Search results for: Medical diagnostic imaging

Authors: Firas Salih, Luban Hameed, Afaf Kamil, Armin Bolz

Abstract:

Diagnostic and detection of the arterial stiffness is very important; which gives indication of the associated increased risk of cardiovascular diseases. To make a cheap and easy method for general screening technique to avoid the future cardiovascular complexes , due to the rising of the arterial stiffness ; a proposed algorithm depending on photoplethysmogram to be used. The photoplethysmograph signals would be processed in MATLAB. The signal will be filtered, baseline wandering removed, peaks and valleys detected and normalization of the signals should be achieved .The area under the catacrotic phase of the photoplethysmogram pulse curve is calculated using trapezoidal algorithm ; then will used in cooperation with other parameters such as age, height, blood pressure in neural network for arterial stiffness detection. The Neural network were implemented with sensitivity of 80%, accuracy 85% and specificity of 90% were got from the patients data. It is concluded that neural network can detect the arterial STIFFNESS depending on risk factor parameters.

Keywords: Arterial stiffness, area under the catacrotic phase of the photoplethysmograph pulse, neural network

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1638

Authors: Xiaocong Liu, Huazhen Wang, Ting He, Xiaozheng Li, Weihan Zhang, Jian Chen

Abstract:

The utilization of electronic medical record (EMR) data to establish the disease diagnosis model has become an important research content of biomedical informatics. Deep learning can automatically extract features from the massive data, which brings about breakthroughs in the study of EMR data. The challenge is that deep learning lacks semantic knowledge, which leads to impracticability in medical science. This research proposes a method of incorporating lexical-semantic knowledge from abundant entities into a convolutional neural network (CNN) framework for pediatric disease diagnosis. Firstly, medical terms are vectorized into Lexical Semantic Vectors (LSV), which are concatenated with the embedded word vectors of word2vec to enrich the feature representation. Secondly, the semantic distribution of medical terms serves as Semantic Decision Guide (SDG) for the optimization of deep learning models. The study evaluates the performance of LSV-SDG-CNN model on four kinds of Chinese EMR datasets. Additionally, CNN, LSV-CNN, and SDG-CNN are designed as baseline models for comparison. The experimental results show that LSV-SDG-CNN model outperforms baseline models on four kinds of Chinese EMR datasets. The best configuration of the model yielded an F1 score of 86.20%. The results clearly demonstrate that CNN has been effectively guided and optimized by lexical-semantic knowledge, and LSV-SDG-CNN model improves the disease classification accuracy with a clear margin.

Keywords: lexical semantics, feature representation, semantic decision, convolutional neural network, electronic medical record

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 570

Authors: Amjad Al Shammari, Ashraf Ibrahim, Laila Seada

Abstract:

Background and Objectives: Incidence of thyroid carcinoma has been increasing world-wide. In the present study, we evaluated diagnostic accuracy of Fine needle aspiration (FNA) and its efficiency in early detecting neoplastic lesions of thyroid gland over a 3-year period. Methods: Data have been retrieved from pathology files in King Khalid Hospital. For each patient, age, gender, FNA, site & size of nodule and final histopathologic diagnosis were recorded. Results: Study included 490 cases where 419 of them were female and 71 male. Male to female ratio was 1:6. Mean age was 43 years for males and 38 for females. Cases with confirmed histopathology were 131. In 101/131 (77.1%), concordance was found between FNA and histology. In 30/131 (22.9%), there was discrepancy in diagnosis. Total malignant cases were 43, out of which 14 (32.5%) were true positive and 29 (67.44%) were false negative. No false positive cases could be found in our series. Conclusion: FNA could diagnose benign nodules in all cases, however, in malignant cases, ultrasound findings have to be taken into consideration to avoid missing of a microcarcinoma in the contralateral lobe.

Keywords: FNA, hail, histopathology, thyroid.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1163

Authors: Taweepol Suesut, Arjin Numsomran, Vittaya Tipsuwanporn

Abstract:

This paper presents the communication network for machine vision system to implement to control systems and logistics applications in industrial environment. The real-time distributed over the network is very important for communication among vision node, image processing and control as well as the distributed I/O node. A robust implementation both with respect to camera packaging and data transmission has been accounted. This network consists of a gigabit Ethernet network and a switch with integrated fire-wall is used to distribute the data and provide connection to the imaging control station and IEC-61131 conform signal integration comprising the Modbus TCP protocol. The real-time and delay time properties each part on the network were considered and worked out in this paper.

Keywords: Distributed Real-Time Automation, Machine Visionand Ethernet.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1651

Authors: Vahid Hosseinpour, Mohammad Kazemini, Alireza Mohammadrezaee

Abstract:

carbonylation of methanol in homogenous phase is one of the major routesfor production of acetic acid. Amongst group VIII metal catalysts used in this process iridium has displayed the best capabilities. To investigate effect of operating parameters like: temperature, pressure, methyl iodide, methyl acetate, iridium, ruthenium, and water concentrations on the reaction rate, experimental design for this system based upon central composite design (CCD) was utilized. Statistical rate equation developed by this method contained individual, interactions and curvature effects of parameters on the reaction rate. The model with p-value less than 0.0001 and R2 values greater than 0.9; confirmeda satisfactory fitness of the experimental and theoretical studies. In other words, the developed model and experimental data obtained passed all diagnostic tests establishing this model as a statistically significant.

Keywords: Acetic Acid, Carbonylation of Methanol, Central Composite Design, Experimental Design, Iridium/Ruthenium

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 3638

Authors: Fares Innal, Yves Dutuit, Mourad Chebila

Abstract:

The object of this work is the probabilistic performance evaluation of safety instrumented systems (SIS), i.e. the average probability of dangerous failure on demand (PFD_avg) and the average frequency of failure (PFH), taking into account the uncertainties related to the different parameters that come into play: failure rate (λ), common cause failure proportion (β), diagnostic coverage (DC)... This leads to an accurate and safe assessment of the safety integrity level (SIL) inherent to the safety function performed by such systems. This aim is in keeping with the requirement of the IEC 61508 standard with respect to handling uncertainty. To do this, we propose an approach that combines (1) Monte Carlo simulation and (2) fuzzy sets. Indeed, the first method is appropriate where representative statistical data are available (using pdf of the relating parameters), while the latter applies in the case characterized by vague and subjective information (using membership function). The proposed approach is fully supported with a suitable computer code.

Keywords: Fuzzy sets, Monte Carlo simulation, Safety instrumented system, Safety integrity level.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2768

Authors: E. Sobhani-Tehrani, K. Khorasani, N. Meskin

Abstract:

This paper presents a novel integrated hybrid approach for fault diagnosis (FD) of nonlinear systems. Unlike most FD techniques, the proposed solution simultaneously accomplishes fault detection, isolation, and identification (FDII) within a unified diagnostic module. At the core of this solution is a bank of adaptive neural parameter estimators (NPE) associated with a set of singleparameter fault models. The NPEs continuously estimate unknown fault parameters (FP) that are indicators of faults in the system. Two NPE structures including series-parallel and parallel are developed with their exclusive set of desirable attributes. The parallel scheme is extremely robust to measurement noise and possesses a simpler, yet more solid, fault isolation logic. On the contrary, the series-parallel scheme displays short FD delays and is robust to closed-loop system transients due to changes in control commands. Finally, a fault tolerant observer (FTO) is designed to extend the capability of the NPEs to systems with partial-state measurement.

Keywords: Hybrid fault diagnosis, Dynamic neural networks, Nonlinear systems.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2209

Authors: Salsabeel F. M. Alfalah, Jannat F. Falah, Nadia Muhaidat, Amjad Hudaib, Diana Koshebye, Sawsan AlHourani

Abstract:

Educational technology is changing the way how students engage and interact with learning materials. This improved the learning process amongst various subjects. Virtual Reality (VR) applications are considered one of the evolving methods that have contributed to enhancing medical education. This paper utilizes VR to provide a solution to improve the delivery of the subject of Embryology to medical students, and facilitate the teaching process by providing a useful aid to lecturers, whilst proving the effectiveness of this new technology in this particular area. After evaluating the current teaching methods and identifying students ‘needs, a VR system was designed that demonstrates in an interactive fashion the development of the human embryo from fertilization to week ten of intrauterine development. This system aims to overcome some of the problems faced by the students’ in the current educational methods, and to increase the efficacy of the learning process.

Keywords: Virtual reality, student assessment, medical education, 3D, embryology.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 829

Authors: K. Assis, K. P. Chong, A. S. Idris, C. M. Ho

Abstract:

Oil palm or Elaeis guineensis is considered as the golden crop in Malaysia. But oil palm industry in this country is now facing with the most devastating disease called as Ganoderma Basal Stem Rot disease. The objective of this paper is to analyze the economic loss due to this disease. There were three commercial oil palm sites selected for collecting the required data for economic analysis. Yield parameter used to measure the loss was the total weight of fresh fruit bunch in six months. The predictors include disease severity, change in disease severity, number of infected neighbor palms, age of palm, planting generation, topography, and first order interaction variables. The estimation model of yield loss was identified by using backward elimination based regression method. Diagnostic checking was conducted on the residual of the best yield loss model. The value of mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) was used to measure the forecast performance of the model. The best yield loss model was then used to estimate the economic loss by using the current monthly price of fresh fruit bunch at mill gate.

Keywords: Ganoderma, oil palm, regression model, yield loss, economic loss.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 3207

Authors: Amlan Kumar Das, Avinash Marwal, Vikram Pareek

Abstract:

Liposome plays an important role in medical and pharmaceutical science as e.g. nano scale drug carriers. Liposomes are vesicles of varying size consisting of a spherical lipid bilayer and an aqueous inner compartment. Magnet-driven liposome used for the targeted delivery of drugs to organs and tissues. These liposome preparations contain encapsulated drug components and finely dispersed magnetic particles. Liposomes are vesicles of varying size consisting of a spherical lipid bilayer and an aqueous inner compartment that are generated in vitro. These are useful in terms of biocompatibility, biodegradability, and low toxicity, and can control biodistribution by changing the size, lipid composition, and physical characteristics. Furthermore, liposomes can entrap both hydrophobic and hydrophilic drugs and are able to continuously release the entrapped substrate, thus being useful drug carriers. Magnetic liposomes (MLs) are phospholipid vesicles that encapsulate magneticor paramagnetic nanoparticles. They are applied as contrast agents for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The biological synthesis of nanoparticles using plant extracts plays an important role in the field of nanotechnology. Green-synthesized magnetite nanoparticles-protein hybrid has been produced by treating Iron (III) / Iron (II) chloride with the leaf extract of Datura inoxia. The phytochemicals present in the leaf extracts act as a reducing as well stabilizing agents preventing agglomeration, which include flavonoids, phenolic compounds, cardiac glycosides, proteins and sugars. The magnetite nanoparticles-protein hybrid has been trapped inside the aqueous core of the liposome prepared by reversed phase evaporation (REV) method using oleic and linoleic acid which has been shown to be driven under magnetic field confirming the formation magnetic liposome (ML). Chemical characterization of stealth magnetic liposome has been performed by breaking the liposome and release of magnetic nanoparticles. The presence iron has been confirmed by colour complex formation with KSCN and UV-Vis study using spectrophotometer Cary 60, Agilent. This magnet driven liposome using nanoparticles-protein hybrid can be a smart vesicles for the targeted drug delivery.

Keywords: Nanoparticles-Protein Hybrid, Magnetic Liposome.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 3012

Authors: M. Zaitoun, S. Cumming, A. Purcell

Abstract:

This study aims to determine if audiologists' experience characteristics in ABR (Auditory Brainstem Response) reading is associated with their performance in interpreting ABR results. Fifteen ABR traces with varying degrees of hearing level were presented twice, making a total of 30. Audiologists were asked to determine the hearing threshold for each of the cases after completing a brief survey regarding their experience and training in ABR administration. Sixty-one audiologists completed all tasks. Correlations between audiologists’ performance measures and experience variables suggested significant associations (p < 0.05) between training period in ABR testing and audiologists’ performance in terms of both sensitivity and accuracy. In addition, the number of years conducting ABR testing correlated with specificity. No other correlations approached significance. While there are relatively few significant correlations between ABR performance and experience, accuracy in ABR reading is associated with audiologists’ length of experience and period of training. To improve audiologists’ performance in reading ABR results, an emphasis on the importance of training should be raised and standardized levels and period for audiologists training in ABR testing should also be set.

Keywords: ABR, audiology, performance, training, experience.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 742

Authors: Ahsan Bin Tufail, Ali Abidi, Adil Masood Siddiqui, Muhammad Shahzad Younis

Abstract:

An early and accurate detection of Alzheimer's disease (AD) is an important stage in the treatment of individuals suffering from AD. We present an approach based on the use of structural magnetic resonance imaging (sMRI) phase images to distinguish between normal controls (NC), mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and AD patients with clinical dementia rating (CDR) of 1. Independent component analysis (ICA) technique is used for extracting useful features which form the inputs to the support vector machines (SVM), K nearest neighbour (kNN) and multilayer artificial neural network (ANN) classifiers to discriminate between the three classes. The obtained results are encouraging in terms of classification accuracy and effectively ascertain the usefulness of phase images for the classification of different stages of Alzheimer-s disease.

Keywords: Biomedical image processing, classification algorithms, feature extraction, statistical learning.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2749

Authors: Mounira Rouaïnia, Mohamed Salah Medjram, Noureddine Doghmane

Abstract:

In Multiple Sclerosis, pathological changes in the brain results in deviations in signal intensity on Magnetic Resonance Images (MRI). Quantitative analysis of these changes and their correlation with clinical finding provides important information for diagnosis. This constitutes the objective of our work. A new approach is developed. After the enhancement of images contrast and the brain extraction by mathematical morphology algorithm, we proceed to the brain segmentation. Our approach is based on building statistical model from data itself, for normal brain MRI and including clustering tissue type. Then we detect signal abnormalities (MS lesions) as a rejection class containing voxels that are not explained by the built model. We validate the method on MR images of Multiple Sclerosis patients by comparing its results with those of human expert segmentation.

Keywords: EM algorithm, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Mathematical morphology, Markov random model.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2150

Authors: A. Szabó Nagy, J. Szabó, I. Vass

Abstract:

Water and sediment samples from the Danube River and Moson Danube Arm (Hungary) have been collected and analyzed for contamination by 18 polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and eight trace metal(loid)s (As, Cu, Pb, Ni, Cr, Cd, Hg and Zn) in the period of 2014-2015. Moreover, the trace metal(loid) concentrations were measured in the Rába and Marcal rivers (parts of the tributary system feeding the Danube). Total PAH contents in water were found to vary from 0.016 to 0.133 µg/L and concentrations in sediments varied in the range of 0.118 mg/kg and 0.283 mg/kg. Source analysis of PAHs using diagnostic concentration ratios indicated that PAHs found in sediments were of pyrolytic origins. The dissolved trace metal and arsenic concentrations were relatively low in the surface waters. However, higher concentrations were detected in the water samples of Rába (Zn, Cu, Ni, Pb) and Marcal (As, Cu, Ni, Pb) compared to the Danube and Moson Danube. The concentrations of trace metals in sediments were higher than those found in water samples.

Keywords: Surface water, sediment, PAH, trace metal.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 765

Authors: Muhibul H. Bhuyan, Md. T. Hasan, Hasan Iskander

Abstract:

Electrocardiographic (ECG) machine is an important equipment to diagnose heart problems. Besides, the ECG signals are used to detect many other features of human body and behavior. But it is not so cheap and simple in operation to be used in the countries like Bangladesh, where most of the people are very low income earners. Therefore, in this paper, we have tried to implement a simple and portable ECG machine. Since Arduino Uno microcontroller is very cheap, we have used it in our system to minimize the cost. Our designed system is powered by a 2-voltage level DC power supply. It provides wireless connectivity to have ECG data either in smartphone having android operating system or a PC/laptop having Windows operating system. To get the data, a graphic user interface has been designed. Android application has also been made using IDE for Android 2.3 and API 10. Since it requires no USB host API, almost 98% Android smartphones, available in the country, will be able to use it. We have calculated the heart rate from the measured ECG by our designed machine and by an ECG machine of a reputed diagnostic center in Dhaka city for the same people at the same time on same day. Then we calculated the percentage of errors between the readings of two machines and computed its average. From this computation, we have found out that the average percentage of error is within an acceptable limit.

Keywords: Low cost ECG machine, heart diseases, remote monitoring, Arduino microcontroller.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 837

Authors: Noor Elaiza Abdul Khalid, Noorhayati Mohamed Noor, Zamalia Mahmud, Saadiah Yahya, and Norharyati Md Ariff

Abstract:

Glaucoma diagnosis involves extracting three features of the fundus image; optic cup, optic disc and vernacular. Present manual diagnosis is expensive, tedious and time consuming. A number of researches have been conducted to automate this process. However, the variability between the diagnostic capability of an automated system and ophthalmologist has yet to be established. This paper discusses the efficiency and variability between ophthalmologist opinion and digital technique; threshold. The efficiency and variability measures are based on image quality grading; poor, satisfactory or good. The images are separated into four channels; gray, red, green and blue. A scientific investigation was conducted on three ophthalmologists who graded the images based on the image quality. The images are threshold using multithresholding and graded as done by the ophthalmologist. A comparison of grade from the ophthalmologist and threshold is made. The results show there is a small variability between result of ophthalmologists and digital threshold.

Keywords: Digital Fundus Image, Glaucoma Detection, Multithresholding, Segmentation.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2028

Authors: Chiu-Wen Chen, Chih-Feng Chen, Cheng-Di Dong

Abstract:

Surface sediment samples were collected from the Canon River mouth, Taiwan and analyzed for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Total PAHs concentrations varied from 337 to 1,252 ng/g dry weight, with a mean concentration of 827 ng/g dry weight. The spatial distribution of PAHs reveals that the PAHs concentration is relatively high in the river mouth region, and gradually diminishes toward the harbor region. Diagnostic ratios showed that the possible source of PAHs in the Canon River mouth could be petroleum combustion. The toxic equivalent concentrations (TEQcarc) of PAHs varied from 47 to 112 ng TEQ/g dry weight. Higher total TEQcarc values were found in the river mouth region. As compared with the US Sediment Quality Guidelines (SQGs), the observed levels of PAHs at Canon River mouth were lower than the effects range low (ERL), and would probably not exert adverse biological effects.

Keywords: PAHs, sediment, river mouth, sediment quality guidelines (SQGs), toxic equivalent (TEQcarc)

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1810

Authors: Marzieh Moosavi-Nasab, Ali R. Yousefi

Abstract:

Bacterial cellulose, a biopolysaccharide, is produced by the bacterium, Gluconacetobacter xylinus. Static batch fermentation for bacterial cellulose production was studied in sucrose and date syrup solutions (Bx. 10%) at 28 °C using G. xylinus (PTCC, 1734). Results showed that the maximum yields of bacterial cellulose (BC) were 4.35 and 1.69 g/l00 ml for date syrup and sucrose medium after 336 hours fermentation period, respectively. Comparison of FTIR spectrum of cellulose with BC indicated appropriate coincidence which proved that the component produced by G. xylinus was cellulose. Determination of the area under X-ray diffractometry patterns demonstrated that the crystallinity amount of cellulose (83.61%) was more than that for the BC (60.73%). The scanning electron microscopy imaging of BC and cellulose were carried out in two magnifications of 1 and 6K. Results showed that the diameter ratio of BC to cellulose was approximately 1/30 which indicated more delicacy of BC fibers relative to cellulose.

Keywords: Gluconacetobacter xylinus, Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopy, Scanning Electron Microscopy, X-ray diffractometry

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 3121

Authors: Ching-Fen Jiang

Abstract:

Edge detection is usually the first step in medical image processing. However, the difficulty increases when a conventional kernel-based edge detector is applied to ultrasonic images with a textural pattern and speckle noise. We designed an adaptive diffusion filter to remove speckle noise while preserving the initial edges detected by using a Sobel edge detector. We also propose a genetic algorithm for edge selection to form complete boundaries of the detected entities. We designed two fitness functions to evaluate whether a criterion with a complex edge configuration can render a better result than a simple criterion such as the strength of gradient. The edges obtained by using a complex fitness function are thicker and more fragmented than those obtained by using a simple fitness function, suggesting that a complex edge selecting scheme is not necessary for good edge detection in medical ultrasonic images; instead, a proper noise-smoothing filter is the key.

Keywords: edge detection, ultrasonic images, speckle noise

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1469

Authors: K. S. Subari, C. H. Shadle, A. Barney, R. I. Damper

Abstract:

The acoustic and articulatory properties of fricative speech sounds are being studied using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and acoustic recordings from a single subject. Area functions were derived from a complete set of axial and coronal MR slices using two different methods: the Mermelstein technique and the Blum transform. Area functions derived from the two techniques were shown to differ significantly in some cases. Such differences will lead to different acoustic predictions and it is important to know which is the more accurate. The vocal tract acoustic transfer function (VTTF) was derived from these area functions for each fricative and compared with measured speech signals for the same fricative and same subject. The VTTFs for /f/ in two vowel contexts and the corresponding acoustic spectra are derived here; the Blum transform appears to show a better match between prediction and measurement than the Mermelstein technique.

Keywords: Area functions, fricatives, vocal tract transferfunction, MRI, speech.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1639

Authors: M. Mika, L. Pina, M. Landova, L. Sveda, R. Havlikova, V. Marsikova, R. Hudec, A. Inneman

Abstract:

Future astronomical projects on large space x-ray imaging telescopes require novel substrates and technologies for the construction of their reflecting mirrors. The mirrors must be lightweight and precisely shaped to achieve large collecting area with high angular resolution. The new materials and technologies must be cost-effective. Currently, the most promising materials are glass or silicon foils. We focused on precise shaping these foils by thermal forming process. We studied free and forced slumping in the temperature region of hot plastic deformation and compared the shapes obtained by the different slumping processes. We measured the shapes and the surface quality of the foils. In the experiments, we varied both heat-treatment temperature and time following our experiment design. The obtained data and relations we can use for modeling and optimizing the thermal forming procedure.

Keywords: Glass, silicon, thermal forming, x-ray

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1373

Authors: Wen W. Zhang, Qian Chen, Bei B. Zhou, Wei J. He

Abstract:

Over the past years, the EMCCD has had a profound influence on photon starved imaging applications relying on its unique multiplication register based on the impact ionization effect in the silicon. High signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) means high image quality. Thus, SNR improvement is important for the EMCCD. This work analyzes the SNR performance of an EMCCD with gain off and on. In each mode, simplified SNR models are established for different integration times. The SNR curves are divided into readout noise (or CIC) region and shot noise region by integration time. Theoretical SNR values comparing long frame integration and frame adding in each region are presented and discussed to figure out which method is more effective. In order to further improve the SNR performance, pixel binning is introduced into the EMCCD. The results show that pixel binning does obviously improve the SNR performance, but at the expensive of the spatial resolution.

Keywords: EMCCD, SNR improvement, pixel binning

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2851

Authors: Zulfadhli Hasan Adli, Mohd Hafiz Musa, M. N. Khairul Arifin

Abstract:

The objective of this paper is to study the electrical resistivity complexity between field and laboratory measurement, in order to improve the effectiveness of data interpretation for geophysical ground resistivity survey. The geological outcrop in Penang, Malaysia with an obvious layering contact was chosen as the study site. Two dimensional geoelectrical resistivity imaging were used in this study to maps the resistivity distribution of subsurface, whereas few subsurface sample were obtained for laboratory advance. In this study, resistivity of samples in original conditions is measured in laboratory by using time domain low-voltage technique, particularly for granite core sample and soil resistivity measuring set for soil sample. The experimentation results from both schemes are studied, analyzed, calibrated and verified, including basis and correlation, degree of tolerance and characteristics of substance. Consequently, the significant different between both schemes is explained comprehensively within this paper.

Keywords: Electrical Resistivity, Granite, Soil.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 4957

Authors: M. M. Isa, R. Abd-Rahman, H. H. Goh

Abstract:

A compound parabolic concentrator (CPC) is a wellknown non-imaging concentrator that will concentrate the solar radiation onto receiver (PV cell). One of disadvantage of CPC is has tall and narrow height compared to its diameter entry aperture area. Therefore, for economic reason, a truncation had been done by removed from the top of the full height CPC. This also will lead to the decreases of concentration ratio but it will be negligible. In this paper, the flux distribution of untruncated and truncated 2-D hollow compound parabolic trough concentrator (hCPTC) design is presented. The untruncated design has initial height H=193.4mm with concentration ratio C_(2-D)=4. This paper presents the optical simulation of compound parabolic trough concentrator using raytracing software TracePro. Results showed that, after the truncation, the height of CPC reduced 45% from initial height with the geometrical concentration ratio only decrease 10%. Thus, the cost of reflector and material dielectric usage can be saved especially at manufacturing site.

Keywords: Compound parabolic trough concentrator, optical modelling, ray-tracing analysis.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 3318

Authors: S.Jerald Jeba Kumar, M.Madheswaran

Abstract:

The structure of retinal vessels is a prominent feature, that reveals information on the state of disease that are reflected in the form of measurable abnormalities in thickness and colour. Vascular structures of retina, for implementation of clinical diabetic retinopathy decision making system is presented in this paper. Retinal Vascular structure is with thin blood vessel, whose accuracy is highly dependent upon the vessel segmentation. In this paper the blood vessel thickness is automatically detected using preprocessing techniques and vessel segmentation algorithm. First the capture image is binarized to get the blood vessel structure clearly, then it is skeletonised to get the overall structure of all the terminal and branching nodes of the blood vessels. By identifying the terminal node and the branching points automatically, the main and branching blood vessel thickness is estimated. Results are presented and compared with those provided by clinical classification on 50 vessels collected from Bejan Singh Eye hospital..

Keywords: Diabetic retinopathy, Binarization, SegmentationClinical Decision Support Systems.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2027

Authors: Negar Riazifar, Mehran Yazdi

Abstract:

Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) has demonstrated far superior to previous Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) and standard JPEG in natural as well as medical image compression. Due to its localization properties both in special and transform domain, the quantization error introduced in DWT does not propagate globally as in DCT. Moreover, DWT is a global approach that avoids block artifacts as in the JPEG. However, recent reports on natural image compression have shown the superior performance of contourlet transform, a new extension to the wavelet transform in two dimensions using nonseparable and directional filter banks, compared to DWT. It is mostly due to the optimality of contourlet in representing the edges when they are smooth curves. In this work, we investigate this fact for medical images, especially for CT images, which has not been reported yet. To do that, we propose a compression scheme in transform domain and compare the performance of both DWT and contourlet transform in PSNR for different compression ratios (CR) using this scheme. The results obtained using different type of computed tomography images show that the DWT has still good performance at lower CR but contourlet transform performs better at higher CR.

Keywords: Computed Tomography (CT), DWT, Discrete Contourlet Transform, Image Compression.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2787

Authors: Ajay Joshi, Surya Ismail

Abstract:

This paper will present the initial findings of a research into distributed computer rendering. The goal of the research is to create a distributed computer system capable of rendering a 3D model into an MPEG-4 stream. This paper outlines the initial design, software architecture and hardware setup for the system. Distributed computing means designing and implementing programs that run on two or more interconnected computing systems. Distributed computing is often used to speed up the rendering of graphical imaging. Distributed computing systems are used to generate images for movies, games and simulations. A topic of interest is the application of distributed computing to the MPEG-4 standard. During the course of the research, a distributed system will be created that can render a 3D model into an MPEG-4 stream. It is expected that applying distributed computing principals will speed up rendering, thus improving the usefulness and efficiency of the MPEG-4 standard

Keywords: Cluster, parallel architecture, rendering, MPEG-4.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1449

Authors: Abder-Rahman Ali, Adélaïde Albouy-Kissi, Manuel Grand-Brochier, Viviane Ladan-Marcus, Christine Hoeffl, Claude Marcus, Antoine Vacavant, Jean-Yves Boire

Abstract:

In this paper, we present a new segmentation approach for focal liver lesions in contrast enhanced ultrasound imaging. This approach, based on a two-cluster Fuzzy C-Means methodology, considers type-II fuzzy sets to handle uncertainty due to the image modality (presence of speckle noise, low contrast, etc.), and to calculate the optimum inter-cluster threshold. Fine boundaries are detected by a local recursive merging of ambiguous pixels. The method has been tested on a representative database. Compared to both Otsu and type-I Fuzzy C-Means techniques, the proposed method significantly reduces the segmentation errors.

Keywords: Defuzzification, fuzzy clustering, image segmentation, type-II fuzzy sets.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2280

Authors: Abdullah I. Alkraiji, Thomas W. Jackson, Ian R. Murray

Abstract:

The proliferation of health data standards today is somewhat overlapping and conflicting, resulting in market confusion and leading to increasing proprietary interests. The government role and support in standardization for health data are thought to be crucial in order to establish credible standards for the next decade, to maximize interoperability across the health sector, and to decrease the risks associated with the implementation of non-standard systems. The normative literature missed out the exploration of the different steps required to be undertaken by the government towards the development of national health data standards. Based on the lessons learned from a qualitative study investigating the different issues to the adoption of health data standards in the major tertiary hospitals in Saudi Arabia and the opinions and feedback from different experts in the areas of data exchange and standards and medical informatics in Saudi Arabia and UK, a list of steps required towards the development of national health data standards was constructed. Main steps are the existence of: a national formal reference for health data standards, an agreed national strategic direction for medical data exchange, a national medical information management plan and a national accreditation body, and more important is the change management at the national and organizational level. The outcome of this study can be used by academics and practitioners to develop the planning of health data standards, and in particular those in developing countries.

Keywords: Interoperability, Case Study, Health Data Standards, Medical Data Exchange, Saudi Arabia.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1990

Authors: G.P. Nguyen, H.J. Andersen

Abstract:

Building intelligent traffic guide systems has been an interesting subject recently. A good system should be able to observe all important visual information to be able to analyze the context of the scene. To do so, signs in general, and traffic signs in particular, are usually taken into account as they contain rich information to these systems. Therefore, many researchers have put an effort on sign recognition field. Sign localization or sign detection is the most important step in the sign recognition process. This step filters out non informative area in the scene, and locates candidates in later steps. In this paper, we apply a new approach in detecting sign locations using a new color invariant model. Experiments are carried out with different datasets introduced in other works where authors claimed the difficulty in detecting signs under unfavorable imaging conditions. Our method is simple, fast and most importantly it gives a high detection rate in locating signs.

Keywords: Sign localization, color-based segmentation.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1284