Title :
Metrics for comparing explicit representations of interconnected biological networks
Author :
Mayerich, David ; Bjornsson, Chris ; Taylor, Jonothan ; Roysam, Badrinath
Author_Institution :
Beckman Inst. for Adv. Sci. & Technol., Univ. of Illinois, Urbana, IL, USA
Abstract :
One of the major goals in biomedical image processing is accurate segmentation of networks embedded in volumetric data sets. Biological networks are composed of a meshwork of thin filaments that span large volumes of tissue. Examples of these structures include neurons and microvasculature, which can take the form of both hierarchical trees and fully connected networks, depending on the imaging modality and resolution. Network function depends on both the geometric structure and connectivity. Therefore, there is considerable demand for algorithms that segment biological networks embedded in three-dimensional data. While a large number of tracking and segmentation algorithms have been published, most of these do not generalize well across data sets. One of the major reasons for the lack of general-purpose algorithms is the limited availability of metrics that can be used to quantitiatively compare their effectiveness against a pre-constructed ground-truth. In this paper, we propose a robust metric for measuring and visualizing the differences between network models. Our algorithm takes into account both geometry and connectivity to measure network similarity. These metrics are then mapped back onto an explicit model for visualization.
Keywords :
biology computing; computational geometry; image segmentation; medical image processing; biological networks; biomedical image processing; geometric connectivity; geometric structure; image segmentation; interconnected biological networks; thin filaments meshwork; volumetric data sets; Geometry; Image color analysis; Image edge detection; Image segmentation; Mathematical model; Measurement; Neurons; segmentation; skeletonization; validation; vector tracking;
Conference_Titel :
Biological Data Visualization (BioVis), 2011 IEEE Symposium on
Conference_Location :
Providence, RI
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4673-0003-2
DOI :
10.1109/BioVis.2011.6094051