1,245 research outputs found

    Geodetic monitoring of complex shaped infrastructures using Ground-Based InSAR

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    In the context of climate change, alternatives to fossil energies need to be used as much as possible to produce electricity. Hydroelectric power generation through the utilisation of dams stands out as an exemplar of highly effective methodologies in this endeavour. Various monitoring sensors can be installed with different characteristics w.r.t. spatial resolution, temporal resolution and accuracy to assess their safe usage. Among the array of techniques available, it is noteworthy that ground-based synthetic aperture radar (GB-SAR) has not yet been widely adopted for this purpose. Despite its remarkable equilibrium between the aforementioned attributes, its sensitivity to atmospheric disruptions, specific acquisition geometry, and the requisite for phase unwrapping collectively contribute to constraining its usage. Several processing strategies are developed in this thesis to capitalise on all the opportunities of GB-SAR systems, such as continuous, flexible and autonomous observation combined with high resolutions and accuracy. The first challenge that needs to be solved is to accurately localise and estimate the azimuth of the GB-SAR to improve the geocoding of the image in the subsequent step. A ray tracing algorithm and tomographic techniques are used to recover these external parameters of the sensors. The introduction of corner reflectors for validation purposes confirms a significant error reduction. However, for the subsequent geocoding, challenges persist in scenarios involving vertical structures due to foreshortening and layover, which notably compromise the geocoding quality of the observed points. These issues arise when multiple points at varying elevations are encapsulated within a singular resolution cell, posing difficulties in pinpointing the precise location of the scattering point responsible for signal return. To surmount these hurdles, a Bayesian approach grounded in intensity models is formulated, offering a tool to enhance the accuracy of the geocoding process. The validation is assessed on a dam in the black forest in Germany, characterised by a very specific structure. The second part of this thesis is focused on the feasibility of using GB-SAR systems for long-term geodetic monitoring of large structures. A first assessment is made by testing large temporal baselines between acquisitions for epoch-wise monitoring. Due to large displacements, the phase unwrapping can not recover all the information. An improvement is made by adapting the geometry of the signal processing with the principal component analysis. The main case study consists of several campaigns from different stations at Enguri Dam in Georgia. The consistency of the estimated displacement map is assessed by comparing it to a numerical model calibrated on the plumblines data. It exhibits a strong agreement between the two results and comforts the usage of GB-SAR for epoch-wise monitoring, as it can measure several thousand points on the dam. It also exhibits the possibility of detecting local anomalies in the numerical model. Finally, the instrument has been installed for continuous monitoring for over two years at Enguri Dam. An adequate flowchart is developed to eliminate the drift happening with classical interferometric algorithms to achieve the accuracy required for geodetic monitoring. The analysis of the obtained time series confirms a very plausible result with classical parametric models of dam deformations. Moreover, the results of this processing strategy are also confronted with the numerical model and demonstrate a high consistency. The final comforting result is the comparison of the GB-SAR time series with the output from four GNSS stations installed on the dam crest. The developed algorithms and methods increase the capabilities of the GB-SAR for dam monitoring in different configurations. It can be a valuable and precious supplement to other classical sensors for long-term geodetic observation purposes as well as short-term monitoring in cases of particular dam operations

    MR thermometry for hyperthermia in the head and neck

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    Geometric Data Analysis: Advancements of the Statistical Methodology and Applications

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    Data analysis has become fundamental to our society and comes in multiple facets and approaches. Nevertheless, in research and applications, the focus was primarily on data from Euclidean vector spaces. Consequently, the majority of methods that are applied today are not suited for more general data types. Driven by needs from fields like image processing, (medical) shape analysis, and network analysis, more and more attention has recently been given to data from non-Euclidean spaces–particularly (curved) manifolds. It has led to the field of geometric data analysis whose methods explicitly take the structure (for example, the topology and geometry) of the underlying space into account. This thesis contributes to the methodology of geometric data analysis by generalizing several fundamental notions from multivariate statistics to manifolds. We thereby focus on two different viewpoints. First, we use Riemannian structures to derive a novel regression scheme for general manifolds that relies on splines of generalized Bézier curves. It can accurately model non-geodesic relationships, for example, time-dependent trends with saturation effects or cyclic trends. Since Bézier curves can be evaluated with the constructive de Casteljau algorithm, working with data from manifolds of high dimensions (for example, a hundred thousand or more) is feasible. Relying on the regression, we further develop a hierarchical statistical model for an adequate analysis of longitudinal data in manifolds, and a method to control for confounding variables. We secondly focus on data that is not only manifold- but even Lie group-valued, which is frequently the case in applications. We can only achieve this by endowing the group with an affine connection structure that is generally not Riemannian. Utilizing it, we derive generalizations of several well-known dissimilarity measures between data distributions that can be used for various tasks, including hypothesis testing. Invariance under data translations is proven, and a connection to continuous distributions is given for one measure. A further central contribution of this thesis is that it shows use cases for all notions in real-world applications, particularly in problems from shape analysis in medical imaging and archaeology. We can replicate or further quantify several known findings for shape changes of the femur and the right hippocampus under osteoarthritis and Alzheimer's, respectively. Furthermore, in an archaeological application, we obtain new insights into the construction principles of ancient sundials. Last but not least, we use the geometric structure underlying human brain connectomes to predict cognitive scores. Utilizing a sample selection procedure, we obtain state-of-the-art results

    BDS GNSS for Earth Observation

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    For millennia, human communities have wondered about the possibility of observing phenomena in their surroundings, and in particular those affecting the Earth on which they live. More generally, it can be conceptually defined as Earth observation (EO) and is the collection of information about the biological, chemical and physical systems of planet Earth. It can be undertaken through sensors in direct contact with the ground or airborne platforms (such as weather balloons and stations) or remote-sensing technologies. However, the definition of EO has only become significant in the last 50 years, since it has been possible to send artificial satellites out of Earth’s orbit. Referring strictly to civil applications, satellites of this type were initially designed to provide satellite images; later, their purpose expanded to include the study of information on land characteristics, growing vegetation, crops, and environmental pollution. The data collected are used for several purposes, including the identification of natural resources and the production of accurate cartography. Satellite observations can cover the land, the atmosphere, and the oceans. Remote-sensing satellites may be equipped with passive instrumentation such as infrared or cameras for imaging the visible or active instrumentation such as radar. Generally, such satellites are non-geostationary satellites, i.e., they move at a certain speed along orbits inclined with respect to the Earth’s equatorial plane, often in polar orbit, at low or medium altitude, Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and Medium Earth Orbit (MEO), thus covering the entire Earth’s surface in a certain scan time (properly called ’temporal resolution’), i.e., in a certain number of orbits around the Earth. The first remote-sensing satellites were the American NASA/USGS Landsat Program; subsequently, the European: ENVISAT (ENVironmental SATellite), ERS (European Remote-Sensing satellite), RapidEye, the French SPOT (Satellite Pour l’Observation de laTerre), and the Canadian RADARSAT satellites were launched. The IKONOS, QuickBird, and GeoEye-1 satellites were dedicated to cartography. The WorldView-1 and WorldView-2 satellites and the COSMO-SkyMed system are more recent. The latest generation are the low payloads called Small Satellites, e.g., the Chinese BuFeng-1 and Fengyun-3 series. Also, Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSSs) have captured the attention of researchers worldwide for a multitude of Earth monitoring and exploration applications. On the other hand, over the past 40 years, GNSSs have become an essential part of many human activities. As is widely noted, there are currently four fully operational GNSSs; two of these were developed for military purposes (American NAVstar GPS and Russian GLONASS), whilst two others were developed for civil purposes such as the Chinese BeiDou satellite navigation system (BDS) and the European Galileo. In addition, many other regional GNSSs, such as the South Korean Regional Positioning System (KPS), the Japanese quasi-zenital satellite system (QZSS), and the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS/NavIC), will become available in the next few years, which will have enormous potential for scientific applications and geomatics professionals. In addition to their traditional role of providing global positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) information, GNSS navigation signals are now being used in new and innovative ways. Across the globe, new fields of scientific study are opening up to examine how signals can provide information about the characteristics of the atmosphere and even the surfaces from which they are reflected before being collected by a receiver. EO researchers monitor global environmental systems using in situ and remote monitoring tools. Their findings provide tools to support decision makers in various areas of interest, from security to the natural environment. GNSS signals are considered an important new source of information because they are a free, real-time, and globally available resource for the EO community

    Deep learning for accelerated magnetic resonance imaging

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    Medical imaging has aided the biggest advance in the medical domain in the last century. Whilst X-ray, CT, PET and ultrasound are a form of imaging that can be useful in particular scenarios, they each have disadvantages in cost, image quality, ease-of-use and ionising radiation. MRI is a slow imaging protocol which contributes to its high cost to run. However, MRI is a very versatile imaging protocol allowing images of varying contrast to be easily generated whilst not requiring the use of ionising radiation. If MRI can be made to be more efficient and smart, the effective cost of running MRI may be more affordable and accessible. The focus of this thesis is decreasing the acquisition time involved in MRI whilst maintaining the quality of the generated images and thus diagnosis. In particular, we focus on data-driven deep learning approaches that aid in the image reconstruction process and streamline the diagnostic process. We focus on three particular aspects of MR acquisition. Firstly, we investigate the use of motion estimation in the cine reconstruction process. Motion allows us to combine an abundance of imaging data in a learnt reconstruction model allowing acquisitions to be sped up by up to 50 times in extreme scenarios. Secondly, we investigate the possibility of using under-acquired MR data to generate smart diagnoses in the form of automated text reports. In particular, we investigate the possibility of skipping the imaging reconstruction phase altogether at inference time and instead, directly seek to generate radiological text reports for diffusion-weighted brain images in an effort to streamline the diagnostic process. Finally, we investigate the use of probabilistic modelling for MRI reconstruction without the use of fully-acquired data. In particular, we note that acquiring fully-acquired reference images in MRI can be difficult and nonetheless may still contain undesired artefacts that lead to degradation of the dataset and thus the training process. In this chapter, we investigate the possibility of performing reconstruction without fully-acquired references and furthermore discuss the possibility of generating higher quality outputs than that of the fully-acquired references.Open Acces

    Advanced Characterization and On-Line Process Monitoring of Additively Manufactured Materials and Components

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    This reprint is concerned with the microstructural characterization and the defect analysis of metallic additively manufactured (AM) materials and parts. Special attention is paid to the determination of residual stress in such parts and to online monitoring techniques devised to predict the appearance of defects. Finally, several non-destructive testing techniques are employed to assess the quality of AM materials and parts

    Contributions in functional data analysis and functional-analytic statistics

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    Functional data analysis is the study of statistical algorithms which are applied in the scenario when the observed data is a collection of functions. Since this type of data is becoming cheaper and easier to collect, there is an increased need to develop statistical tools to handle such data. The first part of this thesis focuses on deriving distances between distributions over function spaces and applying these to two-sample testing, goodness-of-fit testing and sample quality assessment. This presents a wide range of contributions since currently there exists either very few or no methods at all to tackle these problems for functional data. The second part of this thesis adopts the functional-analytic perspective to two statistical algorithms. This is a perspective where functions are viewed as living in specific function spaces and the tool box of functional analysis is applied to identify and prove properties of the algorithms. The two algorithms are variational Gaussian processes, used widely throughout machine learning for function modelling with large observation data sets, and functional statistical depth, used widely as a means to evaluate outliers and perform testing for functional data sets. The results presented contribute a taxonomy of the variational Gaussian process methodology and multiple new results in the theory of functional depth including the open problem of providing a depth which characterises distributions on function spaces.Open Acces

    Elastic shape analysis of geometric objects with complex structures and partial correspondences

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    In this dissertation, we address the development of elastic shape analysis frameworks for the registration, comparison and statistical shape analysis of geometric objects with complex topological structures and partial correspondences. In particular, we introduce a variational framework and several numerical algorithms for the estimation of geodesics and distances induced by higher-order elastic Sobolev metrics on the space of parametrized and unparametrized curves and surfaces. We extend our framework to the setting of shape graphs (i.e., geometric objects with branching structures where each branch is a curve) and surfaces with complex topological structures and partial correspondences. To do so, we leverage the flexibility of varifold fidelity metrics in order to augment our geometric objects with a spatially-varying weight function, which in turn enables us to indirectly model topological changes and handle partial matching constraints via the estimation of vanishing weights within the registration process. In the setting of shape graphs, we prove the existence of solutions to the relaxed registration problem with weights, which is the main theoretical contribution of this thesis. In the setting of surfaces, we leverage our surface matching algorithms to develop a comprehensive collection of numerical routines for the statistical shape analysis of sets of 3D surfaces, which includes algorithms to compute Karcher means, perform dimensionality reduction via multidimensional scaling and tangent principal component analysis, and estimate parallel transport across surfaces (possibly with partial matching constraints). Moreover, we also address the development of numerical shape analysis pipelines for large-scale data-driven applications with geometric objects. Towards this end, we introduce a supervised deep learning framework to compute the square-root velocity (SRV) distance for curves. Our trained network provides fast and accurate estimates of the SRV distance between pairs of geometric curves, without the need to find optimal reparametrizations. As a proof of concept for the suitability of such approaches in practical contexts, we use it to perform optical character recognition (OCR), achieving comparable performance in terms of computational speed and accuracy to other existing OCR methods. Lastly, we address the difficulty of extracting high quality shape structures from imaging data in the field of astronomy. To do so, we present a state-of-the-art expectation-maximization approach for the challenging task of multi-frame astronomical image deconvolution and super-resolution. We leverage our approach to obtain a high-fidelity reconstruction of the night sky, from which high quality shape data can be extracted using appropriate segmentation and photometric techniques
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