An efficient chaos-based image encryption technique using bitplane decay and genetic operators

Social networks have greatly expanded in the last ten years the need for sharing multimedia data. However, on open networks such as the Internet, where security is frequently compromised, it is simple for eavesdroppers to approach the actual contents without much difficulty. Researchers have created a variety of encryption methods to strengthen the security of this transmission and make it difficult for eavesdroppers to get genuine data. However, these conventional approaches increase computing costs and communication overhead and do not offer protection against fresh threats. The problems with current algorithms encourage academics to further investigate the subject and suggest new algorithms that are more effective than current methods, that reduce overhead, and which are equipped with features needed by next-generation multimedia networks. In this paper, a genetic operator-based encryption method for multimedia security is proposed. It has been noted that the proposed algorithm produces improved key strength results. The investigations using attacks on data loss, differential assaults, statistical attacks, and brute force attacks show that the encryption technique suggested has improved security performance. It focuses on two techniques, bitplane slicing and followed by block segmentation and scrambling. The suggested method first divides the plaintext picture into several blocks, which is then followed by block swapping done by the genetic operator used to combine the genetic information of two different images to generate new offspring. The key stream is produced from an iterative chaotic map with infinite collapse (ICMIC). Based on a close-loop modulation coupling (CMC) approach, a three-dimensional hyperchaotic ICMIC modulation map is proposed. By using a hybrid model of multidirectional circular permutation with this map, a brand-new colour image encryption algorithm is created. In this approach, a multidirectional circular permutation is used to disrupt the image's pixel placements, and genetic operations are used to replace the pixel values. According to simulation findings and security research, the technique can fend off brute-force, statistical, differential, known-plaintext, and chosen-plaintext assaults, and has a strong key sensitivity.Web of Science2220art. no. 804

An automated system for the classification and segmentation of brain tumours in MRI images based on the modified grey level co-occurrence matrix

The development of an automated system for the classification and segmentation of brain tumours in MRI scans remains challenging due to high variability and complexity of the brain tumours. Visual examination of MRI scans to diagnose brain tumours is the accepted standard. However due to the large number of MRI slices that are produced for each patient this is becoming a time consuming and slow process that is also prone to errors. This study explores an automated system for the classification and segmentation of brain tumours in MRI scans based on texture feature extraction. The research investigates an appropriate technique for feature extraction and development of a three-dimensional segmentation method. This was achieved by the investigation and integration of several image processing methods that are related to texture features and segmentation of MRI brain scans. First, the MRI brain scans were pre-processed by image enhancement, intensity normalization, background segmentation and correcting the mid-sagittal plane (MSP) of the brain for any possible skewness in the patient’s head. Second, the texture features were extracted using modified grey level co-occurrence matrix (MGLCM) from T2-weighted (T2-w) MRI slices and classified into normal and abnormal using multi-layer perceptron neural network (MLP). The texture feature extraction method starts from the standpoint that the human brain structure is approximately symmetric around the MSP of the brain. The extracted features measure the degree of symmetry between the left and right hemispheres of the brain, which are used to detect the abnormalities in the brain. This will enable clinicians to reject the MRI brain scans of the patients who have normal brain quickly and focusing on those who have pathological brain features. Finally, the bounding 3D-boxes based genetic algorithm (BBBGA) was used to identify the location of the brain tumour and segments it automatically by using three-dimensional active contour without edge (3DACWE) method. The research was validated using two datasets; a real dataset that was collected from the MRI Unit in Al-Kadhimiya Teaching Hospital in Iraq in 2014 and the standard benchmark multimodal brain tumour segmentation (BRATS 2013) dataset. The experimental results on both datasets proved that the efficacy of the proposed system in the successful classification and segmentation of the brain tumours in MRI scans. The achieved classification accuracies were 97.8% for the collected dataset and 98.6% for the standard dataset. While the segmentation’s Dice scores were 89% for the collected dataset and 89.3% for the standard dataset

Survey on Publicly Available Sinhala Natural Language Processing Tools and Research

Sinhala is the native language of the Sinhalese people who make up the largest ethnic group of Sri Lanka. The language belongs to the globe-spanning language tree, Indo-European. However, due to poverty in both linguistic and economic capital, Sinhala, in the perspective of Natural Language Processing tools and research, remains a resource-poor language which has neither the economic drive its cousin English has nor the sheer push of the law of numbers a language such as Chinese has. A number of research groups from Sri Lanka have noticed this dearth and the resultant dire need for proper tools and research for Sinhala natural language processing. However, due to various reasons, these attempts seem to lack coordination and awareness of each other. The objective of this paper is to fill that gap of a comprehensive literature survey of the publicly available Sinhala natural language tools and research so that the researchers working in this field can better utilize contributions of their peers. As such, we shall be uploading this paper to arXiv and perpetually update it periodically to reflect the advances made in the field

CAPTCHA Types and Breaking Techniques: Design Issues, Challenges, and Future Research Directions

The proliferation of the Internet and mobile devices has resulted in malicious bots access to genuine resources and data. Bots may instigate phishing, unauthorized access, denial-of-service, and spoofing attacks to mention a few. Authentication and testing mechanisms to verify the end-users and prohibit malicious programs from infiltrating the services and data are strong defense systems against malicious bots. Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart (CAPTCHA) is an authentication process to confirm that the user is a human hence, access is granted. This paper provides an in-depth survey on CAPTCHAs and focuses on two main things: (1) a detailed discussion on various CAPTCHA types along with their advantages, disadvantages, and design recommendations, and (2) an in-depth analysis of different CAPTCHA breaking techniques. The survey is based on over two hundred studies on the subject matter conducted since 2003 to date. The analysis reinforces the need to design more attack-resistant CAPTCHAs while keeping their usability intact. The paper also highlights the design challenges and open issues related to CAPTCHAs. Furthermore, it also provides useful recommendations for breaking CAPTCHAs

Contributions to the study of Austism Spectrum Brain conectivity

164 p.Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a largely prevalent neurodevelopmental condition with a big social and economical impact affecting the entire life of families. There is an intense search for biomarkers that can be assessed as early as possible in order to initiate treatment and preparation of the family to deal with the challenges imposed by the condition. Brain imaging biomarkers have special interest. Specifically, functional connectivity data extracted from resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) should allow to detect brain connectivity alterations. Machine learning pipelines encompass the estimation of the functional connectivity matrix from brain parcellations, feature extraction and building classification models for ASD prediction. The works reported in the literature are very heterogeneous from the computational and methodological point of view. In this Thesis we carry out a comprehensive computational exploration of the impact of the choices involved while building these machine learning pipelines

Making music through real-time voice timbre analysis: machine learning and timbral control

PhDPeople can achieve rich musical expression through vocal sound { see for example human beatboxing, which achieves a wide timbral variety through a range of extended techniques. Yet the vocal modality is under-exploited as a controller for music systems. If we can analyse a vocal performance suitably in real time, then this information could be used to create voice-based interfaces with the potential for intuitive and ful lling levels of expressive control. Conversely, many modern techniques for music synthesis do not imply any particular interface. Should a given parameter be controlled via a MIDI keyboard, or a slider/fader, or a rotary dial? Automatic vocal analysis could provide a fruitful basis for expressive interfaces to such electronic musical instruments. The principal questions in applying vocal-based control are how to extract musically meaningful information from the voice signal in real time, and how to convert that information suitably into control data. In this thesis we address these questions, with a focus on timbral control, and in particular we develop approaches that can be used with a wide variety of musical instruments by applying machine learning techniques to automatically derive the mappings between expressive audio input and control output. The vocal audio signal is construed to include a broad range of expression, in particular encompassing the extended techniques used in human beatboxing. The central contribution of this work is the application of supervised and unsupervised machine learning techniques to automatically map vocal timbre to synthesiser timbre and controls. Component contributions include a delayed decision-making strategy for low-latency sound classi cation, a regression-tree method to learn associations between regions of two unlabelled datasets, a fast estimator of multidimensional di erential entropy and a qualitative method for evaluating musical interfaces based on discourse analysis