Search

Purpose: A novel rotating gamma stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) system (Galaxy RTi) with real-time image guidance technology has been developed for high-precision SRS and frameless fractionated stereotactic radiotherapy (SRT). This work investigated the dosimetric quality of Galaxy by comparing both the machine treatment parameters and plan dosimetry parameters with those of the widely used Leksell Gamma Knife (LGK) systems for SRS. Methods: The Galaxy RTi system uses 30 cobalt-60 sources on a rotating gantry to deliver non-coplanar, non-overlapping arcs simultaneously while the LGK 4C uses 201 static cobalt-60 sources to deliver noncoplanar beams. Ten brain cancer patients were unarchived from our clinical database, which were previously treated on the LGK 4C. The lesion volume for these cases varied from 0.1 cm3 to 15.4 cm3. Galaxy plans were generated using the Prowess TPS (Prowess, Concord, CA) with the same dose constraints and optimization parameters. Treatment quality metrics such as target coverage (%volume receiving the prescription dose), conformity index (CI), cone size, shots number, beam-on time were compared together with DVH curves and dose distributions. Results: Superior treatment plans were generated for the Galaxy system that met our clinical acceptance criteria. For the 10 patients investigated, the mean CI and dose coverage for Galaxy was 1.77 and 99.24 compared to 1.94 and 99.19 for LGK, respectively. The beam-on time for Galaxy was 17.42 minutes compared to 21.34 minutes for LGK (both assuming dose rates at the initial installation). The dose fall-off is much faster for Galaxy, compared with LGK. Conclusion: The Galaxy RTi system can provide dose distributions with similar quality to that of LGK with less beam-on time and faster dose fall-off. The system is also capable of real-time image guidance at treatment position to ensure accurate dose delivery for SRS., Comment: 14 pages, 7 figures

An aqueous suspension of silica nanoparticles or nanofluid can alter the wettability of surfaces, specifically by making them hydrophilic and oil-repellent under water. Wettability alteration by nanofluids have important technological applications, including for enhanced oil recovery and heat transfer processes. A common way to characterize the wettability alteration is by measuring the contact angles of an oil droplet with and without nanoparticles. While easy to perform, contact angle measurements do not fully capture the wettability changes to the surface. Here, we employed several complementary techniques, such as cryo-scanning electron microscopy, confocal fluorescence and reflection interference contrast microscopy and droplet probe atomic force Microscopy (AFM), to visualize and quantify the wettability alterations by fumed silica nanoparticles. We found that nanoparticles adsorbed onto glass surfaces to form a porous layer with hierarchical micro- and nano-structures. The porous layer is able to trap a thin water film, which reduces contact between the oil droplet and the solid substrate. As a result, even a small addition of nanoparticles (0.1 wt%) lowers the adhesion force for a 20-$\mu$m-sized oil droplet by more than 400 times from 210$\pm$10 nN to 0.5$\pm$0.3 nN as measured using droplet probe AFM. Finally, we show that silica nanofluids can improve oil recovery rates by 8% in a micromodel with glass channels that resemble a physical rock network.

Sparse signal recoveries from multiple measurement vectors (MMV) with joint sparsity property have many applications in signal, image, and video processing. The problem becomes much more involved when snapshots of the signal matrix are temporally correlated. With signal's temporal correlation in mind, we provide a framework of iterative MMV algorithms based on thresholding, functional feedback and null space tuning. Convergence analysis for exact recovery is established. Unlike most of iterative greedy algorithms that select indices in a measurement/solution space, we determine indices based on an orthogonal subspace spanned by the iterative sequence. In addition, a functional feedback that controls the amount of energy relocation from the "tails" is implemented and analyzed. It is seen that the principle of functional feedback is capable to lower the number of iteration and speed up the convergence of the algorithm. Numerical experiments demonstrate that the proposed algorithm has a clearly advantageous balance of efficiency, adaptivity and accuracy compared with other state-of-the-art algorithms.

An accelerated class of adaptive scheme of iterative thresholding algorithms is studied analytically and empirically. They are based on the feedback mechanism of the null space tuning techniques (NST+HT+FB). The main contribution of this article is the accelerated convergence analysis and proofs with a variable/adaptive index selection and different feedback principles at each iteration. These convergence analysis require no longer a priori sparsity information $s$ of a signal. %key theory in this paper is the concept that the number of indices selected at each iteration should be considered in order to speed up the convergence. It is shown that uniform recovery of all $s$-sparse signals from given linear measurements can be achieved under reasonable (preconditioned) restricted isometry conditions. Accelerated convergence rate and improved convergence conditions are obtained by selecting an appropriate size of the index support per iteration. The theoretical findings are sufficiently demonstrated and confirmed by extensive numerical experiments. It is also observed that the proposed algorithms have a clearly advantageous balance of efficiency, adaptivity and accuracy compared with all other state-of-the-art greedy iterative algorithms.

Thresholding based iterative algorithms have the trade-off between effectiveness and optimality. Some are effective but involving sub-matrix inversions in every step of iterations. For systems of large sizes, such algorithms can be computationally expensive and/or prohibitive. The null space tuning algorithm with hard thresholding and feedbacks (NST+HT+FB) has a mean to expedite its procedure by a suboptimal feedback, in which sub-matrix inversion is replaced by an eigenvalue-based approximation. The resulting suboptimal feedback scheme becomes exceedingly effective for large system recovery problems. An adaptive algorithm based on thresholding, suboptimal feedback and null space tuning (AdptNST+HT+subOptFB) without a prior knowledge of the sparsity level is also proposed and analyzed. Convergence analysis is the focus of this article. Numerical simulations are also carried out to demonstrate the superior efficiency of the algorithm compared with state-of-the-art iterative thresholding algorithms at the same level of recovery accuracy, particularly for large systems.

Iterative algorithms based on thresholding, feedback and null space tuning (NST+HT+FB) for sparse signal recovery are exceedingly effective and fast, particularly for large scale problems. The core algorithm is shown to converge in finitely many steps under a (preconditioned) restricted isometry condition. In this paper, we present a new perspective to analyze the algorithm, which turns out that the efficiency of the algorithm can be further elaborated by an estimate of the number of iterations for the guaranteed convergence. The convergence condition of NST+HT+FB is also improved. Moreover, an adaptive scheme (AdptNST+HT+FB) without the knowledge of the sparsity level is proposed with its convergence guarantee. The number of iterations for the finite step of convergence of the AdptNST+HT+FB scheme is also derived. It is further shown that the number of iterations can be significantly reduced by exploiting the structure of the specific sparse signal or the random measurement matrix.

Solving compressed sensing problems relies on the properties of sparse signals. It is commonly assumed that the sparsity s needs to be less than one half of the spark of the sensing matrix A, and then the unique sparsest solution exists, and recoverable by $\ell_1$-minimization or related procedures. We discover, however, a measure theoretical uniqueness exists for nearly spark-level sparsity from compressed measurements Ax = b. Specifically, suppose A is of full spark with m rows, and suppose $\frac{m}{2}$ < s < m. Then the solution to Ax = b is unique for x with $\|x\|_0 \leq s$ up to a set of measure 0 in every s-sparse plane. This phenomenon is observed and confirmed by an $\ell_1$-tail minimization procedure, which recovers sparse signals uniquely with s > $\frac{m}{2}$ in thousands and thousands of random tests. We further show instead that the mere $\ell_1$-minimization would actually fail if s > $\frac{m}{2}$ even from the same measure theoretical point of view., Comment: 12 pages, 2 figures

The problem of recovering signals of high complexity from low quality sensing devices is analyzed via a combination of tools from signal processing and harmonic analysis. By using the rich structure offered by the recent development in fusion frames, we introduce a compressed sensing framework in which we split the dense information into sub-channel or local pieces and then fuse the local estimations. Each piece of information is measured by potentially low quality sensors, modeled by linear matrices and recovered via compressed sensing -- when necessary. Finally, by a fusion process within the fusion frames, we are able to recover accurately the original signal. Using our new method, we show, and illustrate on simple numerical examples, that it is possible, and sometimes necessary, to split a signal via local projections and / or filtering for accurate, stable, and robust estimation. In particular, we show that by increasing the size of the fusion frame, a certain robustness to noise can also be achieved. While the computational complexity remains relatively low, we achieve stronger recovery performance compared to usual single-device compressed sensing systems., Comment: 17 figures, 42 pages