End-to-End Multi-task Learning Architecture for Brain Tumor Analysis with Uncertainty Estimation in MRI Images.

Brain tumors are a threat to life for every other human being, be it adults or children. Gliomas are one of the deadliest brain tumors with an extremely difficult diagnosis. The reason is their complex and heterogenous structure which gives rise to subjective as well as objective errors. Their manual segmentation is a laborious task due to their complex structure and irregular appearance. To cater to all these issues, a lot of research has been done and is going on to develop AI-based solutions that can help doctors and radiologists in the effective diagnosis of gliomas with the least subjective and objective errors, but an end-to-end system is still missing. An all-in-one framework has been proposed in this research. The developed end-to-end multi-task learning (MTL) architecture with a feature attention module can classify, segment, and predict the overall survival of gliomas by leveraging task relationships between similar tasks. Uncertainty estimation has also been incorporated into the framework to enhance the confidence level of healthcare practitioners. Extensive experimentation was performed by using combinations of MRI sequences. Brain tumor segmentation (BraTS) challenge datasets of 2019 and 2020 were used for experimental purposes. Results of the best model with four sequences show 95.1% accuracy for classification, 86.3% dice score for segmentation, and a mean absolute error (MAE) of 456.59 for survival prediction on the test data. It is evident from the results that deep learning-based MTL models have the potential to automate the whole brain tumor analysis process and give efficient results with least inference time without human intervention. Uncertainty quantification confirms the idea that more data can improve the generalization ability and in turn can produce more accurate results with less uncertainty. The proposed model has the potential to be utilized in a clinical setup for the initial screening of glioma patients.

iVision MRSSD: A comprehensive multi-resolution SAR ship detection dataset for state of the art satellite based maritime surveillance applications.

This article describes a comprehensive Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite based ships dataset for use in state of the art object detection algorithms. The dataset comprises 11,590 image tiles containing 27,885 ships examples. Each image tile has spatial dimensions of 512 × 512 pixels and is exported in JPEG format. The dataset contains a wide variety of inshore and offshore scenes under varying background settings and sea conditions to generate an all-inclusive understanding of the ship detection task in SAR satellite images. The dataset is generated using images from six different satellite sensors covering a wide range of electromagnetic spectrum including C, L and X band radar imaging frequencies. All the sensors have different resolutions and imaging modes. The dataset is randomly distributed into training, validation and test sets in the ratio of 70:20:10, respectively, for ease of comparison and bench-marking. The dataset was conceptualized, processed, labeled and verified at the Artificial Intelligence and Computer Vision (iVision) Lab at the Institute of Space Technology, Pakistan. To the best of our knowledge, this is the most diverse satellite based SAR ships dataset available in the public domain in terms of satellite sensors, radar imaging frequencies and background settings. The dataset can be used to train and optimize deep learning based object detection algorithms to develop generic models with high detection performance for any SAR sensor and background condition.

iVision HHID: Handwritten hyperspectral images dataset for benchmarking hyperspectral imaging-based document forensic analysis.

This article presents a dataset of hyperspectral images of handwriting samples collected from 54 individuals. The purpose of the presented dataset is to further explore the use of hyperspectral imaging in document image analysis and to benchmark the performance of forensic analysis methods for hyperspectral document images. Each hyperspectral cube in the dataset has a spatial resolution of 512 × 650 pixels and contains 149 spectral channels in the spectral range of 478-901 nm. All the individuals have different personalities and have their writing patterns. The information of age and gender of each individual is collected. Each subject has written twenty-eight sentences using 12 different varieties of pens from different brands in blue color, each approximately 9 words or 33 characters long, all English alphabets in capital and small cases, digits from 0 to 9. The previous methods use synthetic mixed samples created by joining different parts of the images from the UWA WIHSI dataset.Each document consists of real mixed samples written withdifferent pens and by different writers with a variety of mixing ratios of inks and writers for forensic analysis.The standard A4 pages, each weighing 70 gs and manufactured by "AA" company, are used for data collection. The handwritten notes written by each subject with different pens are annotated in rectangular boxes. This dataset can be used for several tasks related to hyperspectral document image analysis and document forensic analysis including, handwritten optical character recognition, ink mismatch detection, writer identification at sentence, word, and character-level, handwriting-based gender classification, handwriting-based age prediction, handwritten word segmentation, and word generation. This dataset was designed and collected by the research team at the Artificial intelligence and Computer Vision Lab (iVision), Institute of Space Technology, Pakistan, and the hyperspectral images were acquired through imaging spectroscopy in the visible wavelength range at Wageningen University & Research, the Netherlands.

Role of deep learning in brain tumor detection and classification (2015 to 2020): A review.

During the last decade, computer vision and machine learning have revolutionized the world in every way possible. Deep Learning is a sub field of machine learning that has shown remarkable results in every field especially biomedical field due to its ability of handling huge amount of data. Its potential and ability have also been applied and tested in the detection of brain tumor using MRI images for effective prognosis and has shown remarkable performance. The main objective of this research work is to present a detailed critical analysis of the research and findings already done to detect and classify brain tumor through MRI images in the recent past. This analysis is specifically beneficial for the researchers who are experts of deep learning and are interested to apply their expertise for brain tumor detection and classification. As a first step, a brief review of the past research papers using Deep Learning for brain tumor classification and detection is carried out. Afterwards, a critical analysis of Deep Learning techniques proposed in these research papers (2015-2020) is being carried out in the form of a Table. Finally, the conclusion highlights the merits and demerits of deep neural networks. The results formulated in this paper will provide a thorough comparison of recent studies to the future researchers, along with the idea of the effectiveness of various deep learning approaches. We are confident that this study would greatly assist in advancement of brain tumor research.

Deep Learning: A Breakthrough in Medical Imaging.

Deep learning has attracted great attention in the medical imaging community as a promising solution for automated, fast and accurate medical image analysis, which is mandatory for quality healthcare. Convolutional neural networks and its variants have become the most preferred and widely used deep learning models in medical image analysis. In this paper, concise overviews of the modern deep learning models applied in medical image analysis are provided and the key tasks performed by deep learning models, i.e. classification, segmentation, retrieval, detection, and registration are reviewed in detail. Some recent researches have shown that deep learning models can outperform medical experts in certain tasks. With the significant breakthroughs made by deep learning methods, it is expected that patients will soon be able to safely and conveniently interact with AI-based medical systems and such intelligent systems will actually improve patient healthcare. There are various complexities and challenges involved in deep learning-based medical image analysis, such as limited datasets. But researchers are actively working in this area to mitigate these challenges and further improve health care with AI.

Importance of microscopic stool examination in patients with diarrhoea.

BACKGROUND: Loose motion is a common symptom in patients reporting to our hospital. As it is a small set up where only facility for microscopic stool examination is available, we designed this study to know how much microscopic stool examination can help us in management of patients with diarrhoea. METHODS: This cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted from January 2010 to April 2012, at Thall Scout Hospital, Hangoo, Khyber Pukhtoon Khwa, Pakistan. All the patients presenting with acute diarrhoea were included in the study. Patients older than 12 years of age were labelled as adults and those 12 years or younger as child. Stool specimens were collected using proper procedure and were examined microscopically. RESULTS: Of 494 stool specimens examined, 117 (23.68%) were positive for parasites or their ova, 34 (6.88%) had numerous pus and red blood cells and 343 (69.43%) patients had only stool of loose/soft consistency. Of 117 stool specimens positive for parasites, Giardia lamblia was detected in 67 (57.26%) patients, Entamoeba histolytica in 22 (18.80%) patients, H. nana in 10 (8.55%) patients, Tenea saginata in 8(6.84%) patients, hook worm in 6 (5.13%) patients, ascarids in 2 (1.71%) and Trichuris trichura in 2 (1.71%) patients. CONCLUSION: Among the parasitic causes of diarrhoea, giardia is the most common cause in our study with entameoba the second most common cause.