Palmprint recognition using principal lines characterization

In this paper, a novel contactless Palmprint recognition system using palm print principal line-based feature extraction technique has been proposed. The discriminative Palmprint features were extracted from a pre-processed acquired images using easily available and low cost camera. Distances from endpoints to endpoints and point of interception to endpoints were calculated and transformed to frequency domain by the application of Discrete Fourier Transformed (DFT) technique. The extracted K-points DFT coefficients has been used as the discriminating features for recognition and identification purposes using correlation technique, power spectral matching and Euclidean distance measure. The proposed technique has been observed to be rotation, scale and translation invariant and accuracy of 100% was achieved in a 1-to-4 recognition and classification verification

Performance analysis of ANN based YCbCr skin detection algorithm

Skin detection from acquired images has various areas of applications especially in automatic facial and human recognition system. The performance analysis of artificial neural network based –YcbCr skin recognition and three other techniques is evaluated in this work. Results obtained show that the use of YCbCr color model performs better than RGB colour model and the use of artificial neural network further improves the accuracy of the system

Artificial neural network based autoregressive modeling technique with application in voice activity detection

A new method of estimating the coefficients of an autoregressive (AR) model using real-valued neural network (RVNN) technique is presented in this paper. The coefficients of the AR model are obtained from the synaptic weights and adaptive coefficients of the activation function of a two layer RVNN while the number of neurons in the hidden layer is estimated from over-constrained system of equations. The performance of the proposed technique has been evaluated using sinusoidal data and recorded speech so as to examine the spectral resolution and line splitting as well as its ability to detect voiced and unvoiced data section from a recorded speech. Results obtained show that the method can accurately resolve closely related frequencies without experiencing spectral line splitting as well as identify the voice and unvoiced segments in a recorded speech

Analysis of the ECG signal using SVD-based parametric modelling technique

A new parametric modeling technique for the analysis of the ECG signal is presented in this paper. This approach involves the projection of the excitation signal on the right eigenvectors of the impulse response matrix of the LPC filter. Each projected value is then weighted by the corresponding singular value, leading to an approximated sum of exponentially damped sinusoids (EDS). A two-stage procedure is then used to estimate the EDS model parameters. Prony's algorithm is first used to obtain initial estimates of the model, while the Gauss-Newton method is applied to solve the non-linear least-square optimisation problem. The performance of the proposed model is evaluated on abnormal clinical ECG data selected from the MIT-BIH database using objective measures of distortion. A good compression ratio per beat has been obtained using the proposed algorithm which is quite satisfactory when compared to other techniques

A new method of correcting uneven illumination problem in fundus image

Recent advancements in signal and image processing have reduced the time of diagnoses, effort and pressure on the screeners by providing auto diagnostic tools for different diseases. The success rate of these tools greatly depend on the quality of acquired images. Bad image quality can significantly reduce the specificity and the sensitivity which in turn forces screeners back to their tedious job of manual diagnoses. In acquired fundus images, some areas appear to be brighter than the other, that is areas close to the center of the image are always well illuminated, hence appear very bright while areas far from the center are poorly illuminated hence appears to be very dark. Several techniques including the simple thresholding, Naka Rushton (NR) filtering technique and histogram equalization (HE) method have been suggested by various researchers to overcome this problem. However, each of these methods has limitations at their own and hence the need to develop a more robust technique that will provide better performance with greater flexibility. A new method of compensating uneven (irregular) illumination in fundus images termed global-local adaptive histogram equalization using partially-overlapped windows (GLAPOW) is proposed in this paper. The developed algorithm has been tested and the results obtained show superior performance when compared to other known techniques for uneven illumination correction

Analysis of the ECG signal using SVD-based parametric modelling technique

A new parametric modeling technique for the analysis of the ECG signal is presented in this paper. This approach involves the projection of the excitation signal on the right eigenvectors of the impulse response matrix of the LPC filter. Each projected value is then weighted by the corresponding singular value, leading to an approximated sum of exponentially damped sinusoids (EDS). A two-stage procedure is then used to estimate the EDS model parameters. Prony's algorithm is first used to obtain initial estimates of the model, while the Gauss-Newton method is applied to solve the non-linear least-square optimisation problem. The performance of the proposed model is evaluated on abnormal clinical ECG data selected from the MIT-BIH database using objective measures of distortion. A good compression ratio per beat has been obtained using the proposed algorithm which is quite satisfactory when compared to other techniques

Increasing The Speed of Convergence of an Artificial Neural Network based ARMA Coefficients Determination Technique

In this paper, novel techniques in increasing the accuracy and speed of convergence of a Feed forward Back propagation Artificial Neural Network (FFBPNN) with polynomial activation function reported in literature is presented. These technique was subsequently used to determine the coefficients of Autoregressive Moving Average (ARMA) and Autoregressive (AR) system. The results obtained by introducing sequential and batch method of weight initialization, batch method of weight and coefficient update, adaptive momentum and learning rate technique gives more accurate result and significant reduction in convergence time when compared t the traditional method of back propagation algorithm, thereby making FFBPNN an appropriate technique for online ARMA coefficient determination

Optimal model order selection for transient error autoregressive moving average (TERA) MRI reconstruction method

An alternative approach to the use of Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) for Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) reconstruction is the use of parametric modeling technique. This method is suitable for problems in which the image can be modeled by explicit known source functions with a few adjustable parameters. Despite the success reported in the use of modeling technique as an alternative MRI reconstruction technique, two important problems constitutes challenges to the applicability of this method, these are estimation of Model order and model coefficient determination. In this paper, five of the suggested method of evaluating the model order have been evaluated, these are: The Final Prediction Error (FPE), Akaike Information Criterion (AIC), Residual Variance (RV), Minimum Description Length (MDL) and Hannan and Quinn (HNQ) criterion. These criteria were evaluated on MRI data sets based on the method of Transient Error Reconstruction Algorithm (TERA). The result for each criterion is compared to result obtained by the use of a fixed order technique and three measures of similarity were evaluated. Result obtained shows that the use of MDL gives the highest measure of similarity to that use by a fixed order technique

Optimisation of Internal Model Control Performance Indices for Autonomous Vehicle Suspension

Autonomous vehicles (AVs) have grown in popularity and acceptability due to their unique capacity to reduce pollution, road accidents, human error, and traffic congestion. Vehicle suspension is an important component of a car chassis since it affects the performance of vehicle dynamics. As a result, enhancing suspension performance and stability is critical in order to achieve a more pleasant and safer car. Although there are several suspension control methods, they all suffer from fixed gain characteristics that are prone to nonlinearities, disturbances, and the inability to be tuned online. This research provides a comparison of Internal Model Control (IMC) performance metrics for vehicle suspension control. The IMC approach was tuned using the Genetic Algorithm and the Particle Swarm Optimisation algorithms. The performance of each of these schemes was analysed and compared in order to determine the approach with the best performance in terms of AV suspension control. The performance of the system response was compared to that of the traditional IMC. According to the comparison analysis, the optimized IMC systems had lower IAE, ITAE, ISE, rising time, and settling time values than the traditional IMC. Furthermore, there were no overshoots in any of the controllers

MRI reconstruction using discrete Fourier transform: a tutorial

The use of Inverse Discrete Fourier Transform (IDFT) implemented in the form of Inverse Fourier Transform (IFFT) is one of the standard method of reconstructing Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) from uniformly sampled K-space data. In this tutorial, three of the major problems associated with the use of IFFT in MRI reconstruction are highlighted. The tutorial also gives brief introduction to MRI physics; MRI system from instrumentation point of view; K-space signal and the process of IDFT and IFFT for One and two dimensional (1D and 2D) data