Kidney Detection and Segmentation in Contrast-Enhanced Ultrasound 3D Images

Contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) imaging has lately benefited of an increasing interest for diagnosis and intervention planning, as it allows to visualize blood flow in real-time harmlessly for the patient. It complements thus the anatomical information provided by conventional ultrasound (US). This chapter is dedicated to kidney segmentation methods in 3D CEUS images. First we present a generic and fast two-step approach to locate (via a robust ellipsoid estimation algorithm) and segment (using a template deformation framework) the kidney automatically. Then we show how user interactions can be integrated within the algorithm to guide or correct the segmentation in real-time. Finally, we develop a co-segmentation framework that generalizes the aforementioned method and allows the simultaneous use of multiple images (here the CEUS and the US images) to improve the segmentation result. The different approaches are evaluated on a clinical database of 64 volumes.nonouirechercheInternationa

Towards a Metropolitan City Centre for Brussels

Between 2015 and 2020, the city centre of Brussels witnessed the creation of its first major pedestrian zone, one of the largest urban projects in recent decades. Has the Brussels city centre finally done away with the car hegemony? Can the city centre be extended to become the centre of the Brussels metropolis where everyone can find his or her own place? This book presents scientific background to the issue and brings together in words and images the research carried out over the past four years by the Brussels Centre Observatory