arXiv subjects

Hairong Zheng

Publications and source records attributed to Hairong Zheng.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2025

Cross-Sequence Semi-Supervised Learning for Multi-Parametric MRI-Based Visual Pathway Delineation

Accurately delineating the visual pathway (VP) is crucial for understanding the human visual system and diagnosing related disorders. Exploring multi-parametric MR imaging data has been identified as an important way to delineate VP. However, due to the complex cross-sequence relationships, existing methods cannot effectively model the complementary information from different MRI sequences. In addition, these existing methods heavily rely on large training data with labels, which is labor-intensive and time-consuming to obtain. In this work, we propose a novel semi-supervised multi-parametric feature decomposition framework for VP delineation. Specifically, a correlation-constrained feature decomposition (CFD) is designed to handle the complex cross-sequence relationships by capturing the unique characteristics of each MRI sequence and easing the multi-parametric information fusion process. Furthermore, a consistency-based sample enhancement (CSE) module is developed to address the limited labeled data issue, by generating and promoting meaningful edge information from unlabeled data. We validate our framework using two public datasets, and one in-house Multi-Shell Diffusion MRI (MDM) dataset. Experimental results demonstrate the superiority of our approach in terms of delineation performance when compared to seven state-of-the-art approaches.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2024

Scatter correction for photon-counting detector based CBCT imaging

Objective: The aim of this study is to validate the effectiveness of an energy-modulated scatter correction method in suppressing scatter in photon-counting detector (PCD)-based cone beam CT (CBCT) imaging. Approach: The scatter correction method, named e-Grid, which was initially applied to dual-layer flat-panel detector (DLFPD)-based CBCT imaging, was tested for its performance in PCD-CBCT imaging. Benchtop PCD-CBCT imaging experiments were conducted to verify the effectiveness of the e-Grid method. Additionally, quantitative metrics were measured from these experimental results. Main results: It was found that the use of the e-Grid method could significantly eliminate cupping artifacts caused by Compton scatter in PCD-CBCT imaging. Meanwhile, its effectiveness was observed in both low- and high-energy images, as well as for objects of varying sizes. Quantitative results showed that the e-Grid method could reduce scatter artifacts by at least 71% in low-energy images and 75% in high-energy images. Significance: It was demonstrated that the scatter correction method originally applied to DLFPD-based CBCT could also perform well in PCD-CBCT, showing that the e-Grid method has great potential for application in other spectral CBCT imaging systems.

physics.med-ph↗

arXiv2024

Diff5T: Benchmarking Human Brain Diffusion MRI with an Extensive 5.0 Tesla K-Space and Spatial Dataset

Diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI) provides critical insights into the microstructural and connectional organization of the human brain. However, the availability of high-field, open-access datasets that include raw k-space data for advanced research remains limited. To address this gap, we introduce Diff5T, a first comprehensive 5.0 Tesla diffusion MRI dataset focusing on the human brain. This dataset includes raw k-space data and reconstructed diffusion images, acquired using a variety of imaging protocols. Diff5T is designed to support the development and benchmarking of innovative methods in artifact correction, image reconstruction, image preprocessing, diffusion modelling and tractography. The dataset features a wide range of diffusion parameters, including multiple b-values and gradient directions, allowing extensive research applications in studying human brain microstructure and connectivity. With its emphasis on open accessibility and detailed benchmarks, Diff5T serves as a valuable resource for advancing human brain mapping research using diffusion MRI, fostering reproducibility, and enabling collaboration across the neuroscience and medical imaging communities.

eess.IV↗

arXiv2024

SamRobNODDI: Q-Space Sampling-Augmented Continuous Representation Learning for Robust and Generalized NODDI

Neurite Orientation Dispersion and Density Imaging (NODDI) microstructure estimation from diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI) is of great significance for the discovery and treatment of various neurological diseases. Current deep learning-based methods accelerate the speed of NODDI parameter estimation and improve the accuracy. However, most methods require the number and coordinates of gradient directions during testing and training to remain strictly consistent, significantly limiting the generalization and robustness of these models in NODDI parameter estimation. In this paper, we propose a q-space sampling augmentation-based continuous representation learning framework (SamRobNODDI) to achieve robust and generalized NODDI. Specifically, a continuous representation learning method based on q-space sampling augmentation is introduced to fully explore the information between different gradient directions in q-space. Furthermore, we design a sampling consistency loss to constrain the outputs of different sampling schemes, ensuring that the outputs remain as consistent as possible, thereby further enhancing performance and robustness to varying q-space sampling schemes. SamRobNODDI is also a flexible framework that can be applied to different backbone networks. To validate the effectiveness of the proposed method, we compared it with 7 state-of-the-art methods across 18 different q-space sampling schemes, demonstrating that the proposed SamRobNODDI has better performance, robustness, generalization, and flexibility.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2024

CBCT scatter correction with dual-layer flat-panel detector

Background: Recently, the popularity of dual-layer flat-panel detector (DL-FPD) based dual-energy cone-beam CT (DE-CBCT) imaging has been increasing. However, the image quality of DE-CBCT remains constrained by the Compton scattered X-ray photons. Purpose: The objective of this study is to develop an energy-modulated scatter correction method for DL-FPD based CBCT imaging. Methods: In DL-FPD, a certain portion of the X-ray photons (mainly low-energy primary and scattered photons) passing through the object are captured by the top detector layer, while the remaining X-ray photons (mainly high-energy primary and scattered photons) are collected by the bottom detector layer. Based on the two set of distinct low-energy and high-energy measurements, a linear signal model was approximated for the dual-energy primary and scattered signals on DL-FPD. The distributions of X-ray scatters were quickly estimated using this signal model. Monte Carlo (MC) simulation of a water phantom was conducted to verify this newly developed scatter estimation method. Moreover, physical experiments of water phantom, head phantom, and abdominal phantom were carried out to validate the real performance of this proposed scatter correction method. Results: The MC results showed that the e-Grid method was able to generate scatter distributions close to the ground truth. Moreover, the physical experiments demonstrated that the e-Grid method can greatly reduce the shading artifacts in both low-energy and high-energy CBCT images acquired from DL-FPD. On average, the image non-uniformity (NU) was reduced by over 77% in the low-energy CBCT image and by over 66% in the high-energy CBCT image. A a consequence, the accuracy of the decomposed multi-material bases was substantially improved.

physics.med-ph↗

arXiv2024

Score-based Diffusion Models With Self-supervised Learning For Accelerated 3D Multi-contrast Cardiac Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Long scan time significantly hinders the widespread applications of three-dimensional multi-contrast cardiac magnetic resonance (3D-MC-CMR) imaging. This study aims to accelerate 3D-MC-CMR acquisition by a novel method based on score-based diffusion models with self-supervised learning. Specifically, we first establish a mapping between the undersampled k-space measurements and the MR images, utilizing a self-supervised Bayesian reconstruction network. Secondly, we develop a joint score-based diffusion model on 3D-MC-CMR images to capture their inherent distribution. The 3D-MC-CMR images are finally reconstructed using the conditioned Langenvin Markov chain Monte Carlo sampling. This approach enables accurate reconstruction without fully sampled training data. Its performance was tested on the dataset acquired by a 3D joint myocardial T1 and T1rho mapping sequence. The T1 and T1rho maps were estimated via a dictionary matching method from the reconstructed images. Experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms traditional compressed sensing and existing self-supervised deep learning MRI reconstruction methods. It also achieves high quality T1 and T1rho parametric maps close to the reference maps, even at a high acceleration rate of 14.

eess.SP↗

arXiv2024

Quantum Neural Network for Accelerated Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Magnetic resonance image reconstruction starting from undersampled k-space data requires the recovery of many potential nonlinear features, which is very difficult for algorithms to recover these features. In recent years, the development of quantum computing has discovered that quantum convolution can improve network accuracy, possibly due to potential quantum advantages. This article proposes a hybrid neural network containing quantum and classical networks for fast magnetic resonance imaging, and conducts experiments on a quantum computer simulation system. The experimental results indicate that the hybrid network has achieved excellent reconstruction results, and also confirm the feasibility of applying hybrid quantum-classical neural networks into the image reconstruction of rapid magnetic resonance imaging.

eess.IV↗

arXiv2024

Near-Field Coupling Coil System: A Novel Radiofrequency Coil Solution for MRI

The performance of radiofrequency (RF) coils has a significant impact on the quality and speed of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Consequently, rigid coils with attached cables are commonly employed to achieve optimal SNR performance and parallel imaging capability. However, since the adoption of MRI in clinical imaging, both patients and doctors have long suffered from the poor examination experience and physical strain caused by the bulky housings and cumbersome cables of traditional coils. This paper presents a new architectural concept, the Near-Field Coupling (NFC) coil system, which integrates a pickup coil array within the magnet with an NFC coil worn by the patient. In contrast to conventional coils, the NFC coil system obviates the necessity for bed-mounted connectors. It provides a lightweight, cost-effective solution that enhances patient comfort and supports disposable, custom designs for the NFC coils. The paper also derives the SNR expression for the NFC coil system, proposes two key design principles, and demonstrates the system's potential in SNR and parallel imaging through an implementation case.

physics.med-ph↗

arXiv2024

Enhancing the vision-language foundation model with key semantic knowledge-emphasized report refinement

Recently, vision-language representation learning has made remarkable advancements in building up medical foundation models, holding immense potential for transforming the landscape of clinical research and medical care. The underlying hypothesis is that the rich knowledge embedded in radiology reports can effectively assist and guide the learning process, reducing the need for additional labels. However, these reports tend to be complex and sometimes even consist of redundant descriptions that make the representation learning too challenging to capture the key semantic information. This paper develops a novel iterative vision-language representation learning framework by proposing a key semantic knowledge-emphasized report refinement method. Particularly, raw radiology reports are refined to highlight the key information according to a constructed clinical dictionary and two model-optimized knowledge-enhancement metrics. The iterative framework is designed to progressively learn, starting from gaining a general understanding of the patient's condition based on raw reports and gradually refines and extracts critical information essential to the fine-grained analysis tasks. The effectiveness of the proposed framework is validated on various downstream medical image analysis tasks, including disease classification, region-of-interest segmentation, and phrase grounding. Our framework surpasses seven state-of-the-art methods in both fine-tuning and zero-shot settings, demonstrating its encouraging potential for different clinical applications.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2024

Enhancing Representation in Radiography-Reports Foundation Model: A Granular Alignment Algorithm Using Masked Contrastive Learning

Recently, multi-modal vision-language foundation models have gained significant attention in the medical field. While these models offer great opportunities, they still face crucial challenges, such as the requirement for fine-grained knowledge understanding in computer-aided diagnosis and the capability of utilizing very limited or even no task-specific labeled data in real-world clinical applications. In this study, we present MaCo, a masked contrastive chest X-ray foundation model that tackles these challenges. MaCo explores masked contrastive learning to simultaneously achieve fine-grained image understanding and zero-shot learning for a variety of medical imaging tasks. It designs a correlation weighting mechanism to adjust the correlation between masked chest X-ray image patches and their corresponding reports, thereby enhancing the model's representation learning capabilities. To evaluate the performance of MaCo, we conducted extensive experiments using 6 well-known open-source X-ray datasets. The experimental results demonstrate the superiority of MaCo over 10 state-of-the-art approaches across tasks such as classification, segmentation, detection, and phrase grounding. These findings highlight the significant potential of MaCo in advancing a wide range of medical image analysis tasks.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2024

Pediatric TSC-Related Epilepsy Classification from Clinical MR Images Using Quantum Neural Network

Tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC) manifests as a multisystem disorder with significant neurological implications. This study addresses the critical need for robust classification models tailored to TSC in pediatric patients, introducing QResNet,a novel deep learning model seamlessly integrating conventional convolutional neural networks with quantum neural networks. The model incorporates a two-layer quantum layer (QL), comprising ZZFeatureMap and Ansatz layers, strategically designed for processing classical data within a quantum framework. A comprehensive evaluation, demonstrates the superior performance of QResNet in TSC MRI image classification compared to conventional 3D-ResNet models. These compelling findings underscore the potential of quantum computing to revolutionize medical imaging and diagnostics.Remarkably, this method surpasses conventional CNNs in accuracy and Area Under the Curve (AUC) metrics with the current dataset. Future research endeavors may focus on exploring the scalability and practical implementation of quantum algorithms in real-world medical imaging scenarios.

eess.IV↗

arXiv2024

Multimodal self-supervised learning for lesion localization

Multimodal deep learning utilizing imaging and diagnostic reports has made impressive progress in the field of medical imaging diagnostics, demonstrating a particularly strong capability for auxiliary diagnosis in cases where sufficient annotation information is lacking. Nonetheless, localizing diseases accurately without detailed positional annotations remains a challenge. Although existing methods have attempted to utilize local information to achieve fine-grained semantic alignment, their capability in extracting the fine-grained semantics of the comprehensive context within reports is limited. To address this problem, a new method is introduced that takes full sentences from textual reports as the basic units for local semantic alignment. This approach combines chest X-ray images with their corresponding textual reports, performing contrastive learning at both global and local levels. The leading results obtained by this method on multiple datasets confirm its efficacy in the task of lesion localization.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2024

Diff-DTI: Fast Diffusion Tensor Imaging Using A Feature-Enhanced Joint Diffusion Model

Magnetic resonance diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) is a critical tool for neural disease diagnosis. However, long scan time greatly hinders the widespread clinical use of DTI. To accelerate image acquisition, a feature-enhanced joint diffusion model (Diff-DTI) is proposed to obtain accurate DTI parameter maps from a limited number of diffusion-weighted images (DWIs). Diff-DTI introduces a joint diffusion model that directly learns the joint probability distribution of DWIs with DTI parametric maps for conditional generation. Additionally, a feature enhancement fusion mechanism (FEFM) is designed and incorporated into the generative process of Diff-DTI to preserve fine structures in the generated DTI maps. A comprehensive evaluation of the performance of Diff-DTI was conducted on the Human Connectome Project dataset. The results demonstrate that Diff-DTI outperforms existing state-of-the-art fast DTI imaging methods in terms of visual quality and quantitative metrics. Furthermore, Diff-DTI has shown the ability to produce high-fidelity DTI maps with only three DWIs, thus overcoming the requirement of a minimum of six DWIs for DTI.

eess.IV↗

arXiv2024

SPIRiT-Diffusion: Self-Consistency Driven Diffusion Model for Accelerated MRI

Diffusion models have emerged as a leading methodology for image generation and have proven successful in the realm of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) reconstruction. However, existing reconstruction methods based on diffusion models are primarily formulated in the image domain, making the reconstruction quality susceptible to inaccuracies in coil sensitivity maps (CSMs). k-space interpolation methods can effectively address this issue but conventional diffusion models are not readily applicable in k-space interpolation. To overcome this challenge, we introduce a novel approach called SPIRiT-Diffusion, which is a diffusion model for k-space interpolation inspired by the iterative self-consistent SPIRiT method. Specifically, we utilize the iterative solver of the self-consistent term (i.e., k-space physical prior) in SPIRiT to formulate a novel stochastic differential equation (SDE) governing the diffusion process. Subsequently, k-space data can be interpolated by executing the diffusion process. This innovative approach highlights the optimization model's role in designing the SDE in diffusion models, enabling the diffusion process to align closely with the physics inherent in the optimization model, a concept referred to as model-driven diffusion. We evaluated the proposed SPIRiT-Diffusion method using a 3D joint intracranial and carotid vessel wall imaging dataset. The results convincingly demonstrate its superiority over image-domain reconstruction methods, achieving high reconstruction quality even at a substantial acceleration rate of 10.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2024

Explanations of MTF discrepancy in grating-based X-ray differential phase contrast CT imaging

As a multi-contrast X-ray computed tomography (CT) imaging system, the grating-based Talbot-Lau interferometer is able to generate the absorption contrast and differential phase contrast (DPC) images concurrently. However, experiments found that the absorption CT (ACT) images have better spatial resolution, i.e., higher modulation transfer function (MTF), than the differential phase contrast CT (DPCT) images. Until now, the root cause of such observed discrepancy has not been rigorously investigated. Through physical experiments, this study revealed that the phase grating in the Talbot-Lau interferometer induces direct superposition of paired split absorption signals and inverse superposition of paired split phase signals via diffraction. Further simulation experiments demonstrated that this splitting leads to a reduction in MTF in both ACT and DPCT images, with distinct superposition mechanisms contributing to the lower MTF in DPCT. Besides, such MTF discrepancy may also be affected in a minor extent by object composition, sample size, beam spectra and detector pixel size. Based on this study, the spatial resolution could be optimized when designing a grating-based DPC imaging system.

physics.med-ph↗

arXiv2024

Pathology-genomic fusion via biologically informed cross-modality graph learning for survival analysis

The diagnosis and prognosis of cancer are typically based on multi-modal clinical data, including histology images and genomic data, due to the complex pathogenesis and high heterogeneity. Despite the advancements in digital pathology and high-throughput genome sequencing, establishing effective multi-modal fusion models for survival prediction and revealing the potential association between histopathology and transcriptomics remains challenging. In this paper, we propose Pathology-Genome Heterogeneous Graph (PGHG) that integrates whole slide images (WSI) and bulk RNA-Seq expression data with heterogeneous graph neural network for cancer survival analysis. The PGHG consists of biological knowledge-guided representation learning network and pathology-genome heterogeneous graph. The representation learning network utilizes the biological prior knowledge of intra-modal and inter-modal data associations to guide the feature extraction. The node features of each modality are updated through attention-based graph learning strategy. Unimodal features and bi-modal fused features are extracted via attention pooling module and then used for survival prediction. We evaluate the model on low-grade gliomas, glioblastoma, and kidney renal papillary cell carcinoma datasets from the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University (FAHZU). Extensive experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms both unimodal and other multi-modal fusion models. For demonstrating the model interpretability, we also visualize the attention heatmap of pathological images and utilize integrated gradient algorithm to identify important tissue structure, biological pathways and key genes.

q-bio.QM↗

arXiv2024

Swin-UMamba: Mamba-based UNet with ImageNet-based pretraining

Accurate medical image segmentation demands the integration of multi-scale information, spanning from local features to global dependencies. However, it is challenging for existing methods to model long-range global information, where convolutional neural networks (CNNs) are constrained by their local receptive fields, and vision transformers (ViTs) suffer from high quadratic complexity of their attention mechanism. Recently, Mamba-based models have gained great attention for their impressive ability in long sequence modeling. Several studies have demonstrated that these models can outperform popular vision models in various tasks, offering higher accuracy, lower memory consumption, and less computational burden. However, existing Mamba-based models are mostly trained from scratch and do not explore the power of pretraining, which has been proven to be quite effective for data-efficient medical image analysis. This paper introduces a novel Mamba-based model, Swin-UMamba, designed specifically for medical image segmentation tasks, leveraging the advantages of ImageNet-based pretraining. Our experimental results reveal the vital role of ImageNet-based training in enhancing the performance of Mamba-based models. Swin-UMamba demonstrates superior performance with a large margin compared to CNNs, ViTs, and latest Mamba-based models. Notably, on AbdomenMRI, Encoscopy, and Microscopy datasets, Swin-UMamba outperforms its closest counterpart U-Mamba_Enc by an average score of 2.72%.

eess.IV↗

arXiv2024

Enhancing Representation in Medical Vision-Language Foundation Models via Multi-Scale Information Extraction Techniques

The development of medical vision-language foundation models has attracted significant attention in the field of medicine and healthcare due to their promising prospect in various clinical applications. While previous studies have commonly focused on feature learning at a single learning scale, investigation on integrating multi-scale information is lacking, which may hinder the potential for mutual reinforcement among these features. This paper aims to bridge this gap by proposing a method that effectively exploits multi-scale information to enhance the performance of medical foundation models. The proposed method simultaneously exploits features at the local, instance, modality and global aspects, facilitating comprehensive representation learning within the models. We evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed method on six open-source datasets across different clinical tasks, demonstrating its ability to enhance the performance of medical foundation models.

cs.CV↗