Research and Projects
a selection of my research initiatives
Contrast Mechanism for Tumor Imaging at 0.35T (My Masters Thesis)
Magnetic resonance-guided radiation therapy (MRgRT) has shown great promise for localization and real-time tumor tracking; however, limited work has been done in studying tumor response at low magnetic field strengths. Our site uses a Siemens 0.35T scanner coupled with the MRIdian Linac (ViewRay, Mountain View, CA) linear accelerator to map out tumors for radiation planning. In my master thesis, strategically acquired gradient echo (STAGE) imaging was optimized for a 0.35T MR-linear accelerator to yield 4 qualitative (T1- weighted, enhanced T1-weighted, proton-density (PD), and FLAIR), and 4 quantitative (T1 maps, PD maps, susceptibility weighted imaging (SWI), and R2* maps) datasets. We then validate the T1, PD and R2* map values at 0.35T to benchmark our results using an ISMRM\NIST phantom. Finally, serial STAGE results from a post-surgical glioblastoma patient are presented to highlight the strong potential of using STAGE to acquire valuable functional serial data for brain cancer patients undergoing daily MRgRT to correlate with patient outcomes and facilitate functional adaptive RT (ART). A key point of this research is showing STAGE spatial correlation with conventional 3T diagnostic MRI. This work was selected for best in physics (multi-disciplinary) award, AAMP_2019 . Best-in-Physics presentations are those scoring highest in the abstract review process and judged by the Scientific Program Directors to reflect the highest level of scientific quality and innovation. More detailed description is available in my master dissertation, here! We submitted our results for patients with brain cancer in medical physics journal and will be accessible ASAP.
Peripheral
Nerve
Stimulation
Considerations
in
the
Presence
of
the
Metallic
Objects
/
Safe
Mode
Region
Modification
to
Prevent
the
Peripheral
Nerve
Stimulation
During
MR-Scanning
in
the
Presence
of
Paramagnetic Objects
Foreign objects with high conductivity can intensify and concentrate the induced eddy currents from the gradient switching. These concentrated currents in turn may cause PNS during MR-imaging and potentially result in a mild to intolerable discomfort for the patient especially when the foreign object is in the vicinity of sensible locations. The maximum limit for applied gradient intensity in different gradient switching times has been modified to guarantee the safe mode in the presence of metallic objects. We showed that the conductive materials mostly affect the small rise times as the modifies limit is less sensitive to gradient rise time compared to IEC standard.
© 2019 Niloufarz.com
Assessment of fMRI phase Images by means of Averaged BOSS technique
Due to the mechanism of contrast origin in BOLD fMRI, generally only the magnitude data is used for activation detection. Through the use of SSFP sequences, we are able to detect fMRI activation directly based on phase variation induced by frequency shift. BOSS fMRI utilizes this phase information in addition magnitude changes for activation detection. The contribution of phase, however; is highly dependent on the position of the center frequency on the SSFP profile and therefore may not be quantified accurately. Averaged BOSS technique, which has recently been introduced for fMRI by compressing the SSFP profile into a single voxel, also indicates that activation patterns should exist in both phase and magnitude images.
Implementation of Othello Game
For this project, a simulator was created that simulates behaviors of two Othello players in a game. In fact, this players are two written programs in C language which in each status based on their turn select a place for jumping. The simulator is discrete-event and autonomous that was developed by JAVA language and soon under GNU/GPL license and open source will be released.
Designing and implementation a game
for evaluating hand-eye coordination on
FPGA for every person
In this project evaluation the hand-eye coordination in different people was purposed. A game was deigned which everyone should press a key when a special configuration happens in two different seven segments on FPGA board. Then, a logic circuit for calculating the time of hand-eye coordination was designed which show the results in milliseconds. These circuits have been designed in Altuim Designer and implemented on FPGA board.A New Method for Early Microaneurysm Detection in Diabetic Retinopathy
Microaneurysms are the first symptoms of diabetic retinopathy that their rapid diagnosis prevents disease progression. In this project, morphological operator used to detect them. In first step, after denoising and contrast enhancing, blood vessels and optic disk were removed. Candidate regions can be extracted by thresholding. Then, particular features such as geometry, orientation, size and shape were extracted. Finally, a neural network found microaneurysms among candidates. Dataset of this research is from DIARETDB1.
Design a Sudoku table and solve it with
back track technique by LabVIEW
A User Interface (UI) Design for Image
Processing, Denoising, Contrast
Enhancing and Segmentation
The UI was implemented in two stages; the first one for images processing and the second one for interactive segmentation.
Research and Projects
a selection of my research initiatives
Contrast Mechanism for Tumor
Imaging at 0.35T (My Masters
Thesis)
Magnetic resonance-guided radiation therapy (MRgRT) has shown great promise for localization and real-time tumor tracking; however, limited work has been done in studying tumor response at low magnetic field strengths. Our site uses a Siemens 0.35T scanner coupled with the MRIdian Linac (ViewRay, Mountain View, CA) linear accelerator to map out tumors for radiation planning. In my master thesis, strategically acquired gradient echo (STAGE) imaging was optimized for a 0.35T MR-linear accelerator to yield 4 qualitative (T1-weighted, enhanced T1-weighted, proton-density (PD), and FLAIR), and 4 quantitative (T1 maps, PD maps, susceptibility weighted imaging (SWI), and R2* maps) datasets. We then validate the T1, PD and R2* map values at 0.35T to benchmark our results using an ISMRM\NIST phantom. Finally, serial STAGE results from a post-surgical glioblastoma patient are presented to highlight the strong potential of using STAGE to acquire valuable functional serial data for brain cancer patients undergoing daily MRgRT to correlate with patient outcomes and facilitate functional adaptive RT (ART). A key point of this research is showing STAGE spatial correlation with conventional 3T diagnostic MRI. This work was selected for best in physics (multi-disciplinary) award, AAMP_2019 . Best-in- Physics presentations are those scoring highest in the abstract review process and judged by the Scientific Program Directors to reflect the highest level of scientific quality and innovation. More detailed description is available in my master dissertation, here! We submitted our results for patients with brain cancer in medical physics journal and will be accessible ASAP.
Peripheral
Nerve
Stimulation
Considerations
in
the
Presence
of
the
Metallic
Objects
/
Safe
Mode
Region
Modification
to
Prevent
the
Peripheral
Nerve
Stimulation
During
MR-Scanning
in
the
Presence
of
Paramagnetic Objects
Foreign objects with high conductivity can intensify and concentrate the induced eddy currents from the gradient switching. These concentrated currents in turn may cause PNS during MR-imaging and potentially result in a mild to intolerable discomfort for the patient especially when the foreign object is in the vicinity of sensible locations. The maximum limit for applied gradient intensity in different gradient switching times has been modified to guarantee the safe mode in the presence of metallic objects. We showed that the conductive materials mostly affect the small rise times as the modifies limit is less sensitive to gradient rise time compared to IEC standard.
© 2019 Niloufarz.com
Assessment of fMRI phase Images by
means of Averaged BOSS technique
Due to the mechanism of contrast origin in BOLD fMRI, generally only the magnitude data is used for activation detection. Through the use of SSFP sequences, we are able to detect fMRI activation directly based on phase variation induced by frequency shift. BOSS fMRI utilizes this phase information in addition magnitude changes for activation detection. The contribution of phase, however; is highly dependent on the position of the center frequency on the SSFP profile and therefore may not be quantified accurately. Averaged BOSS technique, which has recently been introduced for fMRI by compressing the SSFP profile into a single voxel, also indicates that activation patterns should exist in both phase and magnitude images.
Implementation of Othello Game
For this project, a simulator was created that simulates behaviors of two Othello players in a game. In fact, this players are two written programs in C language which in each status based on their turn select a place for jumping. The simulator is discrete-event and autonomous that was developed by JAVA language and soon under GNU/GPL license and open source will be released.
Designing and implementation a game
for evaluating hand-eye coordination on
FPGA for every person
In this project evaluation the hand-eye coordination in different people was purposed. A game was deigned which everyone should press a key when a special configuration happens in two different seven segments on FPGA board. Then, a logic circuit for calculating the time of hand-eye coordination was designed which show the results in milliseconds. These circuits have been designed in Altuim Designer and implemented on FPGA board.A New Method for Early
Microaneurysm Detection in Diabetic
Retinopathy
Microaneurysms are the first symptoms of diabetic retinopathy that their rapid diagnosis prevents disease progression. In this project, morphological operator used to detect them. In first step, after denoising and contrast enhancing, blood vessels and optic disk were removed. Candidate regions can be extracted by thresholding. Then, particular features such as geometry, orientation, size and shape were extracted. Finally, a neural network found microaneurysms among candidates. Dataset of this research is from DIARETDB1.
Design a Sudoku table and solve it
with back track technique by
LabVIEW
A User Interface (UI) Design for Image
Processing, Denoising, Contrast
Enhancing and Segmentation
The UI was implemented in two stages; the first one for images processing and the second one for interactive segmentation.
Research and Projects
a selection of my research initiatives
Contrast Mechanism for Tumor Imaging at 0.35T (My Masters Thesis)
Magnetic resonance-guided radiation therapy (MRgRT) has shown great promise for localization and real-time tumor tracking; however, limited work has been done in studying tumor response at low magnetic field strengths. Our site uses a Siemens 0.35T scanner coupled with the MRIdian Linac (ViewRay, Mountain View, CA) linear accelerator to map out tumors for radiation planning. In my master thesis, strategically acquired gradient echo (STAGE) imaging was optimized for a 0.35T MR-linear accelerator to yield 4 qualitative (T1-weighted, enhanced T1-weighted, proton-density (PD), and FLAIR), and 4 quantitative (T1 maps, PD maps, susceptibility weighted imaging (SWI), and R2* maps) datasets. We then validate the T1, PD and R2* map values at 0.35T to benchmark our results using an ISMRM\NIST phantom. Finally, serial STAGE results from a post-surgical glioblastoma patient are presented to highlight the strong potential of using STAGE to acquire valuable functional serial data for brain cancer patients undergoing daily MRgRT to correlate with patient outcomes and facilitate functional adaptive RT (ART). A key point of this research is showing STAGE spatial correlation with conventional 3T diagnostic MRI. This work was selected for best in physics (multi-disciplinary) award, AAMP_2019 . Best-in-Physics presentations are those scoring highest in the abstract review process and judged by the Scientific Program Directors to reflect the highest level of scientific quality and innovation. More detailed description is available in my master dissertation, here! We submitted our results for patients with brain cancer in medical physics journal and will be accessible ASAP.
Peripheral
Nerve
Stimulation
Considerations
in
the
Presence
of
the
Metallic
Objects
/
Safe
Mode
Region
Modification
to
Prevent
the
Peripheral
Nerve
Stimulation
During
MR-
Scanning in the Presence of Paramagnetic Objects
Foreign objects with high conductivity can intensify and concentrate the induced eddy currents from the gradient switching. These concentrated currents in turn may cause PNS during MR-imaging and potentially result in a mild to intolerable discomfort for the patient especially when the foreign object is in the vicinity of sensible locations. The maximum limit for applied gradient intensity in different gradient switching times has been modified to guarantee the safe mode in the presence of metallic objects. We showed that the conductive materials mostly affect the small rise times as the modifies limit is less sensitive to gradient rise time compared to IEC standard.
© 2019 Niloufarz.com
Assessment of fMRI phase Images by means of Averaged BOSS technique
Due to the mechanism of contrast origin in BOLD fMRI, generally only the magnitude data is used for activation detection. Through the use of SSFP sequences, we are able to detect fMRI activation directly based on phase variation induced by frequency shift. BOSS fMRI utilizes this phase information in addition magnitude changes for activation detection. The contribution of phase, however; is highly dependent on the position of the center frequency on the SSFP profile and therefore may not be quantified accurately. Averaged BOSS technique, which has recently been introduced for fMRI by compressing the SSFP profile into a single voxel, also indicates that activation patterns should exist in both phase and magnitude images.
Implementation of Othello Game
For this project, a simulator was created that simulates behaviors of two Othello players in a game. In fact, this players are two written programs in C language which in each status based on their turn select a place for jumping. The simulator is discrete-event and autonomous that was developed by JAVA language and soon under GNU/GPL license and open source will be released.
Designing and implementation a game for
evaluating hand-eye coordination on FPGA for
every person
In this project evaluation the hand-eye coordination in different people was purposed. A game was deigned which everyone should press a key when a special configuration happens in two different seven segments on FPGA board. Then, a logic circuit for calculating the time of hand-eye coordination was designed which show the results in milliseconds. These circuits have been designed in Altuim Designer and implemented on FPGA board.A New Method for Early Microaneurysm Detection in Diabetic Retinopathy
Microaneurysms are the first symptoms of diabetic retinopathy that their rapid diagnosis prevents disease progression. In this project, morphological operator used to detect them. In first step, after denoising and contrast enhancing, blood vessels and optic disk were removed. Candidate regions can be extracted by thresholding. Then, particular features such as geometry, orientation, size and shape were extracted. Finally, a neural network found microaneurysms among candidates. Dataset of this research is from DIARETDB1.
Design a Sudoku table and solve it with back track
technique by LabVIEW
A User Interface (UI) Design for Image Processing,
Denoising, Contrast Enhancing and Segmentation
The UI was implemented in two stages; the first one for images processing and the second one for interactive segmentation.
