Fusion of medical images based on salient features extraction by PSO optimized fuzzy logic in NSST domain

Application of Medical Image Navigation Technology in Minimally Invasive Puncture Robot

Microneedle puncture is a standard minimally invasive treatment and surgical method, which is widely used in extracting blood, tissues, and their secretions for pathological examination, needle-puncture-directed drug therapy, local anaesthesia, microwave ablation needle therapy, radiotherapy, and other procedures. The use of robots for microneedle puncture has become a worldwide research hotspot, and medical imaging navigation technology plays an essential role in preoperative robotic puncture path planning, intraoperative assisted puncture, and surgical efficacy detection. This paper introduces medical imaging technology and minimally invasive puncture robots, reviews the current status of research on the application of medical imaging navigation technology in minimally invasive puncture robots, and points out its future development trends and challenges.

Fusion of medical images using Nabla operator; Objective evaluations and step-by-step statistical comparisons

Since vectors include direction and magnitude, they have more information than scalars. So, converting the scalar images into the vector field leads achieving much information about the images that have been hidden in the spatial domain. In this paper, the proposed method fuses images after transforming the scalar field of images to a vector one. To transform the field, it uses Nabla operator. After that, the inverse transform is implemented to reconstruct the fused medical image. To show the performance of the proposed method and to evaluate it, different experiments and statistical comparisons were accomplished. Comparing the experimental results with the previous works, shows the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Multimodal medical image fusion using convolutional neural network and extreme learning machine

The emergence of multimodal medical imaging technology greatly increases the accuracy of clinical diagnosis and etiological analysis. Nevertheless, each medical imaging modal unavoidably has its own limitations, so the fusion of multimodal medical images may become an effective solution. In this paper, a novel fusion method on the multimodal medical images exploiting convolutional neural network (CNN) and extreme learning machine (ELM) is proposed. As a typical representative in deep learning, CNN has been gaining more and more popularity in the field of image processing. However, CNN often suffers from several drawbacks, such as high computational costs and intensive human interventions. To this end, the model of convolutional extreme learning machine (CELM) is constructed by incorporating ELM into the traditional CNN model. CELM serves as an important tool to extract and capture the features of the source images from a variety of different angles. The final fused image can be obtained by integrating the significant features together. Experimental results indicate that, the proposed method is not only helpful to enhance the accuracy of the lesion detection and localization, but also superior to the current state-of-the-art ones in terms of both subjective visual performance and objective criteria.

A Method for Medical Microscopic Images' Sharpness Evaluation Based on NSST and Variance by Combining Time and Frequency Domains

An algorithm for a sharpness evaluation of microscopic images based on non-subsampled shearlet wave transform (NSST) and variance is proposed in the present study for the purpose of improving the noise immunity and accuracy of a microscope's image autofocus. First, images are decomposed with the NSST algorithm; then, the decomposed sub-band images are subjected to variance to obtain the energy of the sub-band coefficients; and finally, the evaluation value is obtained from the ratio of the energy of the high- and low-frequency sub-band coefficients. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm delivers better noise immunity performance than other methods reviewed by this study while maintaining high sensitivity.

Multimodal medical image fusion with convolution sparse representation and mutual information correlation in NSST domain

Multimodal medical image is an effective method to solve a series of clinical problems, such as clinical diagnosis and postoperative treatment. In this study, a medical image fusion method based on convolutional sparse representation (CSR) and mutual information correlation is proposed. In this method, the source image is decomposed into one high-frequency and one low-frequency sub-band by non-subsampled shearlet transform. For the high-frequency sub-band, CSR is used for high-frequency coefficient fusion. For the low-frequency sub-band, different fusion strategies are used for different regions by mutual information correlation analysis. Analysis of two kinds of medical image fusion problems, namely, CT–MRI and MRI–SPECT, reveals that the performance of this method is robust in terms of five common objective metrics. Compared with the other six advanced medical image fusion methods, the experimental results show that the proposed method achieves better results in subjective vision and objective evaluation metrics.