Three-Dimensional Multiscale Fuzzy Entropy: Validation and Application to Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis

• Published in: IEEE journal of biomedical and health informatics Vol. 25; no. 1; pp. 100 - 107
• Main Authors: Gaudencio, Andreia Sofia F., Vaz, Pedro G., Hilal, Mirvana, Cardoso, Joao M., Mahe, Guillaume, Lederlin, Mathieu, Humeau-Heurtier, Anne
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States IEEE 01.01.2021; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE); Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
• Subjects: Algorithms; Biomedical data; Biomedical measurement; Computed tomography; CT scan; Diseases; Engineering Sciences; Entropy; Entropy (Information theory); Fibrosis; fuzzy entropy; idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis; Informatics; Information theory; Life expectancy; Life span; Lung; Lung diseases; Medical imaging; multiscale analysis; noise signals; Pulmonary fibrosis; Signal and Image processing; Three-dimensional displays
• DOI: 10.1109/JBHI.2020.2986210
• ISSN: 2168-2194; 2168-2208

Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF) is a chronic, severe, and progressive lung disease with short life expectancy. Based on information theory and entropy measurement, a three-dimensional multiscale fuzzy entropy (MFE<inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">_{3D}</tex-math></inline-formula>) algorithm is proposed to identify IPF patients from their computed tomography (CT) volumetric data. First, the validation of the algorithm was performed by analyzing several volumetric synthetic noises (white, blue, brown, and pink), MIX( p ) processes-based volumes, and texture-based volumes. The entropy values obtained by MFE<inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">_{3D}</tex-math></inline-formula> were consistent with the values obtained using the one, and two-dimensional versions, validating its use in biomedical data. Hence, MFE<inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">_{3D}</tex-math></inline-formula> was applied to CT scans to identify the existence of IPF within two different groups, one of healthy subjects (26) and another of IPF patients (26). Statistical differences were found (p < 0.05) between the entropy values of each group in 5 scale factors out of 10. These results demonstrate that MFE<inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">_{3D}</tex-math></inline-formula> could be an interesting metric to identify IPF in CT scans.