Soil potentially toxic elements (PTEs) pollution of contaminated sites has become a global environmental issue. However, given that previous studies mostly focused on pollution assessment in surface ...soils, the current status and environmental risks of potentially toxic elements in deeper soils remain unclear. The present study aims to cognize distribution characteristics and spatial autocorrelation, pollution levels, and risk assessment in a stereoscopic environment for soil PTEs through 3D visualization techniques. Pollution levels were assessed in an integrated manner by combining the geoaccumulation index (Igeo), the integrated influence index of soil quality (IICQs), and potential ecological hazard index. Results showed that soil environment at the site was seriously threatened by PTEs, and Cu and Cd were ubiquitous and the predominant pollutants in the study area. The stratigraphic models and pollution plume simulation revealed that pollutants show a decreasing trend with the deepening of the soil layer. The ranking of contamination soil volume is as follows: Cu > Cd > Zn > As > Pb > Cr > Ni. According to the IICQs evaluation, this region was subject to multiple PTE contamination, with more than 60% of the area becoming seriously and highly polluted. In addition, the ecological hazard model revealed the existence of substantial ecological hazards in the soils of the site. The integrated potential ecological risk index (RI) indicated that 45.7%, 10.13%, and 4.15% of the stereoscopic areas were in considerable, high, and very high risks, respectively. The findings could be used as a theoretical reference for applying multiple methods to integrate evaluation through 3D visualization analysis in the assessment and remediation of PTE-contaminated soils.
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•The stratigraphic model and pollution plume simulation model were established.•Visualized multidimensional distribution and calculated volume of pollutants at contaminated site.•Cu and Cd were ubiquitous and predominant pollutants among the eight PTEs in the study area.•Soil potentially toxic element pollution at different depths has been assessed using geoaccumulation index.
Quantification of magnetic resonance (MR)-based relaxation parameters of tendons and ligaments is challenging due to their very short transverse relaxation times, requiring application of ultra-short ...echo-time (UTE) imaging sequences. We quantify both T1 and T2* in the quadriceps and patellar tendons of healthy volunteers at a field strength of 3 T and visualize the results based on 3D segmentation by using bivariate histogram analysis. We applied a 3D ultra-short echo-time imaging sequence with either variable repetition times (VTR) or variable flip angles (VFA) for T1 quantification in combination with multi-echo acquisition for extracting T2*. The values of both relaxation parameters were subsequently binned for bivariate histogram analysis and corresponding cluster identification, which were subsequently visualized. Based on manually-drawn regions of interest in the tendons on the relaxation parameter maps, T1 and T2* boundaries were selected in the bivariate histogram to segment the quadriceps and patellar tendons and visualize the relaxation times by 3D volumetric rendering. Segmentation of bone marrow, fat, muscle and tendons was successfully performed based on the bivariate histogram analysis. Based on the segmentation results mean T2* relaxation times, over the entire tendon volumes averaged over all subjects, were 1.8 ms ± 0.1 ms and 1.4 ms ± 0.2 ms for the patellar and quadriceps tendons, respectively. The mean T1 value of the patellar tendon, averaged over all subjects, was 527 ms ± 42 ms and 476 ms ± 40 ms for the VFA and VTR acquisitions, respectively. The quadriceps tendon had higher mean T1 values of 662 ms ± 97 ms (VFA method) and 637 ms ± 40 ms (VTR method) compared to the patellar tendon. 3D volumetric visualization of the relaxation times revealed that T1 values are not constant over the volume of both tendons, but vary locally. This work provided additional data to build upon the scarce literature available on relaxation times in the quadriceps and patellar tendons. We were able to segment both tendons and to visualize the relaxation parameter distributions over the entire tendon volumes.
•Automatically enhance, divide, and validate the COVID-19 CT images into regions with similar properties such as structure.•Efficient Kapur entropy-based multilevel thresholding unsupervised ...procedure.•Measure, visualize, and study comparisons of the infected by COVID-19 volume.•The proposed reach the desired heat-mapping results of the lesion and has the potential to be used for clinical applications.
History shows that the infectious disease (COVID-19) can stun the world quickly, causing massive losses to health, resulting in a profound impact on the lives of billions of people, from both a safety and an economic perspective, for controlling the COVID-19 pandemic. The best strategy is to provide early intervention to stop the spread of the disease. In general, Computer Tomography (CT) is used to detect tumors in pneumonia, lungs, tuberculosis, emphysema, or other pleura (the membrane covering the lungs) diseases. Disadvantages of CT imaging system are: inferior soft tissue contrast compared to MRI as it is X-ray-based Radiation exposure. Lung CT image segmentation is a necessary initial step for lung image analysis. The main challenges of segmentation algorithms exaggerated due to intensity in-homogeneity, presence of artifacts, and closeness in the gray level of different soft tissue. The goal of this paper is to design and evaluate an automatic tool for automatic COVID-19 Lung Infection segmentation and measurement using chest CT images. The extensive computer simulations show better efficiency and flexibility of this end-to-end learning approach on CT image segmentation with image enhancement comparing to the state of the art segmentation approaches, namely GraphCut, Medical Image Segmentation (MIS), and Watershed. Experiments performed on COVID-CT-Dataset containing (275) CT scans that are positive for COVID-19 and new data acquired from the EL-BAYANE center for Radiology and Medical Imaging. The means of statistical measures obtained using the accuracy, sensitivity, F-measure, precision, MCC, Dice, Jacquard, and specificity are 0.98, 0.73, 0.71, 0.73, 0.71, 0.71, 0.57, 0.99 respectively; which is better than methods mentioned above. The achieved results prove that the proposed approach is more robust, accurate, and straightforward.
Clusters of ryanodine receptor calcium channels (RyRs) form the primary molecular machinery of intracellular calcium signalling in cardiomyocytes. While a range of optical super-resolution microscopy ...techniques have revealed the nanoscale structure of these clusters, the three-dimensional (3D) nanoscale topologies of the clusters have remained mostly unresolved. In this paper, we demonstrate the exploitation of molecular-scale resolution in enhanced expansion microscopy (EExM) along with various 2D and 3D visualization strategies to observe the topological complexities, geometries and molecular sub-domains within the RyR clusters. Notably, we observed sub-domains containing RyR-binding protein junctophilin-2 (JPH2) occupying the central regions of RyR clusters in the deeper interior of the myocytes (including dyads), while the poles were typically devoid of JPH2, lending to a looser RyR arrangement. By contrast, peripheral RyR clusters exhibited variable co-clustering patterns and ratios between RyR and JPH2. EExM images of dyadic RyR clusters in right ventricular (RV) myocytes isolated from rats with monocrotaline-induced RV failure revealed hallmarks of RyR cluster fragmentation accompanied by breaches in the JPH2 sub-domains. Frayed RyR patterns observed adjacent to these constitute new evidence that the destabilization of the RyR arrays inside the JPH2 sub-domains may seed the primordial foci of dyad remodelling observed in heart failure.
This article is part of the theme issue ‘The cardiomyocyte: new revelations on the interplay between architecture and function in growth, health, and disease’.
The purpose of this article is to present an overview of cinematic rendering, illustrating its potential advantages and applications.
Volume-rendered reconstruction, obtaining 3D visualization from ...original CT datasets, is increasingly used by physicians and medical educators in various clinical and educational scenarios. Cinematic rendering is a novel 3D rendering algorithm that simulates the propagation and interaction of light rays as they pass through the volumetric data, showing a more photorealistic representation of 3D images than achieved with standard volume rendering.
Challenges in forest management are increasing due to climate change and its associated risks. Considering the needs and demands of various stakeholders leads to more complex decision-making. The ...increasing amount and quality of available geographic, forest and individual tree data, the combination of this data, and the use of forest growth simulators make it possible to support forest managers in this decision-making process. Our aim was to develop a strong visualization instrument that can be used in both forest planning and stakeholder communication. We present a solution based on a game engine, where data from multiple sources (terrain data, satellite imagery, tree data) is combined into a virtual environment. The user can move freely inside this virtual forest, look at the forest from arbitrary perspectives, and observe its development over the years under different management scenarios. We demonstrate the usefulness of this approach with a study region in Switzerland.
•A game engine was used to visualize a digital twin of an existing forest.•Three-dimensional models of trees of 11 species were procedurally generated.•The application can visualize the output of three forest growth simulators.•The application can be used for training and communication.
•This research introduces the hybrid optimization of both CPU and GPU for image processing.•A novel 3D medical volume segmentation is proposed.•Modified FCM versions are used to increase the accuracy ...of volume segmentation.•Volumetric neighborhood has been considered to validate the actual 3D FCM.
In the past, 2D models were the main models for medical image processing applications, whereas the wide adoption of 3D models has appeared only in recent years. The 2D Fuzzy C-Means (FCM) algorithm has been extensively used for segmenting medical images due to its effectiveness. Various extensions of it were proposed throughout the years. In this work, we propose a modified version of FCM for segmenting 3D medical volumes, which has been rarely implemented for 3D medical image segmentation. We present a parallel implementation of the proposed algorithm using Graphics Processing Unit (GPU). Researchers state that efficiency is one of the main problems of using FCM for medical imaging when dealing with 3D models. Thus, a hybrid parallel implementation of FCM for extracting volume objects from medical files is proposed. The proposed algorithm has been validated using real medical data and simulated phantom data. Segmentation accuracy of predefined datasets and real patient datasets were the key factors for the system validation. The processing times of both the sequential and the parallel implementations are measured to illustrate the efficiency of each implementation. The acquired results conclude that the parallel implementation is 5X faster than the sequential version of the same operation.
Abstract
The digital twin coal preparation plant is a potentially effective way to realize the intelligent interconnection and interactive integration of the manufacturing physical world and the ...information world. Aiming at the difficulty in predicting and maintaining the state of the shearer in a harsh working environment, combined with the high-fidelity behaviour simulation characteristics of the digital twin and the powerful data mining capabilities of deep learning, a coal shearer health prediction driven by the integration of the digital twin and deep learning is proposed. Method. The article builds an information management and integration platform composed of a real-time database and a comprehensive information platform, and realizes the unified management of data integration and application systems.
Contaminated sites pose a significant risk to human health and the regional environment. A comprehensive study was dedicated to improving the understanding of the contamination condition of a ...smelting site by integrating multi-source information through 3D visualization techniques. The results showed that 3D visualization reveals excellent potential for application in the environmental studies to finely depict contamination in soils and establish relationships with geological features, hydrological conditions, and sources of contamination. The contamination plume model revealed that the soil environment at the site was seriously threatened by toxic metals, and dominated by multi-metal contamination, with contamination soil volume ranked as Cd > As > Pb> Zn > Hg. The stratigraphic model revealed the heterogeneous geological conditions of the site and identified the mixed fill layer as the primary remediation soil layer. The permeability model revealed that soil permeability significantly influenced contamination dispersion and contributed to delineate the contamination boundary accurately. The ecological hazard model targeted the high ecological hazard area and determined the high hazard contribution of Cd and Hg in the site soil. The outcomes can be directly applied to actual site remediation and provide a reference for the contaminated sites evaluation and restoration in the future.
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•Multi-source model establishes relationships between influences on site pollution.•3D visualization holds great potential for finely delineating soil pollution.•3D visualization of multi-metal composite pollution plumes was realized.
Due to the influence of buildings on the distribution of flood and their economic and social attributes, 3D spatial information such as the size of buildings and the flooded ratio of buildings ...relative to their height has an increasing impact on urban flood risk. However, existing flood risk assessment methods mainly use data in 2D and analysis methods are mostly 2D. In this study, flood variation processes were analyzed in the form of 3D dynamic visualization by coupling an urban drainage model and a flood simulation model with 3D visualization methods. By further combining with 3D building models, the 3D spatial information of buildings related to flood was obtained. In order to study the influence of 3D information on flood risk and combine with other multi-source heterogeneous data for integrated analysis, a 3D visualization assessment and analysis method for flood risk, coupled with the projection pursuit-particle swarm optimization algorithm (PP–PSO) was established (3DVAAM-PP-PSO). A case study from Chaohu City, China, was used to demonstrate the method. The results showed that the PP-PSO algorithm can process high-dimensional information and obtain the objective weight of each index. The 3D information from the influenced buildings had an impact on the evaluation results, which needed to be considered. Through the 3D visualization analysis, the overall distribution of flood risk and that around the buildings were obtained in multi-perspectives. The flood risk during different rainfall return periods were analyzed intuitively and comparatively. This study furnishes a novel method for flood risk assessment and analysis by making the most of 3D spatial information.
•A 3D visualization assessment and analysis method for flood risk was established.•The 3D information from the influenced buildings had an impact on flood risk.•The assessment results were analyzed in 3D coupling with multi-source data.
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