In this paper, we have presented a microwave scattering analysis from multiple human head models. This study incorporates different levels of detail in the human head models and its effect on microwave scattering phenomenon. Two levels of detail are taken into account; (i) Simplified ellipse shaped head model (ii) Anatomically realistic head model, implemented using 2-D geometry. In addition, heterogenic and frequency-dispersive behavior of the brain tissues has also been incorporated in our head models. It is identified during this study that the microwave scattering phenomenon changes significantly once the complexity of head model is increased by incorporating more details using magnetic resonance imaging database. It is also found out that the microwave scattering results match in both types of head model (i.e., geometrically simple and anatomically realistic), once the measurements are made in the structurally simplified regions. However, the results diverge considerably in the complex areas of brain due to the arbitrary shape interface of tissue layers in the anatomically realistic head model.After incorporating various levels of detail, the solution of subject microwave scattering problem and the measurement of transmitted and backscattered signals were obtained using finite element method. Mesh convergence analysis was also performed to achieve error free results with a minimum number of mesh elements and a lesser degree of freedom in the fast computational time. The results were promising and the E-Field values converged for both simple and complex geometrical models. However, the E-Field difference between both types of head model at the same reference point differentiated a lot in terms of magnitude. At complex location, a high difference value of 0.04236 V/m was measured compared to the simple location, where it turned out to be 0.00197 V/m. This study also contributes to provide a comparison analysis between the direct and iterative solvers so as to find out the solution of subject microwave scattering problem in a minimum computational time along with memory resources requirement.It is seen from this study that the microwave imaging may effectively be utilized for the detection, localization and differentiation of different types of brain stroke. The simulation results verified that the microwave imaging can be efficiently exploited to study the significant contrast between electric field values of the normal and abnormal brain tissues for the investigation of brain anomalies. In the end, a specific absorption rate analysis was carried out to compare the ionizing effects of microwave signals to different types of head model using a factor of safety for brain tissues. It is also suggested after careful study of various inversion methods in practice for microwave head imaging, that the contrast source inversion method may be more suitable and computationally efficient for such problems.
In this paper, a detailed analysis of microwave (MW) scattering from a three-dimensional (3D) anthropomorphic human head model is presented. It is the first time that the finite-element method (FEM) has been deployed to study the MW scattering phenomenon of a 3D realistic head model for brain stroke detection. A major contribution of this paper is to add anatomically more realistic details to the human head model compared with the literature available to date. Using the MRI database, a 3D numerical head model was developed and segmented into 21 different types through a novel tissue-mapping scheme and a mixed-model approach. The heterogeneous and frequency-dispersive dielectric properties were assigned to brain tissues using the same mapping technique. To mimic the simulation set-up, an eight-elements antenna array around the head model was designed using dipole antennae. Two types of brain stroke (haemorrhagic and ischaemic) at various locations inside the head model were then analysed for possible detection and classification. The transmitted and backscattered signals were calculated by finding out the solution of the Helmholtz wave equation in the frequency domain using the FEM. FE mesh convergence analysis for electric field values and comparison between different types of iterative solver were also performed to obtain error-free results in minimal computational time. At the end, specific absorption rate analysis was conducted to examine the ionization effects of MW signals to a 3D human head model. Through computer simulations, it is foreseen that MW imaging may efficiently be exploited to locate and differentiate two types of brain stroke by detecting abnormal tissues’ dielectric properties. A significant contrast between electric field values of the normal and stroke-affected brain tissues was observed at the stroke location. This is a step towards generating MW scattering information for the development of an efficient image reconstruction algorithm.
Sphingomyelin (SM) belongs to a class of lipids termed sphingolipids. The disruption in the sphingomyelin signaling pathway is associated with various neurodegenerative disorders. TNF-α, a potent pro-inflammatory cytokine generated in response to various neurological disorders like Alzheimer’s disease (AD), Parkinson’s disease (PD), and Multiple Sclerosis (MS), is an eminent regulator of the sphingomyelin metabolic pathway. The immune-triggered regulation of the sphingomyelin metabolic pathway via TNF-α constitutes the sphingomyelin signaling pathway. In this pathway, sphingomyelin and its downstream sphingolipids activate various signaling cascades like PI3K/AKT and MAPK/ERK pathways, thus, controlling diverse processes coupled with neuronal viability, survival, and death. The holistic analysis of the immune-triggered sphingomyelin signaling pathway is imperative to make necessary predictions about its pivotal components and for the formulation of disease-related therapeutics. The current work offers a comprehensive in silico systems analysis of TNF-α mediated sphingomyelin and downstream signaling cascades via a model-based quantitative approach. We incorporated the intensity values of genes from the microarray data of control individuals from the AD study in the input entities of the pathway model. Computational modeling and simulation of the inflammatory pathway enabled the comprehensive study of the system dynamics. Network and sensitivity analysis of the model unveiled essential interaction parameters and entities during neuroinflammation. Scanning of the key entities and parameters allowed us to determine their ultimate impact on neuronal apoptosis and survival. Moreover, the efficacy and potency of the FDA-approved drugs, namely Etanercept, Nivocasan, and Scyphostatin allowed us to study the model’s response towards inhibition of the respective proteins/enzymes. The network analysis revealed the pivotal model entities with high betweenness and closeness centrality values including recruit FADD, TNFR_TRADD, act CASP2, actCASP8, actCASP3 and 9, cytochrome C, and RIP_RAIDD which profoundly impacted the neuronal apoptosis. Whereas some of the entities with high betweenness and closeness centrality values like Gi-coupled receptor, actS1PR, Sphingosine, S1P, actAKT, and actERK produced a high influence on neuronal survival. However, the current study inferred the dual role of ceramide, both on neuronal survival and apoptosis. Moreover, the drug Nivocasan effectively reduces neuronal apoptosis via its inhibitory mechanism on the caspases.
Pneumothorax, a life-threatening disease, needs to be diagnosed immediately and efficiently. The prognosis, in this case, is not only time-consuming but also prone to human errors. So, an automatic way of accurate diagnosis using chest X-rays is the utmost requirement. To date, most of the available medical image datasets have a class-imbalance (CI) issue. The main theme of this study is to solve this problem along with proposing an automated way of detecting pneumothorax. To find the optimal approach for CI problem, we first compare the existing approaches and find that under-bagging method (referred as data-levelensemble formed by creating subsets of majority class and then combining each subset with all samples of minority class) outperforms other existing approaches. After selection of best approach for CI problem, we propose a novel framework, named as VDV model, for pneumothorax detection from highly imbalance dataset. The proposed VDV model is a complex model-level ensemble of data-level-ensembles and uses three convolutional neural networks (CNN) including VGG16, VGG-19, and DenseNet-121 as fixed feature extractors. In each data-level-ensemble, features extracted from one of the pre-defined CNN architectures are fed to support vector machine (SVM) classifier, and output is calculated using the voting method. Once outputs from the three data-level-ensembles (corresponding to three different CNN architectures as feature extractor) are obtained, then, again, the voting method is used to calculate the final prediction. Our proposed framework is tested on the SIIM ACR Pneumothorax dataset and Random Sample of NIH Chest X-ray dataset (RS-NIH). For the first dataset, 85.17% Recall with 86.0% Area under the Receiver Operating Characteristic curve (AUC) is attained. For the second dataset, 90.9% Recall with 95.0% AUC is achieved with a random split of data while 85.45% recall with 77.06% AUC is obtained with a patient-wise split of data. The comparison of our results for both the datasets with related work proves the effectiveness of proposed VDV model for pneumothorax detection.
College of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering, National University of Sciences and Technology, Islamabad, Pakistan Email: awaismunawar.phd06@rcms.nust.edu.pkThe objective of this research is to investigate the feasibility of Electromagnetic based Impedance Tomography (EMIT) for brain stroke detection, localization and classification. Electromagnetic based Impedance Tomography employing microwave imaging technique is an emerging brain stroke diagnostic modality. It relies on the significant contrast between dielectric properties of the normal and abnormal brain tissues. To study the interaction between micro-wave signals and head tissues, the simulations are performed using a geometrically simple 3-D ellipsoid head model with emulated stroke. Finite Element numerical technique is adopted to find the solution of Maxwell's equations to measure the transmitted and backscattered signals in forward problem. Contrast Source Inversion technique is proposed to solve the inverse scattering problem and reconstruct brain images based on calculated dielectric profiles. Detailed analysis is performed to determine the safety limits of transmitted signals to minimize ionizing effects while ensuring maximum penetration. The simulations verify the inhomogeneous and frequency-dispersive behavior of brain tissue's dielectric properties. The solution of the forward problem demonstrates the microwave signals scattering by the multilayer structure of the head model, duly validated by analytical results. The scattering phenomena can be fully capitalized by image reconstruction algorithm to obtain brain images and detect stroke presence. The initial results obtained in this research and prior work indicates that EMIT-based head imaging system has a potential for rapid stroke detection, classification, and continuous brain monitoring and offers a comparatively cost-effective solution.
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