Volume 37, Issue 12

Liver cancer is one of the leading causes of cancer death. To assist doctors in hepatocellular carcinoma diagnosis and treatment planning, an accurate and automatic liver and tumor segmentation method is highly demanded in the clinical practice. Recently, fully convolutional neural networks (FCNs), including 2-D and 3-D FCNs, serve as the backbone in many volumetric image segmentation. However, 2-D convolutions cannot fully leverage the spatial information along the third dimension while 3-D convolutions suffer from high computational cost and GPU memory consumption. To address these issues, we propose a novel hybrid densely connected UNet (H-DenseUNet), which consists of a 2-D DenseUNet for efficiently extracting intra-slice features and a 3-D counterpart for hierarchically aggregating volumetric contexts under the spirit of the auto-context algorithm for liver and tumor segmentation. We formulate the learning process of the H-DenseUNet in an end-to-end manner, where the intra-slice representations and inter-slice features can be jointly optimized through a hybrid feature fusion layer. We extensively evaluated our method on the data set of the MICCAI 2017 Liver Tumor Segmentation Challenge and 3DIRCADb data set. Our method outperformed other state-of-the-arts on the segmentation results of tumors and achieved very competitive performance for liver segmentation even with a single model.

肝癌是导致癌症死亡的主要原因之一。为了辅助医生进行肝细胞癌的诊断和治疗规划，在临床实践中迫切需要一种准确且自动的肝脏和肿瘤分割方法。近年来，全卷积神经网络（FCNs），包括2D和3D FCNs，已成为许多体积图像分割的基础。然而，2D卷积无法充分利用第三维的空间信息，而3D卷积则面临高计算成本和GPU内存消耗的问题。为了解决这些问题，我们提出了一种新颖的混合密集连接UNet（H-DenseUNet），它由一个用于高效提取切片内特征的2D DenseUNet和一个用于在自动上下文算法精神下分层聚合体积上下文的3D DenseUNet组成，用于肝脏和肿瘤分割。我们以端到端的方式制定了H-DenseUNet的学习过程，其中切片内表示和切片间特征可以通过混合特征融合层联合优化。我们在MICCAI 2017肝脏肿瘤分割挑战赛数据集和3DIRCADb数据集上广泛评估了我们的方法。我们的方法在肿瘤分割结果上优于其他最先进的方法，并且即使使用单一模型，在肝脏分割上也取得了非常有竞争力的表现。

To realize the full potential of deep learning for medical imaging, large annotated datasets are required for training. Such datasets are difficult to acquire due to privacy issues, lack of experts available for annotation, underrepresentation of rare conditions, and poor standardization. The lack of annotated data has been addressed in conventional vision applications using synthetic images refin...

为了实现深度学习在医学影像中的全部潜力，训练需要大量标注的数据集。由于隐私问题、缺乏可进行标注的专家、罕见病表示不足以及标准化程度差，这些数据集难以获取。在传统视觉应用中，标注数据的缺乏已通过使用合成图像来得到解决...

Transplantable kidneys are in very limited supply. Accurate viability assessment prior to transplantation could minimize organ discard. Rapid and accurate evaluation of intra-operative donor kidney biopsies is essential for determining which kidneys are eligible for transplantation. The criterion for accepting or rejecting donor kidneys relies heavily on pathologist determination of the percent of...

可移植肾脏供应非常有限。移植前准确的活力评估可以减少器官丢弃。术中供肾活检的快速准确评估对于确定哪些肾脏适合移植至关重要。接受或拒绝供肾的标准很大程度上依赖于病理学家对肾小球硬化百分比的决定。

Temporal enhanced ultrasound (TeUS), comprising the analysis of variations in backscattered signals from a tissue over a sequence of ultrasound frames, has been previously proposed as a new paradigm for tissue characterization. In this paper, we propose to use deep recurrent neural networks (RNN) to explicitly model the temporal information in TeUS. By investigating several RNN models, we demonstr...

时间增强超声（TeUS）包括分析一系列超声帧中组织背向散射信号的变化，之前已被提出作为一种新的组织表征范式。在本文中，我们提出使用深度循环神经网络（RNN）显式建模TeUS中的时间信息。通过研究几种RNN模型，我们展示了...

In vivo characterization of intracardiac blood velocity vector fields may provide new clinical information but is currently not available for bedside evaluation. In this paper, 4-D vector flow imaging for intracardiac flow assessment is demonstrated using a clinical ultrasound (US) system and a matrix array transducer, without the use of contrast agent. Two acquisition schemes were developed, one ...

心腔内血流速度矢量场的体内表征可能提供新的临床信息，但目前尚无法用于床边评估。本文利用临床超声系统和矩阵阵列换能器，在不使用造影剂的情况下，展示了用于心内血流评估的四维向量血流成像。开发了两种采集方案，一种...

Histopathological analysis is the current gold standard in breast cancer diagnosis and management, however, as imaging technology improves, the amount of potential diagnostic information that may be demonstrable radiologically should also increase. We aimed to evaluate the potential clinical usefulness of 3-D phase-contrast micro-computed tomography (micro-CT) imaging at high spatial resolutions a...

组织病理学分析是目前乳腺癌诊断和管理的金标准，然而，随着成像技术的进步，放射学可展示的潜在诊断信息量也应增加。

The existence of diverse image datasets accompanied by reference annotations is a crucial prerequisite for an objective benchmarking of bioimage analysis methods. Nevertheless, such a prerequisite is hard to satisfy for time lapse, multidimensional fluorescence microscopy image data, manual annotations of which are laborious and often impracticable. In this paper, we present a simulation system ca...

多样化的图像数据集及其参考标注的存在是客观基准测试生物图像分析方法的先决条件。然而，对于延时、多维荧光显微镜图像数据而言，这一先决条件难以满足，因为手动标注这些数据既费力又往往不可行。本文提出了一个模拟系统...

Sources of nonlinear acoustic emissions, particularly those associated with cavitation activity, play a key role in the safety and efficacy of current and emerging therapeutic ultrasound applications, such as oncological drug delivery, blood-brain barrier opening, and histotripsy. Passive acoustic mapping (PAM) is the first technique to enable real-time and non-invasive imaging of cavitation activ...

非线性声发射源，特别是与空化活动相关的源，在当前和新兴的治疗性超声应用（如肿瘤药物输送、血脑屏障打开和组织摧毁术）的安全性和有效性中起着关键作用。被动声映射（PAM）是第一个能够实时、非侵入性成像空化活动的技术...

Despite being the solid tumor with the highest incidence in western men, prostate cancer (PCa) still lacks reliable imaging solutions that can overcome the need for systematic biopsies. Dynamic contrast-enhanced ultrasound imaging (DCE-US) allows us to quantitatively characterize the vascular bed in the prostate, due to its ability to visualize an intravenously administered bolus of contrast agent...

尽管前列腺癌是西方男性中发病率最高的实体瘤，但仍缺乏可靠的影像学解决方案来替代系统性活检。动态对比增强超声成像（DCE-US）能够可视化静脉注射的造影剂团注，从而对前列腺内的血管床进行定量表征...

Among the challenges arising in brain imaging genetic studies, estimating the potential links between neurological and genetic variability within a population is key. In this paper, we propose a multivariate, multimodal formulation for variable selection that leverages co-expression patterns across various data modalities. Our approach is based on an intuitive combination of two widely used statis...

在脑成像遗传学研究中出现的挑战中，估计人群中神经和遗传变异性之间的潜在联系是关键。在本文中，我们提出了一种多变量、多模态的变量选择公式，该公式利用了跨各种数据模态的共表达模式。我们的方法基于两种广泛使用的统计方法的直观组合...

Prior-image-based reconstruction (PIBR) methods have demonstrated great potential for radiation dose reduction in computed tomography applications. PIBR methods take advantage of shared anatomical information between sequential scans by incorporating a patient-specific prior image into the reconstruction objective function, often as a form of regularization. However, one major challenge with PIBR ...

基于先验图像的重建（PIBR）方法在计算机断层扫描应用中展现了减少辐射剂量的巨大潜力。PIBR方法通过将患者特定的先验图像作为正则化形式纳入重建目标函数，利用连续扫描之间的共享解剖信息。然而，PIBR的一个主要挑战是...

We propose an automatic multiorgan segmentation method for 3-D radiological images of different anatomical contents and modalities. The approach is based on a simultaneous multilabel graph cut optimization of location, appearance, and spatial configuration criteria of target structures. Organ location is defined by target-specific probabilistic atlases (PA) constructed from a training dataset usin...

我们提出了一种针对不同解剖内容和模态的三维放射图像的自动多器官分割方法。该方法基于同时多标签图割优化，对目标结构的位置、外观和空间配置标准进行优化。器官位置由从训练数据集构建的目标特定概率图谱（PA）定义...

Sparse learning has been shown to be effective in solving many real-world problems. Finding sparse representations is a fundamentally important topic in many fields of science including signal processing, computer vision, genome study, and medical imaging. One important issue in applying sparse representation is to find the basis to represent the data, especially in computer vision and medical ima...

稀疏学习已被证明在解决许多现实世界问题中有效。寻找稀疏表示是许多科学领域（包括信号处理、计算机视觉、基因组研究和医学成像）中一个根本重要的话题。应用稀疏表示的一个重要问题是找到表示数据的基，特别是在计算机视觉和医学图像...

Dual Energy X-ray Absorptiometry (DXA) is the standard exam for osteoporosis diagnosis and fracture risk evaluation at the spine. However, numerous patients with bone fragility are not diagnosed as such. In fact, standard analysis of DXA images does not differentiate between trabecular and cortical bone; neither specifically assess of the bone density in the vertebral body, which is where most of ...

双能X射线吸收测量法（DXA）是脊柱骨质疏松诊断和骨折风险评估的标准检查。然而，许多骨脆性患者并未被诊断为骨质疏松。事实上，DXA图像的标准分析并不能区分松质骨和皮质骨；也没有专门评估椎体内的骨密度，而椎体是大多数...

MRI using nuclei other than protons is of clinical interest due to the important role of these nuclei in cellular processes. Phosphorous-31 (31P), for example, plays an important role in energy metabolism. However, measurement of 31P can be challenging, as the receive signal is weak compared with that of proton (1H). Consequently, it is often necessary to integrate 1H elements for localizations an...

利用质子以外的原子核进行MRI因其在细胞过程中的重要作用而具有临床意义。例如，磷-31（31P）在能量代谢中起着重要作用。然而，31P的测量具有挑战性，因为与质子（1H）相比，接收信号较弱。因此，通常需要集成1H元件用于定位……

The mechanical behavior of long bones and fractures has been under investigation for many decades due to its complexity and clinical relevance. In this paper, we report a new subject-specific methodology to predict and analyze the mechanical behavior of the soft tissue at a bone interface with the intent of identifying the presence and location of bone abnormalities with high accuracy, spatial res...

长骨和骨折的力学行为由于其复杂性和临床相关性，几十年来一直受到研究。在本文中，我们报告了一种新的针对特定主体的方法，用于预测和分析骨界面处软组织的力学行为，旨在高精度、高空间分辨率地识别骨异常的存在和位置...

We present a method of generating spatial maps of kinetic parameters from dynamic sequences of images collected in hyperpolarized carbon-13 magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) experiments. The technique exploits spatial correlations in the dynamic traces via regularization in the space of parameter maps. Similar techniques have proven successful in other dynamic imaging problems, such as dynamic cont...

我们提出了一种方法，从超极化碳-13磁共振成像（MRI）实验中收集的动态图像序列生成动力学参数的空间图。该技术通过参数图空间中的正则化利用动态轨迹中的空间相关性。类似技术已在其他动态成像问题中证明成功，如动态对比增强...

In computed tomography, there is a tradeoff between the quality of the reconstructed image and the radiation dose received by the patient. In order to find an appropriate compromise between the image quality of the reconstructed images and the radiation dose, it is important to have reliable methods for evaluating the quality of the reconstructed images. A successful family of methods for the asse...

在计算机断层扫描中，重建图像的质量与患者接受的辐射剂量之间存在权衡。为了在重建图像的质量和辐射剂量之间找到适当的折中，拥有可靠的方法来评估重建图像的质量非常重要。一类成功的方法用于评估...

In [1], please note the updated figure captions for Figures 5, 6, 7, and 8 as follows:

在[1]中，请注意图5、6、7和8的更新图注如下：

Prospective authors are requested to submit new, unpublished manuscripts for inclusion in the upcoming event described in this call for papers.

请潜在作者提交新的、未发表的手稿，以便纳入此次征稿中描述的即将举行的活动。

Presents a listing of the editorial board, board of governors, current staff, committee members, and/or society editors for this issue of the publication.

提供本期出版物的编辑委员会、理事会、现任工作人员、委员会成员和/或学会编辑名单。

Describes the above-named upcoming conference event. May include topics to be covered or calls for papers.

描述上述即将举行的会议活动。可能包括涵盖的主题或征文通知。

Presents the table of contents for this issue of the publication.

介绍本期出版物的目录。

These instructions give guidelines for preparing papers for this publication. Presents information for authors publishing in this journal.

这些指南为准备本刊论文提供了指导。介绍了在本期刊发表论文的作者信息。