SAF-IS: a Spatial Annotation Free Framework for Instance Segmentation of Surgical Tools

Instance segmentation of surgical instruments is a long-standing research problem, crucial for the development of many applications for computer-assisted surgery. This problem is commonly tackled via fully-supervised training of deep learning models, requiring expensive pixel-level annotations to train. In this work, we develop a framework for instance segmentation not relying on spatial annotations for training. Instead, our solution only requires binary tool masks, obtainable using recent unsupervised approaches, and binary tool presence labels, freely obtainable in robot-assisted surgery. Based on the binary mask information, our solution learns to extract individual tool instances from single frames, and to encode each instance into a compact vector representation, capturing its semantic features. Such representations guide the automatic selection of a tiny number of instances (8 only in our experiments), displayed to a human operator for tool-type labelling. The gathered information is finally used to match each training instance with a binary tool presence label, providing an effective supervision signal to train a tool instance classifier. We validate our framework on the EndoVis 2017 and 2018 segmentation datasets. We provide results using binary masks obtained either by manual annotation or as predictions of an unsupervised binary segmentation model. The latter solution yields an instance segmentation approach completely free from spatial annotations, outperforming several state-of-the-art fully-supervised segmentation approaches

Press-n-Paste : Copy-and-Paste Operations with Pressure-sensitive Caret Navigation for Miniaturized Surface in Mobile Augmented Reality

Publisher Copyright: © 2021 ACM.Copy-and-paste operations are the most popular features on computing devices such as desktop computers, smartphones and tablets. However, the copy-and-paste operations are not sufficiently addressed on the Augmented Reality (AR) smartglasses designated for real-time interaction with texts in physical environments. This paper proposes two system solutions, namely Granularity Scrolling (GS) and Two Ends (TE), for the copy-and-paste operations on AR smartglasses. By leveraging a thumb-size button on a touch-sensitive and pressure-sensitive surface, both the multi-step solutions can capture the target texts through indirect manipulation and subsequently enables the copy-and-paste operations. Based on the system solutions, we implemented an experimental prototype named Press-n-Paste (PnP). After the eight-session evaluation capturing 1,296 copy-and-paste operations, 18 participants with GS and TE achieve the peak performance of 17,574 ms and 13,951 ms per copy-and-paste operation, with 93.21% and 98.15% accuracy rates respectively, which are as good as the commercial solutions using direct manipulation on touchscreen devices. The user footprints also show that PnP has a distinctive feature of miniaturized interaction area within 12.65 mm∗14.48 mm. PnP not only proves the feasibility of copy-and-paste operations with the flexibility of various granularities on AR smartglasses, but also gives significant implications to the design space of pressure widgets as well as the input design on smart wearables.Peer reviewe

Strategic capital budgeting: asset replacement under market uncertainty

In this paper the impact of product market uncertainty on the optimal replacement timing of a production facility is studied. The existing production facility can be replaced by a technologically more advanced and thus more cost-effective one. We take into account strategic interactions among the firms competing in the product market by analyzing the problem in a duopolistic setting. We calculate the value of each firm and show that i) a preemptive (simultaneous) replacement occurs when the associated sunk cost is low (high), ii) despite the preemption effect uncertainty always raises the expected time to replace, and iii) the relationship between the probability of optimal replacement within a given time interval and uncertainty is decreasing for long time intervals and humped for short time intervals. Furthermore it is shown that result ii) carries over to the case where firms have to decide about starting production rather than about replacing existing facilities

Homotopical Algebra and Higher Structures (hybrid meeting)

Homotopical algebra and higher category theory play an increasingly important role in pure mathematics, and higher methods have seen tremendous development in the last couple of decades. The talks delivered at the workshop described some of the latest progress in this area and applications to various problems of algebra, geometry, and combinatorics

Thumb + Pen Interaction on Tablets

ABSTRACT Modern tablets support simultaneous pen and touch input, but it remains unclear how to best leverage this capability for bimanual input when the nonpreferred hand holds the tablet. We explore Thumb + Pen interactions that support simultaneous pen and touch interaction, with both hands, in such situations. Our approach engages the thumb of the device-holding hand, such that the thumb interacts with the touch screen in an indirect manner, thereby complementing the direct input provided by the preferred hand. For instance, the thumb can determine how pen actions (articulated with the opposite hand) are interpreted. Alternatively, the pen can point at an object, while the thumb manipulates one or more of its parameters through indirect touch. Our techniques integrate concepts in a novel way that derive from marking menus, spring-loaded modes, indirect input, and multi-touch conventions. Our overall approach takes the form of a set of probes, each representing a meaningfully distinct class of application. They serve as an initial exploration of the design space at a level which will help determine the feasibility of supporting bimanual interaction in such contexts, and the viability of the Thumb + Pen techniques in so doing

Interacting "Through the Display"

The increasing availability of displays at lower costs has led to a proliferation of such in our everyday lives. Additionally, mobile devices are ready to hand and have been proposed as interaction devices for external screens. However, only their input mechanism was taken into account without considering three additional factors in environments hosting several displays: first, a connection needs to be established to the desired target display (modality). Second, screens in the environment may be re-arranged (flexibility). And third, displays may be out of the user’s reach (distance). In our research we aim to overcome the problems resulting from these characteristics. The overall goal is a new interaction model that allows for (1) a non-modal connection mechanism for impromptu use on various displays in the environment, (2) interaction on and across displays in highly flexible environments, and (3) interacting at variable distances. In this work we propose a new interaction model called through the display interaction which enables users to interact with remote content on their personal device in an absolute and direct fashion. To gain a better understanding of the effects of the additional characteristics, we implemented two prototypes each of which investigates a different distance to the target display: LucidDisplay allows users to place their mobile device directly on top of a larger external screen. MobileVue on the other hand enables users to interact with an external screen at a distance. In each of these prototypes we analyzed their effects on the remaining two criteria – namely the modality of the connection mechanism as well as the flexibility of the environment. With the findings gained in this initial phase we designed Shoot & Copy, a system that allows the detection of screens purely based on their visual content. Users aim their personal device’s camera at the target display which then appears in live video shown in the viewfinder. To select an item, users take a picture which is analyzed to determine the targeted region. We further extended this approach to multiple displays by using a centralized component serving as gateway to the display environment. In Tap & Drop we refined this prototype to support real-time feedback. Instead of taking pictures, users can now aim their mobile device at the display resulting and start interacting immediately. In doing so, we broke the rigid sequential interaction of content selection and content manipulation. Both prototypes allow for (1) connections in a non-modal way (i.e., aim at the display and start interacting with it) from the user’s point of view and (2) fully flexible environments (i.e., the mobile device tracks itself with respect to displays in the environment). However, the wide-angle lenses and thus greater field of views of current mobile devices still do not allow for variable distances. In Touch Projector, we overcome this limitation by introducing zooming in combination with temporarily freezing the video image. Based on our extensions to taxonomy of mobile device interaction on external displays, we created a refined model of interacting through the display for mobile use. It enables users to interact impromptu without explicitly establishing a connection to the target display (non-modal). As the mobile device tracks itself with respect to displays in the environment, the model further allows for full flexibility of the environment (i.e., displays can be re-arranged without affecting on the interaction). And above all, users can interact with external displays regardless of their actual size at variable distances without any loss of accuracy.Die steigende Verfügbarkeit von Bildschirmen hat zu deren Verbreitung in unserem Alltag geführt. Ferner sind mobile Geräte immer griffbereit und wurden bereits als Interaktionsgeräte für zusätzliche Bildschirme vorgeschlagen. Es wurden jedoch nur Eingabemechanismen berücksichtigt ohne näher auf drei weitere Faktoren in Umgebungen mit mehreren Bildschirmen einzugehen: (1) Beide Geräte müssen verbunden werden (Modalität). (2) Bildschirme können in solchen Umgebungen umgeordnet werden (Flexibilität). (3) Monitore können außer Reichweite sein (Distanz). Wir streben an, die Probleme, die durch diese Eigenschaften auftreten, zu lösen. Das übergeordnete Ziel ist ein Interaktionsmodell, das einen nicht-modalen Verbindungsaufbau für spontane Verwendung von Bildschirmen in solchen Umgebungen, (2) Interaktion auf und zwischen Bildschirmen in flexiblen Umgebungen, und (3) Interaktionen in variablen Distanzen erlaubt. Wir stellen ein Modell (Interaktion durch den Bildschirm) vor, mit dem Benutzer mit entfernten Inhalten in direkter und absoluter Weise auf ihrem Mobilgerät interagieren können. Um die Effekte der hinzugefügten Charakteristiken besser zu verstehen, haben wir zwei Prototypen für unterschiedliche Distanzen implementiert: LucidDisplay erlaubt Benutzern ihr mobiles Gerät auf einen größeren, sekundären Bildschirm zu legen. Gegensätzlich dazu ermöglicht MobileVue die Interaktion mit einem zusätzlichen Monitor in einer gewissen Entfernung. In beiden Prototypen haben wir dann die Effekte der verbleibenden zwei Kriterien (d.h. Modalität des Verbindungsaufbaus und Flexibilität der Umgebung) analysiert. Mit den in dieser ersten Phase erhaltenen Ergebnissen haben wir Shoot & Copy entworfen. Dieser Prototyp erlaubt die Erkennung von Bildschirmen einzig über deren visuellen Inhalt. Benutzer zeigen mit der Kamera ihres Mobilgeräts auf einen Bildschirm dessen Inhalt dann in Form von Video im Sucher dargestellt wird. Durch die Aufnahme eines Bildes (und der darauf folgenden Analyse) wird Inhalt ausgewählt. Wir haben dieses Konzept zudem auf mehrere Bildschirme erweitert, indem wir eine zentrale Instanz verwendet haben, die als Schnittstelle zur Umgebung agiert. Mit Tap & Drop haben wir den Prototyp verfeinert, um Echtzeit-Feedback zu ermöglichen. Anstelle der Bildaufnahme können Benutzer nun ihr mobiles Gerät auf den Bildschirm richten und sofort interagieren. Dadurch haben wir die strikt sequentielle Interaktion (Inhalt auswählen und Inhalt manipulieren) aufgebrochen. Beide Prototypen erlauben bereits nicht-modale Verbindungsmechanismen in flexiblen Umgebungen. Die in heutigen Mobilgeräten verwendeten Weitwinkel-Objektive erlauben jedoch nach wie vor keine variablen Distanzen. Mit Touch Projector beseitigen wir diese Einschränkung, indem wir Zoomen in Kombination mit einer vorübergehenden Pausierung des Videos im Sucher einfügen. Basierend auf den Erweiterungen der Klassifizierung von Interaktionen mit zusätzlichen Bildschirmen durch mobile Geräte haben wir ein verbessertes Modell (Interaktion durch den Bildschirm) erstellt. Es erlaubt Benutzern spontan zu interagieren, ohne explizit eine Verbindung zum zweiten Bildschirm herstellen zu müssen (nicht-modal). Da das mobile Gerät seinen räumlichen Bezug zu allen Bildschirmen selbst bestimmt, erlaubt unser Modell zusätzlich volle Flexibilität in solchen Umgebungen. Darüber hinaus können Benutzer mit zusätzlichen Bildschirmen (unabhängig von deren Größe) in variablen Entfernungen interagieren

1D-Touch: NLP-Assisted Coarse Text Selection via a Semi-Direct Gesture

Existing text selection techniques on touchscreen focus on improving the control for moving the carets. Coarse-grained text selection on word and phrase levels has not received much support beyond word-snapping and entity recognition. We introduce 1D-Touch, a novel text selection method that complements the carets-based sub-word selection by facilitating the selection of semantic units of words and above. This method employs a simple vertical slide gesture to expand and contract a selection area from a word. The expansion can be by words or by semantic chunks ranging from sub-phrases to sentences. This technique shifts the concept of text selection, from defining a range by locating the first and last words, towards a dynamic process of expanding and contracting a textual semantic entity. To understand the effects of our approach, we prototyped and tested two variants: WordTouch, which offers a straightforward word-by-word expansion, and ChunkTouch, which leverages NLP to chunk text into syntactic units, allowing the selection to grow by semantically meaningful units in response to the sliding gesture. Our evaluation, focused on the coarse-grained selection tasks handled by 1D-Touch, shows a 20% improvement over the default word-snapping selection method on Android

EFFECT OF ENZYMATIC TREATMENTS ON CARBOHYDRATE MATRICES TOWARDS HEALTHY GLUTEN FREE FOODS APPLICATION

Tesis por compendioStarch is the major energy reserve in plants, extensively present in many food and non-food applications, and is one of the most abundant carbohydrates in human diet. In addition to starch native form currently used as a raw material for industrial applications, modified starches have become very attractive to develop numerous products that have greatly expanded starch use and utility. Enzymatic modifications are carried out to enhance starch functionality with the aim of overcoming technological constraints and to improve final product quality. Above all starches, corn starch is widely produced and consumed, and used as main ingredient to produce gluten-free products. This Thesis focuses to the study of the individual effect of three different enzymes, fungal alpha-amylase, amyloglucosidase and cyclodextrin glycosyltransferase, on the above sub-gelatinization temperature of corn starch, in order to modify its properties and extend its applications. Different analyses have been performed to improve the understanding of functional and structural changes promoted by the enzyme action. Moreover, corn starch modified with cyclodextrin glycosyltransferase was selected to investigate the glycemic response in mice. The presence/absence of hydrolysis products released from the enzyme catalytic activity and gelatinization properties were related to glycemic index. Enzymatically modified corn starch resulted in a diversity of functional starch granules that may be used in food applications for many purposes.El almidón es la principal fuente de reserva de energía en las plantas, está ampliamente presente en diversas aplicaciones alimentarias y no alimentarias, y constituye uno de los hidratos de carbono más abundantes en la dieta humana. Además del uso frecuente y clásico del almidón nativo como materia prima en la producción de alimentos, los almidones modificados han experimentado gran expansión en el desarrollo de numerosos productos debido a su carácter versátil. Las modificaciones enzimáticas se llevan a cabo para realzar la funcionalidad del almidón con objeto de soslayar las restricciones tecnológicas y mejorar la calidad del producto final. En concreto, el almidón de maíz ampliamente producido y consumido, es apropiado como ingrediente principal en la producción de alimentos libres de gluten. Esta Tesis aborda el estudio del efecto individual de tres diferentes enzimas, alfa-amylasa fúngica, amiloglucosidasa y ciclodextrina glucosiltransferasa, sobre la temperatura de sub-gelatinización del almidón de maíz. Se realizaron diferentes análisis para ampliar el conocimiento de los cambios estructurales y funcionales asociados a la acción de la enzima. Así mismo, se seleccionó el almidón de maíz modificado con ciclodextrina glucosiltransferasa para investigar la respuesta glicémica en ratones. El índice glicémico se relacionó con la ausencia/presencia de productos de hidrólisis liberados por la acción catalítica de la enzima y las propiedades de gelatinización. Los almidones de maíz enzimáticamente modificados presentaron alteraciones funcionales en los gránulos de almidón, lo que les confiere características de interés para diversos usos alimentarios.El midó és la principal font de reserva d'energia en les plantes, està àmpliament present en diverses aplicacions alimentàries i no alimentàries, i constitueix un dels hidrats de carboni més abundants en la dieta humana. A més de l'ús freqüent i clàssic del midó natiu com a matèria primera en la producció d'aliments, els midons modificats han experimentat gran expansió en el desenvolupament de nombrosos productes a causa del seu caràcter versàtil. Les modificacions enzimàtiques es duen a terme per a realçar la funcionalitat del midó a fi d'esbiaixar les restriccions tecnològiques i millorar la qualitat del producte final. En concret, el midó de dacsa àmpliament produït i consumit, és apropiat com a ingredient principal en la producció d'aliments lliures de gluten. Aquesta Tesi aborda l'estudi de l'efecte individual de tres diferents enzims, alfa-amylasa fúngica, amiloglucosidasa i ciclodextrina glucosiltransferasa, sobre la temperatura de sub-gelatinizació del midó de dacsa. Es van realitzar diferents anàlisi per a ampliar el coneixement dels canvis estructurals i funcionals associats a l'acció de l'enzim. Així mateix, es va seleccionar el midó de dacsa modificat amb ciclodextrina glucosiltransferasa per a investigar la resposta glicémica en ratolins. L'índex glicémic es va relacionar amb l'absència/presencia de productes d'hidròlisis alliberats per l'acció catalítica de l'enzim i les propietats de gelatinización. Els midons de dacsa enzimàticament modificats van presentar alteracions funcionals en els grànuls de midó, la qual cosa els confereix característiques d'interès per a diversos usos alimentaris.Durá De Miguel, Á. (2017). EFFECT OF ENZYMATIC TREATMENTS ON CARBOHYDRATE MATRICES TOWARDS HEALTHY GLUTEN FREE FOODS APPLICATION [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/79509TESISCompendi