by averaging the vertical diagonal length and the horizontal diagonal length. The Vickers indenter was made by a square pyramidal-shaped diamond with opposite faces at an angle of 136°, so the geometrical relation was established between the thickness of material removed between two successive serial sections and the difference of diagonal length on the two serial sections. Based on the relation, the thickness of material removed between two successive serial sections was calculated using the two successive diagonals.展开更多
Traditional texture region location methods with Gabor features are often limited in the selection of Gabor filters and fail to deal with the target which contains both texture and non-texture parts.Thus,to solve this...Traditional texture region location methods with Gabor features are often limited in the selection of Gabor filters and fail to deal with the target which contains both texture and non-texture parts.Thus,to solve this problem,a two-step new model was proposed.In the first step,the original features extracted by Gabor filters are applied to training a self-organizing map(SOM) neural network and a novel merging scheme is presented to achieve the clustering.A back propagation(BP) network is used as a classifier to locate the target region approximately.In the second step,Chan-Vese active contour model is applied to detecting the boundary of the target region accurately and morphological processing is used to create a connected domain whose convex hull can cover the target region.In the experiments,the proposed method is demonstrated accurate and robust in localizing target on texture database and practical barcode location system as well.展开更多
基金funded by the State Key Laboratory Special Fund(2060204)Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences Innovation Fund for Medical Sciences(2023-I2M-2-001)Strengthen Capacity of Study and Application on the Burden of Disease in Health Care Systems in China:Establishment and Development of Chinese Burden of Disease Research and Dissemination Center(15-208)supported by the China Medical Board(CMB)。
文摘Objective Stroke is the third leading cause of death worldwide,with the highest incidence in Asia,particularly in China,where smoking remains a major risk factor.The smoking prevalence in China is similar to that in Asia.Whether the risk estimates for smoking-related stroke in China and all Asian countries are still unknown which is worth evaluating.Thus,this study aims to compare the Relative Risk(RR)of smoking-attributed stroke among the Chinese and Asian populations.Methods A literature search was conducted from the inception to September 10,2022.Studies meeting the criteria were included.The articles were screened,and related information was extracted.Pooled RRs stratified by smoking status and sex were analyzed,including subgroup analyses for China,other Asian countries,and Asia overall.Finally,publication bias and sensitivity analyses were conducted.Results Thirty-seven articles on the Chinese population and 15 on other Asian populations were included,with a mean Newcastle-Ottawa scale(NOS)score of 7.25.About ever smokers,there had no statistical difference existed in both sexes and females between China and other Asian countries,while the RR of males in other Asian countries[2.31(1.38,3.86)]was higher than that in China[1.21(1.15,1.26)];further subgroup analysis indicated that other Asian countries had higher RR[3.76(3.02,4.67)]in the morbidity subgroup.The RRs of both sexes,males and females,between China and the whole of Asia were not statistically different.As for current and former smokers,no meaningful statistical difference was observed in the pooled RRs of both sexes,males and females,in China,other Asian countries,and all of Asia.Conclusion The RR of males ever smokers in China was smaller than that in other Asian countries due to the few articles of morbidity subgroup,but had no statistical difference with the whole of Asia;other groups of ever smokers,current smokers,and former smokers were not statistically significant with other Asian countries or the whole of Asia.
基金supported by the Jilin Science and Technology Development Talent Special Project,Nos.20240601086RC,23JQ08(all to ZH)YDZJ202502CXJD077+1 种基金JLARS-2025-0802-09YDZJ202501ZYTS706.
文摘Population aging is one of the common challenges in the current world.As people age,the body’s tissues including cells,and molecules inevitably degrade,and their functions gradually decline,causing various age-related diseases like Alzheimer’s disease,osteoporosis,low immunity,glucose and lipid metabolism disorders,and cardiovascular diseases.With the continuous increase of the elderly population,the pressure on the medical industry is increasing.To lower the burden on the medical industry and increase the average age of the elderly,it is vital to explore effective anti-aging materials.Ginseng Radix et Rhizoma(Renshen),as a traditional and precious Chinese medicinal herb,is known as the“king of all herbs”.It is famous for its effects of“tonifying Qi,restoring pulse”(helping with the generation of Qi(the fundamental,vital energy that continuously flows within the body)and the circulation of blood)and strengthening the body,nourishing the spleen and lungs,generating fluids and nourishing blood,calming the mind and improving intelligence.Recently,its anti-aging effect has received increasing attention from modern scientific research.This study summarizes the pharmacological effects of the main active ingredients of Renshen(ginsenosides,polysaccharides,etc.)on resisting aging,including preventing neuroaging,suppressing skin aging,mitigating ovarian aging,inhibiting osteoporosis and arthritis,enhancing the immune system of the elderly,protecting the cardiovascular system,resisting aging-induced fatigue and exerting the anti-tumor effects.Through network pharmacology and molecular docking,the anti-aging active ingredients of Renshen were screened,and the key targets and pathways of anti-aging active ingredients in Renshen were determined.Using network pharmacology,totally 106 drug targets and 3,479 disease targets were screened,and 79 common targets between aging and Renshen were identified.Three core targets were identified in the PPI network,including TNF,AKT1,and IL-1β.Molecular docking was used to obtain further verification.This study emphasizes the potential of Renshen as a source of anti-aging activity,which can be developed into a novel drug for the treatment of age-related diseases.
文摘BACKGROUND:Hemiplegia,a prevalent stroke-related condition,is often studied for motor dysfunction;however,spasticity remains under-researched.Abnormal muscle tone significantly hinders hemiplegic patients’walking recovery.OBJECTIVE:To determine whether early suspension-protected training with a personal assistant machine for stroke patients enhances walking ability and prevents muscle spasms.METHODS:Thirty-two early-stage stroke patients from Shenzhen University General Hospital and the China Rehabilitation Research Center were randomly assigned to the experimental group(n=16)and the control group(n=16).Both groups underwent 4 weeks of gait training under the suspension protection system for 30 minutes daily,5 days a week.The experimental group used the personal assistant machine during training.Three-dimensional gait analysis(using the Cortex motion capture system),Brunnstrom staging,Fugl-Meyer Assessment for lower limb motor function,Fugl-Meyer balance function,and the modified Ashworth Scale were evaluated within 1 week before the intervention and after 4 weeks of intervention.RESULTS AND CONCLUSION:After the 4-week intervention,all outcome measures showed significant changes in each group.The experimental group had a small but significant increase in the modified Ashworth Scale score(P<0.05,d=|0.15|),while the control group had a large significant increase(P<0.05,d=|1.48|).The experimental group demonstrated greater improvements in walking speed(16.5 to 38.44 cm/s,P<0.05,d=|4.01|),step frequency(46.44 to 64.94 steps/min,P<0.05,d=|2.32|),stride length(15.50 to 29.81 cm,P<0.05,d=|3.44|),and peak hip and knee flexion(d=|1.82|to|2.17|).After treatment,the experimental group showed significantly greater improvements than the control group in walking speed(38.44 vs.26.63 cm/s,P<0.05,d=|2.75|),stride length,peak hip and knee flexion(d=|1.31|to|1.45|),step frequency(64.94 vs.59.38 steps/min,P<0.05,d=|0.85|),and a reduced support phase(bilateral:24.31%vs.28.38%,P<0.05,d=|0.88|;non-paretic:66.19%vs.70.13%,P<0.05,d=|0.94|).For early hemiplegia,personal assistant machine-assisted gait training under the suspension protection system helps establish a correct gait pattern,prevents muscle spasms,and improves motor function.
基金Supported by the National Basic Research Program of China(2011CB707904)the Natural Science Foundation of China(61472289)Hubei Province Natural Science Foundation of China(2015CFB254)
文摘Segmenting the lesion regions from the ultrasound （US） images is an important step in the intra-operative planning of some computer-aided therapies. High-Intensity Focused Ultrasound （HIFU）, as a popular computer-aided therapy, has been widely used in the treatment of uterine fibroids. However, such segmentation in HIFU remains challenge for two reasons： （1） the blurry or missing boundaries of lesion regions in the HIFU images and （2） the deformation of uterine fibroids caused by the patient＇s breathing or an external force during the US imaging process, which can lead to complex shapes of lesion regions. These factors have prevented classical active contour-based segmentation methods from yielding desired results for uterine fibroids in US images. In this paper, a novel active contour-based segmentation method is proposed, which utilizes the correlation information of target shapes among a sequence of images as prior knowledge to aid the existing active contour method. This prior knowledge can be interpreted as a unsupervised clustering of shapes prior modeling. Meanwhile, it is also proved that the shapes correlation has the low-rank property in a linear space, and the theory of matrix recovery is used as an effective tool to impose the proposed prior on an existing active contour model. Finally, an accurate method is developed to solve the proposed model by using the Augmented Lagrange Multiplier （ALM）. Experimental results from both synthetic and clinical uterine fibroids US image sequences demonstrate that the proposed method can consistently improve the performance of active contour models and increase the robustness against missing or misleading boundaries, and can greatly improve the efficiency of HIFU therapy.
基金supported by Swiss National Science Foundation Grant #205320-101621supported by ONR N00014-03-1-0071
文摘In this paper, we present an efficient approach for unsupervised segmentation of natural and textural images based on the extraction of image features and a fast active contour segmentation model. We address the problem of textures where neither the gray-level information nor the boundary information is adequate for object extraction. This is often the case of natural images composed of both homogeneous and textured regions. Because these images cannot be in general directly processed by the gray-level information, we propose a new texture descriptor which intrinsically defines the geometry of textures using semi-local image information and tools from differential geometry. Then, we use the popular Kullback-Leibler distance to design an active contour model which distinguishes the background and textures of interest. The existence of a minimizing solution to the proposed segmentation model is proven. Finally, a texture segmentation algorithm based on the Split-Bregrnan method is introduced to extract meaningful objects in a fast way. Promising synthetic and real-world results for gray-scale and color images are presented.
基金supported by Department of Science and Technology, Ministry of Science and Technology, India (No. DST/TSG/ICT/2010/08)
文摘The aim of this work is to develop an improved region based active contour and dynamic programming based method for accurate segmentation of left ventricle （LV） from multi-slice cine short axis cardiac magnetic resonance （MR） images. Intensity inhomogeneity and weak object boundaries present in MR images hinder the segmentation accuracy. The proposed active contour model driven by a local Gaussian distribution fitting （LGDF） energy and an auxiliary global intensity fitting energy improves the accuracy of endocardial boundary detection. The weightage of the global energy fitting term is dynamically adjusted using a spatially varying weight function. Dynamic programming scheme proposed for the segmentation of epicardium considers the myocardium probability map and a distance weighted edge map in the cost matrix. Radial distance weighted technique and conical geometry are employed for segmenting the basal slices with left ventricle outflow tract （LVOT） and most apical slices. The proposed method is validated on a public dataset comprising 45 subjects from medical image computing and computer assisted interventions （MICCAI） 2009 segmentation challenge. The average percentage of good endocardial and epicardial contours detected is about 99%, average perpendicular distance of the detected good contours from the manual reference contours is 1.95 mm, and the dice similarity coefficient between the detected contours and the reference contours is 0.91. Correlation coefficient and the coefficient of determination between the ejection fraction measurements from manual segmentation and the automated method are respectively 0.9781 and 0.9567, for LV mass these values are 0.9249 and 0.8554. Statistical analysis of the results reveals a good agreement between the clinical parameters determined manually and those estimated using the automated method.
基金supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(4117132741301361)+2 种基金the National Key Basic Research Program of China(973 Program)(2012CB719903)the Science and Technology Project of Ministry of Transport of People’s Republic of China(2012-364-X11-803)the Shanghai Municipal Natural Science Foundation(12ZR1433200)
文摘Segmentation is the key step in auto-interpretation of high-resolution spaceborne synthetic aperture radar（SAR） images. A novel method is proposed based on integrating the geometric active contour（GAC） and the support vector machine（SVM）models. First, the images are segmented by using SVM and textural statistics. A likelihood measurement for every pixel is derived by using the initial segmentation. The Chan-Vese model then is modified by adding two items： the likelihood and the distance between the initial segmentation and the evolving contour. Experimental results using real SAR images demonstrate the good performance of the proposed method compared to several classic GAC models.
文摘A fast two-stage geometric active contour algorithm for image segmentation is developed. First, the Eikonal equation problem is quickly solved using an improved fast sweeping method, and a criterion of local minimum of area gradient (LMAG) is presented to extract the optimal arrival time. Then, the final time function is passed as an initial state to an area and length minimizing flow model, which adjusts the interface more accurately and prevents it from leaking. For object with complete and salient edge, using the first stage only is able to obtain an ideal result, and this results in a time complexity of O(M), where M is the number of points in each coordinate direction. Both stages are needed for convoluted shapes, but the computation cost can be drastically reduced. Efficiency of the algorithm is verified in segmentation experiments of real images with different feature.
基金Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(60805004)the State Key Lab of Space Medicine Fundamen-tals and Application(SMFA09A16)
文摘Gradient vector flow （GVF） is an effective external force for active contours, but its iso- tropic nature handicaps its performance. The recently proposed gradient vector flow in the normal direction （NGVF） is anisotropic since it only keeps the diffusion along the normal direction of the isophotes; however, it has difficulties forcing a snake into long, thin boundary indentations. In this paper, a novel external force for active contours called normally generalized gradient vector flow （NGGVF） is proposed, which generalizes the NGVF formulation to include two spatially varying weighting functions. Consequently, the proposed NGGVF snake is anisotropic and would improve ac- tive contour convergence into long, thin boundary indentations while maintaining other desirable properties of the NGVF snake, such as enlarged capture range, initialization insensitivity and good convergence at concavities. The advantages on synthetic and real images are demonstrated.
基金the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.59975057).
文摘A B-spline active contour model based on finite element method is presented, into which the advantages of a B-spline active contour attributing to its fewer parameters and its smoothness is built accompanied with reduced computational complexity and better numerical stability resulted from the finite element method. In this model, a cubic B-spline segment is taken as an element, and the finite element method is adopted to solve the energy minimization problem of the B-spline active contour, thus to implement image segmentation. Experiment results verify that this method is efficient for B-spline active contour, which attains stable, accurate and faster convergence.
文摘MGAC (Motion Geometric Active Contours), a new variational framework of geometric active contours to track multiple nonrigid moving objects in the clutter background in image sequences is presented. This framework, incorporating with the motion edge information, consists of motion detection and tracking stages. At the motion detection stage, the motion edge map provides an approximate edge map of the moving objects. Then, a tracking stage, merely using the static edge information, is considered to improve the motion detection result. Force field regularization method is used to extend the capture range of the edge attraction force field in both stages. Experiments demonstrate that the proposed framework is valid for tracking multiple nonrigid objects in the clutter background.
文摘Automatic interpretation of the images of colon cell biopsies requires automatic segmentation of these cells in the image obtained. The active contour method for image segmentation is a well known method for automatic detection of the cell contour. However, the application of this method on colon cell images was not effective. In this paper, the authors have proposed a new technique to reduce the analysis time needed to detect cells in a given image. This technique is based on the active contour method but now using a progressive division of the dimensions of the image to achieve convergence. The model proposed succeeded in detecting cells whose boundaries are not necessarily defined by a gradient. The initial curve can be anywhere in the image, and interior contours can be automatically detected. The developed algorithm was successfully applied on textured multispectral images of three types of cells, including benign hyperplasia （BH）, intraepithelial neoplasia （IN）, and carcinoma （Ca） cells.
文摘In this paper, we propose a fast centerline extraction method to be used for gradient and direction vector flow of active contours. The gradient and direction vector flow is a recently reported active contour model capable of significantly improving the image segmentation performance especially for complex object shape, by seamlessly integrating gradient vector flow and prior directional information. Since the prior directional information is provided by manual line drawing, it can be inconvenient for inexperienced users who might have difficulty in finding the best place to draw the directional lines to achieve the best segmentation performance. This paper describes a method to overcome this problem by automatically extracting centerlines to guide the users for providing the right directional information. Experimental results on synthetic and real images demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed method.
基金Science Special Fund for "Special Training" of Ethnical Minority Professional and Technical Intelligent in Xinjiang sponsored by the Scienceand Technology Department of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Regiongrant number:200723104+1 种基金National Natural Science Foundation of Chinagrant number:30960097
文摘Liver hydatid disease is a common parasitic disease in farm and pastoral areas, which seriously influences people's health. Based on CT imaging features of this disease, an iterative approach for liver segmentation and hydatid lesion extraction simultaneously is proposed. In each iteration, our algorithm consists of two main steps: 1) according to the user-defined pixel seeds in the liver and hydatid lesion, Gaussian probability model fitting and smoothed Bayesian classification are applied to get initial segmentation of liver and lesion; 2) the parametric active contour model using priori shape force field is adopted to refine initial segmentation. We make subjective and objective evaluation on the proposed algorithm validity by the experiments of liver and hydatid lesion segmentation on different patients' CT slices. In comparison with ground-truth manual segmentation results, the experimental results show the effectiveness of our method to segment liver and hydatid lesion.
基金supported by the Science Council,Taiwan,under Grant No.NSC95-2221-E-006-475-MY2
文摘In the present study, a generalized active contour model of gradient vector flow is combined with the video techniques of Argus system to delineate and track sequential nearshore wave crest profiles in the shoaling process, up to their breaking on the shoreline. Previous applications of active contour models to water wave problems are limited to controllable wave tank experiments. By contrast, our application in this study is in a nearshore field environment where oblique images obtained under natural and varying condition of ambient light are employed. Existing Argus techniques produce plane image data or time series data from a selected small subset of discrete pixels. By contrast, the active contour model produces line image data along continuous visible curves such as wave crest profiles. The combination of these two existing techniques, the active contour model and Argus methodologies, facilitates the estimates of the direction wave field and phase speeds within the whole area covered by camera. These estimates are useful for the purpose of inverse calculation of the water depth. Applications of the present techniques to Hsi-tzu bay where a beach restoration program is currently undertaken are illustrated. This extension of Argus video techniques provides new application of optical remote sensing to study the hydrodynamics and morphology of a nearshore environment.
文摘A novel active contour model is proposed, which incorporates local information distributions in a fuzzy energy function to effectively deal with the intensity inhomogeneity. Moreover, the proposed model is convex with respect to the variable which is used for extracting the contour. This makes the model independent on the initial condition and suitable for an automatic segmentation. Furthermore, the energy function is minimized in a computationally efficient way by calculating the fuzzy energy alterations directly. Experiments are carried out to prove the performance of the proposed model over some existing methods. The obtained results confirm the efficiency of the method.
基金the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos.30801302 and 30872906)the "Medical and Engineering Crossing" Foundation of Shanghai Jiaotong University (No.40YG2009ZD102)
文摘A novel segmentation method for medical image with intensity inhomogeneity is introduced.In the proposed active contour model,both region and gradient information are taken into consideration.The former,i.e.,region-based fitting energy,draws upon the region information and guarantees the accurate extraction of inhomogeneous image's local information.The latter,i.e.,an edge indicator,weights the length penalizing term to consider the gradient constrain.Moreover,signed distance penalizing term is also added to ensure accurate computation and avoid the time-consuming re-initialization of evolving level set function.Experiments for synthetic and real images demonstrate the feasibility and superiority of the proposed model.
基金Sponsored by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No.60873089)the Doctoral Fund of Shandong Province( Grant No.2007BS04018)
文摘The measurement of thickness of material removed between serial sections is a crucial step of three-dimensional reconstruction. Active contour model is an efficient method for contour detection of objects on an image. Based on the segmentation of the FeAl/ZrO2 composite image by using adaptive threshold, the gradient vector flow (GVF) snake was used to detect the contour of the indent. The horizontal diagonal length and the vertical diagonal length of the indent contour were acquired by measuring the distance from the uppermost snaxel to the lowermost snaxel and that from the leftmost snaxel to the rightmost snaxel respectively. Then the final diagonal length was gotten by averaging the vertical diagonal length and the horizontal diagonal length. The Vickers indenter was made by a square pyramidal-shaped diamond with opposite faces at an angle of 136°, so the geometrical relation was established between the thickness of material removed between two successive serial sections and the difference of diagonal length on the two serial sections. Based on the relation, the thickness of material removed between two successive serial sections was calculated using the two successive diagonals.
基金Supported by Tianjin Natural Science Fundation (No.07JCZDJC05800)
文摘Traditional texture region location methods with Gabor features are often limited in the selection of Gabor filters and fail to deal with the target which contains both texture and non-texture parts.Thus,to solve this problem,a two-step new model was proposed.In the first step,the original features extracted by Gabor filters are applied to training a self-organizing map(SOM) neural network and a novel merging scheme is presented to achieve the clustering.A back propagation(BP) network is used as a classifier to locate the target region approximately.In the second step,Chan-Vese active contour model is applied to detecting the boundary of the target region accurately and morphological processing is used to create a connected domain whose convex hull can cover the target region.In the experiments,the proposed method is demonstrated accurate and robust in localizing target on texture database and practical barcode location system as well.
