Bahareh Morovati

Bahareh Morovati, Reza Lashgari, Mojtaba Hajihasani et al.

Breast cancer is the second most common cancer among women worldwide. Diagnosis of breast cancer by the pathologists is a time-consuming procedure and subjective. Computer aided diagnosis frameworks are utilized to relieve pathologist workload by classifying the data automatically, in which deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs) are effective solutions. The features extracted from activation layer of pre-trained CNNs are called deep convolutional activation features (DeCAF). In this paper, we have analyzed that all DeCAF features are not necessarily led to a higher accuracy in the classification task and dimension reduction plays an important role. Therefore, different dimension reduction methods are applied to achieve an effective combination of features by capturing the essence of DeCAF features. To this purpose, we have proposed reduced deep convolutional activation features (R-DeCAF). In this framework, pre-trained CNNs such as AlexNet, VGG-16 and VGG-19 are utilized in transfer learning mode as feature extractors. DeCAF features are extracted from the first fully connected layer of the mentioned CNNs and support vector machine has been used for binary classification. Among linear and nonlinear dimensionality reduction algorithms, linear approaches such as principal component analysis (PCA) represent a better combination among deep features and lead to a higher accuracy in the classification task using small number of features considering specific amount of cumulative explained variance (CEV) of features. The proposed method is validated using experimental BreakHis dataset. Comprehensive results show improvement in the classification accuracy up to 4.3% with less computational time. Best achieved accuracy is 91.13% for 400x data with feature vector size (FVS) of 23 and CEV equals to 0.15 using pre-trained AlexNet as feature extractor and PCA as feature reduction algorithm.

Dayang Wang, Yongshun Xu, Shuo Han et al.

Low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) offers reduced X-ray radiation exposure but at the cost of compromised image quality, characterized by increased noise and artifacts. Recently, transformer models emerged as a promising avenue to enhance LDCT image quality. However, the success of such models relies on a large amount of paired noisy and clean images, which are often scarce in clinical settings. In the fields of computer vision and natural language processing, masked autoencoders (MAE) have been recognized as an effective label-free self-pretraining method for transformers, due to their exceptional feature representation ability. However, the original pretraining and fine-tuning design fails to work in low-level vision tasks like denoising. In response to this challenge, we redesign the classical encoder-decoder learning model and facilitate a simple yet effective low-level vision MAE, referred to as LoMAE, tailored to address the LDCT denoising problem. Moreover, we introduce an MAE-GradCAM method to shed light on the latent learning mechanisms of the MAE/LoMAE. Additionally, we explore the LoMAE's robustness and generability across a variety of noise levels. Experiments results show that the proposed LoMAE can enhance the transformer's denoising performance and greatly relieve the dependence on the ground truth clean data. It also demonstrates remarkable robustness and generalizability over a spectrum of noise levels.

Changsheng Fang, Yongtong Liu, Bahareh Morovati et al.

In computed tomography (CT), reducing the number of projection views is an effective strategy to lower radiation exposure and/or improve temporal resolution. However, this often results in severe aliasing artifacts and loss of structural details in reconstructed images, posing significant challenges for clinical applications. Inspired by the success of the Poisson Flow Generative Model (PFGM++) in natural image generation, we propose a PoCGM (Poisson-Conditioned Generative Model) to address the challenges of sparse-view CT reconstruction. Since PFGM++ was originally designed for unconditional generation, it lacks direct applicability to medical imaging tasks that require integrating conditional inputs. To overcome this limitation, the PoCGM reformulates PFGM++ into a conditional generative framework by incorporating sparse-view data as guidance during both training and sampling phases. By modeling the posterior distribution of full-view reconstructions conditioned on sparse observations, PoCGM effectively suppresses artifacts while preserving fine structural details. Qualitative and quantitative evaluations demonstrate that PoCGM outperforms the baselines, achieving improved artifact suppression, enhanced detail preservation, and reliable performance in dose-sensitive and time-critical imaging scenarios.

Yu Shi, Shuyi Fan, Changsheng Fang et al.

Limited-angle computed tomography (LACT) offers improved temporal resolution and reduced radiation dose for cardiac imaging, but suffers from severe artifacts due to truncated projections. To address the ill-posedness of LACT reconstruction, we propose a two-stage diffusion framework guided by structured clinical metadata. In the first stage, a transformer-based diffusion model conditioned exclusively on metadata, including acquisition parameters, patient demographics, and diagnostic impressions, generates coarse anatomical priors from noise. The second stage further refines the images by integrating both the coarse prior and metadata to produce high-fidelity results. Physics-based data consistency is enforced at each sampling step in both stages using an Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers module, ensuring alignment with the measured projections. Extensive experiments on both synthetic and real cardiac CT datasets demonstrate that incorporating metadata significantly improves reconstruction fidelity, particularly under severe angular truncation. Compared to existing metadata-free baselines, our method achieves superior performance in SSIM, PSNR, nMI, and PCC. Ablation studies confirm that different types of metadata contribute complementary benefits, particularly diagnostic and demographic priors under limited-angle conditions. These findings highlight the dual role of clinical metadata in improving both reconstruction quality and efficiency, supporting their integration into future metadata-guided medical imaging frameworks.

Li Zhou, Changsheng Fang, Bahareh Morovati et al.

This paper introduces $ρ$-NeRF, a self-supervised approach that sets a new standard in novel view synthesis (NVS) and computed tomography (CT) reconstruction by modeling a continuous volumetric radiance field enriched with physics-based attenuation priors. The $ρ$-NeRF represents a three-dimensional (3D) volume through a fully-connected neural network that takes a single continuous four-dimensional (4D) coordinate, spatial location $(x, y, z)$ and an initialized attenuation value ($ρ$), and outputs the attenuation coefficient at that position. By querying these 4D coordinates along X-ray paths, the classic forward projection technique is applied to integrate attenuation data across the 3D space. By matching and refining pre-initialized attenuation values derived from traditional reconstruction algorithms like Feldkamp-Davis-Kress algorithm (FDK) or conjugate gradient least squares (CGLS), the enriched schema delivers superior fidelity in both projection synthesis and image recognition.