Automated segmentation of electron microscopy (EM) images is a challenging problem. In this paper, we present a novel method that utilizes a hierarchical structure and boundary classification for 2D neuron segmentation. With a membrane detection probability map, a watershed merge tree is built for the representation of hierarchical region merging from the watershed algorithm. A boundary classifier is learned with non-local image features to predict each potential merge in the tree, upon which merge decisions are made with consistency constraints to acquire the final segmentation. Independent of classifiers and decision strategies, our approach proposes a general framework for efficient hierarchical segmentation with statistical learning. We demonstrate that our method leads to a substantial improvement in segmentation accuracy.

Representing uncertainty when creating visualizations is becoming more indispensable to understand and analyze scientific data. Uncertainty may come from different sources, such as, ensembles of experiments or unavoidable information loss when performing data reduction. One natural model to represent uncertainty is to assume that each position in space instead of a single value may take on a distribution of values. In this paper we present a new volume rendering method using per voxel Gaussian mixture models (GMMs) as the input data representation. GMMs are an elegant and compact way to drastically reduce the amount of data stored while still enabling realtime data access and rendering on the GPU. Our renderer offers efficient sampling of the data distribution, generating renderings of the data that flicker at each frame to indicate high variance. We can accumulate samples as well to generate still frames of the data, which preserve additional details in the data as compared to either traditional scalar indicators (such as a mean or a single nearest neighbor down sample) or to fitting the data with only a single Gaussian per voxel. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our method using ensembles of climate simulations and MRI scans as well as the down sampling of large scalar fields as examples.

Keywords: Uncertainty Visualization, Volume Rendering, Gaussian Mixture Model, Ensemble Visualization

Identifying functional networks from resting-state functional MRI is a challenging task, especially for multiple subjects. Most current studies estimate the networks in a sequential approach, i.e., they identify each individual subject's network independently to other subjects, and then estimate the group network from the subjects networks. This one-way flow of information prevents one subject's network estimation benefiting from other subjects. We propose a hierarchical Markov Random Field model, which takes into account both the within-subject spatial coherence and between-subject consistency of the network label map. Both population and subject network maps are estimated simultaneously using a Gibbs sampling approach in a Monte Carlo Expectation Maximization framework. We compare our approach to two alternative groupwise fMRI clustering methods, based on K-means and Normalized Cuts, using both synthetic and real fMRI data.We show that our method is able to estimate more consistent subject label maps, as well as a stable group label map.

Effective detection of and response to infectious disease outbreaks depend on the ability to capture and analyze information and on how public health officials respond to this information. Researchers have developed various surveillance systems to automate data collection, analysis, and alert generation, yet the massive amount of collected data often leads to information overload. To improve decision-making in outbreak detection and response, it's important to understand how outbreak investigators seek relevant information. Studying their information-search strategies can provide insight into their cognitive biases and heuristics. Identifying the presence of such biases will enable the development of tools that counter balance them and help users develop alternative scenarios.

We implemented a large-scale high-fidelity simulation of scripted infectious-disease outbreaks to help us study public health practitioners' information- search strategies. We also developed Epinome, an integrated visual-analytics investigation system. Epinome caters to users' needs by providing a variety of investigation tools. It facilitates user studies by recording which tools they used, when, and how. (See the video demonstration of Epinome at www.sci.utah.edu/gallery2/v/ software/epinome.) Epinome provides a dynamic environment that seamlessly evolves and adapts to user tasks and needs. It introduces four userinteraction paradigms in public health:

• an evolving visual display,
• seamless integration between disparate views,
• loosely coordinated multiple views, and
• direct interaction with data items.

Using Epinome, users can replay simulation scenarios, investigate an unfolding outbreak using a variety of visualization tools, and steer the simulation by implementing different public health policies at predefined decision points. Epinome records user actions, such as tool selection, interactions with each tool, and policy changes, and stores them in a database for postanalysis. A psychology team can then use that information to study users' search strategies.

This paper describes an adaptive implementation of a high order Discontinuous Galerkin (DG) method for the solution of elastohydrodynamic lubrication (EHL) point contact problems. These problems arise when modelling the thin lubricating film between contacts which are under sufficiently high pressure that the elastic deformation of the contacting elements cannot be neglected. The governing equations are highly nonlinear and include a second order partial differential equation that is derived via the thin-film approximation. Furthermore, the problem features a free boundary, which models where cavitation occurs, and this is automatically captured as part of the solution process. The need for spatial adaptivity stems from the highly variable length scales that are present in typical solutions. Results are presented which demonstrate both the effectiveness and the limitations of the proposed adaptive algorithm.

Keywords: Elastohydrodynamic lubrication, Discontinuous Galerkin, High polynomial degree, h-adaptivity, Nonlinear systems

Background: Enlargement of the lateral ventricles is thought to originate from abnormal prenatal brain development and is associated with neurodevelopmental disorders. Fetal isolated mild ventriculomegaly (MVM) is associated with the enlargement of lateral ventricle volumes in the neonatal period and developmental delays in early childhood. However, little is known about postnatal brain development in these children.

Methods: Twenty-eight children with fetal isolated MVM and 56 matched controls were followed at ages 1 and 2 years with structural imaging on a 3T Siemens scanner and assessment of cognitive development with the Mullen Scales of Early Learning. Lateral ventricle, total gray and white matter volumes, and Mullen cognitive composite scores and subscale scores were compared between groups.

Results: Compared to controls, children with prenatal isolated MVM had significantly larger lateral ventricle volumes at ages 1 and 2 years. Lateral ventricle volume at 1 and 2 years of age was significantly correlated with prenatal ventricle size. Enlargement of the lateral ventricles was associated with increased intracranial volumes and increased gray and white matter volumes. Children with MVM had Mullen composite scores similar to controls, although there was evidence of delay in fine motor and expressive language skills.

Conclusions: Children with prenatal MVM have persistent enlargement of the lateral ventricles through the age of 2 years; this enlargement is associated with increased gray and white matter volumes and some evidence of delay in fine motor and expressive language development. Further study is needed to determine if enlarged lateral ventricles are associated with increased risk for neurodevelopmental disorders.

In the field of computational biomechanics, investigators have primarily used commercial software that is neither geared toward biological applications nor sufficiently flexible to follow the latest developments in the field. This lack of a tailored software environment has hampered research progress, as well as dissemination of models and results. To address these issues, we developed the FEBio software suite (http://febio.org/), a nonlinear implicit finite element (FE) framework, designed specifically for analysis in computational solid biomechanics. This paper provides an overview of the theoretical basis of FEBio and its main features. FEBio offers modeling scenarios, constitutive models, and boundary conditions, which are relevant to numerous applications in biomechanics. The open-source FEBio software is written in C++, with particular attention to scalar and parallel performance on modern computer architectures. Software verification is a large part of the development and maintenance of FEBio, and to demonstrate the general approach, the description and results of several problems from the FEBio Verification Suite are presented and compared to analytical solutions or results from other established and verified FE codes. An additional simulation is described that illustrates the application of FEBio to a research problem in biomechanics. Together with the pre- and postprocessing software PREVIEW and POSTVIEW, FEBio provides a tailored solution for research and development in computational biomechanics.

We introduce a novel mid-structure called the generalized swept mid-structure (GSM) of a closed polygonal shape, and a framework to compute it. The GSM contains both curve and surface elements and has consistent sheet-by-sheet topology, versus triangle-by-triangle topology produced by other mid-structure methods. To obtain this structure, a harmonic function, defined on the volume that is enclosed by the surface, is used to decompose the volume into a set of slices. A technique for computing the 1D mid-structures of these slices is introduced. The mid-structures of adjacent slices are then iteratively matched through a boundary similarity computation and triangulated to form the GSM. This structure respects the topology of the input surface model is a hybrid mid-structure representation. The construction and topology of the GSM allows for local and global simplification, used in further applications such as parameterization, volumetric mesh generation and medical applications.

Keywords: scidac, kaust

Personalized computational cardiac models are emerging as an important tool for studying cardiac arrhythmia mechanisms, and have the potential to become powerful instruments for guiding clinical anti-arrhythmia therapy. In this article, we present the methodology for constructing a patient-specific model of atrial fibrosis as a substrate for atrial fibrillation. The model is constructed from high-resolution late gadolinium-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (LGE-MRI) images acquired in vivo from a patient suffering from persistent atrial fibrillation, accurately capturing both the patient's atrial geometry and the distribution of the fibrotic regions in the atria. Atrial fiber orientation is estimated using a novel image-based method, and fibrosis is represented in the patient-specific fibrotic regions as incorporating collagenous septa, gap junction remodeling, and myofibroblast proliferation. A proof-of-concept simulation result of reentrant circuits underlying atrial fibrillation in the model of the patient's fibrotic atrium is presented to demonstrate the completion of methodology development.

Keywords: Patient-specific modeling, Computational model, Atrial fibrillation, Atrial fibrosis

Uintah is a software framework that provides an environment for solving fluid-structure interaction problems on structured adaptive grids on large-scale science and engineering problems involving the solution of partial differential equations. Uintah uses a combination of fluid-flow solvers and particle-based methods for solids, together with adaptive meshing and a novel asynchronous task-based approach with fully automated load balancing. When applying Uintah to fluid-structure interaction problems with mesh refinement, the combination of adaptive meshing and the movement of structures through space present a formidable challenge in terms of achieving scalability on large-scale parallel computers. With core counts per socket continuing to grow along with the prospect of less memory per core, adopting a model that uses MPI to communicate between nodes and a shared memory model on-node is one approach to achieve scalability at full machine capacity on current and emerging large-scale systems. For this approach to be successful, it is necessary to design data-structures that large numbers of cores can simultaneously access without contention. These data structures and algorithms must also be designed to avoid the overhead involved with locks and other synchronization primitives when running on large number of cores per node, as contention for acquiring locks quickly becomes untenable. This scalability challenge is addressed here for Uintah, by the development of new hybrid runtime and scheduling algorithms combined with novel lockfree data structures, making it possible for Uintah to achieve excellent scalability for a challenging fluid-structure problem with mesh refinement on as many as 260K cores.

Keywords: uintah, csafe

The development of a new unified, multi-threaded runtime system for the execution of asynchronous tasks on heterogeneous systems is described in this work. These asynchronous tasks arise from the Uintah framework, which was developed to provide an environment for solving a broad class of fluid-structure interaction problems on structured adaptive grids. Uintah has a clear separation between its MPI-free user-coded tasks and its runtime system that ensures these tasks execute efficiently. This separation also allows for complete isolation of the application developer from the complexities involved with the parallelism Uintah provides. While we have designed scalable runtime systems for large CPU core counts, the emergence of heterogeneous systems, with additional on-node accelerators and co-processors presents additional design challenges in terms of effectively utilizing all computational resources on-node and managing multiple levels of parallelism. Our work addresses these challenges for Uintah by the development of new hybrid runtime system and Unified multi-threaded MPI task scheduler, enabling Uintah to fully exploit current and emerging architectures with support for asynchronous, out-of-order scheduling of both CPU and GPU computational tasks. This design coupled with an approach that uses MPI to communicate between nodes, a shared memory model on-node and the use of novel lock-free data structures, has made it possible for Uintah to achieve excellent scalability for challenging fluid-structure problems using adaptive mesh refinement on as many as 256K cores on the DoE Jaguar XK6 system. This design has also demonstrated an ability to run capability jobs on the heterogeneous systems, Keeneland and TitanDev. In this work, the evolution of Uintah and its runtime system is examined in the context of our new Unified multi-threaded scheduler design. The performance of the Unified scheduler is also tested against previous Uintah scheduler and runtime designs over a range of processor core and GPU counts.

Transforming growth factor β1 (TGF-β1) has a potent profibrotic function and is central to signaling cascades involved in interstitial fibrosis, which plays a critical role in the pathobiology of cardiomyopathy and contributes to diastolic and systolic dysfunction. In addition, fibrotic remodeling is responsible for generation of re-entry circuits that promote arrhythmias (Bujak and Frangogiannis 2007 Cardiovasc. Res. 74, 184–195). Due to the small size of the heart, functional electrophysiology of transgenic mice is problematic. Large transgenic animal models have the potential to offer insights into conduction heterogeneity associated with fibrosis and the role of fibrosis in cardiovascular diseases. The goal of this study was to generate transgenic goats overexpressing an active form of TGFβ-1 under control of the cardiac-specific α-myosin heavy chain promoter (α-MHC). A pcDNA3.1DV5-MHC-TGF-β1cys³³ser vector was constructed by subcloning the MHC-TGF-β1 fragment from the plasmid pUC-BM20-MHC-TGF-β1 (Nakajima et al. 2000 Circ. Res. 86, 571–579) into the pcDNA3.1D V5 vector. The Neon transfection system was used to electroporate primary goat fetal fibroblasts. After G418 selection and PCR screening, transgenic cells were used for SCNT. Oocytes were collected by slicing ovaries from an abattoir and matured in vitro in an incubator with 5\% CO₂ in air. Cumulus cells were removed at 21 to 23 h post-maturation. Oocytes were enucleated by aspirating the first polar body and nearby cytoplasm by micromanipulation in Hepes-buffered SOF medium with 10 µg of cytochalasin B mL^–1. Transgenic somatic cells were individually inserted into the perivitelline space and fused with enucleated oocytes using double electrical pulses of 1.8 kV cm^–1 (40 µs each). Reconstructed embryos were activated by ionomycin (5 min) and DMAP and cycloheximide (CHX) treatments. Cloned embryos were cultured in G1 medium for 12 to 60 h in vitro and then transferred into synchronized recipient females. Pregnancy was examined by ultrasonography on day 30 post-transfer. A total of 246 cloned embryos were transferred into 14 recipients that resulted in production of 7 kids. The pregnancy rate was higher in the group cultured for 12 h compared with those cultured 36 to 60 h [44.4\% (n = 9) v. 20\% (n = 5)]. The kidding rates per embryo transferred of these 2 groups were 3.8\% (n = 156) and 1.1\% (n = 90), respectively. The PCR results confirmed that all the clones were transgenic. Phenotype characterization [e.g. gene expression, electrocardiogram (ECG), and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)] is underway. We demonstrated successful production of transgenic goat via SCNT. To our knowledge, this is the first transgenic goat model produced for cardiovascular research.

We propose an extension to the four-level nested model for design and validation of visualization systems that defines the term \"guidelines\" in terms of blocks at each level. Blocks are the outcomes of the design process at a specific level, and guidelines discuss relationships between these blocks. Within-level guidelines provide comparisons for blocks within the same level, while between-level guidelines provide mappings between adjacent levels of design. These guidelines help a designer choose which abstractions, techniques, and algorithms are reasonable to combine when building a visualization system. This definition of guideline allows analysis of how the validation efforts in different kinds of papers typically lead to different kinds of guidelines. Analysis through the lens of blocks and guidelines also led us to identify four major needs: a definition of the meaning of block at the problem level; mid-level task taxonomies to fill in the blocks at the abstraction level; refinement of the model itself at the abstraction level; and a more complete set of guidelines that map up from the algorithm level to the technique level. These gaps in visualization knowledge present rich opportunities for future work.

Longitudinal data arises in many applications in which the goal is to understand changes in individual entities over time. In this paper, we present a method for analyzing longitudinal data that take values in a Riemannian manifold. A driving application is to characterize anatomical shape changes and to distinguish between trends in anatomy that are healthy versus those that are due to disease. We present a generative hierarchical model in which each individual is modeled by a geodesic trend, which in turn is considered as a perturbation of the mean geodesic trend for the population. Each geodesic in the model can be uniquely parameterized by a starting point and velocity, i.e., a point in the tangent bundle. Comparison between these parameters is achieved through the Sasaki metric, which provides a natural distance metric on the tangent bundle. We develop a statistical hypothesis test for differences between two groups of longitudinal data by generalizing the Hotelling T² statistic to manifolds. We demonstrate the ability of these methods to distinguish differences in shape changes in a comparison of longitudinal corpus callosum data in subjects with dementia versus healthily aging controls.

In this paper we propose a method for conducting stochastic collocation on arbitrary sets of nodes. To accomplish this, we present the framework of least orthogonal interpolation, which allows one to construct interpolation polynomials based on arbitrarily located grids in arbitrary dimensions. These interpolation polynomials are constructed as a subspace of the family of orthogonal polynomials corresponding to the probability distribution function on stochastic space. This feature enables one to conduct stochastic collocation simulations in practical problems where one cannot adopt some popular node selections such as sparse grids or cubature nodes. We present in detail both the mathematical properties of the least orthogonal interpolation and its practical implementation algorithm. Numerical benchmark problems are also presented to demonstrate the efficacy of the method.

Keywords: stochastic collocation, polynomial chaos, interpolation, orthogonal polynomials

Data assimilation is an essential tool for predicting the behavior of real physical systems given approximate simulation models and limited observations. For many complex systems, there may exist several models, each with different properties and predictive capabilities. It is desirable to incorporate multiple models into the assimilation procedure in order to obtain a more accurate prediction of the physics than any model alone can provide. In this paper, we propose a framework for conducting sequential data assimilation with multiple models and sources of data. The assimilated solution is a linear combination of all model predictions and data. One notable feature is that the combination takes the most general form with matrix weights. By doing so the method can readily utilize different weights in different sections of the solution state vectors, allow the models and data to have different dimensions, and deal with the case of a singular state covariance. We prove that the proposed assimilation method, termed direct assimilation, minimizes a variational functional, a generalized version of the one used in the classical Kalman filter. We also propose an efficient iterative assimilation method that assimilates two models at a time until all models and data are assimilated. The mathematical equivalence of the iterative method and the direct method is established. Numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the new method.

Keywords: Uncertainty quantification, Data assimilation, Kalman filter, Model averaging

This paper presents the Element Visualizer (ElVis), a new, open-source scientific visualization system for use with high-order finite element solutions to PDEs in three dimensions. This system is designed to minimize visualization errors of these types of fields by querying the underlying finite element basis functions (e.g., high-order polynomials) directly, leading to pixel-exact representations of solutions and geometry. The system interacts with simulation data through runtime plugins, which only require users to implement a handful of operations fundamental to finite element solvers. The data in turn can be visualized through the use of cut surfaces, contours, isosurfaces, and volume rendering. These visualization algorithms are implemented using NVIDIA's OptiX GPU-based ray-tracing engine, which provides accelerated ray traversal of the high-order geometry, and CUDA, which allows for effective parallel evaluation of the visualization algorithms. The direct interface between ElVis and the underlying data differentiates it from existing visualization tools. Current tools assume the underlying data is composed of linear primitives; high-order data must be interpolated with linear functions as a result. In this work, examples drawn from aerodynamic simulations-high-order discontinuous Galerkin finite element solutions of aerodynamic flows in particular-will demonstrate the superiority of ElVis' pixel-exact approach when compared with traditional linear-interpolation methods. Such methods can introduce a number of inaccuracies in the resulting visualization, making it unclear if visual artifacts are genuine to the solution data or if these artifacts are the result of interpolation errors. Linear methods additionally cannot properly visualize curved geometries (elements or boundaries) which can greatly inhibit developers' debugging efforts. As we will show, pixel-exact visualization exhibits none of these issues, removing the visualization scheme as a source of - ncertainty for engineers using ElVis.

Automatic fingerprint identification systems (AFIS) have been studied extensively and are widely used for biometric identification. Given its importance, many well-engineered methods have been developed for the different stages that encompass those systems. The first stage of any such system is the segmentation of the actual fingerprint region from the background. This is typically achieved by classifying pixels, or blocks of pixels, based on a set of features. In this paper, we describe novel features for fingerprint segmentation that express the underlying manifold topology associated with image patches in a local neighborhood. It is shown that fingerprint patches seen in a high-dimensional space form a simple and highly regular circular manifold. The characterization of the manifold topology suggests a set of optimal features that characterize the local properties of the fingerprint. Thus, fingerprint segmentation can be formulated as a classification problem based on the deviation from the expected topology. This leads to features that are more robust to changes in contrast than mean, variance and coherence. The superior performance of the proposed features for fingerprint segmentation is shown in the eight datasets from the 2002 and 2004 Fingerprint Verification Competitions.

Keywords: Fingerprint segmentation, manifold characterization, feature extraction, dimensionality reduction

Description of purpose: The NA-MIC SPHARM-PDM Toolbox represents an automated set of tools for the computation of 3D structural statistical shape analysis. SPHARM-PDM solves the correspondence problem by defining a first order ellipsoid aligned, uniform spherical parameterization for each object with correspondence established at equivalently parameterized points. However, SPHARM correspondence has shown to be inadequate for some biological shapes that are not well described by a uniform spherical parameterization. Entropy-based particle systems compute correspondence by representing surfaces as discrete point sets that does not rely on any inherent parameterization. However, they are sensitive to initialization and have little ability to recover from initial errors. By combining both methodologies we compute reliable correspondences in topologically challenging biological shapes. Data: Diverse subcortical structures cohorts were used, obtained from MR brain images. Method(s): The SPHARM-PDM shape analysis toolbox was used to compute point based correspondent models that were then used as initializing particles for the entropy-based particle systems. The combined framework was implemented as a stand-alone Slicer3 module, which works as an end-to-end shape analysis module. Results: The combined SPHARM-PDM-Particle framework has demonstrated to improve correspondence in the example dataset over the conventional SPHARM-PDM toolbox. Conclusions: The work presented in this paper demonstrates a two-sided improvement for the scientific community, being able to 1) find good correspondences among spherically topological shapes, that can be used in many morphometry studies 2) offer an end-to-end solution that will facilitate the access to shape analysis framework to users without computer expertise.

Pathway maps are an important source of information when analyzing functional implications of experimental data on biological processes. However, associating large quantities of data with nodes on a pathway map and allowing in depth-analysis at the same time is a challenging task. While a wide variety of approaches for doing so exist, they either do not scale beyond a few experiments or fail to represent the pathway appropriately. To remedy this, we introduce enRoute, a new approach for interactively exploring experimental data along paths that are dynamically extracted from pathways. By showing an extracted path side-by-side with experimental data, enRoute can present large amounts of data for every pathway node. It can visualize hundreds of samples, dozens of experimental conditions, and even multiple datasets capturing different aspects of a node at the same time. Another important property of this approach is its conceptual compatibility with arbitrary forms of pathways. Most notably, enRoute works well with pathways that are manually created, as they are available in large, public pathway databases. We demonstrate enRoute with pathways from the well-established KEGG database and expression as well as copy number datasets from humans and mice with more than 1,000 experiments. We validate enRoute using case studies with domain experts, who used enRoute to explore data for glioblastoma multiforme in humans and a model of steatohepatitis in mice.