Monitoring Processes in Visual Search Enhanced by Professional Experience: The Case of Orange Quality-Control Workers

Visual search tasks have often been used to investigate how cognitive processes change with expertise. Several studies have shown visual experts' advantages in detecting objects related to their expertise. Here, we tried to extend these findings by investigating whether professional search experience could boost top-down monitoring processes involved in visual search, independently of advantages specific to objects of expertise. To this aim, we recruited a group of quality-control workers employed in citrus farms. Given the specific features of this type of job, we expected that the extensive employment of monitoring mechanisms during orange selection could enhance these mechanisms even in search situations in which orange-related expertise is not suitable. To test this hypothesis, we compared performance of our experimental group and of a well-matched control group on a computerized visual search task. In one block the target was an orange (expertise target) while in the other block the target was a Smurfette doll (neutral target). The a priori hypothesis was to find an advantage for quality-controllers in those situations in which monitoring was especially involved, that is, when deciding the presence/absence of the target required a more extensive inspection of the search array. Results were consistent with our hypothesis. Quality-controllers were faster in those conditions that extensively required monitoring processes, specifically, the Smurfette-present and both target-absent conditions. No differences emerged in the orange-present condition, which resulted to mainly rely on bottom-up processes. These results suggest that top-down processes in visual search can be enhanced through immersive real-life experience beyond visual expertise advantages

3D time series analysis of cell shape using Laplacian approaches

Background: Fundamental cellular processes such as cell movement, division or food uptake critically depend on cells being able to change shape. Fast acquisition of three-dimensional image time series has now become possible, but we lack efficient tools for analysing shape deformations in order to understand the real three-dimensional nature of shape changes. Results: We present a framework for 3D+time cell shape analysis. The main contribution is three-fold: First, we develop a fast, automatic random walker method for cell segmentation. Second, a novel topology fixing method is proposed to fix segmented binary volumes without spherical topology. Third, we show that algorithms used for each individual step of the analysis pipeline (cell segmentation, topology fixing, spherical parameterization, and shape representation) are closely related to the Laplacian operator. The framework is applied to the shape analysis of neutrophil cells. Conclusions: The method we propose for cell segmentation is faster than the traditional random walker method or the level set method, and performs better on 3D time-series of neutrophil cells, which are comparatively noisy as stacks have to be acquired fast enough to account for cell motion. Our method for topology fixing outperforms the tools provided by SPHARM-MAT and SPHARM-PDM in terms of their successful fixing rates. The different tasks in the presented pipeline for 3D+time shape analysis of cells can be solved using Laplacian approaches, opening the possibility of eventually combining individual steps in order to speed up computations

Recognition of Microseismic and Blasting Signals in Mines Based on Convolutional Neural Network and Stockwell Transform

The microseismic monitoring signals which need to be determined in mines include those caused by both rock bursts and by blasting. The blasting signals must be separated from the microseismic signals in order to extract the information needed for the correct location of the source and for determining the blast mechanism. The use of a convolutional neural network (CNN) is a viable approach to extract these blast characteristic parameters automatically and to achieve the accuracy needed in the signal recognition. The Stockwell Transform (or S-Transform) has excellent two-dimensional time-frequency characteristics and thus to obtain the microseismic signal and blasting vibration signal separately, the microseismic signal has been converted in this work into a two-dimensional image format by use of the S-Transform, following which it is recognized by using the CNN. The sample data given in this paper are used for model training, where the training sample is an image containing three RGB color channels. The training time can be decreased by means of reducing the picture size and thus reducing the number of training steps used. The optimal combination of parameters can then be obtained after continuously updating the training parameters. When the image size is 180 × 140 pixels, it has been shown that the test accuracy can reach 96.15% and that it is feasible to classify separately the blasting signal and the microseismic signal based on using the S-Transform and the CNN model architecture, where the training parameters were designed by synthesizing LeNet-5 and AlexNet