On the Reduction of Side Effects in Tomography

As the Computed Tomography(CT) requires normally hundreds of projections to reconstruct the image, patients are exposed to more X-ray energy, which may cause side effects such as cancer. Even when the variability of the particles in the object is very less, Computed Tomography requires many projections for good quality reconstruction. In this paper, less variability of the particles in an object has been exploited to obtain good quality reconstruction. Though the reconstructed image and the original image have same projections, in general, they need not be the same. In addition to projections, if a priori information about the image is known, it is possible to obtain good quality reconstructed image. In this paper, it has been shown by experimental results why conventional algorithms fail to reconstruct from a few projections, and an efficient polynomial time algorithm has been given to reconstruct a bi-level image from its projections along row and column, and a known sub image of unknown image with smoothness constraints by reducing the reconstruction problem to integral max flow problem. This paper also discusses the necessary and sufficient conditions for uniqueness and extension of 2D-bi-level image reconstruction to 3D-bi-level image reconstruction.

Effects of Data Correlation in a Sparse-View Compressive Sensing Based Image Reconstruction

Computed tomography and laminography are heavily investigated in a compressive sensing based image reconstruction framework to reduce the dose to the patients as well as to the radiosensitive devices such as multilayer microelectronic circuit boards. Nowadays researchers are actively working on optimizing the compressive sensing based iterative image reconstruction algorithm to obtain better quality images. However, the effects of the sampled data’s properties on reconstructed the image’s quality, particularly in an insufficient sampled data conditions have not been explored in computed laminography. In this paper, we investigated the effects of two data properties i.e. sampling density and data incoherence on the reconstructed image obtained by conventional computed laminography and a recently proposed method called spherical sinusoidal scanning scheme. We have found that in a compressive sensing based image reconstruction framework, the image quality mainly depends upon the data incoherence when the data is uniformly sampled.

3D Anisotropic Diffusion for Liver Segmentation

Liver segmentation is the first significant process for liver diagnosis of the Computed Tomography. It segments the liver structure from other abdominal organs. Sophisticated filtering techniques are indispensable for a proper segmentation. In this paper, we employ a 3D anisotropic diffusion as a preprocessing step. While removing image noise, this technique preserve the significant parts of the image, typically edges, lines or other details that are important for the interpretation of the image. The segmentation task is done by using thresholding with automatic threshold values selection and finally the false liver region is eliminated using 3D connected component. The result shows that by employing the 3D anisotropic filtering, better liver segmentation results could be achieved eventhough simple segmentation technique is used.

Alignment of Emission Gamma Ray Sources with Nai(Ti) Scintillation Detectors by Two Laser Beams to Pre-Operation using Alternating Minimization Technique

Accurate timing alignment and stability is important to maximize the true counts and minimize the random counts in positron emission tomography So signals output from detectors must be centering with the two isotopes to pre-operation and fed signals into four units of pulse-processing units, each unit can accept up to eight inputs. The dual source computed tomography consist two units on the left for 15 detector signals of Cs-137 isotope and two units on the right are for 15 detectors signals of Co-60 isotope. The gamma spectrum consisting of either single or multiple photo peaks. This allows for the use of energy discrimination electronic hardware associated with the data acquisition system to acquire photon counts data with a specific energy, even if poor energy resolution detectors are used. This also helps to avoid counting of the Compton scatter counts especially if a single discrete gamma photo peak is emitted by the source as in the case of Cs-137. In this study the polyenergetic version of the alternating minimization algorithm is applied to the dual energy gamma computed tomography problem.

Barriers and Opportunities for the Adoption of e-Governance Services

In this article a bibliography research takes place to track down and introduce the barriers and opportunities for the adoption of e-Governance services mainly from the side of citizen, that is to say, the demand side. Although governments invest continuously in producing of e-Governance services, citizens face difficulties to adopt these services. Barriers derive and prevent them from using e-Governance services. Barrier is anything preventing citizens from the adoption of e-Governance services. Barriers impede or do not allow the adoption of e-Governance services by the citizens. If the barriers are pinpointed, it will be possible to take them into consideration while designing e-Governance services which the citizens are likely to use, if the obstacles are raised. The barriers will thus be converted in opportunities that will facilitate the adoption.

A Green Design for Assembly Model for Integrated Design Evaluation and Assembly and Disassembly Sequence Planning

A green design for assembly model is presented to integrate design evaluation and assembly and disassembly sequence planning by evaluating the three activities in one integrated model. For an assembled product, an assembly sequence planning model is required for assembling the product at the start of the product life cycle. A disassembly sequence planning model is needed for disassembling the product at the end. In a green product life cycle, it is important to plan how a product can be disassembled, reused, or recycled, before the product is actually assembled and produced. Given a product requirement, there may be several design alternative cases to design the same product. In the different design cases, the assembly and disassembly sequences for producing the product can be different. In this research, a new model is presented to concurrently evaluate the design and plan the assembly and disassembly sequences. First, the components are represented by using graph based models. Next, a particle swarm optimization (PSO) method with a new encoding scheme is developed. In the new PSO encoding scheme, a particle is represented by a position matrix defining an assembly sequence and a disassembly sequence. The assembly and disassembly sequences can be simultaneously planned with an objective of minimizing the total of assembly costs and disassembly costs. The test results show that the presented method is feasible and efficient for solving the integrated design evaluation and assembly and disassembly sequence planning problem. An example product is implemented and illustrated in this paper.

Analysis of Social Network Using Clever Ant Colony Metaphor

A social network is a set of people or organization or other social entities connected by some form of relationships. Analysis of social network broadly elaborates visual and mathematical representation of that relationship. Web can also be considered as a social network. This paper presents an innovative approach to analyze a social network using a variant of existing ant colony optimization algorithm called as Clever Ant Colony Metaphor. Experiments are performed and interesting findings and observations have been inferred based on the proposed model.

Ultrasonic Evaluation of Bone Callus Growth in a Rabbit Tibial Distraction Model

Ultrasound is useful in demonstrating bone mineral density of regenerating osseous tissue as well as structural alterations. A proposed ultrasound method, which included ultrasonography and acoustic parameters measurement, was employed to evaluate its efficacy in monitoring the bone callus changes in a rabbit tibial distraction osteogenesis (DO) model. The findings demonstrated that ultrasonographic images depicted characteristic changes of the bone callus, typical of histology findings, during the distraction phase. Follow-up acoustic parameters measurement of the bone callus, including speed of sound, reflection and attenuation, showed significant linear changes over time during the distraction phase. The acoustic parameters obtained during the distraction phase also showed moderate to strong correlation with consolidated bone callus density and micro-architecture measured by micro-computed tomography at the end of the consolidation phase. The results support the preferred use of ultrasound imaging in the early monitoring of bone callus changes during DO treatment.

Experimental Results about the Dynamics of the Generalized Belief Propagation Used on LDPC Codes

In the context of channel coding, the Generalized Belief Propagation (GBP) is an iterative algorithm used to recover the transmission bits sent through a noisy channel. To ensure a reliable transmission, we apply a map on the bits, that is called a code. This code induces artificial correlations between the bits to send, and it can be modeled by a graph whose nodes are the bits and the edges are the correlations. This graph, called Tanner graph, is used for most of the decoding algorithms like Belief Propagation or Gallager-B. The GBP is based on a non unic transformation of the Tanner graph into a so called region-graph. A clear advantage of the GBP over the other algorithms is the freedom in the construction of this graph. In this article, we explain a particular construction for specific graph topologies that involves relevant performance of the GBP. Moreover, we investigate the behavior of the GBP considered as a dynamic system in order to understand the way it evolves in terms of the time and in terms of the noise power of the channel. To this end we make use of classical measures and we introduce a new measure called the hyperspheres method that enables to know the size of the attractors.

Efficient Secured Lossless Coding of Medical Images– Using Modified Runlength Coding for Character Representation

Lossless compression schemes with secure transmission play a key role in telemedicine applications that helps in accurate diagnosis and research. Traditional cryptographic algorithms for data security are not fast enough to process vast amount of data. Hence a novel Secured lossless compression approach proposed in this paper is based on reversible integer wavelet transform, EZW algorithm, new modified runlength coding for character representation and selective bit scrambling. The use of the lifting scheme allows generating truly lossless integer-to-integer wavelet transforms. Images are compressed/decompressed by well-known EZW algorithm. The proposed modified runlength coding greatly improves the compression performance and also increases the security level. This work employs scrambling method which is fast, simple to implement and it provides security. Lossless compression ratios and distortion performance of this proposed method are found to be better than other lossless techniques.

Experimental Parallel Architecture for Rendering 3D Model into MPEG-4 Format

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

Transliterating Methods of the Kazakh Onyms in the Arabic Language

Transliteration is frequently used especially in writing geographic denominations, personal names (onyms) etc. Proper names (onyms) of all languages must sound similarly in translated works as well as in scientific projects and works written in mother tongue, because we can get introduced with the nation, its history, culture, traditions and other spiritual values through the onyms of that nation. Therefore it is necessary to systematize the different transliterations of onyms of foreign languages. This paper is dedicated to the problem of making the project of transliterating Kazakh onyms into Arabic. In order to achieve this goal we use scientific or practical types of transliteration. Because in this type of transliteration provides easy reading writing source language's texts in the target language without any diacritical symbols, it is limited by the target language's alphabetic system.

Distillation Monitoring and Control using LabVIEW and SIMULINK Tools

LabVIEW and SIMULINK are two most widely used graphical programming environments for designing digital signal processing and control systems. Unlike conventional text-based programming languages such as C, Cµ and MATLAB, graphical programming involves block-based code developments, allowing a more efficient mechanism to build and analyze control systems. In this paper a LabVIEW environment has been employed as a graphical user interface for monitoring the operation of a controlled distillation column, by visualizing both the closed loop performance and the user selected control conditions, while the column dynamics has been modeled under the SIMULINK environment. This tool has been applied to the PID based decoupled control of a binary distillation column. By means of such integrated environments the control designer is able to monitor and control the plant behavior and optimize the response when both, the quality improvement of distillation products and the operation efficiency tasks, are considered.

Computer Models of the Vestibular Head Tilt Response, and Their Relationship to EVestG and Meniere's Disease

This paper attempts to explain response components of Electrovestibulography (EVestG) using a computer simulation of a three-canal model of the vestibular system. EVestG is a potentially new diagnostic method for Meniere's disease. EVestG is a variant of Electrocochleography (ECOG), which has been used as a standard method for diagnosing Meniere's disease - it can be used to measure the SP/AP ratio, where an SP/AP ratio greater than 0.4-0.5 is indicative of Meniere-s Disease. In EVestG, an applied head tilt replaces the acoustic stimulus of ECOG. The EVestG output is also an SP/AP type plot, where SP is the summing potential, and AP is the action potential amplitude. AP is thought of as being proportional to the size of a population of afferents in an excitatory neural firing state. A simulation of the fluid volume displacement in the vestibular labyrinth in response to various types of head tilts (ipsilateral, backwards and horizontal rotation) was performed, and a simple neural model based on these simulations developed. The simple neural model shows that the change in firing rate of the utricle is much larger in magnitude than the change in firing rates of all three semi-circular canals following a head tilt (except in a horizontal rotation). The data suggests that the change in utricular firing rate is a minimum 2-3 orders of magnitude larger than changes in firing rates of the canals during ipsilateral/backward tilts. Based on these results, the neural response recorded by the electrode in our EVestG recordings is expected to be dominated by the utricle in ipsilateral/backward tilts (It is important to note that the effect of the saccule and efferent signals were not taken into account in this model). If the utricle response dominates the EVestG recordings as the modeling results suggest, then EVestG has the potential to diagnose utricular hair cell damage due to a viral infection (which has been cited as one possible cause of Meniere's Disease).

GIS-based Approach for Land-Use Analysis: A Case Study

Geographical Information Systems are an integral part of planning in modern technical systems. Nowadays referred to as Spatial Decision Support Systems, as they allow synergy database management systems and models within a single user interface machine and they are important tools in spatial design for evaluating policies and programs at all levels of administration. This work refers to the creation of a Geographical Information System in the context of a broader research in the area of influence of an under construction station of the new metro in the Greek city of Thessaloniki, which included statistical and multivariate data analysis and diagrammatic representation, mapping and interpretation of the results.

A Nano-Scaled SRAM Guard Band Design with Gaussian Mixtures Model of Complex Long Tail RTN Distributions

This paper proposes, for the first time, how the challenges facing the guard-band designs including the margin assist-circuits scheme for the screening-test in the coming process generations should be addressed. The increased screening error impacts are discussed based on the proposed statistical analysis models. It has been shown that the yield-loss caused by the misjudgment on the screening test would become 5-orders of magnitude larger than that for the conventional one when the amplitude of random telegraph noise (RTN) caused variations approaches to that of random dopant fluctuation. Three fitting methods to approximate the RTN caused complex Gamma mixtures distributions by the simple Gaussian mixtures model (GMM) are proposed and compared. It has been verified that the proposed methods can reduce the error of the fail-bit predictions by 4-orders of magnitude.

Multi-VSS Scheme by Shifting Random Grids

Visual secret sharing (VSS) was proposed by Naor and Shamir in 1995. Visual secret sharing schemes encode a secret image into two or more share images, and single share image can’t obtain any information about the secret image. When superimposes the shares, it can restore the secret by human vision. Due to the traditional VSS have some problems like pixel expansion and the cost of sophisticated. And this method only can encode one secret image. The schemes of encrypting more secret images by random grids into two shares were proposed by Chen et al. in 2008. But when those restored secret images have much distortion, those schemes are almost limited in decoding. In the other words, if there is too much distortion, we can’t encrypt too much information. So, if we can adjust distortion to very small, we can encrypt more secret images. In this paper, four new algorithms which based on Chang et al.’s scheme be held in 2010 are proposed. First algorithm can adjust distortion to very small. Second algorithm distributes the distortion into two restored secret images. Third algorithm achieves no distortion for special secret images. Fourth algorithm encrypts three secret images, which not only retain the advantage of VSS but also improve on the problems of decoding.

Automatic Vehicle Location Systems

In this article, a single application is suggested to determine the position of vehicles using Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and Geographical Position Systems (GPS). The part of the article material included mapping three dimensional coordinates to two dimensional coordinates using UTM or LAMBERT geographical methods, and the algorithm of conversion of GPS information into GIS maps is studied. Also, suggestions are given in order to implement this system based on web (called web based systems). To apply this system in IRAN, related official in this case are introduced and their duties are explained. Finally, economy analyzed is assisted according to IRAN communicational system.

Analysis on the Game-Playing Tendency of SNGs (Social Network Games) users by Gender

As the Social network game(SNG) is rising dramatically worldwide, an interesting aspect has appeared in the demographic analysis. That is the ratio of the game users by gender. Although the ratio of male and female users in online game was 60:40% previously, the ratio of male and female users in SNG stood at 47:53% which shows that the ratio of female users is higher than that of male users. Here, it should be noted that 35% in those 53% female users are the first-time users of game. This fact suggests that women who were not interested in game previously has taken an interest in SNG. Notwithstanding this issue, there have been little studies on the female users of SNG although there are many studies that analyzed the tendency of female users- online game play. This study conducted the analyzed how the game-playing tendency of SNG gamers was manifested in the game by gender. For that, this study will identify the tendency of SNG users by gender based on the preceding studies that analyzed the online game users by gender. The subject of this study was confined to the farm and urban construction simulation games which were offered based on the mobile application platform. Regarding the methodology of study, the first focus group interview(FGI) was conducted with the male and female users who had played games on Social network service(SNS) until recently. Later, the second one-on-one in-depth interview was conducted to gain an insight into the psychological state of the subjects.

Kinetic Study of Gluconic Acid Batch Fermentation by Aspergillus niger

Gluconic acid is one of interesting chemical products in industries such as detergents, leather, photographic, textile, and especially in food and pharmaceutical industries. Fermentation is an advantageous process to produce gluconic acid. Mathematical modeling is important in the design and operation of fermentation process. In fact, kinetic data must be available for modeling. The kinetic parameters of gluconic acid production by Aspergillus niger in batch culture was studied in this research at initial substrate concentration of 150, 200 and 250 g/l. The kinetic models used were logistic equation for growth, Luedeking-Piret equation for gluconic acid formation, and Luedeking-Piret-like equation for glucose consumption. The Kinetic parameters in the model were obtained by minimizing non linear least squares curve fitting.