Parallel magnetic resonance imaging acceleration with a hybrid sensing approach.

In magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), the scan time for acquiring an image is relatively long, resulting in patient uncomfortable and error artifacts. Fortunately, the compressed sensing (CS) and parallel magnetic resonance imaging (pMRI) can reduce the scan time of the MRI without significantly compromising the quality of the images. It has been found that the combination of pMRI and CS can better improve the image reconstruction, which will accelerate the speed of MRI acquisition because the number of measurements is much smaller than that by pMRI. In this paper, we propose combining a combined CS method and pMRI for better accelerating the MRI acquisition. In the combined CS method, the under-sampled data of the K-space is performed by taking both regular sampling and traditional random under-sampling approaches. MRI image reconstruction is then performed by using nonlinear conjugate gradient optimization. The performance of the proposed method is simulated and evaluated using the reconstruction error measure, the universal image quality Q-index, and the peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR). The numerical simulations confirmed that, the average error, the Q index, and the PSNR ratio of the appointed scheme are remarkably improved up to 59, 63, and 39% respectively as compared to the traditional scheme. For the first time, instead of using highly computational approaches, a simple and efficient combination of CS and pMRI is proposed for the better MRI reconstruction. These findings are very meaningful for reducing the imaging time of MRI systems.

The new design of cows' behavior classifier based on acceleration data and proposed feature set.

Monitor and classify behavioral activities in cows is a helpful support solution for livestock based on the analysis of data from sensors attached to the animal. Accelerometers are particularly suited for monitoring cow behaviors due to small size, lightweight and high accuracy. Nevertheless, the interpretation of the data collected by such sensors when characterizing the type of behaviors still brings major challenges to developers, related to activity complexity (i.e., certain behaviors contain similar gestures). This paper presents a new design of cows' behavior classifier based on acceleration data and proposed feature set. Analysis of cow acceleration data is used to extract features for classification using machine learning algorithms. We found that with 5 features (mean, standard deviation, root mean square, median, range) and 16-second window of data (1 sample/second), classification of seven cow behaviors (including feeding, lying, standing, lying down, standing up, normal walking, active walking) achieved the overall highest performance. We validated the results with acceleration data from a public source. Performance of our proposed classifier was evaluated and compared to existing ones in terms of the sensitivity, the accuracy, the positive predictive value, and the negative predictive value.

MRI Simulation-based evaluation of an efficient under-sampling approach.

Compressive sampling (CS) has been commonly employed in the field of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to accurately reconstruct sparse and compressive signals. In a MR image, a large amount of encoded information focuses on the origin of the k-space. For the 2D Cartesian K-space MRI, under-sampling the frequency-encoding (kx) dimension does not affect to the acquisition time, thus, only the phase-encoding (ky) dimension can be exploited. In the traditional random under-sampling approach, it acquired Gaussian random measurements along the phaseencoding (ky) in the k-space. In this paper, we proposed a hybrid under-sampling approach; the number of measurements in (ky) is divided into two portions: 70% of the measurements are for random under-sampling and 30% are for definite under-sampling near the origin of the k-space. The numerical simulation consequences pointed out that, in the lower region of the under-sampling ratio r, both the average error and the universal image quality index of the appointed scheme are drastically improved up to 55 and 77% respectively as compared to the traditional scheme. For the first time, instead of using highly computational complexity of many advanced reconstruction techniques, a simple and efficient CS method based simulation is proposed for MRI reconstruction improvement. These findings are very useful for designing new MRI data acquisition approaches for reducing the imaging time of current MRI systems.