Neuromorphic engineers study models and implementations of systems that mimic neurons behavior in the brain. Neuro-inspired systems commonly use spikes to represent information. This representation has several advantages: its robustness to noise thanks to repetition, its continuous and analog information representation using digital pulses, its capacity of pre-processing during transmission time, ... , Furthermore, spikes is an efficient way, found by nature, to codify, transmit and process information. In this paper we propose, design, and analyze neuro-inspired building blocks that can perform spike-based analog filters used in signalprocessing. We present a VHDL implementation for FPGA.Presented building blocks take advantages of the spike rate coded representation to perform a massively parallel processing without complex hardware units, like floating point arithmetic units, or a large memory. Those low requirements of hardware allow the integration of a high number of blocks inside a FPGA, allowing to process fully in parallel several spikes coded signals.
Existing computational approaches have not yet resulted in effective and efficient computer-aided tools that are used in pathologists' daily practice. Focusing on a computer-based qualification for breast cancer diagnosis, the present study proposes two deep learning architectures to efficiently and effectively detect and classify mitosis in a histopathological tissue sample. The first method consists of two parts, entailing a preprocessing of the digital histological image and a free-handcrafted-feature Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) used for binary classification. Results show that the methodology proposed can achieve 95% accuracy in testing, with an F1-score of 94.35%. This result is higher than the results using classical image processing techniques and also higher than the approaches combining CCNs with handcrafted features. The second approach is an end-to-end methodology using semantic segmentation. Results showed that this algorithm can achieve an accuracy higher than 95% in testing and an average Dice index of 0.6, higher than the existing results using CNNs (0.9 F1-score). Additionally, due to the semantic properties of the deep learning approach, an end-to-end deep learning framework is viable to perform both tasks: detection and classification of mitosis. The results show the potential of deep learning in the analysis of Whole Slide Images (WSI) and its integration to computer-aided systems. The extension of this work to whole slide images is also addressed in the last sections; as well as, some computational key points that are useful when constructing a computer-aided-system inspired by the proposed technology.
Address-Event-Representation (AER) is a communication protocol for transferring spikes between bio-inspired chips. Such systems may consist of a hierarchical structure with several chips that transmit spikes among them in real time, while performing some processing. To develop and test AER based systems it is convenient to have a set of instruments that would allow to: generate AER streams, monitor the output produced by neural chips and modify the spike stream produced by an emitting chip to adapt it to the requirements of the receiving elements. In this paper we present a set of tools that implement these functions developed in the CAVIAR EU project.
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Tau proteins in the gray matter are widely known to be a part of Alzheimer's disease symptoms. They can aggregate in three different structures within the brain: neurites, tangles, and neuritic plaques. The morphology and the spatial disposition of these three aggregates are hypothesised to be correlated to the advancement of the disease. In order to establish a behavioural disease model related to the Tau proteins aggregates, it is necessary to develop algorithms to detect and segment them automatically. We present a 5-folded pipeline aiming to perform with clinically operational results. This pipeline is composed of a non-linear colour normalisation, a CNN-based image classifier, an Unet-based image segmentation stage, and a morphological analysis of the segmented objects. The tangle detection and segmentation algorithms improve state-of-the-art performances (75.8% and 91.1% F1score, respectively), and create a reference for neuritic plaques detection and segmentation (81.3% and 78.2% F1-score, respectively). These results constitute an initial baseline in an area where no prior results exist, as far as we know. The pipeline is complete and based on a promising state-of-the-art architecture. Therefore, we consider this study a handy baseline of an impactful extension to support new advances in Alzheimer's disease. Moreover, building a fully operational pipeline will be crucial to create a 3D histology map for a deeper understanding of clinico-pathological associations in Alzheimer's disease and the histology-based evidence of disease stratification among different sub-types.
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