Intelligent multimedia communication for enhanced medical e-collaboration in back pain treatment

This is the post-print version of the Article. The official published version can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2004 SAGE PublicationsRemote, multimedia-based, collaboration in back pain treatment is an option which only recently has come to the attention of clinicians and IT providers. The take-up of such applications will inevitably depend on their ability to produce an acceptable level of service over congested and unreliable public networks. However, although the problem of multimedia application-level performance is closely linked to both the user perspective of the experience as well as to the service provided by the underlying network, it is rarely studied from an integrated viewpoint. To alleviate this problem, we propose an intelligent mechanism that integrates user-related requirements with the more technical characterization of quality of service, obtaining a priority order of low-level quality of service parameters, which would ensure that user-centred quality of perception is maintained at an optimum level. We show how our framework is capable of suggesting appropriately tailored transmission protocols, by incorporating user requirements in the remote delivery of e-health solutions

QoS adaptation in multimedia multicast conference applications for e-learning services

The evolution of the World Wide Web (WWW) service has incorporated new distributed multimedia conference applications, powering a new generation of e-learning development, and allowing improved interactivity and pro- human relations. Groupware applications are increasingly representative in the Internet home applications market, however, the Quality of Service (QoS) provided by the network is still a limitation impairing their performance. Such applications have found in multicast technology an ally contributing for their efficient implementation and scalability. Additionally, consider QoS as design goal at application level becomes crucial for groupware development, enabling QoS proactivity to applications. The applications’ ability to adapt themselves dynamically according to the resources availability can be considered a quality factor. Tolerant real-time applications, such as videoconferences, are in the frontline to benefit from QoS adaptation. However, not all include adaptive technology able to provide both end-system and network quality awareness. Adaptation, in these cases, can be achieved by introducing a multiplatform middleware layer responsible for tutoring the applications' resources (enabling adjudication or limitation) based on the available processing and networking capabilities. Congregating these technological contributions, an adaptive platform has been developed integrating public domain multicast tools, applied to a web-based distance learning system. The system is user-centered (e-student), aiming at good pedagogical practices and proactive usability for multimedia and network resources. The services provided, including QoS adapted interactive multimedia multicast conferences (MMC), are fully integrated and transparent to end-users. QoS adaptation, when treated systematically in tolerant real-time applications, denotes advantages in group scalability and QoS sustainability in heterogeneous and unpredictable environments such as the Internet

A MODEL FOR PREDICTING THE PERFORMANCE OF IP VIDEOCONFERENCING

With the incorporation of free desktop videoconferencing (DVC) software on the majority of the world's PCs, over the recent years, there has, inevitably, been considerable interest in using DVC over the Internet. The growing popularity of DVC increases the need for multimedia quality assessment. However, the task of predicting the perceived multimedia quality over the Internet Protocol (IP) networks is complicated by the fact that the audio and video streams are susceptible to unique impairments due to the unpredictable nature of IP networks, different types of task scenarios, different levels of complexity, and other related factors. To date, a standard consensus to define the IP media Quality of Service (QoS) has yet to be implemented. The thesis addresses this problem by investigating a new approach to assess the quality of audio, video, and audiovisual overall as perceived in low cost DVC systems. The main aim of the thesis is to investigate current methods used to assess the perceived IP media quality, and then propose a model which will predict the quality of audiovisual experience from prevailing network parameters. This thesis investigates the effects of various traffic conditions, such as, packet loss, jitter, and delay and other factors that may influence end user acceptance, when low cost DVC is used over the Internet. It also investigates the interaction effects between the audio and video media, and the issues involving the lip sychronisation error. The thesis provides the empirical evidence that the subjective mean opinion score (MOS) of the perceived multimedia quality is unaffected by lip synchronisation error in low cost DVC systems. The data-gathering approach that is advocated in this thesis involves both field and laboratory trials to enable the comparisons of results between classroom-based experiments and real-world environments to be made, and to provide actual real-world confirmation of the bench tests. The subjective test method was employed since it has been proven to be more robust and suitable for the research studies, as compared to objective testing techniques. The MOS results, and the number of observations obtained, have enabled a set of criteria to be established that can be used to determine the acceptable QoS for given network conditions and task scenarios. Based upon these comprehensive findings, the final contribution of the thesis is the proposal of a new adaptive architecture method that is intended to enable the performance of IP based DVC of a particular session to be predicted for a given network condition

Video Conference as a tool for Higher Education

The book describes the activities of the consortium member institutions in the framework of the TEMPUS IV Joint Project ViCES - Video Conferencing Educational Services (144650-TEMPUS-2008-IT-JPGR). In order to provide the basis for the development of a distance learning environment based on video conferencing systems and develop a blended learning courses methodology, the TEMPUS Project VICES (2009-2012) was launched in 2009. This publication collects the conclusion of the project and it reports the main outcomes together with the approach followed by the different partners towards the achievement of the project's goal. The book includes several contributions focussed on specific topics related to videoconferencing services, namely how to enable such services in educational contexts so that, the installation and deployment of videoconferencing systems could be conceived an integral part of virtual open campuses

{WAVA}: a New Web Service for Automatic Video Data Flow Adaptation in Heterogeneous Collaborative Environments

International audienceThe progressive needs for using video streaming for different applications in varied domains have created a new set of heterogeneous environments. In order to get the best performance of such environments, video streaming has to be adapted to the different parameters that characterize these environments, namely: bandwidth, CPU, GPU, screen resolution, etc. In this paper, we define a new web service, named Wava (Web service for Automatic Video Data Flows Adaptation). Wava allows multimedia platform to adjust the adaptation at two levels: the static level during initialization and the dynamic level according to the fluctuation of the environment

Multimedia Streaming through Wireless Networks

An overview of wireless networks, cross-layer optimization techniques, and advances in wireless LAN technologies is presented. This paper presents a scalable and adaptive system-level approach to wireless multimedia in the emerging, Proactive Enterprise computing environment. A Distributed Network Information Base with Service Agents at each node is proposed to enable network-wide, proactive adaptation with adaptive routing and end-to-end Quality of Service (QoS) management. The paper suggests that a combination of technological advancements in emerging wireless networks, node-level cross-layer optimizations, and the proposed distributed cross-node system-level architecture are all required to efficiently scale and adapt wireless multimedia in the current market

Developing and operating time critical applications in clouds: the state of the art and the SWITCH approach

Cloud environments can provide virtualized, elastic, controllable and high quality on-demand services for supporting complex distributed applications. However, the engineering methods and software tools used for developing, deploying and executing classical time critical applications do not, as yet, account for the programmability and controllability provided by clouds, and so time critical applications cannot yet benefit from the full potential of cloud technology. This paper reviews the state of the art of technologies involved in developing time critical cloud applications, and presents the approach of a recently funded EU H2020 project: the Software Workbench for Interactive, Time Critical and Highly self-adaptive cloud applications (SWITCH). SWITCH aims to improve the existing development and execution model of time critical applications by introducing a novel conceptual model—the application-infrastructure co-programming and control model—in which application QoS and QoE, together with the programmability and controllability of cloud environments, is included in the complete application lifecycle

Multimedia delivery in the future internet

The term “Networked Media” implies that all kinds of media including text, image, 3D graphics, audio and video are produced, distributed, shared, managed and consumed on-line through various networks, like the Internet, Fiber, WiFi, WiMAX, GPRS, 3G and so on, in a convergent manner [1]. This white paper is the contribution of the Media Delivery Platform (MDP) cluster and aims to cover the Networked challenges of the Networked Media in the transition to the Future of the Internet. Internet has evolved and changed the way we work and live. End users of the Internet have been confronted with a bewildering range of media, services and applications and of technological innovations concerning media formats, wireless networks, terminal types and capabilities. And there is little evidence that the pace of this innovation is slowing. Today, over one billion of users access the Internet on regular basis, more than 100 million users have downloaded at least one (multi)media file and over 47 millions of them do so regularly, searching in more than 160 Exabytes1 of content. In the near future these numbers are expected to exponentially rise. It is expected that the Internet content will be increased by at least a factor of 6, rising to more than 990 Exabytes before 2012, fuelled mainly by the users themselves. Moreover, it is envisaged that in a near- to mid-term future, the Internet will provide the means to share and distribute (new) multimedia content and services with superior quality and striking flexibility, in a trusted and personalized way, improving citizens’ quality of life, working conditions, edutainment and safety. In this evolving environment, new transport protocols, new multimedia encoding schemes, cross-layer inthe network adaptation, machine-to-machine communication (including RFIDs), rich 3D content as well as community networks and the use of peer-to-peer (P2P) overlays are expected to generate new models of interaction and cooperation, and be able to support enhanced perceived quality-of-experience (PQoE) and innovative applications “on the move”, like virtual collaboration environments, personalised services/ media, virtual sport groups, on-line gaming, edutainment. In this context, the interaction with content combined with interactive/multimedia search capabilities across distributed repositories, opportunistic P2P networks and the dynamic adaptation to the characteristics of diverse mobile terminals are expected to contribute towards such a vision. Based on work that has taken place in a number of EC co-funded projects, in Framework Program 6 (FP6) and Framework Program 7 (FP7), a group of experts and technology visionaries have voluntarily contributed in this white paper aiming to describe the status, the state-of-the art, the challenges and the way ahead in the area of Content Aware media delivery platforms

Collaboration in the Semantic Grid: a Basis for e-Learning

The CoAKTinG project aims to advance the state of the art in collaborative mediated spaces for the Semantic Grid. This paper presents an overview of the hypertext and knowledge based tools which have been deployed to augment existing collaborative environments, and the ontology which is used to exchange structure, promote enhanced process tracking, and aid navigation of resources before, after, and while a collaboration occurs. While the primary focus of the project has been supporting e-Science, this paper also explores the similarities and application of CoAKTinG technologies as part of a human-centred design approach to e-Learning