Image Content Enhancement Through Salient Regions Segmentation for People With Color Vision Deficiencies

Color vision deficiencies affect visual perception of colors and, more generally, color images. Several sciences such as genetics, biology, medicine, and computer vision are involved in studying and analyzing vision deficiencies. As we know from visual saliency findings, human visual system tends to fix some specific points and regions of the image in the first seconds of observation summing up the most important and meaningful parts of the scene. In this article, we provide some studies about human visual system behavior differences between normal and color vision-deficient visual systems. We eye-tracked the human fixations in first 3 seconds of observation of color images to build real fixation point maps. One of our contributions is to detect the main differences between the aforementioned human visual systems related to color vision deficiencies by analyzing real fixation maps among people with and without color vision deficiencies. Another contribution is to provide a method to enhance color regions of the image by using a detailed color mapping of the segmented salient regions of the given image. The segmentation is performed by using the difference between the original input image and the corresponding color blind altered image. A second eye-tracking of color blind people with the images enhanced by using recoloring of segmented salient regions reveals that the real fixation points are then more coherent (up to 10%) with the normal visual system. The eye-tracking data collected during our experiments are in a publicly available dataset called Eye-Tracking of Color Vision Deficiencies

Image Content Enhancement Through Salient Regions Segmentation for People With Color Vision Deficiencies.

Color vision deficiencies affect visual perception of colors and, more generally, color images. Several sciences such as genetics, biology, medicine, and computer vision are involved in studying and analyzing vision deficiencies. As we know from visual saliency findings, human visual system tends to fix some specific points and regions of the image in the first seconds of observation summing up the most important and meaningful parts of the scene. In this article, we provide some studies about human visual system behavior differences between normal and color vision-deficient visual systems. We eye-tracked the human fixations in first 3 seconds of observation of color images to build real fixation point maps. One of our contributions is to detect the main differences between the aforementioned human visual systems related to color vision deficiencies by analyzing real fixation maps among people with and without color vision deficiencies. Another contribution is to provide a method to enhance color regions of the image by using a detailed color mapping of the segmented salient regions of the given image. The segmentation is performed by using the difference between the original input image and the corresponding color blind altered image. A second eye-tracking of color blind people with the images enhanced by using recoloring of segmented salient regions reveals that the real fixation points are then more coherent (up to 10%) with the normal visual system. The eye-tracking data collected during our experiments are in a publicly available dataset called Eye-Tracking of Color Vision Deficiencies

Task Specific Ionic Liquids for Enantiomeric Recognition and Nanomaterials for Biomedical Imaging

Ionic liquids (ILs) are organic salts that melt at or below 100°C. Interest in ILs continues to grow due to their unique properties such as lack of measurable vapor pressure, high thermal stability, tunability and recyclability. The first part of this dissertation explores the use of chiral ionic liquids (CILs) for enantiomeric recognition of chiral analytes using fluorescence spectroscopy. Chiral analyses continue to be a subject of considerable interest primarily as a result of legislation introduced by the Food and Drug Administration. This has led to an increased need for suitable chiral selectors and methods to verify the enantiomeric forms of drugs. In this study, CILs derived from amino acid esters were used simultaneously as solvents and chiral selectors for enantiomeric recognition of various fluorescent as well as non-fluorescent chiral analytes. The second part of this dissertation focuses on the development of a new class of fluorescent near infrared (NIR) nanoparticles from a Group of Uniform Materials Based on Organic Salts (GUMBOS) largely comprising frozen ILs. The GUMBOS were subsequently used to fabricate nanoGUMBOS using a reprecipitation method. The potential of the NIR nanoGUMBOS for non-invasive imaging was evaluated by fluorescence imaging of Vero cells incubated with nanoGUMBOS. Fluorescence imaging of diseased cells and tissues is useful for early detection and treatment of diseases. The work presented here is significant and may improve the quality of human life by employing NIR nanoGUMBOS as contrast agents for early diagnosis and treatment of some diseases. Through variations in the anion, different spectral properties were observed for nanoGUMBOS presenting the possibility of using a single dye for multiple applications

Investigating the build-up of precedence effect using reflection masking

The auditory processing level involved in the build‐up of precedence [Freyman et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 90, 874–884 (1991)] has been investigated here by employing reflection masked threshold (RMT) techniques. Given that RMT techniques are generally assumed to address lower levels of the auditory signal processing, such an approach represents a bottom‐up approach to the buildup of precedence. Three conditioner configurations measuring a possible buildup of reflection suppression were compared to the baseline RMT for four reflection delays ranging from 2.5–15 ms. No buildup of reflection suppression was observed for any of the conditioner configurations. Buildup of template (decrease in RMT for two of the conditioners), on the other hand, was found to be delay dependent. For five of six listeners, with reflection delay=2.5 and 15 ms, RMT decreased relative to the baseline. For 5‐ and 10‐ms delay, no change in threshold was observed. It is concluded that the low‐level auditory processing involved in RMT is not sufficient to realize a buildup of reflection suppression. This confirms suggestions that higher level processing is involved in PE buildup. The observed enhancement of reflection detection (RMT) may contribute to active suppression at higher processing levels

Enhancing efficacy, performance, and applicability of additive food manufacturing

The advent of three-dimensional (3D) printers has led to many industrial innovations by providing alternatives to conventional manufacturing in various disciplines, including food science and engineering. As an emerging digital fabrication technique, 3D printing relies on computer-aided design and a set of commands for physical production in a layer-by-layer fashion. AM technology has attracted much attention in the food industry due to advantages such as on-demand production, personalization in nutrition, better food textures, printing complex and appealing structures without using molds or fixtures. More recently, with the advances in engineering and digital technologies, four-dimensional (4D) printing has emerged, which is defined as property changes (e.g., shape morphing, color change) of a 3D-printed product after exposure to a stimulus (e.g., pH change, water, heat). Successful adoption of this novel AM technology needs substantial work in selecting appropriate materials, creating geometrical designs, and improving the stability of 3D printed products after processing. The applications of 3D and 4D printing using edible materials should consider the complexity of food systems and the availability of appropriate materials to enable desirable functions of foods. This study focused on using AM technology to create food products that are structurally stable, suitable for post-processing, and anisotropically-actuated via extrusion-based 3D printers. Cookie dough, a popular food containing multiple ingredients, was selected as a model system to investigate the effects of food components, pre-heating, different geometrical properties, and the baking conditions on the printability of food ink. A novel 3D printing methodology was established to create structurally stable cookies by modifying the dough recipe without using gums or stabilizers. The results indicate that the reduction of sugar is an effective way to develop structurally stable cookies by 3D printing. On the other hand, pre-heating improves the printing performance and shape stability of the cookie dough systems by yielding a dense network and affecting conformational changes. The baking conditions and geometrical properties affected the quality of 3D-printed shapes, such as layer cracking due to high-temperature cooking. In addition, this study explored the osmotically driven and anisotropically actuated 4D printing concepts using edible composite films and elucidated two different mechanisms of 4D printing: shape-changing and color-transforming. Edible composites containing ethyl cellulose and gelatin were formed and submerged into water, resulting in osmotically driven structural changes of the composites. The results demonstrate that mismatching in the swelling behaviors of film components and geometrical properties of designed shapes are critical to controlling the shape-morphing behaviors of the composite structures. This study proves the great potential of 3D and 4D printing in the food industry.Includes bibliographical references

Pharmaceutical Particulates and Membranes for Delivery of Drugs and Bioactive Molecules

This book is a collection of papers published in the Special Issue of Pharmaceutics, entitled "Pharmaceutical Particulates and Membranes for Delivery of Drugs and Bioactive Molecules". A drug release profile is a consequential factor for nanoparticle application, directly related to drug stability and therapeutic results, as well as formulation development. Pharmaceutical particulates of different sizes and shapes (e.g., liposomes, oil-in-water emulsions, polymeric nano- and microspheres, metallic nanoparticles (NPs) such as gold, silver and iron oxide crystals, and core-shell hybrid NPs) offer many diagnostic and therapeutic applications. Membranes are also extensively utilized in many applications. They are especially beneficial to the distribution of macromolecular drugs and biopharmaceutical drugs (peptides, proteins, antibodies, oligonucleotides, plasmids, and viruses) with physicochemical and pharmacokinetic vulnerability. The delivery of drugs and bioactive molecules using particulates and membranes has gained a great deal of attention for various applications, such as the treatment of secondary infections, cancer treatment, skin regeneration, orthopaedic applications, and antimicrobial drug delivery. In addition, several production techniques have been utilized for the fabrication of particulates and membranes in the last decade, which include lyophilisation, micro-emulsion, nano-spray dryer, nano-electrospinning, slip casting and 3D printers. Therefore, pharmaceutical particulates and membranes possess excellent prospects to deliver drugs and bioactive molecules with the potential to improve new delivery strategies like sustained and controlled release

Interface Oral Health Science 2014

dentistry; oral and maxillofacial surgery; regenerative medicine; tissue engineerin