arXiv subjects

Xu Cao

Publications and source records attributed to Xu Cao.

At least 109 records · Page 6Linked to original sources

arXiv2022

Improving Computed Tomography (CT) Reconstruction via 3D Shape Induction

Chest computed tomography (CT) imaging adds valuable insight in the diagnosis and management of pulmonary infectious diseases, like tuberculosis (TB). However, due to the cost and resource limitations, only X-ray images may be available for initial diagnosis or follow up comparison imaging during treatment. Due to their projective nature, X-rays images may be more difficult to interpret by clinicians. The lack of publicly available paired X-ray and CT image datasets makes it challenging to train a 3D reconstruction model. In addition, Chest X-ray radiology may rely on different device modalities with varying image quality and there may be variation in underlying population disease spectrum that creates diversity in inputs. We propose shape induction, that is, learning the shape of 3D CT from X-ray without CT supervision, as a novel technique to incorporate realistic X-ray distributions during training of a reconstruction model. Our experiments demonstrate that this process improves both the perceptual quality of generated CT and the accuracy of down-stream classification of pulmonary infectious diseases.

eess.IV↗

arXiv2022

Automatic Infectious Disease Classification Analysis with Concept Discovery

Automatic infectious disease classification from images can facilitate needed medical diagnoses. Such an approach can identify diseases, like tuberculosis, which remain under-diagnosed due to resource constraints and also novel and emerging diseases, like monkeypox, which clinicians have little experience or acumen in diagnosing. Avoiding missed or delayed diagnoses would prevent further transmission and improve clinical outcomes. In order to understand and trust neural network predictions, analysis of learned representations is necessary. In this work, we argue that automatic discovery of concepts, i.e., human interpretable attributes, allows for a deep understanding of learned information in medical image analysis tasks, generalizing beyond the training labels or protocols. We provide an overview of existing concept discovery approaches in medical image and computer vision communities, and evaluate representative methods on tuberculosis (TB) prediction and monkeypox prediction tasks. Finally, we propose NMFx, a general NMF formulation of interpretability by concept discovery that works in a unified way in unsupervised, weakly supervised, and supervised scenarios.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2022

A Compacted Structure for Cross-domain learning on Monocular Depth and Flow Estimation

Accurate motion and depth recovery is important for many robot vision tasks including autonomous driving. Most previous studies have achieved cooperative multi-task interaction via either pre-defined loss functions or cross-domain prediction. This paper presents a multi-task scheme that achieves mutual assistance by means of our Flow to Depth (F2D), Depth to Flow (D2F), and Exponential Moving Average (EMA). F2D and D2F mechanisms enable multi-scale information integration between optical flow and depth domain based on differentiable shallow nets. A dual-head mechanism is used to predict optical flow for rigid and non-rigid motion based on a divide-and-conquer manner, which significantly improves the optical flow estimation performance. Furthermore, to make the prediction more robust and stable, EMA is used for our multi-task training. Experimental results on KITTI datasets show that our multi-task scheme outperforms other multi-task schemes and provide marked improvements on the prediction results.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2022

AggPose: Deep Aggregation Vision Transformer for Infant Pose Estimation

Movement and pose assessment of newborns lets experienced pediatricians predict neurodevelopmental disorders, allowing early intervention for related diseases. However, most of the newest AI approaches for human pose estimation methods focus on adults, lacking publicly benchmark for infant pose estimation. In this paper, we fill this gap by proposing infant pose dataset and Deep Aggregation Vision Transformer for human pose estimation, which introduces a fast trained full transformer framework without using convolution operations to extract features in the early stages. It generalizes Transformer + MLP to high-resolution deep layer aggregation within feature maps, thus enabling information fusion between different vision levels. We pre-train AggPose on COCO pose dataset and apply it on our newly released large-scale infant pose estimation dataset. The results show that AggPose could effectively learn the multi-scale features among different resolutions and significantly improve the performance of infant pose estimation. We show that AggPose outperforms hybrid model HRFormer and TokenPose in the infant pose estimation dataset. Moreover, our AggPose outperforms HRFormer by 0.8 AP on COCO val pose estimation on average. Our code is available at github.com/SZAR-LAB/AggPose.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2022

Timelike nucleon electromagnetic form factors: All about interference of isospin amplitudes

A striking feature of the timelike nucleon electromagnetic form factors, investigated in $e^+e^- \to N\bar N$ annihilation reactions, is the modulation by local structures of small magnitude and oscillatory form, showing up above $N\bar N$ threshold. Starting from an isospin decomposition of the proton and neutron form factors it is shown that such structures are the natural consequence of the interference of a large and a small amplitudes, resulting in a sinusoidal behavior as a function of the "invariant energy" if the relative phase shift varies with energy. Thus, periodic oscillations superimposed on a smooth background will be observed. In this scenario, an equal size of the modulation for neutron and proton discovered by recent BESIII data evidently implies the particular isoscalar or isovector nature of these local structures, or their orthogonal interference, hence specifies their origin as excited vector mesons whose widths are tied to the modulation frequency.We clarify that the phase difference of modulation between neutron and proton as BESIII data found, but not the modulation itself, is the evidence of an imaginary part of the timelike nucleon electromagnetic form factors, which is associated with the rescattering processes.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2021

Individual Pulse Monitoring and Dose Control System for Pre-Clinical Implementation of FLASH-RT

Ultra-high dose rate electron sources require dose rate independent dosimeters and a calibrated dose control system for accurate delivery. In this study, we developed a single-pulse dose monitoring and a real-time dose-based control system for a converted clinical linear accelerator (LINAC). A point scintillator detector was coupled to a gated amplifier and a real-time controller for dose monitoring and feedback control loop. The controller was programmed to integrate dose and measure pulse width of each radiation pulse and gate the LINAC beam when the prescribed dose was delivered. The scintillator was mounted in solid water phantom and placed underneath mice skin for in vivo dose monitoring. Additionally, the scintillator was characterized in terms of its radiation stability, mean dose-rate, and dose per pulse dependence. Dose integration was performed for each radiation pulse and displayed in real-time. The scintillator was shown to be linear with mean dose-rate (40-380 Gy/s) and dose per pulse (0.3-1.3 Gy/Pulse) to within +/- 3%. However, the plastic scintillator was subject to significant radiation damage (16%/kGy) and would need to be calibrated frequently. Pulse-counting control was accurately implemented with direct correspondence between the intended and the actual delivered pulses. The dose-based control was sufficient to gate on any pulse of the LINAC. In-vivo dosimetry monitoring with a 1 cm circular cut-out revealed that a ramp-up of 4-5 pulses was present during which the average dose per pulse was ~0.045 +/- 0.004 Gy/Pulse, whereas after the ramp-up it stabilized at 0.65 +/- 0.01 Gy/Pulse. The tools presented in this study can be used to determine the beam parameter space pertinent to the FLASH effect. Additionally, this study is the first instance of real-time dose-based control for a modified LINAC at ultra-high dose rates.

physics.med-ph↗

arXiv2021

Hunting for the heavy quark spin symmetry partner of $Z_{cs}$

The discovery of a charged strange hidden-charm state $Z_{cs}$(3985) implies another higher $Z^*_{cs}$ state coupling to $\bar{D}_s^{*-}D^{*0} + c.c$ under the heavy quark spin symmetry. In this paper we discuss a possible hunt for it with data taken at existing facilities. We point out a hint for $Z^*_{cs}$ in the data of $\bar{B}_s^0 \to J/ψK^- K^+$ at LHCb, though weak, in line with the production mechanism of pentaquark $P_c$. We also study the triangular singularity which would possibly enhance the production of $Z^*_{cs}$ in electron-positron collision. Surprisingly, the production rate of $Z^*_{cs}$ is expected to be maximum at the $e^+ e^-$ center of mass energy of 4.648 GeV, which is lower than 4.681 GeV for $Z_{cs}$ due to the inverted coupling hierarchy of $D_{s1} \bar D K$ and $D_{s2} \bar D^* K$ in the triangle diagrams. Their bottom analogue under heavy quark flavor symmetry is also discussed. Our theoretical analysis would confront with future experiment of LHCb, BESIII, and Bell II.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2021

Treatment Planning System for Electron FLASH Radiotherapy: Open-source for Clinical Implementation

Purpose: A Monte Carlo (MC) beam model and its implementation in a clinical treatment planning system (TPS, Varian Eclipse) are presented for a modified ultra-high dose-rate electron FLASH radiotherapy (eFLASH-RT) LINAC. Methods: The gantry head without scattering foils or targets, representative of the LINAC modifications, was modelled in Geant4. The energy spectrum (σE) and beam source emittance cone angle (θcone) were varied to match the calculated and Gafchromic film measured central-axis percent depth dose (PDD) and lateral profiles. Its Eclipse configuration was validated with measured profiles of the open field and nominal fields for clinical applicators. eFLASH-RT plans were MC forward calculated in Geant4 for a mouse brain treatment and compared to a conventional (Conv-RT) plan in Eclipse for a human patient with metastatic renal cell carcinoma. Results: The beam model and its Eclipse configuration agreed best with measurements at σE=0.5 MeV and θcone=3.9+/-0.2 degrees to clinically acceptable accuracy (the absolute average error was within 1.5% for in-water lateral, 3% for in-air lateral, and 2% for PDD). The forward dose calculation showed dose was delivered to the entire mouse brain with adequate conformality. The human patient case demonstrated the planning capability with routine accessories in relatively complex geometry to achieve an acceptable plan (90% of the tumor volume receiving 95% and 90% of the prescribed dose for eFLASH and Conv-RT, respectively). Conclusion: To the best of our knowledge, this is the first functional beam model commissioned in a clinical TPS for eFLASH-RT, enabling planning and evaluation with minimal deviation from Conv-RT workflow. It facilitates the clinical translation as eFLASH-RT and Conv-RT plan quality were comparable for a human patient. The methods can be expanded to model other eFLASH irradiators.

physics.med-ph↗

arXiv2021

VeniBot: Towards Autonomous Venipuncture with Semi-supervised Vein Segmentation from Ultrasound Images

In the modern medical care, venipuncture is an indispensable procedure for both diagnosis and treatment. In this paper, unlike existing solutions that fully or partially rely on professional assistance, we propose VeniBot -- a compact robotic system solution integrating both novel hardware and software developments. For the hardware, we design a set of units to facilitate the supporting, positioning, puncturing and imaging functionalities. For the software, to move towards a full automation, we propose a novel deep learning framework -- semi-ResNeXt-Unet for semi-supervised vein segmentation from ultrasound images. From which, the depth information of vein is calculated and used to enable automated navigation for the puncturing unit. VeniBot is validated on 40 volunteers, where ultrasound images can be collected successfully. For the vein segmentation validation, the proposed semi-ResNeXt-Unet improves the dice similarity coefficient (DSC) by 5.36%, decreases the centroid error by 1.38 pixels and decreases the failure rate by 5.60%, compared to fully-supervised ResNeXt-Unet.

eess.IV↗

arXiv2021

VeniBot: Towards Autonomous Venipuncture with Automatic Puncture Area and Angle Regression from NIR Images

Venipucture is a common step in clinical scenarios, and is with highly practical value to be automated with robotics. Nowadays, only a few on-shelf robotic systems are developed, however, they can not fulfill practical usage due to varied reasons. In this paper, we develop a compact venipucture robot -- VeniBot, with four parts, six motors and two imaging devices. For the automation, we focus on the positioning part and propose a Dual-In-Dual-Out network based on two-step learning and two-task learning, which can achieve fully automatic regression of the suitable puncture area and angle from near-infrared(NIR) images. The regressed suitable puncture area and angle can further navigate the positioning part of VeniBot, which is an important step towards a fully autonomous venipucture robot. Validation on 30 VeniBot-collected volunteers shows a high mean dice coefficient(DSC) of 0.7634 and a low angle error of 15.58° on suitable puncture area and angle regression respectively, indicating its potentially wide and practical application in the future.

eess.IV↗

arXiv2021

Production of hidden-charm and hidden-bottom pentaquark states in electron-proton collisions

Electro-production of several pentaquark states is investigated in this paper. eSTARlight package is adapted to study the electro-production of $J/ψ$ and $Υ(1S)$ via pentaquark $P_c$ and $P_b$ resonance channels in $e p \to e eJ/ψp$ and $e p \to eΥ(1S) p$ scattering processes at proposed electron-ion colliders (EICs). The results in this paper are compared to the non-resonance $t$-channels, which is described in pomeron exchange model in our studies. Some pseudo-rapidity distributions rapidity distributions of $J/ψ$ and $Υ(1S)$ are presented for proposed EICs including EicC and EIC-US. It is found that EicC is a good platform to identify $P_b$ states in the future.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2021

Strange molecular partners of the $Z_c(3900)$ and $Z_c(4020)$

Quantum Chromodynamics presents a series of exact and approximate symmetries which can be exploited to predict new hadrons from previously known ones. The $Z_c(3900)$ and $Z_c(4020)$ resonances, which have been theorized to be isovector $D^* \bar{D}$ and $D^* \bar{D}^*$ molecules [$I^G(J^{PC}) = 1^-(1^{+-})$], are no exception. Here we argue that from SU(3)-flavor symmetry, we should expect the existence of strange partners of the $Z_c$'s with hadronic molecular configurations $D^* \bar{D}_s$-$D \bar{D}_s^*$ and $D^* \bar{D}^{*}_s$ (or, equivalently, quark content $c\bar{c} s \bar{q}$, with $q = u, d$). The quantum numbers of these $Z_{cs}$ and $Z_{cs}^*$ resonances would be $I(J^P)$ = $\frac{1}{2}(1^+)$. The predicted masses of these partners depend on the details of the theoretical scheme used, but they should be around the $D^* \bar{D}_s$-$D \bar{D}_s^*$ and $D^* \bar{D}^{*}_s$ thresholds, respectively. Moreover, any of these states could be either a virtual pole or a resonance. We show that, together with a possible triangle singularity contribution, such a picture nicely agrees with the very recent BESIII data of the $e^+e^-\to K^+(D_s^-D^{*0}+D_s^{*-}D^0)$.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2021

Photoproduction of strange hidden-charm and hidden-bottom states

Recently BESIII collaboration discovered a charged strange hidden-charm state $Z_{cs}$(3985) in the $D_s^-D^{*0} + D_s^{*-}D^{0}$ spectrum. A higher $Z'_{cs}$ state coupling to $\bar{D}_s^{*-}D^{*0}$ is expected by SU(3)-flavor symmetry, and their bottom partners are anticipated by heavy quark flavor symmetry. Here we study the photoproduction of these exotic states and investigate carefully the background from Pomeron exchange. Our results indicate that the maximal photoproduction cross section of strange partner is around 1 $\sim$ 2 orders of magnitude smaller than that of the corresponding non-strange states. The possibility of searching for them in future electron-ion colliders (EIC) is briefly discussed.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2021

Electron-Ion Collider in China

Lepton scattering is an established ideal tool for studying inner structure of small particles such as nucleons as well as nuclei. As a future high energy nuclear physics project, an Electron-ion collider in China (EicC) has been proposed. It will be constructed based on an upgraded heavy-ion accelerator, High Intensity heavy-ion Accelerator Facility (HIAF) which is currently under construction, together with a new electron ring. The proposed collider will provide highly polarized electrons (with a polarization of $\sim$80%) and protons (with a polarization of $\sim$70%) with variable center of mass energies from 15 to 20 GeV and the luminosity of (2-3) $\times$ 10$^{33}$ cm$^{-2}$ s$^{-1}$. Polarized deuterons and Helium-3, as well as unpolarized ion beams from Carbon to Uranium, will be also available at the EicC. The main foci of the EicC will be precision measurements of the structure of the nucleon in the sea quark region, including 3D tomography of nucleon; the partonic structure of nuclei and the parton interaction with the nuclear environment; the exotic states, especially those with heavy flavor quark contents. In addition, issues fundamental to understanding the origin of mass could be addressed by measurements of heavy quarkonia near-threshold production at the EicC. In order to achieve the above-mentioned physics goals, a hermetical detector system will be constructed with cutting-edge technologies. This document is the result of collective contributions and valuable inputs from experts across the globe. The EicC physics program complements the ongoing scientific programs at the Jefferson Laboratory and the future EIC project in the United States. The success of this project will also advance both nuclear and particle physics as well as accelerator and detector technology in China.

nucl-ex↗

arXiv2021

Electron FLASH Delivery at Treatment Room Isocenter for Efficient Reversible Conversion of a Clinical LINAC

Purpose: In this study, procedures were developed to achieve efficient reversible conversion of a clinical linear accelerator (LINAC) and deliver electron FLASH (eFLASH) or conventional beams to the treatment room isocenter. Material & Methods: The LINAC was converted to deliver eFLASH beam within 20 minutes by retracting the x-ray target from the beam's path, positioning the carousel on an empty port, and selecting 10 MV photon beam energy in the treatment console. Dose per pulse and average dose rate were measured in a solid water phantom at different depths with Gafchromic film and OSLD. A pulse controller counted the pulses via scattered radiation signal and gated the delivery for preset pulse count. A fast photomultiplier tube-based Cherenkov detector measured per pulse beam output at 2 ns sampling rate. After conversion back to clinical mode, conventional beam output, flatness, symmetry, field size and energy were measured for all clinically commissioned energies. Results: Dose per pulse of 0.86 +/- 0.01 Gy (310 +/- 7 Gy/s average dose rate) were achieved at isocenter. The dose from simultaneous irradiation of film and OSLD were within 1%. The PMT showed the LINAC required about 5 pulses before the output stabilized and its long-term stability was within 3% for measurements performed at 3 minutes intervals. The dose, flatness, symmetry, and photon energy were unchanged from baseline and within tolerance (1%, 3%, 2%, and 0.1% respectively) after reverting to conventional beams. Conclusion: 10 MeV FLASH beams were achieved at the isocenter of the treatment room. The beam output was reproducible but requires further investigation of the ramp up time in the first 5 pulses, equivalent to <100 cGy. The eFLASH beam can irradiate both small and large subjects in minimally modified clinical settings and dose rates can be further increased by reducing the source to surface distance.

physics.med-ph↗

arXiv2020

CAggNet: Crossing Aggregation Network for Medical Image Segmentation

In this paper, we present Crossing Aggregation Network (CAggNet), a novel densely connected semantic segmentation approach for medical image analysis. The crossing aggregation network improves the idea from deep layer aggregation and makes significant innovations in semantic and spatial information fusion. In CAggNet, the simple skip connection structure of general U-Net is replaced by aggregations of multi-level down-sampling and up-sampling layers, which is a new form of nested skip connection. This aggregation architecture enables the network to fuse both coarse and fine features interactively in semantic segmentation. It also introduces weighted aggregation module to up-sample multi-scale output at the end of the network. We have evaluated and compared our CAggNet with several advanced U-Net based methods in two public medical image datasets, including the 2018 Data Science Bowl nuclei detection dataset and the 2015 MICCAI gland segmentation competition dataset. Experimental results indicate that CAggNet improves medical object recognition and achieves a more accurate and efficient segmentation compared to existing improved U-Net and UNet++ structure.

eess.IV↗

arXiv2020

Photoproduction of hidden-bottom pentaquark and related topics

Due to the discovery of the hidden-charm pentaquark $P_c$ states by the LHCb collaboration, the interests on the candidates of hidden-bottom pentaquark $P_b$ states are increasing. They are anticipated to exist as the analogues of the $P_c$ states in the bottom sector and predicted by many models. We give an exploration of searching for a typical $P_b$ in the $γp \to Υp$ reaction, which shows a promising potential to observe it at an electron-ion collider. The possibility of searching for $P_b$ in open-bottom channels are also briefly discussed. Meanwhile, the $t$-channel non-resonant contribution, which in fact covers several interesting topics at low energies, is systematically investigated.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2020

Identify the hidden charm pentaquark signal from non-resonant background in electron-proton scattering

We study the electroproduction of the LHCb pentaquark states with the assumption that they are resonant states. The main concern here is to investigate the final state distribution in the phase space in order to extract the feeble pentaquark signal from the large non-resonant background. Our results show that the ratio of the signal to background would increase significantly with proper kinematic cut, which would be very helpful for future experimental analysis.

hep-ph↗