MEDICAL IMAGING Edited by Okechukwu Felix Erondu Medical Imaging Edited by Okechukwu Felix Erondu Published by InTech Janeza Trdine 9, 51000 Rijeka, Croatia Copyright © 2011 InTech All chapters are Open Access distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license, which allows users to download, copy and build upon published articles even for commercial purposes, as long as the author and publisher are properly credited, which ensures maximum dissemination and a wider impact of our publications. After this work has been published by InTech, authors have the right to republish it, in whole or part, in any publication of which they are the author, and to make other personal use of the work. Any republication, referencing or personal use of the work must explicitly identify the original source. As for readers, this license allows users to download, copy and build upon published chapters even for commercial purposes, as long as the author and publisher are properly credited, which ensures maximum dissemination and a wider impact of our publications. Notice Statements and opinions expressed in the chapters are these of the individual contributors and not necessarily those of the editors or publisher. No responsibility is accepted for the accuracy of information contained in the published chapters. The publisher assumes no responsibility for any damage or injury to persons or property arising out of the use of any materials, instructions, methods or ideas contained in the book. Publishing Process Manager Marija Radja Technical Editor Teodora Smiljanic Cover Designer InTech Design Team Image Copyright Kirsty Pargeter, 2011. DepositPhotos First published December, 2011 Printed in Croatia A free online edition of this book is available at www.intechopen.com Additional hard copies can be obtained from orders@intechweb.org Medical Imaging, Edited by Okechukwu Felix Erondu p. cm. ISBN 978-953-307-774-1 free online editions of InTech Books and Journals can be found at www.intechopen.com Contents Preface IX Part 1 Basic Concepts in Medical Imaging 1 Chapter 1 Identification of Structures in Medical Images 3 Marina de Sá Rebelo, Sérgio Shiguemi Furuie, Lincoln de Assis Moura Jr, Eduardo Tavares Costa and Marco Antonio Gutierrez Chapter 2 Detection of Abnormalities in a Biological Tissue by Diffuse Optical Tomography: A Computational Study 27 H. Trabelsi, M. Gantri and E. Sediki Chapter 3 3D Ultrasound Image Segmentation: Interactive Texture-Based Approaches 43 Julien Olivier and Ludovic Paulhac Chapter 4 Radiation Protection in Medical Imaging 67 Horaţiu Colosi, Dan Colosi, Vlad Mureşan and Marius Roman Part 2 Image Processing Techniques 87 Chapter 5 Current Trends in Archiving and Transmission of Medical Images 89 Luís S. Ribeiro, Carlos Costa and José Luís Oliveira Chapter 6 Large-Scale User Facility Imaging and Scattering Techniques to Facilitate Basic Medical Research 107 Stephen D. Miller, Jean-Christophe Bilheux, Shaun S. Gleason, Trent L. Nichols, Philip R. Bingham and Mark L. Green Chapter 7 Tools to Improve the Patient’s Processes at Imaging Centers 135 Liliana Neriz and Francisco J. Ramis VI Contents Chapter 8 High to Microwave Frequencies Imaging Techniques 147 George A. Kyriacou, Ilias N. Aitidis, Dimitrios G. Drogoudis and John N. Sahalos Chapter 9 A Mutual Information-Based Image Quality Metric for Medical Imaging Systems 195 Du-Yih Tsai, Eri Matsuyama and Yongbum Lee Part 3 Applications in Clinical Settings 213 Chapter 10 Diagnostic Imaging in Oral and Maxillofacial Pathology 215 Hasan Ayberk Altug and Aydin Ozkan Chapter 11 Fast MRI Methods for the Clinical Evaluation of Skeletal Disorders 239 Renato Toffanin, Giuseppe Guglielmi and Maria A. Cova Chapter 12 Determination of Cardiac Ejection Fraction by Electrical Impedance Tomography 253 Franciane C. Peters, Luis Paulo da S. Barra and Rodrigo W. dos Santos Chapter 13 Assessment of Human Skin Microcirculation and Its Endothelial Function Using Laser Doppler Flowmetry 271 Helena Lenasi Chapter 14 Determination of Limb Hemodynamics During Rhythmical Muscle Contractions Assessed by Doppler Ultrasound 297 Takuya Osada and Göran Rådegran Part 4 Advances in Medical Imaging Techniques 309 Chapter 15 Current State of the PET/CT Hybrid Technique and Clinical Indications 311 Patricia Carreño-Morán and María de las Nieves Gómez León Chapter 16 Advances in Medical Imaging Applied to Bone Metastases 339 Àngel González-Sistal, Alicia Baltasar Sánchez, Michel Herranz Carnero and Álvaro Ruibal Morell Chapter 17 A Hierarchical Framework for Mitosis Detection in Time-Lapse Phase Contrast Microscopy Image Sequences of Stem Cell Populations 355 Anan Liu, Kang Li and Tong Hao Chapter 18 Safety of Interactive Image-Guided Surgery 373 Alain Beaulieu Contents VII Preface Medical imaging was primarily seen as the use of non-invasive techniques to create internal images of the human body for clinical or medical purposes. This rapidly evolving field of medicine originated in the first decade of the 19 th century, when Wilhelm Röntgen, a professor of physics at Würzburg University in Germany, discovered electromagnetic radiation. After the World War Two, the development of computer technology has triggered an amazing revolution in medical imaging techniques. What we know about and do with medical imaging has changed tremendously over the past decade, beginning with the basics, following with the breakthroughs, and moving on to the abstract. There is a continuous drive not only to improve the diagnostic yield of medical imaging techniques for clinical use, but also the management of the huge amount of digital information available to medical imaging departments. Today there is an increasing interest to harness medical imaging processes to improve research in the biophysical domain. Medical imaging has experienced tremendous progress during the past decade. Continuous innovations have been fueled by the need to improve diagnostic yield and achieve fast turnaround through robust information management, which should ultimately improve patient outcome. The rapid changes in digital technology have also created opportunities for the development of high-tech equipment employed in medical imaging practice. Incidentally, these changes tend to revolve around key modalities such as radiography, computed tomography, scintigraphy, magnetic resonance imaging and ultrasound. In many instances, one modality tends to augment the limitations associated with others. This book approaches the concept of medical imaging from a wider perspective not considered by many authors in this area. It consists of four sections and eighteen chapters and topics. The first section deals with basic concepts such as identification of structures in medical images, 3D image segmentation, image analysis, texture analysis, radiation protection and simulations. X Preface Section two concentrates on the image processing techniques, quality metrics as well as tools required to optimize patient processes. Section three deals with applications of medical techniques in clinical settings, while the last section explores the advances made in this area including PET/CT hybrid technique, optical imaging thermography, mitosis detection, phase contrast microscopy and use in image-guided surgery. It is hoped that this book bridges the gap between the core clinical books reserved for medical diagnosis and the wide ranging possibilities in the field of biological research. It is a must-read for all practitioners and researchers interested in medical imaging. This book is an attempt to present the old, understand the current and appreciate the great advancements into the future of medical imaging. It will be an invaluable resource to those interested in history, clinical applications and unlimited horizons presented by medical imaging science. My acknowledgement goes to all the authors, who have made scholarly contributions to the book from diverse backgrounds. I am also grateful and indebted to the publishing process managers Bojana Zelenika and Marija Radja for carefully directing the editorial process and for their patience even when I couldn’t meet the scheduled timeline. Felix Okechukwu Erondu Ph.D Adjunct Senior Lecturer in Radiography and Medical Imaging University of Nigeria Nigeria [...]... in Medical Imaging 1 Identification of Structures in Medical Images 1 Marina de Sá Rebelo1, Sérgio Shiguemi Furuie2, Lincoln de Assis Moura Jr2, Eduardo Tavares Costa3,4 and Marco Antonio Gutierrez1 1Heart Institute (InCor) - University of São Paulo Medical School 2Polytechnic School – University of São Paulo 3School of Electrical and Computer Engineering- University of Campinas 4Center for Biomedical... degraded the reconstructed slice of the brain (images acquired at the Imaging Department - Heart Institute – HCFMUSP- with patient anonymization) 6 Medical Imaging All these factors may affect the identification of organs due to poorly defined boundaries, blur or weak edges homogeneity Moreover, the identification of organs in medical imaging presents some unique challenges as the creation of efficient... aforementioned problems, the identification of some tissues in medical images can be difficult even in modalities with high resolution as CT (left image) and MR (middle and right) (images acquired at the Imaging Department Heart Institute – HCFMUSP- with patient anonymization) 3.1 Use of a priori information for identification in medical images In the context of medical images, the concept of identification, as... for Biomedical Engineering - University of Campinas Brazil 1 Introduction The development of automatic systems for medical image processing, which can effectively act as an agent to aid medical diagnosis, is a goal that has been pursued by researchers since the first works on the field of medical image processing in the 80´s The automation of image analysis tasks can produce very interesting results... variations both in form and size Identification of Structures in Medical Images 7 3.2 A review of applications in medical imaging Techniques specifically designed for computerized detection of abnormalities in chest radiographs were among the first works in the area of identification of structures in medical images (Duncan & Ayache, 2000) The field has evolved continuously since then and the amount of knowledge... connectivity are followed sequentially and collected into a list to represent an object boundary 8 Medical Imaging The second generation is composed of algorithms using image models, optimization methods, and uncertainty models, and includes: Pattern recognition and clustering: as certain structures in medical images can be treated as patterns, segmentation algorithms that combine pattern recognition... information, medical imaging procedures are able to provide extremely relevant information about brain physiology, which can be used to understand physical and psychological clinical conditions In order to capture the extraordinary morphological variability of the human brain, a number of automatic methods for identification and analysis of structures have been developed for different imaging modalities... authors have described methods to isolate the cardiac walls and chambers in CT images (Ecabert et al, 2008; O’Donnell et al, 2006; Peters et al, 2010; Zheng et al, 2010) Ultrasound imaging is arguably the hardest medical imaging modality upon which to perform organ identification (Noble, 2010) The main problem in detecting, for example, heart boundaries in ultrasound images is related to the high level... 1 = 1.0 (original image), 2= 1.19; 3 = 1.41; 4 = 1.68; 5 = 2.00; 6 = 2.37; 7 = 2.82; 8 = 3.35; 9 = 3.97; 10 = 5.61 (Original image acquired at the Imaging Department Heart Institute – HCFMUSP- with patient anonymization) 16 Medical Imaging The thin arrows in Figure 4 right point to the 15 most significant dark blobs extracted using the general significance rate and the scale where the blob... clinical examples of medical image identification We pointed out the importance of this task as a previous step for medical image applications such as visualization and the quantitative analysis of organs and systems A classification for the methods described in the literature and a brief review of their clinical applications were presented It was shown that identification of structures in medical images . Lecturer in Radiography and Medical Imaging University of Nigeria Nigeria Part 1 Basic Concepts in Medical Imaging 1 Identification of Structures in Medical Images 1 Marina de. of computer technology has triggered an amazing revolution in medical imaging techniques. What we know about and do with medical imaging has changed tremendously over the past decade, beginning. improve the diagnostic yield of medical imaging techniques for clinical use, but also the management of the huge amount of digital information available to medical imaging departments. Today there