Domenico Tegolo

University of Palermo | UNIPA · Dipartimento di Matematica e Informatica

Geometric shape models often help to extract specific contours in digital images (the segmentation process) with major precision. Motivated by this idea, we introduce two models for the representation of prostate shape in the axial plane of magnetic resonance images. In more detail, the models are two parametric closed curves of the plane. The anal...

The back-propagation of an action potential (AP) from the axon/soma to the dendrites plays a central role in dendritic integration. This process involves an intricate orchestration of various ion channels, but a comprehensive understanding of the contribution of each channel type remains elusive. In this study, we leverage ultrafast membrane potent...

The back-propagation of an action potential (AP) from the axon/soma to the dendrites plays a central role in dendritic integration. This process involves an intricate orchestration of various ion channels, but a comprehensive understanding of the contribution of each channel type remains elusive. In this study, we leverage ultrafast membrane potent...

Background: Image analysis applications in digital pathology include various methods for segmenting regions of interest. Their identification is one of the most complex steps and therefore of great interest for the study of robust methods that do not necessarily rely on a machine learning (ML) approach. Method: A fully automatic and optimized segme...

Background: Image analysis applications in digital pathology include various methods for segmenting regions of interest. Their identification is one of the most complex steps, and therefore of great interest for the study of robust methods that do not necessarily rely on a machine learning (ML) approach. Method: A fully automatic and optimized segm...

Videocapillaroscopy allows the study of both the morphological and architectural structure of the microcirculation and its hemodynamic conditions; these parameters are directly involved in autoimmune and/or inflammatory pathologies. The purpose of this research, based on capillaroscopy, is to establish whether a patient who receives an anti-COVID 1...

Coeliac disease (CD) is frequently underdiagnosed with a consequent heavy burden in terms of morbidity and health care costs. Diagnosis of CD is based on the evaluation of symptoms and anti-transglutaminase antibodies IgA (TGA-IgA) levels, with values above a tenfold increase being the basis of the biopsy-free diagnostic approach suggested by prese...

Coeliac disease (CD) is a permanent inflammatory disease of the small intestine characterized by the destruction of the mucous membrane of this intestinal tract. Coeliac disease represents the most frequent food intolerance and affects about 1% of the population, but it is severely underdiagnosed. Currently available guidelines require CD-specific...

A number of potentially important mechanisms have been identified as key players to generate epileptiform activity, such as genetic mutations, activity-dependent alteration of synaptic functions, and functional network reorganization at the macroscopic level. Here we study how network connectivity at cellular level can affect the onset of epileptif...

The brain’s structural connectivity plays a fundamental role in determining how neuron networks generate, process, and transfer information within and between brain regions. The underlying mechanisms are extremely difficult to study experimentally and, in many cases, large-scale model networks are of great help. However, the implementation of these...

A number of potentially important mechanisms have been identified as key players to generate epileptiform activity, such as genetic mutations, activity-dependent alteration of synaptic functions, and functional network reorganization at the macroscopic level. Here we study how network connectivity at cellular level can affect the onset of epileptif...

The aim of this work was to develop a method for the automatic identification of exudates, using an unsupervised clustering approach. The ability to classify each pixel as belonging to an eventual exudate, as a warning of disease, allows for the tracking of a patient’s status through a noninvasive approach. In the field of diabetic retinopathy dete...

Introduction: Diabetic foot represents one of the most serious and expensive complications of diabetes and is subject to a high percentage of amputations that are almost always preceded by ulcers ascribable to neuropathy and/or vasculopathy. Videocapillaroscopy (VCS) can be a valuable aid in order to uncover morpho-structural anomalies in the vasc...

Brain connectivity at the single neuron level can provide fundamental insights into how information is integrated and propagated within and between brain regions. However, it is almost impossible to adequately study this problem experimentally and, despite intense efforts in the field, no mathematical description has been obtained so far. Here, we...

The methods developed in recent years for synthesising an ocular fundus can be been divided into two main categories. The first category of methods involves the development of an anatomical model of the eye, where artificial images are generated using appropriate parameters for modelling the vascular networks and fundus. The second type of method h...

The health sector has traditionally been one of the early adopters of databases, from the most simple Electronic Health Record (formerly Computer-Based Patient Record) systems in use in general practice, hospitals and intensive care units to big data, multidata based systems used to support diagnosis and care decisions. In this paper we present a f...

A number of previous studies have shown that IIF image analysis requires complex and sometimes heterogeneous and diversified methods. Robust solutions can be proposed but they need to orchestrate several methods from low-level analysis up to more complex neural networks or SVM for data classification. The contribution intends to highlight the versa...

The description of an innovative framework built on top of Web-based visual programming environment is the primary aim of this contribution. In the last decade, many frameworks oriented to visual languages have been introduced in literature to improve the skill on programming languages, but at the best of our knowledge, no framework has been specia...

The screening of chromosomal defects, as trisomy 13, 18 and 21, can be obtained by the measurement of the nuchal translucency thickness scanning during the end of the first trimester of pregnancy. This contribution proposes an automatic methodology to detect mid-sagittal sections to identify the correct measurement of nuchal translucency. Wavelet a...

In this paper we propose a new methodology to support the physician both to identify automatically the nuchal region and to obtain a correct thickness measurement of the nuchal translucency. The thickness of the nuchal translucency is one of the main markers for screening of chromosomal defects such as trisomy 13, 18 and 21. Its measurement is perf...

In this paper an automatic unsupervised method for retinal vessel segmentation is described. Self-Organizing Map, modified Fuzzy C-Means, STAPLE algorithms and majority voting strategy were adopted to identify a segmentation of the retinal vessels. The performance of the proposed method was evaluated on the DRIVE database.

We propose a methodology to support the physician in the automatic identification of mid-sagittal sections of the fetus in ultrasound videos acquired during the first trimester of pregnancy. A good mid-sagittal section is a key requirement to make the correct measurement of nuchal translucency which is one of the main marker for screening of chromo...

The cellular processes underlying individual differences in the Working Memory Capacity (WMC) of humans are essentially unknown. Psychological experiments suggest that subjects with lower working memory capacity (LWMC), with respect to subjects with higher capacity (HWMC), take more time to recall items from a list because they search through a lar...

The integration of programming teachings, in all levels of education, highlights the need to acquire the art of programming for each individual student through versatile tools based on specific cognitive methods. Diversified linguistic metaphors have to be adopted by the developing frame, in order to highlight the qualities of each student. Therefo...

This contribution describes a method to select regions of interest as capillaries of the oral mucosa and to extract their main features useful for real diagnosis purposes. A discrete version of the wavelet transform has been adopted for segmenting the images coming from video sequences acquired by a prototype capillaroscopic, able to put in evidenc...

The possible cognitive effects of low frequency external electric fields (EFs), such as those generated by power lines, are poorly understood. Their functional consequences for mechanisms at the single neuron level are very difficult to study and identify experimentally, especially in vivo. The major open problem is that experimental investigations...

This paper presents a matching strategy to improve the discriminative power of histogram-based keypoint descriptors by constraining the range of allowable dominant orientations according to the context of the scene under observation. This can be done whenthe descriptor uses a circular grid and quantized orientation steps, by computing or providing...

Landmark points in retinal images can be used to create a graph representation to understand and to diagnose not only different pathologies of the eye, but also a variety of more general diseases. Aim of this paper is the description of a non-supervised methodology to distinguish between bifurcations and crossings of the retinal vessels, which can...

The main contribution of this paper is introducing a method to distinguish between different landmarks of the retina: bifurcations and crossings. The methodology may help in differentiating between arteries and veins and is useful in identifying diseases and other special pathologies, too. The method does not need any special skills, thus it can be...

The black void behind the pupil was optically impenetrable before the invention of the ophthalmoscope by von Helmholtz over 150 years ago. Advances in retinal imaging and image processing, especially over the past decade have opened a route to another unexplored landscape, the retinal neurovascular architecture and the retinal ganglion pathways lin...

We aim to describe a new non-parametric methodology to support the clinician during the diagnostic process of oral videocapillaroscopy to evaluate peripheral microcirculation. Our methodology, mainly based on wavelet analysis and mathematical morphology to preprocess the images, segments them by minimizing the within-class luminosity variance of bo...

This paper presents a new framework to evaluate feature descriptors on 3D datasets. The proposed method employs the approxi-mated overlap error in order to conform with the reference planar evalu-ation case of the Oxford dataset based on the overlap error. The method takes into account not only the keypoint centre but also the feature shape and it...

We present an algorithm estimating the width of retinal vessels in fundus camera images. The algorithm uses a novel parametric surface model of the cross-sectional intensities of vessels, and ensembles of bagged decision trees to estimate the local width from the parameters of the best-fit surface. We report comparative tests with REVIEW, currently...

We aim at describing a non-parametric approach to evaluate blood cells velocity in oral capillascopic videos. The proposed methodology is based on the application of standard optical flow algorithms and it is part of a general environment to support during the diagnostic process for evaluating peripheral microcirculation in real time. We validated...

Accurate retinal image registration is essential to track the evolution of eye-related diseases. We propose a semiautomatic method based on features relying upon retinal graphs for temporal registration of retinal images. The features represent straight lines connecting vascular landmarks on the retina vascular tree: bifurcations, branchings, cross...

Nowadays the measurement of the nuchal translucency thickness is being used as part of routine ultrasound scanning during the end of the first trimester of pregnancy, for the screening of chromosomal defects, as trisomy 21. Currently, the measurement is being performed manually by physicians. The measurement can take a long time for being accomplis...

This paper summarizes three recent, novel algorithms developed within VAMPIRE, namely optic disc and macula detection, arteryvein classification, and enhancement of binary vessel masks, and their performance assessment. VAMPIRE is an international collaboration growing a suite of software tools to allow efficient quantification of morphological pro...

We report a measurement of the proton-air cross section for particle production at the center-of-mass energy per nucleon of 57 TeV. This is derived from the distribution of the depths of shower maxima observed with the Pierre Auger Observatory: systematic uncertainties are studied in detail. Analyzing the tail of the distribution of the shower maxi...

This paper presents a semi-automatic framework for minimal path tracking in the skeleton of the retinal vascular network. The method is based on the graph structure of the vessel network. The vascular network is represented based on the skeleton of the available segmented vessels and using an undirected graph. Significant points on the skeleton are...

Observations of cosmic ray arrival directions made with the Pierre Auger Observatory have previously provided evidence of anisotropy at the 99% CL using the correlation of ultra high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) with objects drawn from the Véron-Cetty Véron catalog. In this paper we report on the use of three catalog independent methods to search fo...

The Surface Detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory is sensitive to neutrinos of all flavours above 0.1 EeV. These interact through charged and neutral currents in the atmosphere giving rise to extensive air showers. When interacting deeply in the atmosphere at nearly horizontal incidence, neutrinos can be distinguished from regular hadronic cosmi...

The Surface Detector of the Pierre Auger Observatory is sensitive to neutrinos of all flavors above 0.1 EeV. These interact through charged and neutral currents in the atmosphere giving rise to extensive air showers. When interacting deeply in the atmosphere at nearly horizontal incidence, neutrinos can be distinguished from regular hadronic cosmic...

We present a comprehensive study of the influence of the geomagnetic field on the energy estimation of extensive air showers with a zenith angle smaller than $60^\circ$, detected at the Pierre Auger Observatory. The geomagnetic field induces an azimuthal modulation of the estimated energy of cosmic rays up to the ~2% level at large zenith angles. W...

The surface detector array of the Pierre Auger Observatory consists of 1600 water-Cherenkov detectors, for the study of extensive air showers (EAS) generated by ultra-high-energy cosmic rays. We describe the trigger hierarchy, from the identification of candidate showers at the level of a single detector, amongst a large background (mainly random s...

In this paper we introduce the concept of Lateral Trigger Probability (LTP) function, i.e., the probability for an extensive air shower (EAS) to trigger an individual detector of a ground based array as a function of distance to the shower axis, taking into account energy, mass and direction of the primary cosmic ray. We apply this concept to the s...

We present the results of an analysis of data recorded at the Pierre Auger Observatory in which we search for groups of directionally-aligned events (or `multiplets') which exhibit a correlation between arrival direction and the inverse of the energy. These signatures are expected from sets of events coming from the same source after having been de...

Hypocenter and focal mechanism of an earthquake can be determined by the analysis of signals, named waveforms, related to the wave field produced and recorded by a seismic network. Assuming that waveform similarity implies the similarity of focal parameters, the analysis of those signals characterized by very similar shapes can be used to give impo...

In this paper an automatic unsupervised method for the segmentation of retinal vessels is proposed. Three features are extracted from the tested image. The features are scaled down by a factor of 2 and mapped into a Self-Organizing Map. A modified Fuzzy C-Means clustering algorithm is used to divide the neuron units of the map in 2 classes. The ent...

We present VAMPIRE, a software application for efficient, semi-automatic quantification of retinal vessel properties with large collections of fundus camera images. VAMPIRE is also an international collaborative project of four image processing groups and five clinical centres. The system provides automatic detection of retinal landmarks (optic dis...

The neural mechanisms underlying schizophrenic behavior are unknown and very difficult to investigate experimentally, although a few experimental and modeling studies suggested possible causes for some of the typical psychotic symptoms related to this disease. The brain region most involved in these processes seems to be the hippocampus, because of...

Studies of the composition of the highest energy cosmic rays with the Pierre Auger Observatory, including examination of hadronic physics effects on the structure of extensive air showers.

Astrophysical observations of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays with the Pierre Auger Observatory

Technical reports on operations and monitoring of the Pierre Auger Observatory

Ongoing and planned enhancements of the Pierre Auger Observatory

Studies of the cosmic ray energy spectrum at the highest energies with the Pierre Auger Observatory

Technical reports on operations and monitoring of the Pierre Auger Observatory