5,100 research outputs found
A scintillating plastic fiber tracking detector for neutron and proton imaging and spectroscopy
We report the results of recent calibration data analysis of a prototype scintillating fiber tracking detector system designed to perform imaging, spectroscopy and particle identification on 20 to 250 MeV neutrons and protons. We present the neutron imaging concept and briefly review the detection principle and the prototype description. The prototype detector system records ionization track data on an event-by-event basis allowing event selection criteria to be used in the off-line analysis. Images of acrylic phantoms from the analysis of recent proton beam calibrations (14 to 65 MeV range) are presented as demonstrations of the particle identification, imaging and energy measurement capabilities. The measured position resolution is c 500 pm. The measured energy resolution (AE/E, FWHM) is 14.2% at 35 MeV. An effective technique for track identification and data compression is presented. The detection techniques employed can be applied to measurements in a variety of disciplines including solar and atmospheric physics, radiation therapy and nuclear materials monitoring. These applications are discussed briefly as are alternative detector configurations and future development plans
Online Pattern Recognition for the ALICE High Level Trigger
The ALICE High Level Trigger has to process data online, in order to select
interesting (sub)events, or to compress data efficiently by modeling
techniques.Focusing on the main data source, the Time Projection Chamber (TPC),
we present two pattern recognition methods under investigation: a sequential
approach "cluster finder" and "track follower") and an iterative approach
("track candidate finder" and "cluster deconvoluter"). We show, that the former
is suited for pp and low multiplicity PbPb collisions, whereas the latter might
be applicable for high multiplicity PbPb collisions, if it turns out, that more
than 8000 charged particles would have to be reconstructed inside the TPC.
Based on the developed tracking schemes we show, that using modeling techniques
a compression factor of around 10 might be achievableComment: Realtime Conference 2003, Montreal, Canada to be published in IEEE
Transactions on Nuclear Science (TNS), 6 pages, 8 figure
Connectivity-Enforcing Hough Transform for the Robust Extraction of Line Segments
Global voting schemes based on the Hough transform (HT) have been widely used
to robustly detect lines in images. However, since the votes do not take line
connectivity into account, these methods do not deal well with cluttered
images. In opposition, the so-called local methods enforce connectivity but
lack robustness to deal with challenging situations that occur in many
realistic scenarios, e.g., when line segments cross or when long segments are
corrupted. In this paper, we address the critical limitations of the HT as a
line segment extractor by incorporating connectivity in the voting process.
This is done by only accounting for the contributions of edge points lying in
increasingly larger neighborhoods and whose position and directional content
agree with potential line segments. As a result, our method, which we call
STRAIGHT (Segment exTRAction by connectivity-enforcInG HT), extracts the
longest connected segments in each location of the image, thus also integrating
into the HT voting process the usually separate step of individual segment
extraction. The usage of the Hough space mapping and a corresponding
hierarchical implementation make our approach computationally feasible. We
present experiments that illustrate, with synthetic and real images, how
STRAIGHT succeeds in extracting complete segments in several situations where
current methods fail.Comment: Submitted for publicatio
Pre-processing of integral images for 3-D displays
This paper seeks to explore a method to accurately correct geometric distortions caused during the capture of three dimensional (3-D) integral images. Such distortions are rotational and scaling errors which, if not corrected, will cause banding and moire effects on the replayed image. The method for calculating the angle of deviation in the 3-D Integral Images is based on Hough Transform. It allows detection of the angle necessary for correction of the rotational error. Experiments have been conducted on a number of 3-D integral image samples and it has been found that the proposed method produces results with accuracy of 0.05 deg
Design of automatic vision-based inspection system for solder joint segmentation
Purpose: Computer vision has been widely used in the inspection of electronic components. This paper proposes a computer vision system for the automatic detection, localisation, and segmentation of solder joints on Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) under different illumination conditions. Design/methodology/approach: An illumination normalization approach is applied to an image, which can effectively and efficiently eliminate the effect of uneven illumination while keeping the properties of the processed image the same as in the corresponding image under normal lighting conditions. Consequently special lighting and instrumental setup can be reduced in order to detect solder joints. These normalised images are insensitive to illumination variations and are used for the subsequent solder joint detection stages. In the segmentation approach, the PCB image is transformed from an RGB color space to a YIQ color space for the effective detection of solder joints from the background. Findings: The segmentation results show that the proposed approach improves the performance significantly for images under varying illumination conditions. Research limitations/implications: This paper proposes a front-end system for the automatic detection, localisation, and segmentation of solder joint defects. Further research is required to complete the full system including the classification of solder joint defects. Practical implications: The methodology presented in this paper can be an effective method to reduce cost and improve quality in production of PCBs in the manufacturing industry. Originality/value: This research proposes the automatic location, identification and segmentation of solder joints under different illumination conditions
About the directional properties of Solar Spicules from Hough Transform analysis
Spicules are intermittently rising above the surface of the Sun eruptions;
EUV jets are now also reported in immediately above layers. The variation of
spicule orientation with respect to the solar latitude, presumably reflecting
the confinement and the focusing of ejecta by the surrounding global coronal
magnetic field, is an important parameter to understand their dynamical
properties. A wealth of high resolution images of limb spicules are made
available in H CaII emission from the SOT Hinode mission. Furthermore, the
Hough transform is applied to the resulting images for making a statistical
analysis of spicule orientations in different regions around the solar limb,
from the pole to the equator. Results show a large difference of spicule
apparent tilt angles in: (i) the solar pole regions, (ii) the equatorial
regions, (iii) the active regions and (iv) the coronal hole regions. Spicules
are visible in a radial direction in the polar regions with a tilt angle (less
than 200). The tilt angle is even reduced to 10 degrees inside the coronal hole
with open magnetic field lines and at the lower latitude the tilt angle reaches
values in excess of 50 degree. Usually, which is in close resemblance to the
rosettes made of dark mottles and fibrils in projection on the solar disk. The
inference of these results for explaining the so-called chromospheric
prolateness observed at solar minimum of activity in cool chromospheric lines
is considered.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figure
Circulant temporal encoding for video retrieval and temporal alignment
We address the problem of specific video event retrieval. Given a query video
of a specific event, e.g., a concert of Madonna, the goal is to retrieve other
videos of the same event that temporally overlap with the query. Our approach
encodes the frame descriptors of a video to jointly represent their appearance
and temporal order. It exploits the properties of circulant matrices to
efficiently compare the videos in the frequency domain. This offers a
significant gain in complexity and accurately localizes the matching parts of
videos. The descriptors can be compressed in the frequency domain with a
product quantizer adapted to complex numbers. In this case, video retrieval is
performed without decompressing the descriptors. We also consider the temporal
alignment of a set of videos. We exploit the matching confidence and an
estimate of the temporal offset computed for all pairs of videos by our
retrieval approach. Our robust algorithm aligns the videos on a global timeline
by maximizing the set of temporally consistent matches. The global temporal
alignment enables synchronous playback of the videos of a given scene
Cleaning sky survey databases using Hough Transform and Renewal String approaches
Large astronomical databases obtained from sky surveys such as the
SuperCOSMOS Sky Survey (SSS) invariably suffer from spurious records coming
from artefactual effects of the telescope, satellites and junk objects in orbit
around earth and physical defects on the photographic plate or CCD. Though
relatively small in number these spurious records present a significant problem
in many situations where they can become a large proportion of the records
potentially of interest to a given astronomer. Accurate and robust techniques
are needed for locating and flagging such spurious objects, and we are
undertaking a programme investigating the use of machine learning techniques in
this context. In this paper we focus on the four most common causes of unwanted
records in the SSS: satellite or aeroplane tracks, scratches, fibres and other
linear phenomena introduced to the plate, circular halos around bright stars
due to internal reflections within the telescope and diffraction spikes near to
bright stars. Appropriate techniques are developed for the detection of each of
these. The methods are applied to the SSS data to develop a dataset of spurious
object detections, along with confidence measures, which can allow these
unwanted data to be removed from consideration. These methods are general and
can be adapted to other astronomical survey data.Comment: Accepted for MNRAS. 17 pages, latex2e, uses mn2e.bst, mn2e.cls,
md706.bbl, shortbold.sty (all included). All figures included here as low
resolution jpegs. A version of this paper including the figures can be
downloaded from http://www.anc.ed.ac.uk/~amos/publications.html and more
details on this project can be found at
http://www.anc.ed.ac.uk/~amos/sattrackres.htm
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