Computational Bioimaging: How to Further Reduce Exposure and/or Increase Image Quality

M. Unser

Thirty-Ninth Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, in conjunction with the biennial Conference of the French Society of Biological and Medical Engineering (EMBC'17), Jeju-do, Republic of Korea, July 11-15, 2017.

We start our account of inverse problems in imaging with a brief review of first-generation reconstruction algorithms, which are linear and typically non-iterative (e.g., backprojection). We then highlight the emergence of the concept of sparsity, which opened the door to the resolution of more difficult image reconstruction problems, including compressed sensing. In particular, we demonstrate the global optimality of splines for solving problems with total-variation (TV) regularization constraints. Next, we introduce an alternative statistical formulation where signals are modeled as sparse stochastic processes. This allows us to establish a formal equivalence between non-Gaussian MAP estimation and sparsity-promoting techniques that are based on the minimization of a non-quadratic cost functional. We also show how to compute the solution efficiently via an alternating sequence of linear steps and pointwise nonlinearities (ADMM algorithm). This concludes our discussion of the second-generation methods that constitute the state-of-the-art in a variety of modalities.

In the final part of the presentation, we shall argue that learning techniques will play a central role in the future development of the field with the emergence of third-generation methods. A natural solution for improving image quality is to retain the linear part of the ADMM algorithm while optimizing its non-linear step (proximal operator) so as to minimize the reconstruction error. Another more extreme scenario is to replace the iterative part of the reconstruction by a deep convolutional network. The various approaches will be illustrated with the reconstruction of images in a variety of modalities including MRI, X-ray and cryo-electron tomography, and deconvolution microscopy.

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AUTHOR="Unser, M.",
TITLE="Computational Bioimaging: {H}ow to Further Reduce Exposure and/or
	Increase Image Quality",
BOOKTITLE="Thirty-Ninth Annual International Conference of the {IEEE}
	Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, in conjunction with the
	biennial Conference of the French Society of Biological and Medical
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YEAR="2017",
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address="Jeju-do, Republic of Korea",
month="July 11-15,",
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