FAME - A Flexible Appearance Modelling Environment

Combined modelling of pixel intensities and shape has proven to be a very robust and widely applicable approach to interpret images. As such the Active Appearance Model (AAM) framework has been applied to a wide variety of problems within medical image analysis. This paper summarises AAM applications within medicine and describes a public domain implementation, namely the Flexible Appearance Modelling Environment (FAME). We give guidelines for the use of this research platform, and show that the optimisation techniques used renders it applicable to interactive medical applications. To increase performance and make models generalise better, we apply parallel analysis to obtain automatic and objective model truncation. Further, two different AAM training methods are compared along with a reference case study carried out on cross-sectional short-axis cardiac magnetic resonance images and face images. Source code and annotated data sets needed to reproduce the results are put in the public domain for further investigation

Complexity Metrics for Systems Development Methods and Techniques

So many systems development methods have been introduced in the last decade that one can talk about a ¿methodology jungle¿. To aid the method developers and evaluators in fighting their way through this jungle, we propose a systematic approach for measuring properties of methods. We describe two sets of metrics which measure the complexity of single diagram techniques, and of complete systems development methods. The proposed metrics provide a relatively fast and simple way to analyse the descriptive capabilities of a technique or method. When accompanied with other selection criteria, the metrics can be used for estimating the relative complexity of a technique compared to others. To demonstrate the applicability of the metrics, we have applied them to 36 techniques and 11 methods

Generalized Method Of Designing Unmanned Remotely Operated Complexes Based On The System Approach

Self-propelled underwater systems belong to the effective means of marine robotics. The advantages of their use include the ability to perform underwater work in real time with high quality and without risk to the life of a human operator. At present, the design of such complexes is not formalized and is carried out separately for each of the components – a remotely operated vehicle, a tether-cable and cable winch, a cargo device and a control and energy device. As a result, the time spent on design increases and its quality decreases. The system approach to the design of remotely operated complexes ensures that the features of the interaction of the components of the complex are taken into account when performing its main operating modes. In this paper, the system interaction between the components of the complex is proposed to take into account in the form of decomposition of “underwater tasks (mission) – underwater technology of its implementation – underwater work on the selected technology – task for the executive mechanism of the complex” operations. With this approach, an information base is formed for the formation of a list of mechanisms of the complex, the technical appearance of its components is being formed, which is important for the early design stages. Operative, creative and engineering phases of the design of the complex are proposed. For each phase, a set of works has been formulated that cover all the components of the complex and use the author's existence equations for these components as a tool for system analysis of technical solutions.The perspective of the scientific task of the creative phase to create accurate information models of the functioning of the components of the complex and models to support the adoption of design decisions based on a systematic approach is shown.The obtained results form the theoretical basis for finding effective technical solutions in the early stages of designing remotely operated complexes and for automating the design with the assistance of modern applied computer research and design packages

Hierarchical Object Parsing from Structured Noisy Point Clouds

Object parsing and segmentation from point clouds are challenging tasks because the relevant data is available only as thin structures along object boundaries or other features, and is corrupted by large amounts of noise. To handle this kind of data, flexible shape models are desired that can accurately follow the object boundaries. Popular models such as Active Shape and Active Appearance models lack the necessary flexibility for this task, while recent approaches such as the Recursive Compositional Models make model simplifications in order to obtain computational guarantees. This paper investigates a hierarchical Bayesian model of shape and appearance in a generative setting. The input data is explained by an object parsing layer, which is a deformation of a hidden PCA shape model with Gaussian prior. The paper also introduces a novel efficient inference algorithm that uses informed data-driven proposals to initialize local searches for the hidden variables. Applied to the problem of object parsing from structured point clouds such as edge detection images, the proposed approach obtains state of the art parsing errors on two standard datasets without using any intensity information.Comment: 13 pages, 16 figure

Fast Registration of Cardiac Perfusion MRI

This abstract presents a novel method for registration of cardiac perfusion MRI sequences. By performing complex analyses of variance and clustering in an annotated training set off-line, our method provides real-time segmentation in an on-line setting. This renders the method feasible for live motion-compensation in MR scanners. Changes in image intensity during the bolus passage are modelled by an Active Appearance Model augmented with a cluster analysis of the training set. Preliminary validation carried out using five subjects showed acceptable segmentation accuracy produced very rapidly (below 40 ms per image)

Trading Virtual Legacies (Management of Tradition from Alexandria to Internet)

Will the reconstructed library of Alexandria prevent a forthcoming clash of civilizations? Inventing and re-inventing traditions requires total quality management and multiple networking in shifting alliances in the information space. Stock exchange of cultural forms has long abandoned the golden standards of Enlightenment and follows a theory of cultural relativity and an international political economy of attention.Virtual legacies;cultural relativity;detraditionalization;political economy of attention;re-enchantment

Linear-Quadratic Jump-Diffusion Modeling with Application to Stochastic Volatility

We aim at accommodating the existing affine jump-diffusion and quadratic models under the same roof, namely the linear-quadratic jump-diffusion (LQJD) class. We give a complete characterization of the dynamics underlying this class of models as well as identification constraints, and compute standard and extended transforms relevant to asset pricing. We also show that the LQJD class can be embedded into the affine class through use of an augmented state vector. We further establish that an equivalence relationship holds between both classes in terms of transform analysis. An option pricing application to multifactor stochastic volatility models reveals that adding nonlinearity into the model significantly reduces pricing errors, and further addition of a jump component in the stock price largely improves goodness-of-fit for in-the-money calls but less for out-of-the-money ones.Linear-quadratic models; affine models; jump-diffusions; generalized Fourier transform; option pricing; stochastic volatility