Decomposition of voxel constituents into meaningful parameters may lead to informative measures that reflect changes in tissue microstructure. Magn Reson Med 77:1946-1958, 2017. © 2016 International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine.

Gradient recalled echo magnetic resonance imaging (GRE-MRI) at ultra-high field holds great promise for new contrast mechanisms and delineation of putative tissue compartments that contribute to the multi-echo GRE-MRI signal may aid structural characterization. Several studies have adopted the three water-pool compartment model to study white matter brain regions, associating individual compartments with myelin, axonal and extracellular water. However, the number and identifiability of GRE-MRI signal compartments has not been fully explored. We undertook this task for human brain imaging data. Multiple echo time GRE-MRI data were acquired in five healthy participants, specific anatomical structures were segmented in each dataset (substantia nigra, caudate, insula, putamen, thalamus, fornix, internal capsule, corpus callosum and cerebrospinal fluid), and the signal fitted with models comprising one to six signal compartments using a complex-valued plane wave formulation. Information criteria and cluster analysis methods were used to ascertain the number of distinct compartments within the signal from each structure and to determine their respective frequency shifts. We identified five principal signal compartments with different relative contributions to each structure's signal. Voxel-based maps of the volume fraction of each of these compartments were generated and demonstrated spatial correlation with brain anatomy.

Coronary Artery Disease (CAD) is a heart disease caused due to insufficient supply of nutrients and oxygen to the heart muscles. Hence, reduced supply of nutrients and oxygen causes heart attack or stroke and may cause death. Also significant number of people are suffering from CAD around the world so timely diagnosis of CAD can save the life of patients. In this work, we have proposed computer assisted diagnosis of CAD using Heart Rate (HR) signals obtained from Electrocardiogram (ECG) signals. We have used the Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD) technique to process the HR signals. The features namely: Second-Order Difference Plot (SODP) area, Analytic Signal Representation (ASR) area, Amplitude Modulation (AM) bandwidth, Frequency Modulation (FM) bandwidth and Fourier–Bessel expansion (FBE)- based mean frequency computed from the Intrinsic Mode Functions (IMFs) are extracted to discriminate normal and CAD subjects. Thereafter, Kruskal–Wallis statistical test is performed on these features. The features having p-value less than 0.05 are considered to be significant. Our results show that three features namely: AM bandwidth, FM bandwidth and FBE-based mean frequency are more suitable than ASR area and SODP area features for discrimination of normal and CAD subjects.