Enrique J. Carmona

There are different retinal vascular imaging modalities widely used in clinical practice to diagnose different retinal pathologies. The joint analysis of these multimodal images is of increasing interest since each of them provides common and complementary visual information. However, if we want to facilitate the comparison of two images, obtained with different techniques and containing the same retinal region of interest, it will be necessary to make a previous registration of both images. Here, we present a weakly supervised deep learning methodology for robust deformable registration of multimodal retinal images, which is applied to implement a method for the registration of fluorescein angiography (FA) and optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA) images. This methodology is strongly inspired by VoxelMorph, a general unsupervised deep learning framework of the state of the art for deformable registration of unimodal medical images. The method was evaluated in a public dataset with 172 pairs of FA and superficial plexus OCTA images. The degree of alignment of the common information (blood vessels) and preservation of the non-common information (image background) in the transformed image were measured using the Dice coefficient (DC) and zero-normalized cross-correlation (ZNCC), respectively. The average values of the mentioned metrics, including the standard deviations, were DC = 0.72 ± 0.10 and ZNCC = 0.82 ± 0.04. The time required to obtain each pair of registered images was 0.12 s. These results outperform rigid and deformable registration methods with which our method was compared.

The Foveal Avascular Zone (FAZ) is a capillary-free area that is placed inside the macula and its morphology and size represent important biomarkers to detect different ocular pathologies such as diabetic retinopathy, impaired vision or retinal vein occlusion. Therefore, an adequate and precise segmentation of the FAZ presents a high clinical interest. About to this, Angiography by Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT-A) is a non-invasive imaging technique that allows the expert to visualize the vascular and avascular foveal zone. In this work, we present a robust methodology composed of three stages to model, localize, and segment the FAZ in OCT-A images. The first stage is addressed to generate two FAZ normality models: superficial and deep plexus. The second one uses the FAZ model as a template to localize the FAZ center. Finally, in the third stage, an adaptive binarization is proposed to segment the entire FAZ region. A method based on this methodology was implemented and validated in two OCT-A image subsets, presenting the second subset more challenging pathological conditions than the first. We obtained localization success rates of 100% and 96% in the first and second subsets, respectively, considering a success if the obtained FAZ center is inside the FAZ area segmented by an expert clinician. Complementary, the Dice score and other indexes (Jaccard index and Hausdorff distance) are used to measure the segmentation quality, obtaining competitive average values in the first subset: 0.84 ± 0.01 (expert 1) and 0.85 ± 0.01 (expert 2). The average Dice score obtained in the second subset was also acceptable (0.70 ± 0.17), even though the segmentation process is more complex in this case.

We present a new approach based on grammatical evolution (GE) aimed at addressing the analog electronic circuit design problem. In the new approach, called multi-grammatical evolution (MGE), a chromosome is a variable-length codon string that is divided into as many partitions as subproblems result from breaking down the original optimization problem: circuit topology and component sizing in our case. This leads to a modular approach where the solution of each subproblem is encoded and evolved in a partition of the chromosome. Additionally, each partition is decoded according to a specific grammar and the final solution to the original problem emerges as an aggregation result associated with the decoding process of the different partitions. Modularity facilitates the encoding and evolution of the solution in each subproblem. On the other way, homology helps to reduce the potentially destructive effect associated with standard crossover operators normally used in GE-based approaches. Seven analog circuit designs are addressed by an MGE-based method and the obtained results are compared to those obtained by different methods based on GE and other evolutionary paradigms. A simple parsimony mechanism was also introduced to ensure compliance with design specifications and reduce the number of components of the circuits obtained. We can conclude that our method obtains competitive results in the seven circuits analyzed.