7,516 research outputs found
Revisiting Complex Moments For 2D Shape Representation and Image Normalization
When comparing 2D shapes, a key issue is their normalization. Translation and
scale are easily taken care of by removing the mean and normalizing the energy.
However, defining and computing the orientation of a 2D shape is not so simple.
In fact, although for elongated shapes the principal axis can be used to define
one of two possible orientations, there is no such tool for general shapes. As
we show in the paper, previous approaches fail to compute the orientation of
even noiseless observations of simple shapes. We address this problem. In the
paper, we show how to uniquely define the orientation of an arbitrary 2D shape,
in terms of what we call its Principal Moments. We show that a small subset of
these moments suffice to represent the underlying 2D shape and propose a new
method to efficiently compute the shape orientation: Principal Moment Analysis.
Finally, we discuss how this method can further be applied to normalize
grey-level images. Besides the theoretical proof of correctness, we describe
experiments demonstrating robustness to noise and illustrating the method with
real images.Comment: 69 pages, 20 figure
Probing the Protostellar Envelope around L1157: the Dust and Gas Connection
We present observations of the Class 0 protostar L1157-mm using the Combined
Array for Research in Millimeter-wave Astronomy (CARMA) in 3 mm dust continuum
and N2H+ line emission. In the N2H+ line, we detect a large-scale envelope
extended over a linear size of ~20,000AU flattened in the direction
perpendicular to the outflow. This N2H+ feature coincides with the outer
envelope seen in the 8 micron extinction by Looney et al. Meanwhile, the dust
continuum traces the compact, nearly spherical structure of the inner envelope,
where N2H+ becomes depleted. This highly flattened N2H+ envelope also shows
dynamical signatures consistent with gravitational infall in the inner region,
but a slow, solid-body rotation at large scales. This flattened structure is
not a rotationally supported circumstellar disk; instead, it resembles a
prestellar core both morphologically and kinematically, representing the early
phase of a Class 0 system. In this paper, we construct a simple model to
interpret both the dust continuum and N2H+ emission and suggest a possible
dynamical scenario for the overall properties of the envelope.Comment: Accepted for publication by the ApJ, 34 pages, 10 figures and 2
table
SHIRAZ: an automated histology image annotation system for zebrafish phenomics
Histological characterization is used in clinical and research contexts as a highly sensitive method for detecting the morphological features of disease and abnormal gene function. Histology has recently been accepted as a phenotyping method for the forthcoming Zebrafish Phenome Project, a large-scale community effort to characterize the morphological, physiological, and behavioral phenotypes resulting from the mutations in all known genes in the zebrafish genome. In support of this project, we present a novel content-based image retrieval system for the automated annotation of images containing histological abnormalities in the developing eye of the larval zebrafish
A near-infrared interferometric survey of debris disc stars. II. CHARA/FLUOR observations of six early-type dwarfs
High-precision interferometric observations of six early-type main sequence
stars known to harbour cold debris discs have been obtained in the
near-infrared K band with the FLUOR instrument at the CHARA Array. The measured
squared visibilities are compared to the expected visibility of the stellar
photospheres based on theoretical photospheric models taking into account
rotational distortion, searching for potential visibility reduction at short
baselines due to circumstellar emission. Our observations bring to light the
presence of resolved circumstellar emission around one of the six target stars
(zeta Aql) at the 5 sigma level. The morphology of the emission source cannot
be directly constrained because of the sparse spatial frequency sampling of our
interferometric data. Using complementary adaptive optics observations and
radial velocity measurements, we find that the presence of a low-mass companion
is a likely origin for the excess emission. The potential companion has a
K-band contrast of four magnitudes, a most probable mass of about 0.6 Msun, and
is expected to orbit between about 5.5 AU and 8 AU from its host star assuming
a purely circular orbit. Nevertheless, by adjusting a physical debris disc
model to the observed Spectral Energy Distribution of the zeta Aql system, we
also show that the presence of hot dust within 10 AU from zeta Aql, producing a
total thermal emission equal to 1.69 +- 0.31% of the photospheric flux in the K
band, is another viable explanation for the observed near-infrared excess. Our
re-interpretation of archival near- to far-infrared photometric measurements
shows however that cold dust is not present around zeta Aql at the sensitivity
limit of the IRS and MIPS instruments onboard Spitzer, and urges us to remove
zeta Aql from the category of bona fide debris disc stars.Comment: 14 pages, accepted for publication in A&
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