Multimodal person recognition for human-vehicle interaction

Next-generation vehicles will undoubtedly feature biometric person recognition as part of an effort to improve the driving experience. Today's technology prevents such systems from operating satisfactorily under adverse conditions. A proposed framework for achieving person recognition successfully combines different biometric modalities, borne out in two case studies

Binary and nonbinary description of hypointensity for search and retrieval of brain MR images

Diagnosis accuracy in the medical field, is mainly affected by either lack of sufficient understanding of some diseases or the inter/intra-observer variability of the diagnoses. We believe that mining of large medical databases can help improve the current status of disease understanding and decision making. In a previous study based on binary description of hypointensity in the brain, it was shown that brain iron accumulation shape provides additional information to the shape-insensitive features, such as the total brain iron load, that are commonly used in clinics. This paper proposes a novel, nonbinary description of hypointensity in the brain based on principal component analysis. We compare the complementary and redundant information provided by the two descriptions using Kendall's rank correlation coefficient in order to better understand the individual descriptions of iron accumulation in the brain and obtain a more robust and accurate search and retrieval system

Scanning from heating: 3D shape estimation of transparent objects from local surface heating

Today, with quality becoming increasingly important, each product requires three-dimensional in-line quality control. On the other hand, the 3D reconstruction of transparent objects is a very difficult problem in computer vision due to transparency and specularity of the surface. This paper proposes a new method, called Scanning From Heating (SFH), to determine the surface shape of transparent objects using laser surface heating and thermal imaging. Furthermore, the application to transparent glass is discussed and results on different surface shapes are presented

Defect detection in textile fabric images using subband domain subspace analysis

In this work, a new model that combines the concepts of wavelet transformation and subspace analysis tools, like Independent Component Analysis, Topographic Independent Component Analysis, and Independent Subspace Analysis, is developed for the purpose of defect detection in textile images. In previous works, it has been shown that reduction of the textural components of the textile image by preprocessing has increased the performance of the system. Based on this observation, in present work, the aforementioned subspace analysis tools are aimed to be applied on the sub-band images. The feature vector of a sub-window of a test image is compared with that of the defect-free image in order to make a decision. This decision is based on a Euclidean distance classifier. The performance increase that results using wavelet transformation prior to subspace analysis has been discussed in detail. While all the subspace analysis methods has been found to lead to the same detection performances, as a further step, independent subspace analysis is used to classify the detected defects according to their directionalities

The effect of garlic powder on human urinary cytokine excretion.

PubMedID: 24595942To evaluate the effects of orally administered dehydrated garlic powder on cytokine excretion in the urinary tract. A total of 60 healthy volunteers, randomized into 3 groups, were given a single oral dose of 1 g or 3 g of dehydrated garlic powder or placebo. Urine samples were obtained 6.0 and 24.0 h after garlic intake and assayed for interleukin-8 (IL-8), interleukin- 12 (IL-12), tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-?), diallyl disulfide (DADS) and diallyl sulfide (DAS). Significant increases in IL-12 levels over baseline were noted in urine samples obtained after oral intake of 1 g and 3 g of garlic powder (P .017). DADS and DAS were not detected in the urine samples at any time after garlic powder intake. Oral intake of doses of garlic traditionally used for daily supplementation increases urinary levels of IL-12, which is a potent stimulator of T helper cell 1 (Th-1) immune responses. This observation encourages further studies investigating the immunostimulatory role of garlic in the urinary tract

Robot Vision beyond 2000

The work in the Construction Robotics Unit at City University has progressed through prototyping a wallbuilding robot and a wall-climbing robot, to now employing computer vision in feedback systems. Vision has already been considered for assessing the visual quality of the component bricks to be built into a wall, and in locating the position of the wall-climbing robot when it is inspecting a large building. With this machine vision experience, new tasks are being considered. One is the inspection of large storage tanks or ships, and another is the restoration of large painted structures such as steel bridges. That work should start to yield fruit 'Beyond 2000'. Specifically, work is now underway to consider automating the paint stripping operation for a robot cleaning a steel bridge. The aim is to have a green operation, by collecting the removed paint and spent blast material. Also, by having a robot manipulate the heavy sand- or water- blasting equipment, the operators can be safe i..