Crowdsourcing airway annotations in chest computed tomography images.

Measuring airways in chest computed tomography (CT) scans is important for characterizing diseases such as cystic fibrosis, yet very time-consuming to perform manually. Machine learning algorithms offer an alternative, but need large sets of annotated scans for good performance. We investigate whether crowdsourcing can be used to gather airway annotations.

Airway tapering: an objective image biomarker for bronchiectasis.

Purpose: To estimate airway tapering in control subjects and to assess the usability of tapering as a bronchiectasis biomarker in paediatric populations.

Methods: Airway tapering values were semi-automatically quantified in 156 children with control CTs collected in the Normal Chest CT Study Group. Airway tapering as a biomarker for bronchiectasis was assessed on spirometer-guided inspiratory CTs from 12 patients with bronchiectasis and 12 age- and sex-matched controls.

Technical challenges of quantitative chest MRI data analysis in a large cohort pediatric study.

Objectives: This study was conducted in order to evaluate the effect of geometric distortion (GD) on MRI lung volume quantification and evaluate available manual, semi-automated, and fully automated methods for lung segmentation.

Methods: A phantom was scanned with MRI and CT. GD was quantified as the difference in phantom's volume between MRI and CT, with CT as gold standard.

Diagnosis of bronchiectasis and airway wall thickening in children with cystic fibrosis: Objective airway-artery quantification.

Objectives: To quantify airway and artery (AA)-dimensions in cystic fibrosis (CF) and control patients for objective CT diagnosis of bronchiectasis and airway wall thickness (AWT).

Methods: Spirometer-guided inspiratory and expiratory CTs of 11 CF and 12 control patients were collected retrospectively. Airway pathways were annotated semi-automatically to reconstruct three-dimensional bronchial trees.

Automatic airway-artery analysis on lung CT to quantify airway wall thickening and bronchiectasis.

Purpose: Bronchiectasis and airway wall thickening are commonly assessed in computed tomography (CT) by comparing the airway size with the size of the accompanying artery. Thus, in order to automate the quantification of bronchiectasis and wall thickening following a similar principle, there is a need for methods that automatically segment the airway and vascular trees, measure their size, and pair each airway branch with its accompanying artery.

Methods: This paper combines and extends existing techniques to present a fully automated pipeline that, given a thoracic chest CT, segments, measures, and pairs airway branches with the accompanying artery, then quantifies airway wall thickening and bronchiectasis by measuring the wall-artery ratio (WAR) and lumen and outer wall airway-artery ratio (AAR).

Quantification of Diaphragm Mechanics in Pompe Disease Using Dynamic 3D MRI.

Background: Diaphragm weakness is the main reason for respiratory dysfunction in patients with Pompe disease, a progressive metabolic myopathy affecting respiratory and limb-girdle muscles. Since respiratory failure is the major cause of death among adult patients, early identification of respiratory muscle involvement is necessary to initiate treatment in time and possibly prevent irreversible damage. In this paper we investigate the suitability of dynamic MR imaging in combination with state-of-the-art image analysis methods to assess respiratory muscle weakness.

Objective airway artery dimensions compared to CT scoring methods assessing structural cystic fibrosis lung disease.

Background: CF-CT and PRAGMA-CF are commonly used scoring methods to quantify the severity of bronchiectasis (BE) and airway wall thickening (AWT) on chest CTs of children with cystic fibrosis (CF). We aimed to validate CF-CT and PRAGMA-CF sub-scores for BE and AWT against quantitative airway–artery (AA) dimensions.

Methods: This is a retrospective study with 23 spirometer guided inspiratory chest CTs (11 CF, 12 controls; age range 6 to 16 years old) included.

The development of bronchiectasis on chest computed tomography in children with cystic fibrosis: can pre-stages be identified?

Objective: Bronchiectasis is an important component of cystic fibrosis (CF) lung disease but little is known about its development. We aimed to study the development of bronchiectasis and identify determinants for rapid progression of bronchiectasis on chest CT.

Methods: Forty-three patients with CF with at least four consecutive biennial volumetric CTs were included.

Multicentre chest computed tomography standardisation in children and adolescents with cystic fibrosis: the way forward.

Progressive cystic fibrosis (CF) lung disease is the main cause of mortality in CF patients. CF lung disease starts in early childhood. With current standards of care, respiratory function remains largely normal in children and more sensitive outcome measures are needed to monitor early CF lung disease.

Lung MRI and impairment of diaphragmatic function in Pompe disease.

Background: Pompe disease is a progressive metabolic myopathy. Involvement of respiratory muscles leads to progressive pulmonary dysfunction, particularly in supine position. Diaphragmatic weakness is considered to be the most important component.

RERBEE: robust efficient registration via bifurcations and elongated elements applied to retinal fluorescein angiogram sequences.

We present RERBEE (robust efficient registration via bifurcations and elongated elements), a novel feature-based registration algorithm able to correct local deformations in high-resolution ultra-wide field-of-view (UWFV) fluorescein angiogram (FA) sequences of the retina. The algorithm is able to cope with peripheral blurring, severe occlusions, presence of retinal pathologies and the change of image content due to the perfusion of the fluorescein dye in time. We have used the computational power of a graphics processor to increase the performance of the most computationally expensive parts of the algorithm by a factor of over × 1300, enabling the algorithm to register a pair of 3900 × 3072 UWFV FA images in 5-10 min instead of the 5-7 h required using only the CPU.

Deformable registration of retinal fluorescein angiogram sequences using vasculature structures.

State-of-the-art deformable registration algorithms do not perform as well with FA sequences because they are designed to deal with changes of content appearance (e.g., due to different sensors imaging the same organs) but not with content changes, which occur throughout a FA sequence as different portions or the vascular structure are visible (perfused) in different frames.

Robust optic disc location via combination of weak detectors.

This paper presents a new robust approach for the automatic location of the optic disc. We detect several candidates independently for optic disc, macula and the main blood vessels (arcades). Candidates are sorted by reliability.