Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is an autoimmune disease of central nervous system. It may result in a variety of symptoms from blurred vision to severe muscle weakness and degradation, depending on the affected regions in brain. To better understand this disease and to quantify its evolution, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is increasingly used nowadays. Manual delineation of MS lesions in MR images by human expert is time-consuming, subjective, and prone to inter-expert variability. Therefore, automatic segmentation is needed as an alternative to manual segmentation. However, the progression of the MS lesions shows considerable variability and MS lesions present temporal changes in shape, location, and area between patients and even for the same patient, which renders the automatic segmentation of MS lesions a challenging problem. In this dissertation, a set of segmentation pipelines are proposed for automatic segmentation of multiple sclerosis (MS) lesions from brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data. These techniques use a trained support vector machine (SVM) to discriminate between the blocks in regions of MS lesions and the blocks in non-MS lesion regions mainly based on the textural features with aid of the other features. The main contribution of this set of frameworks is the use of textural features to detect MS lesions in a fully automated approach that does not rely on manually delineating the MS lesions. In addition, the technique introduces the concept of the multi-sectional views segmentation to produce verified segmentation. The multi-sectional views pipeline is customized to provide better segmentation performance and to benefit from the properties and the nature of MS lesion in MRI. These customization and enhancement leads to development of the customized MV-T-SVM. The MRI datasets that were used in the evaluation of the proposed pipelines are simulated MRI datasets (3 subjects) generated using the McGill University BrainWeb MRI Simulator, real datasets (51 subjects) publicly available at the workshop of MS Lesion Segmentation Challenge 2008 and real MRI datasets (10 subjects) for MS subjects acquired at the University of Miami. The obtained results indicate that the proposed method would be viable for use in clinical practice for the detection of MS lesions in MRI.

This work relates to the remote sensing technologies to determine wind velocity and its related phenomena. Laser-based pulsed systems with heterodyne detection allow a very sensitive measurement of particles’ velocity in the atmosphere. The heterodyne detection theory and the essential principles and properties of this technology are presented. An all-fiber coherent Doppler lidar system in master-oscillator power-amplifier design with a novel multi-wavelength channel configuration was developed and introduced, characterized, and validated in this work. The fiber amplifier is a crucial component of multi-channel all-fiber systems and is therefore discussed with special emphasis on non-linear effects and pulse distortions. A novel feedback controlled pulse-shaping unit was developed to control pulse energy and the shape of the amplified pulses of each channel. Each and every wavelength-channel creates an independent speckle pattern, which is demonstrated by hard targets with diffuse character and atmospheric single-shot measurements, and compared with theoretical results. Utilizing four channels, the precision of the measured wind velocity can be improved and this feature is demonstrated with measured atmospheric return signals. A correlation technique is presented, which enables the enhancement of the SNR at higher backscattered powers by utilizing multiple channels. The multi-wavelength system was designed to work with four wavelength-channels, which also allow measurements along the same line-of-sight with different channel configurations. These channels can be different in pulse shape, pulse length, and pulse repetition frequency. In this work, the resulting benefits of using multiple channels are shown with atmospheric measurements and scientific discussion of these is presented.:1. Introduction to the subject 2. Introduction to pulsed coherent Doppler lidar 3. Methodology: Multi-channel coherent Doppler lidar system 4. Erbium-doped fiber amplifier in a multi-channel lidar 5. Correlation properties of a multi-channel lidar system 6. Benefits of a multi-channel coherent Doppler lidar 7. Conclusions A. Wind measurement examples B. Range gate weighting function for different pulse shapes / Diese Arbeit befasst sich mit der Fernerkundungstechnologie zur Erfassung der Windgeschwindigkeit und den damit verbundenen Phänomenen. Die heterodyne Detektion der laserbasierten gepulsten Systeme ermöglicht eine sehr sensitive Messung von Partikelgeschwindigkeiten in der Atmosphäre. Sowohl die Theorie der heterodynen Detektion als auch die wesentlichen Eigenschaften und Grundsätze werden in dieser Arbeit diskutiert. Ein neuartiges faserbasiertes kohärentes Doppler Mehrkanal-Lidarsystem wurde entwickelt, vorgestellt, charakterisiert und validiert. Dabei ist der faserbasierte Verstärker eine wesentliche Komponente in diesem System und wird somit in Bezug auf Nichtlinearitäten und Impulsverzerrungen besonders analysiert. Eine neuartige geregelte Impulsformung wurde entwickelt, um die Impulsenergie und die Impulsform unabhängig für jeden Kanal zu stabilisieren. Jeder einzelne Kanal erzeugt ein unabhängiges Specklebild, welches durch Messungen am festen Ziel und durch atmosphärische Messungen präsentiert und mit theoretischen Berechnungen verglichen wird. Somit wird unter der Verwendung aller vier Kanäle des Systems die Geschwindigkeitsgenauigkeit erhöht, welches durch atmosphärische Messungen dargelegt wird. Zudem wird eine Korrelationstechnik vorgestellt, die das SNR bei höherer Rückstreuintensität weiter erhöht. Das Mehr-Wellenlängensystem wurde für vier Kanäle ausgelegt, welches eine Beobachtung der Atmosphäre entlang der Sichtlinie unter sonst gleichen Bedingungen ermöglicht. Diese Kanäle können sich sowohl in der Impulsform, in der Impulslänge als auch in der Pulsfolgefrequenz unterscheiden. Diese Arbeit zeigt die wesentlichen Vorteile eines solchen Mehrkanal-Lidarsystems mit atmosphärischen Messungen und wissenschaftlichen Ausarbeitungen.:1. Introduction to the subject 2. Introduction to pulsed coherent Doppler lidar 3. Methodology: Multi-channel coherent Doppler lidar system 4. Erbium-doped fiber amplifier in a multi-channel lidar 5. Correlation properties of a multi-channel lidar system 6. Benefits of a multi-channel coherent Doppler lidar 7. Conclusions A. Wind measurement examples B. Range gate weighting function for different pulse shapes