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Publications

Publications by António Cunha

2019

SMALL BOWEL MUCOSA SEGMENTATION FOR FRAME CHARACTERIZATION IN VIDEOS OF ENDOSCOPIC CAPSULES

Authors
Pinheiro, G; Coelho, P; Mourao, M; Salgado, M; Oliveira, HP; Cunha, A;

Publication
2019 IEEE 16TH INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON BIOMEDICAL IMAGING (ISBI 2019)

Abstract
Endoscopic capsules are vitamin-sized devices that leverage from a small wireless camera to create 8 to 10 hour videos of the patients' entire digestive tract, still being the leading tool to diagnose small bowel diseases. The revision of the produced videos is a very time-consuming task, currently conducted manually and frame-by-frame by an expert. Since endoscopic videos usually contain a considerable amount of frames where the mucosa is not clearly visible, the segmentation of the informative regions is a vital component to reduce the necessary time to review each exam. In this work, a CNN encoder-decoder architecture is applied to segment informative regions in small bowel frames of videos of endoscopic capsules. The network was trained and tested with a dataset of 2,929 manually annotated images, achieving a 91.2% Dice coefficient and 83.9% IoU. Furthermore, a video-wise analysis based on the amount of informative pixels in each frame is done.

2019

Comparison of conventional and deep learning based methods for pulmonary nodule segmentation in CT images

Authors
Rocha, J; Cunha, A; Maria Mendonça, A;

Publication
Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)

Abstract
Lung cancer is among the deadliest diseases in the world. The detection and characterization of pulmonary nodules are crucial for an accurate diagnosis, which is of vital importance to increase the patients’ survival rates. The segmentation process contributes to the mentioned characterization, but faces several challenges, due to the diversity in nodular shape, size, and texture, as well as the presence of adjacent structures. This paper proposes two methods for pulmonary nodule segmentation in Computed Tomography (CT) scans. First, a conventional approach which applies the Sliding Band Filter (SBF) to estimate the center of the nodule, and consequently the filter’s support points, matching the initial border coordinates. This preliminary segmentation is then refined to include mainly the nodular area, and no other regions (e.g. vessels and pleural wall). The second approach is based on Deep Learning, using the U-Net to achieve the same goal. This work compares both performances, and consequently identifies which one is the most promising tool to promote early lung cancer screening and improve nodule characterization. Both methodologies used 2653 nodules from the LIDC database: the SBF based one achieved a Dice score of 0.663, while the U-Net achieved 0.830, yielding more similar results to the ground truth reference annotated by specialists, and thus being a more reliable approach. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019.

2019

Lesions Multiclass Classification in Endoscopic Capsule Frames

Authors
Valerio, MT; Gomes, S; Salgado, M; Oliveira, HP; Cunha, A;

Publication
CENTERIS2019--INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ENTERPRISE INFORMATION SYSTEMS/PROJMAN2019--INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON PROJECT MANAGEMENT/HCIST2019--INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON HEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE INFORMATION SYSTEMS AND TECHNOLOGIES

Abstract
Wireless capsule endoscopy is a relatively novel technique used for imaging of the gastrointestinal tract. Unlike traditional approaches, it allows painless visualisation of the whole of the gastrointestinal tract, including the small bowel, a region of difficult access. Endoscopic capsules record for about 8h, producing around 60,000 images. These are analysed by an expert that identifies abnormalities present in the frames, a process that is very tedious and prone to errors. Thus there is a clear need to develop systems that automatically analyse this data and detect lesions. Lesion detection achieved a precision of 0.94 and a recall of 0.93 by fmetuning the pre-trained DenseNet-161 model. (C) 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.

2020

Automatic Lung Reference Model

Authors
Machado, M; Ferreira, CA; Pedrosa, J; Negrao, E; Rebelo, J; Leitao, P; Carvalho, AS; Rodrigues, MC; Ramos, I; Cunha, A; Campilho, A;

Publication
XV MEDITERRANEAN CONFERENCE ON MEDICAL AND BIOLOGICAL ENGINEERING AND COMPUTING - MEDICON 2019

Abstract
The lung cancer diagnosis is based on the search of lung nodules. Besides its characterization, it is also common to register the anatomical position of these findings. Even though computed-aided diagnosis systems tend to help in these tasks, there is still lacking a complete system that can qualitatively label the nodules in lung regions. In this way, this paper proposes an automatic lung reference model to facilitate the report of nodules between computed-aided diagnosis systems and the radiologist, and among radiologists. The model was applied to 115 computed tomography scans with manually and automatically segmented lobes, and the obtained sectors' variability was evaluated. As the sectors average variability within lobes is less or equal to 0.14, the model can be a good way to promote the report of lung nodules.

2020

Conventional Filtering Versus U-Net Based Models for Pulmonary Nodule Segmentation in CT Images

Authors
Rocha, J; Cunha, A; Mendonca, AM;

Publication
JOURNAL OF MEDICAL SYSTEMS

Abstract
Lung cancer is considered one of the deadliest diseases in the world. An early and accurate diagnosis aims to promote the detection and characterization of pulmonary nodules, which is of vital importance to increase the patients' survival rates. The mentioned characterization is done through a segmentation process, facing several challenges due to the diversity in nodular shape, size, and texture, as well as the presence of adjacent structures. This paper tackles pulmonary nodule segmentation in computed tomography scans proposing three distinct methodologies. First, a conventional approach which applies the Sliding Band Filter (SBF) to estimate the filter's support points, matching the border coordinates. The remaining approaches are Deep Learning based, using the U-Net and a novel network called SegU-Net to achieve the same goal. Their performance is compared, as this work aims to identify the most promising tool to improve nodule characterization. All methodologies used 2653 nodules from the LIDC database, achieving a Dice score of 0.663, 0.830, and 0.823 for the SBF, U-Net and SegU-Net respectively. This way, the U-Net based models yield more identical results to the ground truth reference annotated by specialists, thus being a more reliable approach for the proposed exercise. The novel network revealed similar scores to the U-Net, while at the same time reducing computational cost and improving memory efficiency. Consequently, such study may contribute to the possible implementation of this model in a decision support system, assisting the physicians in establishing a reliable diagnosis of lung pathologies based on this segmentation task.

2020

Segmentation of Pulmonary Nodules in CT Images Using the Sliding Band Filter

Authors
Rocha, J; Cunha, A; Mendonca, AM;

Publication
XV MEDITERRANEAN CONFERENCE ON MEDICAL AND BIOLOGICAL ENGINEERING AND COMPUTING - MEDICON 2019

Abstract
This paper proposes a conventional approach for pulmonary nodule segmentation, that uses the Sliding Band Filter to estimate the center of the nodule, and consequently the filter's support points, matching the initial border coordinates. This preliminary segmentation is then refined to try to include mainly the nodular area, and no other regions (e.g. vessels and pleural wall). The algorithm was tested on 2653 nodules from the LIDC database and achieved a Dice score of 0.663, yielding similar results to the ground truth reference, and thus being a promising tool to promote early lung cancer screening and improve nodule characterization.

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