Sahirzeeshan (Sahir) Ali

Quantitative histomorphometry (QH) refers to the application of advanced computational image analysis to reproducibly describe disease appearance on digitized histopathology images. QH thus could serve as an important complementary tool for pathologists in interrogating and interpreting cancer morphology and malignancy. In the US, annually, over 60,000 prostate cancer patients undergo radical prostatectomy treatment. Around 10,000 of these men experience biochemical recurrence within 5 years of… Show more

Quantitative histomorphometry (QH) refers to the application of advanced computational image analysis to reproducibly describe disease appearance on digitized histopathology images. QH thus could serve as an important complementary tool for pathologists in interrogating and interpreting cancer morphology and malignancy. In the US, annually, over 60,000 prostate cancer patients undergo radical prostatectomy treatment. Around 10,000 of these men experience biochemical recurrence within 5 years of surgery, a marker for local or distant disease recurrence. The ability to predict the risk of biochemical recurrence soon after surgery could allow for adjuvant therapies to be prescribed as necessary to improve long term treatment outcomes. The underlying hypothesis with our approach, co-occurring gland angularity (CGA), is that in benign or less aggressive prostate cancer, gland orientations within local neighborhoods are similar to each other but are more chaotically arranged in aggressive disease. By modeling the extent of the disorder, we can differentiate surgically removed prostate tissue sections from (a) benign and malignant regions and (b) more and less aggressive prostate cancer. For a cohort of 40 intermediate-risk (mostly Gleason sum 7) surgically cured prostate cancer patients where half suffered biochemical recurrence, the CGA features were able to predict biochemical recurrence with 73% accuracy. Additionally, for 80 regions of interest chosen from the 40 studies, corresponding to both normal and cancerous cases, the CGA features yielded a 99% accuracy. CGAs were shown to be statistically signicantly ([Formula: see text]) better at predicting BCR compared to state-of-the-art QH methods and postoperative prostate cancer nomograms. Show less

Active contours and active shape models (ASM) have been widely employed in image segmentation. A major limitation of active contours, however, is in their 1) inability to resolve boundaries of intersecting objects and to 2) handle occlusion. Multiple overlapping objects are typically segmented out as a single object. In this paper, we present a novel synergistic boundary and region-based active contour model that incorporates shape priors in a level set formulation with automated initialization… Show more

Active contours and active shape models (ASM) have been widely employed in image segmentation. A major limitation of active contours, however, is in their 1) inability to resolve boundaries of intersecting objects and to 2) handle occlusion. Multiple overlapping objects are typically segmented out as a single object. In this paper, we present a novel synergistic boundary and region-based active contour model that incorporates shape priors in a level set formulation with automated initialization based on watershed. We demonstrate an application of these synergistic active contour models using multiple level sets to segment nuclear and glandular structures on digitized histopathology images of breast and prostate biopsy specimens. Unlike previous related approaches, our model is able to resolve object overlap and separate occluded boundaries of multiple objects simultaneously. The energy functional of the active contour is comprised of three terms. The first term is the prior shape term, modeled on the object of interest, thereby constraining the deformation achievable by the active contour. The second term, a boundary-based term detects object boundaries from image gradients. The third term drives the shape prior and the contour towards the object boundary based on region statistics. The results of qualitative and quantitative evaluation on 100 prostate and 14 breast cancer histology images for the task of detecting and segmenting nuclei and lymphocytes reveals that the model easily outperforms two state of the art segmentation schemes (geodesic active contour and Rousson shape-based model) and on average is able to resolve up to 91% of overlapping/occluded structures in the images. Show less

In recent years, shape based active contours have emerged as a natural solution to overlap resolution. However, most of these shape-based methods are limited to finding and resolving one object overlap per scene and require user intervention for model initialization. In this paper, we present a novel synergistic segmentation scheme called Active Contour for Overlap Resolution using Watershed (ACOReW). ACOReW combines shape priors with boundary and region-based active contours in a level set… Show more

In recent years, shape based active contours have emerged as a natural solution to overlap resolution. However, most of these shape-based methods are limited to finding and resolving one object overlap per scene and require user intervention for model initialization. In this paper, we present a novel synergistic segmentation scheme called Active Contour for Overlap Resolution using Watershed (ACOReW). ACOReW combines shape priors with boundary and region-based active contours in a level set formulation with a watershed scheme for model initialization for identifying and resolving multiple object overlaps in an image scene. The energy functional for the variational active contour model is composed of three complimentary terms (a) a shape model which constrains the active contour to a pre-defined shape, (b) boundary based term which directs the active contour model to the image gradient, and (c) a third term driving the shape prior and the active contour towards a homogeneous intensity region. In this paper we show an application of ACOReW in the context of segmenting nuclear and glandular structures on prostate and breast cancer histopathology. The results of qualitative and quantitative evaluation on 100 prostate and 14 breast cancer histology images reveals that ACOReW outperforms two state of the art segmentation schemes (Geodesic Active Contour (GAC) and Rousson's shape based model) and resolves up to 92% of overlapping/occluded lymphocytes and nuclei on prostate and breast cancer histology images. Show less

Shape based active contours have emerged as a natural solution to overlap resolution. However, most of these shape-based methods are computationally expensive. There are instances in an image where no overlapping objects are present and applying these schemes results in significant computational overhead without any accompanying, additional benefit. In this paper we present a novel adaptive active contour scheme (AdACM) that combines boundary and region based energy terms with a shape prior in… Show more

Shape based active contours have emerged as a natural solution to overlap resolution. However, most of these shape-based methods are computationally expensive. There are instances in an image where no overlapping objects are present and applying these schemes results in significant computational overhead without any accompanying, additional benefit. In this paper we present a novel adaptive active contour scheme (AdACM) that combines boundary and region based energy terms with a shape prior in a multi level set formulation. To reduce the computational overhead, the shape prior term in the variational formulation is only invoked for those instances in the image where overlaps between objects are identified; these overlaps being identified via a contour concavity detection scheme. By not having to invoke all 3 terms (shape, boundary, region) for segmenting every object in the scene, the computational expense of the integrated active contour model is dramatically reduced, a particularly relevant consideration when multiple objects have to be segmented on very large histopathological images. The AdACM was employed for the task of segmenting nuclei on 80 prostate cancer tissue microarray images. Morphological features extracted from these segmentations were found to able to discriminate different Gleason grade patterns with a classification accuracy of 84% via a Support Vector Machine classifier. On average the AdACM model provided 100% savings in computational times compared to a non-optimized hybrid AC model involving a shape prior. Show less

Commodity graphics hardware has become a cost-effective parallel platform to solve m any general computational problems. In medical imaging and more so in digital pathology, segmentation of multiple structures on high-resolution images, is often a complex and computationally expensive task. In this paper, we present a parallel implementation of a computationally heavy segmentation scheme on a graphical processing unit (GPU). The segmentation scheme incorporates level sets with shape priors to… Show more

Commodity graphics hardware has become a cost-effective parallel platform to solve m any general computational problems. In medical imaging and more so in digital pathology, segmentation of multiple structures on high-resolution images, is often a complex and computationally expensive task. In this paper, we present a parallel implementation of a computationally heavy segmentation scheme on a graphical processing unit (GPU). The segmentation scheme incorporates level sets with shape priors to segment multiple overlapping nuclei from very large digital pathology images. Show less

Active contours and active shape models (ASM) have been widely employed in image segmentation. A major limitation of active contours, however, is in their (a) inability to resolve boundaries of intersecting objects and to (b) handle occlusion. Multiple overlapping objects are typically segmented out as a single object. On the other hand, ASMs are limited by point correspondence issues since object landmarks need to be identified across multiple objects for initial object alignment. ASMs are… Show more

Active contours and active shape models (ASM) have been widely employed in image segmentation. A major limitation of active contours, however, is in their (a) inability to resolve boundaries of intersecting objects and to (b) handle occlusion. Multiple overlapping objects are typically segmented out as a single object. On the other hand, ASMs are limited by point correspondence issues since object landmarks need to be identified across multiple objects for initial object alignment. ASMs are also are constrained in that they can usually only segment a single object in an image. In this paper, we present a novel synergistic boundary and region-based active contour model that incorporates shape priors in a level set formulation. We demonstrate an application of these synergistic active contour models using multiple level sets to segment nuclear and glandular structures on digitized histopathology images of breast and prostate biopsy specimens. Unlike previous related approaches, our model is able to resolve object overlap and separate occluded boundaries of multiple objects simultaneously. The energy functional of the active contour is comprised of three terms. The first term comprises the prior shape term, modeled on the object of interest, thereby constraining the deformation achievable by the active contour. The second term, a boundary based term detects object boundaries from image gradients. The third term drives the shape prior and the contour towards the object boundary based on region statistics. The results of qualitative and quantitative evaluation on 100 prostate and 14 breast cancer histology images for the task of detecting and segmenting nuclei, lymphocytes, and glands reveals that the model easily outperforms two state of the art segmentation schemes (Geodesic Active Contour (GAC) and Roussons shape based model) and resolves up to 92% of overlapping/occluded lymphocytes and nuclei on prostate and breast cancer histology images. Show less