A discrete Reeb graph approach for the segmentation of human body scans

Segmentation of 3D human body (HB) scan is a very challenging problem in applications exploiting human scan data. To tackle this problem, we propose a topological approach based on discrete Reeb graph (DRG) which is an extension of the classical Reeb graph to unorganized cloud of 3D points. The essence of the approach is detecting critical nodes in the DRG thus permitting the extraction of branches that represent the body parts. Because the human body shape representation is built upon global topological features that are preserved so long as the whole structure of the human body does not change, our approach is quite robust against noise, holes, irregular sampling, moderate reference change and posture variation. Experimental results performed on real scan data demonstrate the validity of our method

Aerospace Medicine and Biology: A continuing bibliography, supplement 191

A bibliographical list of 182 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system in February 1979 is presented

Image Spread Characteristics of Vesicular Films

An altered Bausch and Lomb metallograph, in conjunction with a 150 watt high-pressure Xenon-arc lamp, was used to image 50µm uniformly illuminated round spots on several vesicular emulsions and a silver emulsion to determine image spread characteristics with increasing exposure times. Vesicular films tested include Kalvar Types 16, 143, 163, and 164, a sample of Xidex Blue and a high resolution aerial film. It was found in all cases that image spread was more profound in vesicular films than in the silver film tested. It was also found that ten minute and twenty minute periods of time between exposure and development had varying effects on the final image size usually causing the image to shrink with increasing time interim. Many observations were made including an adjacency effect, latent images under the microscope, and what might be described as a three-dimensional view of the vesicle distribution in the image

Automated retinal analysis

Diabetes is a chronic disease affecting over 2% of the population in the UK [1]. Long-term complications of diabetes can affect many different systems of the body including the retina of the eye. In the retina, diabetes can lead to a disease called diabetic retinopathy, one of the leading causes of blindness in the working population of industrialised countries. The risk of visual loss from diabetic retinopathy can be reduced if treatment is given at the onset of sight-threatening retinopathy. To detect early indicators of the disease, the UK National Screening Committee have recommended that diabetic patients should receive annual screening by digital colour fundal photography [2]. Manually grading retinal images is a subjective and costly process requiring highly skilled staff. This thesis describes an automated diagnostic system based oil image processing and neural network techniques, which analyses digital fundus images so that early signs of sight threatening retinopathy can be identified. Within retinal analysis this research has concentrated on the development of four algorithms: optic nerve head segmentation, lesion segmentation, image quality assessment and vessel width measurements. This research amalgamated these four algorithms with two existing techniques to form an integrated diagnostic system. The diagnostic system when used as a 'pre-filtering' tool successfully reduced the number of images requiring human grading by 74.3%: this was achieved by identifying and excluding images without sight threatening maculopathy from manual screening

Proceedings of the 15th Conference on Knowledge Organization WissOrg'17 of theGerman Chapter of the International Society for Knowledge Organization (ISKO),30th November - 1st December 2017, Freie Universität Berlin

Wissensorganisation is the name of a series of biennial conferences / workshops with a long tradition, organized by the German chapter of the International Society of Knowledge Organization (ISKO). The 15th conference in this series, held at Freie Universität Berlin, focused on knowledge organization for the digital humanities. Structuring, and interacting with, large data collections has become a major issue in the digital humanities. In these proceedings, various aspects of knowledge organization in the digital humanities are discussed, and the authors of the papers show how projects in the digital humanities deal with knowledge organization.Wissensorganisation ist der Name einer Konferenzreihe mit einer langjährigen Tradition, die von der Deutschen Sektion der International Society of Knowledge Organization (ISKO) organisiert wird. Die 15. Konferenz dieser Reihe, die an der Freien Universität Berlin stattfand, hatte ihren Schwerpunkt im Bereich Wissensorganisation und Digital Humanities. Die Strukturierung von und die Interaktion mit großen Datenmengen ist ein zentrales Thema in den Digital Humanities. In diesem Konferenzband werden verschiedene Aspekte der Wissensorganisation in den Digital Humanities diskutiert, und die Autoren der einzelnen Beiträge zeigen, wie die Digital Humanities mit Wissensorganisation umgehen

Representative Rivers: An Experimental Research Program in River Recreation Management

Earlier attempts at synthesizing research needs and priorities were not fruitful. It became an exercise in which I subconsciously tried to produce a document that was acceptable through peer review. I styled my writing and format after other analyses that I had read. It seemed the natural thing to do - to look just like the others so mine would be accepted. At the same time, I tried to be different. It became a matter of shifting chairs around the table, but somehow the dinner still looked the same. I did not really realize what I was doing until Drs. Workman and Becker, in separate reviews, pointed out the problem. They simply said I was not covering new ground or even looking critically at river-recreation management. The second attempt was more progressive in terms of reviewing previous research and management theory, and proposing a new approach to river recreation management research; but it was too disjointed to be effective in communicating the problems of present research and means of overcoming those problems. At least one thing became clear - most of the research done in recreation, particularly river recreation, was based on survey research designs which required a lot of data-crunching and liberal interpretation. As reproved by W. G. Workman, "Torture the data until nature confesses." In fact, much of the belief in the process of survey research appears to be related to the apparent ability to overcome inadequacies of research design by simply increasing sample size and then manipulating that data until some significant relationship is noted .First I wish to say "thanks" to Dr. Ted Dyrness who had faith in me and pushed for the original cooperative agreement with the U. S. Forest Service, and who also offered two extensions of the agreement so the final report might move in a different direction than earlier versions. Dr. Roger Clark, who acted as the technical advisor and reviewer for the agreement, helped immensely in the molding of the direction of the project. Drs. Robert H. Becker and William G. Workman diagnosed my problem in trying to prepare an acceptable program. And Drs. Steve McCool, University of Montana, and Mike Manfredo, Oregon State University, pointed to the need for reorganization and a more comprehensive research program. Within my own bailiwick, Steve Cook's help in the development of the original manuscript is recognized and appreciated. And thanks to my wife, J o, who at least pretended to understand when I brought home the manuscript, spread it out on the supper table, and mumbled something about reviewers. This project was funded jointly by the Pacific Northwest Forest Experiment Station through the Institute of Northern Forestry and W -13 3 Regional Hatch Project here at the Agriculture Experiment Station, University of Alaska, Fairbanks

Conceptual challenges for the evaluation of digital repositories with multiple access options

The evaluation of digital repositories with multiple access options poses various questions concerning the choice of an appropriate methodology and an adequate evaluation setting. Especially when semantic concepts are represented by visual components a multimethodology approach needs to be taken. This paper discusses such an approach for coping with the various challenges. This work is based on a digital image repository that allows multiple access via semantic concepts such as topic maps, classical full-text search and content-based image retrieval. This system is the central part of a research project known as Living Memory

Aerospace Medicine and Biology: A continuing bibliography with indexes (supplement 261)

This bibliography lists 281 reports, articles and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system in July 1984

Semi-automated co-reference identification in digital humanities collections

Locating specific information within museum collections represents a significant challenge for collection users. Even when the collections and catalogues exist in a searchable digital format, formatting differences and the imprecise nature of the information to be searched mean that information can be recorded in a large number of different ways. This variation exists not just between different collections, but also within individual ones. This means that traditional information retrieval techniques are badly suited to the challenges of locating particular information in digital humanities collections and searching, therefore, takes an excessive amount of time and resources. This thesis focuses on a particular search problem, that of co-reference identification. This is the process of identifying when the same real world item is recorded in multiple digital locations. In this thesis, a real world example of a co-reference identification problem for digital humanities collections is identified and explored. In particular the time consuming nature of identifying co-referent records. In order to address the identified problem, this thesis presents a novel method for co-reference identification between digitised records in humanities collections. Whilst the specific focus of this thesis is co-reference identification, elements of the method described also have applications for general information retrieval. The new co-reference method uses elements from a broad range of areas including; query expansion, co-reference identification, short text semantic similarity and fuzzy logic. The new method was tested against real world collections information, the results of which suggest that, in terms of the quality of the co-referent matches found, the new co-reference identification method is at least as effective as a manual search. The number of co-referent matches found however, is higher using the new method. The approach presented here is capable of searching collections stored using differing metadata schemas. More significantly, the approach is capable of identifying potential co-reference matches despite the highly heterogeneous and syntax independent nature of the Gallery, Library Archive and Museum (GLAM) search space and the photo-history domain in particular. The most significant benefit of the new method is, however, that it requires comparatively little manual intervention. A co-reference search using it has, therefore, significantly lower person hour requirements than a manually conducted search. In addition to the overall co-reference identification method, this thesis also presents: • A novel and computationally lightweight short text semantic similarity metric. This new metric has a significantly higher throughput than the current prominent techniques but a negligible drop in accuracy. • A novel method for comparing photographic processes in the presence of variable terminology and inaccurate field information. This is the first computational approach to do so.AHR