Accuracy of Doppler-Echocardiographic Mean Pulmonary Artery Pressure for Diagnosis of Pulmonary Hypertension

Background: The validity of Doppler echocardiographic (DE) measurement of systolic pulmonary artery pressure (sPAP) has been questioned. Recent studies suggest that mean pulmonary artery pressure (mPAP) might reflect more accurately the invasive pressures. Methodology/Principal Findings: 241 patients were prospectively studied to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of mPAP for the diagnosis of PH. Right heart catheterization (RHC) and DE were performed in 164 patients mainly for preoperative evaluation of heart valve dysfunction. The correlation between DE and RHC was better when mPAP (r = 0.93) and not sPAP (r = 0.81) was assessed. Bland-Altman analysis revealed a smaller variation of mPAP than sPAP. The following ROC analysis identified that a mPAP$25.5 mmHg is useful for the diagnosis of PH. This value was validated in an independent cohort of patients (n = 50) with the suspicion of chronic-thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension. The calculated diagnostic accuracy was 98%, based on excellent sensitivity of 98 % and specificity of 100%. The corresponding positive and negative predictive values were 100%, respectively 88%. Conclusion: mPAP has been found to be highly accurate for the initial diagnosis of PH. A cut-off value of 25.5 mmHg might be helpful to avoid unnecessary RHC and select patients in whom RHC might be beneficial

Neural Style Transfer: A Paradigm Shift for Image-based Artistic Rendering?

International audienceIn this meta paper we discuss image-based artistic rendering (IB-AR) based on neural style transfer (NST) and argue, while NST may represent a paradigm shift for IB-AR, that it also has to evolve as an interactive tool that considers the design aspects and mechanisms of artwork production. IB-AR received significant attention in the past decades for visual communication, covering a plethora of techniques to mimic the appeal of artistic media. Example-based rendering (EBR) represents one the most promising paradigms in IB-AR to (semi-)automatically simulate artistic media with high fidelity, but so far has been limited because it relies on pre-defined image pairs for training or informs only low-level image features for texture transfers. Recent advancements in deep convolutional neural networks showed to alleviate these limitations by separating image contents from style, thus making a generalized style transfer practicable. We categorize style transfers within the taxonomy of IB-AR, then propose a semiotic structure to derive a technical research agenda for NSTs with respect to the grand challenges of NPAR. We finally discuss the potentials of NSTs, thereby identifying applications such as casual creativity and art production

Design Space of Geometry-based Image Abstraction Techniques with Vectorization Applications

The paper presents a new approach of optimized vectorization to generate stylized artifacts such as drawings with a plotter or cutouts with a laser cutter. For this, we developed a methodology for transformations between raster and vector space. More over, we identify semiotic aspects of Geometry-based Stylization Techniques (GSTs) and the combination with raster-based stylization techniques. Therefore, the system enables also Fused Stylization Techniques (FSTs

Arkangel dans Black Mirror : la réalité diminuée

National audienceBlack Mirror est une série qui interroge les usages de la technologie dans la société. Souvent les situations sont poussées à l’extrême pour mettre en avant les travers de ce qui parfois apparait comme de bonnes solutions. Dans cet épisode, la société Arkangel propose un système numérique de contrôle à distance et de censure visuelle en temps réel. Actuellement, des chercheurs se penchent sur la question de filtrer du contenu dans des images. Nous vous proposons de ne plus jamais voir vos lasagnes de la même façon

Arkangel dans Black Mirror : la réalité diminuée

National audienceBlack Mirror est une série qui interroge les usages de la technologie dans la société. Souvent les situations sont poussées à l’extrême pour mettre en avant les travers de ce qui parfois apparait comme de bonnes solutions. Dans cet épisode, la société Arkangel propose un système numérique de contrôle à distance et de censure visuelle en temps réel. Actuellement, des chercheurs se penchent sur la question de filtrer du contenu dans des images. Nous vous proposons de ne plus jamais voir vos lasagnes de la même façon

Reducing Affective Responses to Surgical Images through Color Manipulation and Stylization

Supplemental material for the articles "Reducing Affective Responses to Surgical Images through Color Manipulation and Stylization" and "Reducing Affective Responses to Surgical Images and Videos through Stylization

Service-based processing and provisioning of image-abstraction techniques

Digital images and image streams represent two major categories of media captured, delivered, and shared on the Web. Techniques for their analysis, classification, and processing are fundamental building blocks in today’s digital media applications ranging from mobile image transformation apps to professional digital production suites. To efficiently process such digital media (1) independent of hardware requirements, (2) at different data complexity scales, while (3) yielding high-quality results, poses several challenges for software frameworks and hardware systems, in particular for mobile devices. With respect to these aspects, using service-based architectures is a common approach to strive for. However, unlike geodata, there is currently no standard approach for service definition, implementation, and orchestration in the domain of digital images and videos. This paper presents an approach for service-based image-processing and provisioning of processing techniques by the example of imageabstraction techniques. The generality and feasibility of the proposed system is demonstrated by different client applications that have been implemented for the Android operating system, for Google’s G-Suite Software-as-a- Service infrastructure, as well as for desktop systems. The performance of the system is discussed at the example of complex, resource-intensive image-abstraction techniques, such as watercolor rendering