http://repub.eur.nl/res/aut/59508/ List of Publications en http://repub.eur.nl/static-eur/img/logo.png http://repub.eur.nl http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/39601/ 2012-12-01T00:00:00Z Classification is widely used in the context of medical image analysis and in order to illustrate the mechanism of a classifier, we introduce the notion of an exaggerated image stereotype based on training data and trained classifier. The stereotype of some image class of interest should emphasize/exaggerate the characteristic patterns in an image class and visualize the information the employed classifier relies on. This is useful for gaining insight into the classification and serves for comparison with the biological models of disease. In this work, we build exaggerated image stereotypes by optimizing an objective function which consists of a discriminative term based on the classification accuracy, and a generative term based on the class distributions. A gradient descent method based on iterated conditional modes (ICM) is employed for optimization. We use this idea with Fisher's linear discriminant rule and assume a multivariate normal distribution for samples within a class. The proposed framework is applied to computed tomography (CT) images of lung tissue with emphysema. The synthesized stereotypes illustrate the exaggerated patterns of lung tissue with emphysema, which is underpinned by three different quantitative evaluation methods. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/37347/ 2012-10-15T00:00:00Z Asia is the most populous region in the world and its rapidly growing societies are the sources of global development. However, accompanying this rapid growth is aging of the population with increasing occurrence of diseases, of which dementia is the most prominent, which provide major challenges to healthcare systems. Dementia prevalence in Asia has previously been found to be lower than Western populations, but recent studies show that age-specific prevalence rates are similar globally. Overall dementia prevalence is expected to rise dramatically across Asia due to maturing populations. Earlier Asian studies reported a lower prevalence of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and a higher prevalence of vascular dementia (VaD). Recent studies, however, show a reversal of this ratio that now parallels that of Western countries. This change may be attributed to an altered demographic profile, urbanization, environmental reactions, ethnicity and advances in the use of neuroimaging modalities. Several factors may influence the results of epidemiological studies including changes in societal perception of aging, family attitudes, validity of assessment tools due to language and literacy, and medical practitioners' expertise in recognizing dementia. Nevertheless, epidemiological studies in Asia may reveal factors contributory to inter-ethnic differences in dementia. Potentially modifiable risk factors apparent only in low and middle-income countries and gene-environment interactions may underlie these disparities and identification of such factors may lead to effective treatments.