Advanced Signal Processing for

Medical Imaging

Highlights
Jim Ji , 236B WERC, E-mail: jimji@tamu.edu
Lab: USB 109, off-campus east of highway 6
Three-credit graduate course
TR 11:10am-12:15PM 223A
Webpage on http://ece.tamu.edu/~jimji click Teaching tab
Office hours: Thursday 4-5 PM, 236B WERC

Jim Ji
Department of Electrical Engineering
Texas A&M University
2015 Copyright All rights reserved

X-rays were discovered accidentally by a German physicist,

Wilhelm Konrad Roentgen, in 1895 who received the Nobel
Prize in 1901.

U of Wuerzburg

One of his earliest photographic plate

from his experiments was a film of
his wife, Bertha's hand with a ring,
was produced on Friday, November 8,
1895.

Medical Imaging Applications

Diagnosis
Cancer
Cardiovscular
Neural

Prognosis
Drug development
Treatment

Screening

2003. Lauterbur and Mansfield receive the Nobel Prize in

physiology and Medicine

Art of Medical Imaging

Why Signal/Image Processing?

Make better images

Object

Reconstruction quality

Speed
Resolution
Signal-to-noise
Contrast

Focus:
Signal generation: physics
Instrumentation: hardware
Data acquisition
Image reconstruction

Signal
Acquisition

Enhancement
Denoising

From Images to Information

Segmentation
Registration
Parametric mapping

Data

Image
Recon

Image
Processing

Image
Analysis
Information

From Single Trial to Statistics.

MRI CT SPECT
PET US OCT
Microscopy

Topics

Outlines

Signal generation, detection; image formation and

processing
multi-dimensional sampling/reconstruction
Med. image processing, visualization and analysis
phased-array signal processing
Modalities
magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)
x-ray computer tomography (CT)
ultrasound

Imaging as a Scientific Discipline

Basic Medical Imaging Physics

Tomographic Reconstruction (CT and MRI)
Multidimentional sampling and reconstruction
Compressive Sensing
Ultrasound Array and Beam Forming
MR Arrays and Parallel Imaging
Hardware Acceleration in Medical Imaging (e.g.GPU)
Imaging Analysis: Segmentation and Registration
Statistical Analysis and Tests (clinical trial, fMRI)
ImageJ

What we study in this course: example of MRI

Basic Physical Principles

d () I ( x ) E ( x ,)dx


E ( x , x0 ) ( x x0 ) :

E ( x , k ) ei 2kx :


E ( x, , p) ( x p) :

Point scanning
Fourier transform imaging
Radon transform imaging

Physics: Magnetic resonance signal generation

Magnetic Resonance Imaging

d (k )

I ( x)e i 2 kx dx

ky

kx

I( x) k

N / 2 1

d (nk )ei 2 n kx

n N / 2

Muli-dimension sampling and recon

More efficient sampling

ky

MR Phased Array: Multi-channel

Signal Sampling and Processing

UltraSound: Phased-Array

coil sensitivity

d n (k )

I ( x) sn ( x)e i 2 kx dx
n 1, 2,..., L

Channel 1
Channel 2

Array
Signal
Processing

Channel L

Focal point and direction are controlled by variable time delays

Image Enhancement

Resolution

Image Enhancement: SNR

Histogram equalization
Output vs. Input Intensity
1
Equalized Image
0.5

Histogram

0.5

Histogram

Cardiac MRI and Analysis

Image Segmentation

MRI of Beating Heart with High Spatiotemporal

resolution

Motion Tracking and Analysis using Spline Models and

Quantification
Visualization

Feature classification
Intensity thresholding
Edge/region/contour/surface

Tagging

Cardiac MRI
Jim Ji, Electrical and Computer Engineering, jimji@tamu.edu

ICCV 2003,

Illustration of New Method

Challenges of Image Segmentation

Input

Complex structures
Low signal-to-noise ratio
Ill-posedness

Output
Multi-scale
Analysis
Classification
and
Labeling

Prior Knowledge
Template
Library

Why Image Registration

Global&Local
Transform

Retrospective Image Registration

Spatial
transformation

I1

Superimpose
Evaluate similarity
between images

I2
T(I2)

Optimization

opt arg max d ( I1 , ( I 2 ))

Information Fusion
Courtesy: Bruce Hasegawa,
IEEE Spectrum Jan 2000.

Kinetics/Activation/
Development

Morphometrics

:Spatial transform
d :Similarity metric
Searching algorithm

Signal detection: fMRI

Parametric mapping (perfusion example)

Perfusion Study of Angiogenesis of Tumors

Parametric Mapping of Contrast Exchange Rate
Facilitated by High-Speed MRI
50

40

30

20

10

Parametric
Map

Breast MRI
Jim Ji, Electrical and Computer Engineering, jimji@tamu.edu

Statistics related to Medical Imaging

Correlation/Pattern Recognition/Biomarkers

Large Data and Parallel Computing

Multi-core CPU

Coil-by-coil

FPGA

Spatial
partition

GPU (Graphics
Processing Unit)

Sensitivity
Specificity

[1] A. Borghi et al, Sep. 2008

[3] F. Knoll et al, Graz University of Technology

[2] M. Andrecut, Quantitative Methods (q-bio.QM) 2008

[4] S. Lee, Optimization community, Nov.2008

Biomedical-Area Faculty

Biomedical-Area Faculty

Biomedical Imaging:
MRI: Wright (Systems and EM), Ji (Signal
Processing), McDougall (BioEng, Application)
Ultrasounds: Righitte
BioMEMS/BIO-Fluidics: Han

Genomics: Dougherty, Datta, Braga-Neto, Yoon,

Qian,Shen
BME faculty members (optical imaging)

Dougherty
Wright

McDougall

Righitte

The 21st century would be the biomedical century

just as the 20th century had been the century of
physics, electronics, and computers.
-- Elias Zerhouni, NIH Director from 2002-2008
A career in radiologic technology offers a promising
future, job stability and good salaries. As
technology advances and the population ages, .
The country needs a growing number of qualified
professionals to provide medical imaging and
radiation therapy.
-- Excerpt from monster.com

Datta

Braga-Neto

Yoon

Qian

Peng

Shen

Han

Summary
Medical imaging is a rapid-growing, multi-disciplinary
field
Signal processing plays an important role in the
performance and application of medical imaging
applications
Topics of the course is limited to signal generation and
processing of MRI, CT and Ultrasound.
If you are not familiar with Matlab, get yourself started
with the tutorial (see link on course webpage).