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This work proposes a novel framework for brain tumor segmentation prediction in longitudinal multimodal MRI scans, comprising two methods; feature fusion and joint label fusion (JLF). The first method fuses stochastic multi-resolution texture features with tumor cell density feature to obtain tumor segmentation predictions in follow-up timepoints using data from baseline pre-operative timepoint. The cell density feature is obtained by solving the 3D reaction-diffusion equation for biophysical tumor growth modelling using the Lattice-Boltzmann method. The second method utilizes JLF to combine segmentation labels obtained from (i) the stochastic texture feature-based and Random Forest (RF)-based tumor segmentation method; and (ii) another state-of-the-art tumor growth and segmentation method, known as boosted Glioma Image Segmentation and Registration (GLISTRboost, or GB). We quantitatively evaluate both proposed methods using the Dice Similarity Coefficient (DSC) in longitudinal scans of 9 patients from the public BraTS 2015 multi-institutional dataset. The evaluation results for the feature-based fusion method show improved tumor segmentation prediction for the whole tumor(DSCWT = 0.314, p = 0.1502), tumor core (DSCTC = 0.332, p = 0.0002), and enhancing tumor (DSCET = 0.448, p = 0.0002) regions. The feature-based fusion shows some improvement on tumor prediction of longitudinal brain tumor tracking, whereas the JLF offers statistically significant improvement on the actual segmentation of WT and ET (DSCWT = 0.85 ± 0.055, DSCET = 0.837 ± 0.074), and also improves the results of GB. The novelty of this work is two-fold: (a) exploit tumor cell density as a feature to predict brain tumor segmentation, using a stochastic multi-resolution RF-based method, and (b) improve the performance of another successful tumor segmentation method, GB, by fusing with the RF-based segmentation labels.

Even though state-of-the-art convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have shown outstanding performance in a wide range of imaging applications, they typically require large amounts of high-quality training data to prevent over fitting. In the case of medical image segmentation, it is often difficult to gain access to large data sets, particularly those involving rare diseases, such as skull-based chordoma tumors. This challenge is exacerbated by the difficulty in performing manual delineations, which are time-consuming and can have inconsistent quality. In this work, we propose a deep ensemble method that learns multiple models, trained using a leave-one-out strategy, and then aggregates the outputs for test data through a boosting strategy. The proposed method was evaluated for chordoma tumor segmentation in head magnetic resonance images using three well-known CNN architectures; VNET, UNET, and Feature pyramid network (FPN). Significantly improved Dice scores (up to 27%) were obtained using the proposed ensemble method when compared to a single model trained with all available training subjects. The proposed ensemble method can be applied to any neural network based segmentation method to potentially improve generalizability when learning from a small sized dataset.

Ischemic stroke is the most common cerebrovascular disease, and its diagnosis, treatment, and study relies on non-invasive imaging. Algorithms for stroke lesion segmentation from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) volumes are intensely researched, but the reported results are largely incomparable due to different datasets and evaluation schemes. We approached this urgent problem of comparability with the Ischemic Stroke Lesion Segmentation (ISLES) challenge organized in conjunction with the MICCAI 2015 conference. In this paper we propose a common evaluation framework, describe the publicly available datasets, and present the results of the two sub-challenges: Sub-Acute Stroke Lesion Segmentation (SISS) and Stroke Perfusion Estimation (SPES). A total of 16 research groups participated with a wide range of state-of-the-art automatic segmentation algorithms. A thorough analysis of the obtained data enables a critical evaluation of the current state-of-the-art, recommendations for further developments, and the identification of remaining challenges. The segmentation of acute perfusion lesions addressed in SPES was found to be feasible. However, algorithms applied to sub-acute lesion segmentation in SISS still lack accuracy. Overall, no algorithmic characteristic of any method was found to perform superior to the others. Instead, the characteristics of stroke lesion appearances, their evolution, and the observed challenges should be studied in detail. The annotated ISLES image datasets continue to be publicly available through an online evaluation system to serve as an ongoing benchmarking resource (www.isles-challenge.org).

A glioma grading method using conventional structural magnetic resonance image (MRI) and molecular data from patients is proposed. The noninvasive grading of glioma tumors is obtained using multiple radiomic texture features including dynamic texture analysis, multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis, and multiresolution fractal Brownian motion in structural MRI. The proposed method is evaluated using two multicenter MRI datasets: (1) the brain tumor segmentation (BRATS-2017) challenge for high-grade versus low-grade (LG) and (2) the cancer imaging archive (TCIA) repository for glioblastoma (GBM) versus LG glioma grading. The grading performance using MRI is compared with that of digital pathology (DP) images in the cancer genome atlas (TCGA) data repository. The results show that the mean area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) is 0.88 for the BRATS dataset. The classification of tumor grades using MRI and DP images in TCIA/TCGA yields mean AUC of 0.90 and 0.93, respectively. This work further proposes and compares tumor grading performance using molecular alterations (IDH1/2 mutations) along with MRI and DP data, following the most recent World Health Organization grading criteria, respectively. The overall grading performance demonstrates the efficacy of the proposed noninvasive glioma grading approach using structural MRI.

In this work, we propose a novel method to improve texture based tumor segmentation by fusing cell density patterns that are generated from tumor growth modeling. In order to model tumor growth, we solve the reaction-diffusion equation by using Lattice-Boltzmann method (LBM). Computational tumor growth modeling obtains the cell density distribution that potentially indicates the predicted tissue locations in the brain over time. The density patterns is then considered as novel features along with other texture (such as fractal, and multifractal Brownian motion (mBm)), and intensity features in MRI for improved brain tumor segmentation. We evaluate the proposed method with about one hundred longitudinal MRI scans from five patients obtained from public BRATS 2015 data set, validated by the ground truth. The result shows significant improvement of complete tumor segmentation using ANOVA analysis for five patients in longitudinal MR images.

This work proposes a computationally efficient cell nuclei morphologic feature analysis technique to characterize the brain gliomas in tissue slide images. In this work, our contributions are two-fold: 1) obtain an optimized cell nuclei segmentation method based on the pros and cons of the existing techniques in literature, 2) extract representative features by k-mean clustering of nuclei morphologic features to include area, perimeter, eccentricity, and major axis length. This clustering based representative feature extraction avoids shortcomings of extensive tile [1] [2] and nuclear score [3] based methods for brain glioma grading in pathology images. Multilayer perceptron (MLP) is used to classify extracted features into two tumor types: glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) and low grade glioma (LGG). Quantitative scores such as precision, recall, and accuracy are obtained using 66 clinical patients’ images from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) [4] dataset. On an average ~94% accuracy from 10 fold cross-validation confirms the efficacy of the proposed method.

This chapter discusses multi-fractal texture estimation and characterization of brain lesions (necrosis, edema, enhanced tumor, non-enhanced tumor, etc.) in magnetic resonance (MR) images. This work formulates the complex texture of tumor in MR images using a stochastic model known as multi-fractional Brownian motion (mBm). Mathematical derivations of the mBm model and corresponding algorithm to extract the spatially varying multi-fractal texture feature are discussed. Extracted multi-fractal texture feature is fused with other effective features to enhance the tissue characteristics. Segmentation of the tissues is performed by using a feature-based classification method. The efficacy of the mBm texture feature in segmenting different abnormal tissues is demonstrated using a large-scale publicly available clinical dataset. Experimental results and performance of the methods confirm the efficacy of the proposed technique in an automatic segmentation of abnormal tissues in multimodal (T1, T2, Flair, and T1contrast) brain MRIs.

In this work, we propose a novel method to improve the predication of brain tumor growth by fusing with the state-of-art tumor segmentation. The Glioma Image Segmentation and Registration (GLISTR) is known for joint segmentation and deformable registration of brain scans as well as tumor growth prediction using MRI. This paper, for the first time in literature, aims to improve the tumor growth prediction by integrating the growth patterns of different tissues such as necrosis, edema, and tumor obtained from GLISTR with our stochastic texture-based tumor segmentation methods using a joint label fusion (JLF) technique. We evaluate the proposed method using several adult longitudinal cases from the 2015 BRATS [1] dataset. The experimental results show difference of these tissues growth prediction by applying GLISTR and joint label fusion. ANOVA analysis suggests statistically improvement in the longitudinal tumor core prediction results.

In this paper we report the set-up and results of the Multimodal Brain Tumor Image Segmentation Benchmark (BRATS) organized in conjunction with the MICCAI 2012 and 2013 conferences. Twenty state-of-the-art tumor segmentation algorithms were applied to a set of 65 multi-contrast MR scans of low- and high-grade glioma patients - manually annotated by up to four raters - and to 65 comparable scans generated using tumor image simulation software. Quantitative evaluations revealed considerable disagreement between the human raters in segmenting various tumor sub-regions (Dice scores in the range 74%-85%), illustrating the difficulty of this task. We found that different algorithms worked best for different sub-regions (reaching performance comparable to human inter-rater variability), but that no single algorithm ranked in the top for all sub-regions simultaneously. Fusing several good algorithms using a hierarchical majority vote yielded segmentations that consistently ranked above all individual algorithms, indicating remaining opportunities for further methodological improvements. The BRATS image data and manual annotations continue to be publicly available through an online evaluation system as an ongoing benchmarking resource., National Center for Research Resources (U.S.) (P41-RR14075), National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (U.S.) (R01EB013565), National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (U.S.) (U54-EB005149), National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (P41-RR13218), National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (U.S.) (P41-EB-015902), National Cancer Institute (U.S.) (R15CA115464)

This work proposes a novel non-invasive method for brain tumor grading using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Multifractal Detrended Fluctuation Analysis (MFDFA) [1] provides features that are useful for classification (grading) of brain tumors such as High Grade (HG) or Low Grade (LG) in MRI.

A stochastic model for characterizing tumor texture in brain magnetic resonance (MR) images is proposed. The efficacy of the model is demonstrated in patient-independent brain tumor texture feature extraction and tumor segmentation in magnetic resonance images (MRIs). Due to complex appearance in MRI, brain tumor texture is formulated using a multiresolution-fractal model known as multifractional Brownian motion (mBm). Detailed mathematical derivation for mBm model and corresponding novel algorithm to extract spatially varying multifractal features are proposed. A multifractal feature-based brain tumor segmentation method is developed next. To evaluate efficacy, tumor segmentation performance using proposed multifractal feature is compared with that using Gabor-like multiscale texton feature. Furthermore, novel patient-independent tumor segmentation scheme is proposed by extending the well-known AdaBoost algorithm. The modification of AdaBoost algorithm involves assigning weights to component classifiers based on their ability to classify difficult samples and confidence in such classification. Experimental results for 14 patients with over 300 MRIs show the efficacy of the proposed technique in automatic segmentation of tumors in brain MRIs. Finally, comparison with other state-of-the art brain tumor segmentation works with publicly available low-grade glioma BRATS2012 dataset show that our segmentation results are more consistent and on the average outperforms these methods for the patients where ground truth is made available.

Fusion of images from different modalities provides information that cannot be obtained by viewing the images separately and consecutively. Automatic fusion of thermal and visual images is of great interest in defense and medical applications. In this study, we implemented automatic intensity-based illumination, translation and scale invariant registration of deformable objects in thermal and visual images by maximization of a similarity measure such as generalized correlation ratio. This method was originally used to register ultrasound (US) and magnetic resonance images (MRI) successfully. In our current work, we propose a major modification to the original algorithm by investigating appropriate information content in the input data. The registration of facial thermal and visual images in this algorithm is achieved by maximization of the similarity measure between the input images in the appropriate image channel. The algorithm is tested using real facial images with illumination, scale, and translation variations and the results show acceptable accuracy.