Applying Transfer Learning in Classification of Ischemia from Myocardial Polar Maps in PET Cardiac Perfusion Imaging

Introduction: Ischemia is defined as the restriction of blood flow to a body organ, such as the heart, resulting in a cutback in oxygen supply. Myocardial ischemia is characterized by an imbalance between myocardial oxygen supply and demand, causing cardiac dysfunction, arrhythmia, myocardial infarction, and sudden death. Positron emission tomography myocardial perfusion imaging (PET-MPI) is an examination for accurately evaluating blood circulation to the heart muscle at stress and rest. Images obtained from this technique can be interpreted by experts or potentially classified by deep learning for the diagnosis of cardiac ischemia. Although deep learning has proved to be effective for medical image classification tasks, the challenge of small medical image datasets for model training remains to exist. Transfer learning is a state-of-the-art technique for resolving this challenge by utilizing pre-trained models for a new task. Pre-trained models are deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs) trained on a vast dataset, such as ImageNet, capable of transferring learned weights to a new classification problem. Objective: To study the effectiveness of image classification using transfer learning and benchmarking pre-trained CNN models for the classification of myocardial ischemia from myocardial polar maps in PET 15O-H2O cardiac perfusion imaging. Subject and methods: 138 JPEG polar maps from a 15O-H2O stress perfusion test from patients classified as ischemic or non-ischemic were used. Experiments for comparing a total of 20 pre-trained CNN models were performed. The results were compared against a custom CNN developed on the same dataset. Python programming language and its relevant libraries for deep learning were used. Results and discussion: Pre-trained models showed reliable performance compared to a custom-built CNN. VGG19, VGG16, DenseNet169, and Xception were superior among all pre-trained models. Ensemble learning improved overall performance, closest to the clinical interpretation level

Bridging the complexity gap in Tbps-achieving THz-band baseband processing

Recent advances in electronic and photonic technologies have allowed efficient signal generation and transmission at terahertz (THz) frequencies. However, as the gap in THz-operating devices narrows, the demand for terabit-per-second (Tbps)-achieving circuits is increasing. Translating the available hundreds of gigahertz (GHz) of bandwidth into a Tbps data rate requires processing thousands of information bits per clock cycle at state-of-the-art clock frequencies of digital baseband processing circuitry of a few GHz. This paper addresses these constraints and emphasizes the importance of parallelization in signal processing, particularly for channel code decoding. By leveraging structured sub-spaces of THz channels, we propose mapping bits to transmission resources using shorter code words, extending parallelizability across all baseband processing blocks. THz channels exhibit quasi-deterministic frequency, time, and space structures that enable efficient parallel bit mapping at the source and provide pseudo-soft bit reliability information for efficient detection and decoding at the receiver

Pipelined Architecture for Soft-decision Iterative Projection Aggregation Decoding for RM Codes

The recently proposed recursive projection-aggregation (RPA) decoding algorithm for Reed-Muller codes has received significant attention as it provides near-ML decoding performance at reasonable complexity for short codes. However, its complicated structure makes it unsuitable for hardware implementation. Iterative projection-aggregation (IPA) decoding is a modified version of RPA decoding that simplifies the hardware implementation. In this work, we present a flexible hardware architecture for the IPA decoder that can be configured from fully-sequential to fully-parallel, thus making it suitable for a wide range of applications with different constraints and resource budgets. Our simulation and implementation results show that the IPA decoder has 41% lower area consumption, 44% lower latency, four times higher throughput, but currently seven times higher power consumption for a code with block length of 128 and information length of 29 compared to a state-of-the-art polar successive cancellation list (SCL) decoder with comparable decoding performance

Sentiment Analysis in Unstructured Textual Information with Deep Learning

This document analyses the current State-of-the-Art algorithms in the fields of Natural Language Processing and Sentiment Analysis. It continues with a step-by-step explication of the development process of pre-processing techniques and neural networks architectures that allow to perform sentiment predictions (predicting rating stars) on Amazon.com customer reviews. An accuracy comparison has been made between 4 different models to check their performance. The second part of the project has been the development of a demo web application to show the potential of a Product Analytics Tool, which allows to perform sentiment predictions of any product on Amazon website. This app scrapes the reviews, loads the previously trained model and makes the predictions, generating different insights such as the most positive and negative features of the product based exclusively on the most reliable and objective data, customer reviews. The source code of the app can be found here: https://github.com/albergar2/SA_Project At the end of the document an appendix has been added providing information and estimates of the cost and tasks required to replicate this project in a professional environment.Doble Grado en Ingeniería Informática y Administración de Empresa

Analysis of Spacecraft Charging in several space environments

Since the first days of space era, the effects of the space environment in spacecraftwere considered a critical issue. Spacecraft charging is one of the most damaging effects of space environment. This work presents this phenomenon, focusing on surface spacecraft charging. This is studied through the Equipot tool that allows to study surface charging in spacecraft at Earth’s environment. It has been performed a sensitive analysis using this code and the results were compared with similar analysis presented in 1989. Considering the expansion of the space technology along the Solar system, it has been considered to broaden the study of this phenomenon to other planets. Therefore, it is also presented in this bachelor thesis the implementation of a Matlab code for the study of spacecraft charging at Jupiter and Saturn’s magnetospheres.Ingeniería Aeroespacia

Polar-Coded OFDM with Index Modulation

Polar codes, as the first error-correcting codes with an explicit construction to provably achieve thesymmetric capacity of memoryless channels, which are constructed based on channel polarization, have recently become a primary contender in communication networks for achieving tighter requirements with relatively low complexity. As one of the contributions in this thesis, three modified polar decoding schemes are proposed. These schemes include enhanced versions of successive cancellation-flip (SC-F), belief propagation (BP), and sphere decoding (SD). The proposed SC-F utilizes novel potential incorrect bits selection criteria and stack to improve its error correction performance. Next, to make the decoding performance of BP better, permutation and feedback structure are utilized. Then, in order to reduce the complexity without compromising performance, a SD by using novel decoding strategies according to modified path metric (PM) and radius extension is proposed. Additionally, to solve the problem that BP has redundant iterations, a new stopping criterion based on bit different ratio (BDR) is proposed. According to the simulation results and mathematical proof, all proposed schemes can achieve corresponding performance improvement or complexity reduction compared with existing works. Beside applying polar coding, to achieve a reliable and flexible transmission in a wireless communication system, a modified version of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) modulation based on index modulation, called OFDM-in-phase/quadrature-IM (OFDM-I/Q-IM), is applied. This modulation scheme can simultaneously improve spectral efficiency and bit-error rate (BER) performance with great flexibility in design and implementation. Hence, OFDM-I/Q-IM is considered as a potential candidate in the new generation of cellular networks. As the main contribution in this work, a polar-coded OFDM-I/Q-IM system is proposed. The general design guidelines for overcoming the difficulties associated with the application of polar codes in OFDM-I/Q-IM are presented. In the proposed system, at the transmitter, we employ a random frozen bits appending scheme which not only makes the polar code compatible with OFDM-I/Q-IM but also improves the BER performance of the system. Furthermore, at the receiver, it is shown that the \textit{a posteriori} information for each index provided by the index detector is essential for the iterative decoding of polar codes by the BP algorithm. Simulation results show that the proposed polar-coded OFDM-I/Q-IM system outperforms its OFDM counterpart in terms of BER performance

Truck Cycle and Delay Automated Data Collection System (TCD-ADCS) for Surface Coal Mining

Data management of production records has become a key element in surface coal mining operations. Information systems (IS) and information technologies (IT) can be used as valuable tools for the production monitoring and analysis of employee and equipment performances. This thesis presents the research results on the development and application of a custom-made Truck Cycle and Delay Automated Data Collection System (TCD-ADCS) for surface coal mining. The TCD-ADCS is capable of collecting trucks\u27 production data, delay times, loading and dumping times, travel distance, and GPS coordinates of production events from a mine site. Also, it enables field data transfer through a wireless network to a server located in an office environment. Additionally, the system is compatible with the already developed Integrated Production Management System (IPMS). Data are locally stored in each truck and then synchronized and replicated into a centralized server containing database management system for analysis and reporting. The system relies on motion sensing and distance traveled in order to automatically define the cycle starting/ending points, cycle time, position, and delay time. Connectivity and communication between loading equipment and trucks have also been established. A user-friendly graphic interface has been developed for the communication between the equipment operators and TCD-ADCS system. The infrastructure used for the development of this system application consists in a rugged touch-screen personal computer, 2.4 GHz radio transmitter antenna, and a high-sensitivity commercial GPS receiver. The system was developed, tested, and deployed at a surface coal mines in the U.S

Algorithm Development and VLSI Implementation of Energy Efficient Decoders of Polar Codes

With its low error-floor performance, polar codes attract significant attention as the potential standard error correction code (ECC) for future communication and data storage. However, the VLSI implementation complexity of polar codes decoders is largely influenced by its nature of in-series decoding. This dissertation is dedicated to presenting optimal decoder architectures for polar codes. This dissertation addresses several structural properties of polar codes and key properties of decoding algorithms that are not dealt with in the prior researches. The underlying concept of the proposed architectures is a paradigm that simplifies and schedules the computations such that hardware is simplified, latency is minimized and bandwidth is maximized. In pursuit of the above, throughput centric successive cancellation (TCSC) and overlapping path list successive cancellation (OPLSC) VLSI architectures and express journey BP (XJBP) decoders for the polar codes are presented. An arbitrary polar code can be decomposed by a set of shorter polar codes with special characteristics, those shorter polar codes are referred to as constituent polar codes. By exploiting the homogeneousness between decoding processes of different constituent polar codes, TCSC reduces the decoding latency of the SC decoder by 60% for codes with length n = 1024. The error correction performance of SC decoding is inferior to that of list successive cancellation decoding. The LSC decoding algorithm delivers the most reliable decoding results; however, it consumes most hardware resources and decoding cycles. Instead of using multiple instances of decoding cores in the LSC decoders, a single SC decoder is used in the OPLSC architecture. The computations of each path in the LSC are arranged to occupy the decoder hardware stages serially in a streamlined fashion. This yields a significant reduction of hardware complexity. The OPLSC decoder has achieved about 1.4 times hardware efficiency improvement compared with traditional LSC decoders. The hardware efficient VLSI architectures for TCSC and OPLSC polar codes decoders are also introduced. Decoders based on SC or LSC algorithms suffer from high latency and limited throughput due to their serial decoding natures. An alternative approach to decode the polar codes is belief propagation (BP) based algorithm. In BP algorithm, a graph is set up to guide the beliefs propagated and refined, which is usually referred to as factor graph. BP decoding algorithm allows decoding in parallel to achieve much higher throughput. XJBP decoder facilitates belief propagation by utilizing the specific constituent codes that exist in the conventional factor graph, which results in an express journey (XJ) decoder. Compared with the conventional BP decoding algorithm for polar codes, the proposed decoder reduces the computational complexity by about 40.6%. This enables an energy-efficient hardware implementation. To further explore the hardware consumption of the proposed XJBP decoder, the computations scheduling is modeled and analyzed in this dissertation. With discussions on different hardware scenarios, the optimal scheduling plans are developed. A novel memory-distributed micro-architecture of the XJBP decoder is proposed and analyzed to solve the potential memory access problems of the proposed scheduling strategy. The register-transfer level (RTL) models of the XJBP decoder are set up for comparisons with other state-of-the-art BP decoders. The results show that the power efficiency of BP decoders is improved by about 3 times