SCPAT-GAN: Structural Constrained and Pathology Aware Convolutional Transformer-GAN for Virtual Histology Staining of Human Coronary OCT images

There is a significant need for the generation of virtual histological information from coronary optical coherence tomography (OCT) images to better guide the treatment of coronary artery disease. However, existing methods either require a large pixel-wisely paired training dataset or have limited capability to map pathological regions. To address these issues, we proposed a structural constrained, pathology aware, transformer generative adversarial network, namely SCPAT-GAN, to generate virtual stained H&E histology from OCT images. The proposed SCPAT-GAN advances existing methods via a novel design to impose pathological guidance on structural layers using transformer-based network.

Structural constrained virtual histology staining for human coronary imaging using deep learning

Histopathological analysis is crucial in artery characterization for coronary artery disease (CAD). However, histology requires an invasive and time-consuming process. In this paper, we propose to generate virtual histology staining using Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) images to enable real-time histological visualization. We develop a deep learning network, namely Coronary-GAN, to transfer coronary OCT images to virtual histology images. With a special consideration on the structural constraints in coronary OCT images, our method achieves better image generation performance than the conventional GAN-based method. The experimental results indicate that Coronary-GAN generates virtual histology images that are similar to real histology images, revealing the human coronary layers.

Towards reliable calcification detection: calibration of uncertainty in coronary optical coherence tomography images

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) has become increasingly essential in assisting the treatment of coronary artery disease (CAD). Image-guided solutions such as Percutaneous Coronary Intervention (PCI) are extensively used during the treatment of CAD. However, unidentified calcified regions within a narrowed artery could impair the outcome of the PCI. Prior to treatments, object detection is paramount to automatically procure accurate readings on the location and thickness of calcifications within the artery. Deep learning-based object detection methods have been explored in a variety of applications. The quality of object detection predictions could lead to uncertain results, which are not desirable in safety-critical scenarios. In this work, we implement an object detection model, You-Only-Look-Once v5 (YOLO), on a calcification detection framework within coronary OCT images. We evaluate the uncertainty of predictions based on the expected calibration errors, thus assessing the certainty level of detection results. To calibrate confidence scores of predictions, we implement dependent logistic calibration using each detection result's confidence and center coordinates. With the calibrated confidence score of each prediction, we lower the uncertainty of predictions in calcification detection. Our results show that the YOLO achieves higher precision and recall in comparison with the other object detection model, meanwhile producing more reliable results. The calibrated confidence of prediction results in a confidence error of approximately 0.13, suggesting that the confidence calibration on calcification detection could provide a more trustworthy result, indicating a great potential to assist clinical evaluation of treating the CAD during the imaging-guided procedure.

Automatic Block-wise Pruning with Auxiliary Gating Structures for Deep Convolutional Neural Networks

Convolutional neural networks are prevailing in deep learning tasks. However, they suffer from massive cost issues when working on mobile devices. Network pruning is an effective method of model compression to handle such problems. This paper presents a novel structured network pruning method with auxiliary gating structures which assigns importance marks to blocks in backbone network as a criterion when pruning. Block-wise pruning is then realized by proposed voting strategy, which is different from prevailing methods who prune a model in small granularity like channel-wise. We further develop a three-stage training scheduling for the proposed architecture incorporating knowledge distillation for better performance. Our experiments demonstrate that our method can achieve state-of-the-arts compression performance for the classification tasks. In addition, our approach can integrate synergistically with other pruning methods by providing pretrained models, thus achieving a better performance than the unpruned model with over 93\% FLOPs reduced.

Multi-scale reconstruction of undersampled spectral-spatial OCT data for coronary imaging using deep learning

Coronary artery disease (CAD) is a cardiovascular condition with high morbidity and mortality. Intravascular optical coherence tomography (IVOCT) has been considered as an optimal imagining system for the diagnosis and treatment of CAD. Constrained by Nyquist theorem, dense sampling in IVOCT attains high resolving power to delineate cellular structures/ features. There is a trade-off between high spatial resolution and fast scanning rate for coronary imaging. In this paper, we propose a viable spectral-spatial acquisition method that down-scales the sampling process in both spectral and spatial domain while maintaining high quality in image reconstruction. The down-scaling schedule boosts data acquisition speed without any hardware modifications. Additionally, we propose a unified multi-scale reconstruction framework, namely Multiscale- Spectral-Spatial-Magnification Network (MSSMN), to resolve highly down-scaled (compressed) OCT images with flexible magnification factors. We incorporate the proposed methods into Spectral Domain OCT (SD-OCT) imaging of human coronary samples with clinical features such as stent and calcified lesions. Our experimental results demonstrate that spectral-spatial downscaled data can be better reconstructed than data that is downscaled solely in either spectral or spatial domain. Moreover, we observe better reconstruction performance using MSSMN than using existing reconstruction methods. Our acquisition method and multi-scale reconstruction framework, in combination, may allow faster SD-OCT inspection with high resolution during coronary intervention.

Modeling and Validating Temporal Rules with Semantic Petri-Net for Digital Twins

Semantic rule checking on RDFS/OWL data has been widely used in the construction industry. At present, semantic rule checking is mainly performed on static models. There are still challenges in integrating temporal models and semantic models for combined rule checking. In this paper, Semantic Petri-Net (SPN) is proposed as a novel temporal modeling and validating method, which implements the states and transitions of the Colored Petri-Net directly based on RDFS and SPARQL, and realizes two-way sharing of knowledge between domain semantic webs and temporal models in the runtime. Several cases are provided to demonstrate the possible applications in digital twins with concurrent state changes and dependencies.

Machine-learning based three-qubit gate for realization of a Toffoli gate with cQED-based transmon systems

We use machine learning techniques to design a 50 ns three-qubit flux-tunable controlled-controlled-phase gate with fidelity of >99.99% for nearest-neighbor coupled transmons in circuit quantum electrodynamics architectures. We explain our gate design procedure where we enforce realistic constraints, and analyze the new gate's robustness under decoherence, distortion, and random noise. Our controlled-controlled-phase gate in combination with two single-qubit gates realizes a Toffoli gate which is widely used in quantum circuits, logic synthesis, quantum error correction, and quantum games.