11091243
Efficient Algorithms for Intensity Map Splitting Problems in Radiation Therapy
In this paper, we study several interesting intensity map splitting (IMSp) problems that arise in Intensity-Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT), a state-of-the-art radiation therapy technique for cancer treatments. In current clinical practice, a multi-leaf collimator (MLC) with a maximum leaf spread is used to deliver the prescribed intensity maps (IMs). However, the maximum leaf spread of an MLC may require to split a large intensity map into several abutting sub-IMs each being delivered separately, which results in prolonged treatment time. Few IM splitting techniques reported in the literature has addressed the issue of treatment delivery efficiency for large IMs. We develop a unified approach for solving the IMSp problems while minimizing the total beam-on time in various settings. Our basic idea is to formulate the IMSp problem as computing a k-link shortest path in a directed acyclic graph. We carefully characterize the intrinsic structures of the graph, yielding efficient algorithms for the IMSp problems.
123098354
Globally optimal segmentation of interacting surfaces with geometric constraints
Efficient detection of globally optimal surfaces representing object boundaries in volumetric datasets is important and remains challenging in many medical image analysis applications. We have developed an optimal surface detection method that is capable of simultaneously detecting multiple interacting surfaces, in which the optimality is controlled by the cost functions designed for individual surfaces and several geometric constraints defining the surface smoothness and interrelations. The method solves the surface detection problems by transforming them into computing minimum s-t cuts in the derived edge-weighted directed graphs. The proposed algorithm has low-order polynomial complexity and is computationally efficient. The method has been validated on over 100 computer generated volumetric images and 96 CT-scanned datasets of different-sized plexiglas tubes, yielding highly accurate results (mean signed error of the measured inner- and outer-diameters of the plexiglas tubes was 0.21 /spl plusmn/ 3.20%). Our approach can be readily extended to higher dimensional image segmentation.
17909513
Determining an optimal penetration among weighted regions in two and three dimensions
We present efficient algorithms for solving the problem of computing an optimal penetration (a ray or a semi-ray) among weighted regions in 2-D and 3-D spaces. This problem finds applications in several areas, such as radiation therapy, geological exploration, and environmental engineering. Our algorithms are based on a combination of geometric techniques and optimization methods. Our geometric analysis shows that the d-D (d = 2, 3) optimal penetration problem can be reduced to solving O(n2(d−1)) instances of certain special types of non-linear optimization problems, where n is the total number of vertices of the regions. We also give implementation results of our 2-D algorithms.
27904596
Segmenting Doughnut-Shaped Objects in Medical Images
Image segmentation with specific constraints has found applications in several areas such as biomedical image analysis and data mining. In this paper, we study the problem of segmenting doughnut-shaped and smooth objects in 2-D medical images. Image objects of these shapes are often studied in medical applications. We present an O(IJU(U − L)logJlog(U − L)) time algorithm, where the size of the input 2-D image is I× J, M is the smoothness parameter with 1 ≤ M ≤ J, and L and U are the thickness parameters specifying the thickness between two border contours of a doughnut-shaped object. Previous approaches for solving this segmentation problem are computationally expensive and/or need a lot of user interference. Our algorithm improves the straightforward dynamic programming algorithm by a factor of \(O(\frac{J(U-L)M^2}{U{\rm log}J{\rm log}(U-L)})\). We explore some interesting observations, which make possible to apply the divide-and-conquer strategy combined with dynamic programming. Our algorithm is also based on computing optimal paths in an implicitly represented graph.
31548532
Efficient Algorithms and Implementations for Optimizing the Sum of Linear Fractional Functions, with Applications
This paper presents an improved algorithm for solving the sum of linear fractional functions (SOLF) problem in 1-D and 2-D. A key subproblem to our solution is the off-line ratio query (OLRQ) problem, which asks to find the optimal values of a sequence of m linear fractional functions (called ratios), each ratio subject to a feasible domain defined by O(n) linear constraints. Based on some geometric properties and the parametric linear programming technique, we develop an algorithm that solves the OLRQ problem in O((m+n)log (m+n)) time. The OLRQ algorithm can be used to speed up every iteration of a known iterative SOLF algorithm, from O(m(m+n)) time to O((m+n)log (m+n)), in 1-D and 2-D. Implementation results of our improved 1-D and 2-D SOLF algorithm have shown that in most cases it outperforms the commonly-used approaches for the SOLF problem. We also apply our techniques to some problems in computational geometry and other areas, improving the previous results.
39603817
Optimal Terrain Construction Problems and Applications in Intensity-Modulated Radiation Therapy
In this paper, we study several rectilinear terrain construction problems, which model leaf sequencing problems in intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT). We present a novel unified approach based on geometric techniques for solving these terrain construction problems. Our approach leads to the first algorithms for several leaf sequencing problems in IMRT that are practically fast and guarantee the optimal quality of the output solutions. Our implementation results show that our terrain construction algorithms run very fast on real medical data.
13903489
Whole genome phylogeny based on clustered signature string composition
Peptide compositions constructed out of whole sets of protein sequences can be used as species signatures for phylogenetic analysis. To account for point mutations, an amino acid substitution model is integrated into the complete composition vectors through a novel peptide clustering algorithm. Such a refined signature is expected to highlight deeper evolutionary relationships among the species and employed into the whole genome phylogenetic analysis to define a new evolutionary distance measure. Computational experiments have been set up to validate the effectiveness of this new measure and a vertebrate evolutionary tree using a dataset of 832 proteins for 64 vertebrates is reported.
14353526
A logical framework for identifying quality knowledge from different data sources
As the Web has emerged as a large distributed data repository, individuals and organizations have been able to utilize the low-cost information and knowledge on the Internet when making business decisions. Because data in different data sources may be conflictive or untrue, researchers and practitioners must intensify efforts to develop appropriate techniques for its efficient use and management. In this paper, a logical framework is designed for identifying quality knowledge from different data sources, thus working towards the development of an agreed ontology. Our experimental results have demonstrated that the approach is promising, and that a minor data enhancement adjustment could bring higher effectiveness.
7782106
Localized Energy-Aware Broadcast Protocol for Wireless Networks with Directional Antennas
We consider broadcast protocols in wireless networks that have limited energy and computation resources. The well-known algorithm, DBIP (Directional Broadcast Incremental Power), which exploits “Incremental Power” philosophy for wireless networks with directional antenna to construct broadcasting tree, provides very good results in terms of energy savings. Unfortunately, its computation is centralized, as the source node needs to know the entire topology of the network. Mobility of nodes or frequent changes in the node activity status (from “active” to “passive” and vice-versa) may cause global changes in topology which must be propagated throughout the network for any centralized solution. This may results in extreme and un-acceptable communication overhead. In this paper, we propose and evaluate a localized energy-efficient broadcast protocol, Localized Directional Broadcast Incremental Power Protocol (LDBIP), which employs distributed location information and computation to construct broadcast trees. In the proposed method, a source node sets up spanning tree with its local neighborhood position information and includes certain hops relay information in packet. Directional antennas are used for transmitting broadcast packet, and the transmission power is adjusted for each transmission to the minimal necessary for reaching the particular neighbor. Relay nodes will consider relay instructions received to compute their own local neighborhood spanning tree and then rebroadcasts. Experimental results verify that this new protocol shows similar performance with DBIP in static wireless networks, and better performance in mobile scenarios.
19709239
Scheduling real-time requests in on-demand data broadcast environments
On-demand broadcast is an attractive data dissemination method for mobile and wireless computing. In this paper, we propose a new online preemptive scheduling algorithm, called PRDS that incorporates urgency, data size and number of pending requests for real-time on-demand broadcast system. Furthermore, we use pyramid preemption to optimize performance and reduce overhead. A series of simulation experiments have been performed to evaluate the real-time performance of our algorithm as compared with other previously proposed methods. The experimental results show that our algorithm substantially outperforms other algorithms over a wide range of workloads and parameter settings.
22986
Robust Routing in Malicious Environment for Ad Hoc Networks
Secure routing in ad hoc networks has been extensively studied in recent years. The vast majority of this work, however, has only focused on providing authenticity of the route. Availability of the network in a malicious environment has largely been ignored. 
 
In this paper, we divide the secure routing problem into two layers. The first layer provides authenticated routing and the second layer provides a route selection algorithm that selects a route with the highest probability of successful delivery rather than the shortest route. We provide a metric for evaluating this probability. We provide simulation results that demonstrate that our approach increases the throughput by at least ten percent in a network where fifty percent of the nodes are malicious when compared to an approach that selects the shortest route. Furthermore, our approach incurs only a small delay when compared to the delay along the shortest route.