Sharing e-Health information through ontological layering

e-Health information, including patient clinical and demographic data, is very often dispersed across various environments, which either generate them or retrieve them from different sources. Healthcare professionals often need related e-health information in order to obtain a more comprehensive picture of a patient's health status. There are many obstacles to retrieving information and data from heterogeneous sources. In this paper we show that our ontological layering helps in (a) classifying requests imposed by healthcare professionals when retrieving e-health information from heterogeneous sources and (b) resolving semantic heterogeneities across repositories and composing an adequate answer to issued requests. We use a layered software architectural model based on Generic ontology for Context-aware, Interoperable and Data sharing (Go- CID) software applications, applicable to e-Health environments. Ontological layering and reasoning have been demonstrated with semantic web technologies

Interim research assessment 2003-2005 - Computer Science

This report primarily serves as a source of information for the 2007 Interim Research Assessment Committee for Computer Science at the three technical universities in the Netherlands. The report also provides information for others interested in our research activities

A geometrical-based approach to recognise structure of complex interiors

3D modelling of building interiors has gained a lot of interest recently, specifically since the rise of Building Information Modeling (BIM). A number of methods have been developed in the past, however most of them are limited to modelling non-complex interiors. 3D laser scanners are the preferred sensor to collect the 3D data, however the cost of state-of-the-art laser scanners are prohibitive to many. Other types of sensors could also be used to generate the 3D data but they have limitations especially when dealing with clutter and occlusions. This research has developed a platform to produce 3D modelling of building interiors while adapting a low-cost, low-level laser scanner to generate the 3D interior data. The PreSuRe algorithm developed here, which introduces a new pipeline in modelling building interiors, combines both novel methods and adapts existing approaches to produce the 3D modelling of various interiors, from sparse room to complex interiors with non-ideal geometrical structure, highly cluttered and occluded. This approach has successfully reconstructed the structure of interiors, with above 96% accuracy, even with high amount of noise data and clutter. The time taken to produce the resulting model is almost real-time, compared to existing techniques which may take hours to generate the reconstruction. The produced model is also equipped with semantic information which differentiates the model from a regular 3D CAD drawing and can be use to assist professionals and experts in related fields

Efficiency in utilizing ICT infrastructure in developing countries: a case study of the Royal Thai Police\u27s attitudes to the adoption of an image retrieval application for eyewitness identification

One of the most important aspects of decision and policy making is the timely access to accurately and relevant information. At present the situation in some developing countries is that communication and exchange of information between the government agencies are still paper-based. It can often take weeks or months for one government agency to obtain the records it requires from another agency. The lack of communication between these agencies often results in duplication of efforts and inefficiencies. This lack of communication also means that agencies often produce more of the irrelevant albeit sophisticated information (such as the Statistics Division) than the essential information that is critical and actually needed by other agency for decision making. (World Bank report, 1998) In order to bring people into information society, to have access to information, it is crucial to have appropriate technology and applications that compatible with both old and new technologies—given that majority can not afford to keep up with new technologies being introduced everyday--as well as quality programming in indigenous languages, To create an information society in developing countries, we must first have knowledge of their past, understand their present. Only then participating in their future can be more probable and possible (Matsepe-Casaburri 1996) The overall aim of this study is to add value to the process of information sharing among the government departments in Thailand. It does this by analyzing the opportunity to integrate existing technology with the data available in existing databases and make it more valuable for future use. A case study of the Department of Local Administration, under the Ministry of Interior, and the Royal Thai Police Department is used to develop an understanding of how the utilization of data to a full extent can be beneficial in the government service. In Thailand, every Thai citizen is required to carry a national identity card. Personal data of each person such as date of birth, height, blood type, religion and occupation, including registered address and individual photograph image, are kept in the Central Registration Database Systems (CRDS). The CRDS is operated by the Department of Local Administration under the supervision of the Ministry of Interior. In order to maximize the benefits from this database, the CRDS is shared by other authorized government agencies. The Royal Thai Police Department is one of the government agencies that also share the information from the CRDS. Frequently, the individual registration database and photographs from CRDS are needed to support crime investigation. This research therefore, investigates how the Thai government could utilize the existing database system to aid in the crime investigation process. It then suggests an effective method of image retrieval to support police officers when searching criminal records from a Central Registration Database Systems. The research begins with an exploratory study of the use and sharing of information amongst the government agencies in developing countries. It examines the use of existing technology and how the Government uses technology to access information. There are two major objectives in this research. The first one addresses how value can be added to the present data in the existing system. The author chooses to focus on the area of crime investigation and evaluate two existing image retrieval methods, in order to determine the most suited one from crime investigation process in Thailand. The second objective is to examine and evaluate the attitudes and perceptions of the Thai police towards acceptance of IT usage in the crime investigation process. The results are then was compared with the literature on barriers to the adoption of IT and some of the more recently developed Technology Acceptance Models, which is also used to explain the findings

Advances in Robotics, Automation and Control

The book presents an excellent overview of the recent developments in the different areas of Robotics, Automation and Control. Through its 24 chapters, this book presents topics related to control and robot design; it also introduces new mathematical tools and techniques devoted to improve the system modeling and control. An important point is the use of rational agents and heuristic techniques to cope with the computational complexity required for controlling complex systems. Through this book, we also find navigation and vision algorithms, automatic handwritten comprehension and speech recognition systems that will be included in the next generation of productive systems developed by man

Virtual human modelling and animation for real-time sign language visualisation

>Magister Scientiae - MScThis thesis investigates the modelling and animation of virtual humans for real-time sign language visualisation. Sign languages are fully developed natural languages used by Deaf communities all over the world. These languages are communicated in a visual-gestural modality by the use of manual and non-manual gestures and are completely di erent from spoken languages. Manual gestures include the use of hand shapes, hand movements, hand locations and orientations of the palm in space. Non-manual gestures include the use of facial expressions, eye-gazes, head and upper body movements. Both manual and nonmanual gestures must be performed for sign languages to be correctly understood and interpreted. To e ectively visualise sign languages, a virtual human system must have models of adequate quality and be able to perform both manual and non-manual gesture animations in real-time. Our goal was to develop a methodology and establish an open framework by using various standards and open technologies to model and animate virtual humans of adequate quality to e ectively visualise sign languages. This open framework is to be used in a Machine Translation system that translates from a verbal language such as English to any sign language. Standards and technologies we employed include H-Anim, MakeHuman, Blender, Python and SignWriting. We found it necessary to adapt and extend H-Anim to e ectively visualise sign languages. The adaptations and extensions we made to H-Anim include imposing joint rotational limits, developing exible hands and the addition of facial bones based on the MPEG-4 Facial De nition Parameters facial feature points for facial animation. By using these standards and technologies, we found that we could circumvent a few di cult problems, such as: modelling high quality virtual humans; adapting and extending H-Anim; creating a sign language animation action vocabulary; blending between animations in an action vocabulary; sharing animation action data between our virtual humans; and e ectively visualising South African Sign Language.South Afric