Topology-preserving perceptual segmentation using the Combinatorial Pyramid

Scene understanding and other high-level visual tasks usually rely on segmenting the captured images for dealing with a more efficient mid-level representation. Although this segmentation stage will consider topological constraints for the set of obtained regions (e.g., their internal connectivity), it is typical that the importance of preserving the topological relationships among regions will be not taken into account. Contrary to other similar approaches, this paper presents a bottom-up approach for perceptual segmentation of natural images which preserves the topology of the image. The segmentation algorithm consists of two consecutive stages: firstly, the input image is partitioned into a set of blobs of uniform colour (pre-segmentation stage) and then, using a more complex distance which integrates edge and region descriptors, these blobs are hierarchically merged (perceptual grouping). Both stages are addressed using the Combinatorial Pyramid, a hierarchical structure which can correctly encode relationships among image regions at upper levels. The performance of the proposed approach has been initially evaluated with respect to groundtruth segmentation data using the Berkeley Segmentation Dataset and Benchmark. Although additional descriptors must be added to deal with small regions and textured surfaces, experimental results reveal that the proposed perceptual grouping provides satisfactory scores

Towards Active Image Segmentation: the Foveal Bounded Irregular Pyramid

Presentado en: 2nd workshop on Recognition and Action for Scene Understanding York, Inglaterra August 30, 2013It is well established that the units of attention on human vision are not merely spatial but closely related to perceptual objects. This implies a strong relationship between segmentation and attention processes. This interaction is bi-directional: if the segmentation process constraints attention, the way an image is segmented may depend on the specific question asked to an observer, i.e. what she 'attend' in this sense. When the focus of attention is deployed from one visual unit to another, the rest of the scene is perceived but at a lower resolution that the focused object. The result is a multi-resolution visual perception in which the fovea, a dimple on the central retina, provides the highest resolution vision. While much work has recently been focused on computational models for object-based attention, the design and development of multi-resolution structures that can segment the input image according to the focused perceptual unit is largely unexplored. This paper proposes a novel structure for multi-resolution image segmentation that extends the encoding provided by the Bounded Irregular Pyramid. Bottom-up attention is enclosed in the same structure, allowing to set the fovea over the most salient image region. Preliminary results obtained from the segmentation of natural images show that the performance of the approach is good in terms of speed and accuracy.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

IDENTIFICATION OF SAFETY ALERT BY MONITORING ANALYTICAL PARAMETERS AND HIGH-RISK DRUGS

Early detection of  adverse  drug  reactions  (ADR) increases patient  safety.  Our  objective  was  to  identify  ADR  by  monitoring laboratory  parameters  and  high-risk  drugs.  We  carried  out  a two-month  prospective  observational  study  in  a  Internal Medicine  Department,  with  daily  recording  of  drugs  prescribed and  the  following  parameters:  Na,  K,  Ca,  serum  creatinine, glomerular  filtration  rate  (GFR),  INR,  glucose,  haemoglobin, platelets,  ALT,  AST,  bilirubin,  GGT,  alkaline  phosphatase,  TSH, T4,  and  blood  digoxin.  High-risk  drugs  were  closely  monitored. 52  patients  included,  of  whom  46.2%  experienced  an  ADR.  We observed  an  association  with  drugs  in  25.5%,  as  follows: reduction  in  GFR,  26.9%  (associated  with  loop  diuretics [41.7%],  angiotensin-converting  enzyme  [ACE]  inhibitors [33.3%],  angiotensin  II  receptor  blockers  [ARB]  [16.6%],  andanti-diabetic  drugs  [8.3%]);  hypokalemia,  22.3%  (associated with  loop  diuretics  [50.0%],  potassium-free  fluid  [37.5%],  and salbutamol  [12.5%]);  hyperkalemia,  14.4%  (associated  with ACE  inhibitors  [60.0%]  and  ARB  [40.0%]);  INR  out  of  range, 10.8%  (associated  with  drug  interactions  [66.7%]); hyperglycemia,  8.1%  (associated  with  corticosteroids  [66.7%] and  anti-diabetic  drugs  [33.3%]);  and  other  conditions,  18.8%. We  conclued  that  patient  safety  could  be  improved  by implementing  warnings  in  electronic  prescriptions  in  cases  of  a decrease  in  GFR  or  modification  of  potassium  levels  in  patients who are prescribed loop diuretics, ACE inhibitors, or ARBs.Key words:   Adverse drug reaction,  clinical decision support,  high-risk drug, safety

Autoras de manga shōnen: Diferencias en el tratamiento de personajes entre autoras y autores en el manga para chicos

Este trabajo de final de grado hace un análisis del tratamiento de personajes principales, masculinos y femeninos, en el manga shōnen con el objetivo de descubrir si existe una diferencia entre como construyen los personajes los autores y las autoras. El objetivo final es dirimir si realmente, como afirman algunos aficionados, existe una diferencia notable entre los manga shōnen dibujados por mujeres y los dibujados por hombres. Para ello se utilizarán el concepto de "marco shōnen" para las protagonistas femeninas y la tipologia de héroe para los protagonistas masculinos.Aquest treball de final de grau fa una anàlisi del tractament de personatges principals, masculins i femenins, al manga shōnen amb l'objectiu de descobrir si hi ha una diferència entre com construeixen els personatges els autors i les autores. L'objectiu final és dirimir si realment, com afirmen alguns aficionats, hi ha una diferència notable entre els manga shōnen dibuixats per dones i els dibuixats per homes. Per això s'utilitzaran el concepte de "marc shōnen" per a les protagonistes femenines i la tipologia d'heroi per als protagonistes masculins.This graduation thesis analyzes the treatment of main characters, male and female, in shōnen manga with the aim of discovering if there is a difference between how male and female authors construct their characters. The goal is to determine whether there really is, as some fans claim, a noticeable difference between shōnen manga drawn by women and those drawn by men. For this purpose, the concept of "shōnenframe" will be used for female protagonists and the hero typology for male protagonists

Flexible Heuristics for Supporting Recommendations Within an AI Platform Aimed at Non-expert Users

The use of Machine Learning (ML) to resolve complex tasks has become popular in several contexts. While these approaches are very effective and have many related benefits, they are still very tricky for the general audience. In this sense, expert knowledge is crucial to apply ML algorithms properly and to avoid potential issues. However, in some situations, it is not possible to rely on experts to guide the development of ML pipelines. To tackle this issue, we present an approach to provide customized heuristics and recommendations through a graphical platform to build ML pipelines, namely KoopaML, focused on the medical domain.With this approach, we aim not only at providing an easy way to apply ML for non-expert users, but also at providing a learning experience for them to understand how these methods work

Multiancestry analysis of the HLA locus in Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases uncovers a shared adaptive immune response mediated by HLA-DRB1*04 subtypes

Across multiancestry groups, we analyzed Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA) associations in over 176,000 individuals with Parkinson’s disease (PD) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) versus controls. We demonstrate that the two diseases share the same protective association at the HLA locus. HLA-specific fine-mapping showed that hierarchical protective effects of HLA-DRB1*04 subtypes best accounted for the association, strongest with HLA-DRB1*04:04 and HLA-DRB1*04:07, and intermediary with HLA-DRB1*04:01 and HLA-DRB1*04:03. The same signal was associated with decreased neurofibrillary tangles in postmortem brains and was associated with reduced tau levels in cerebrospinal fluid and to a lower extent with increased Aβ42. Protective HLA-DRB1*04 subtypes strongly bound the aggregation-prone tau PHF6 sequence, however only when acetylated at a lysine (K311), a common posttranslational modification central to tau aggregation. An HLA-DRB1*04-mediated adaptive immune response decreases PD and AD risks, potentially by acting against tau, offering the possibility of therapeutic avenues

Hierarchical matching using submap isomorphism

This Ph.D. Thesis presents a novel part-based approach for automatic object detection in real scenes. For that purpose, the scene is represented using a novel perceptual segmentation approach, also presented in this thesis, that uses the combinatorial pyramid and that combines boundaries and region information. The target object is also represented by means of a combinatorial map. This representation provides two interesting properties for object detection: i) it does not deliver a single segmentation result, but a hierarchy of partitions that represent the image at different scales, and ii) topology can be used to drive the searching of the target object in the scene. Then, in order to compare both representations (object and scene), a novel hierarchical algorithm for sub-combinatorial map isomorphism is performed. Submap isomorphism consists of checking if a given submap can be found into another map. This search procedure, however, should not expect the representation of the object, in any of the layers, to match exactly with the internal representation of that object. Shadows, occlusions and many other factors will avoid these exact matchings to occur. For that reason, this thesis presents a error-tolerant submap isomorphism algorithm that is able to identify the distortions that make one submap a distorted version of the other map. The algorithm for submap isomorphism does not work with combinatorial maps, but with their associated symbol sequences. Thus, using this encoding, the submap isomorphism will be solved looking for a matching of symbol sequences. This search is done iteratively in each level of the combinatorial pyramid, starting from the apex. The proposed method for object detection has been tested for traffic sign detection and also using a real use case in the framework of robot navigation showing good performance and robustness of the approach in the presence of partial occlusions, uneven illumination and 3-dimensional rotations. Moreover, the perceptual segmentation approach has been also evaluated using the Berkeley dataset BSD300. These experiments show that the proposed method yields better or similar results than other approaches while offering two insteresting features alreay mentioned: computation at multiple image resolutions and preservation of the image topology

Representing the Surface of Objects by Combinatorial Pyramids

This paper introduces a new method to rep- resent the surface of objects using two dimensional com- binatorial maps. The classical de nition of two dimen- sional combinatorial maps is extended here by adding a \back face" that corresponds to the non{visible part of the object. As a rst step, every object in the scene is extracted in one image pyramid, where levels are re- lated by means of coordinates. Finally, an algorithm to complete the description of the surface is presented. Such representation is translation, rotation and scale invariant. It will allow to update information about movements and parts of the object that become visible, reducing the complexity and the computational time.Austrian Science Fund P20134-N13Austrian Science Fund P18716-N13Junta de Andalucía FQM-296Junta de Andalucía PO6-TIC-02268Junta de Andalucía P07-TIC-03106Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación MTM2009-1271

Bioética como marco de la responsabilidad social en hospitales públicos

The purpose of the study was describing Bioethics as a part of the Social Responsibility in public Hospitals. It was tagged as descriptive field with a non transactional and experimental design. The studied population was conformed by 30 nursing supervisors. Among the results we can highlight that the bioethic principles are taken in count without hierarchization in case of conflict between them. The right to clear and complete information, the right to quality sanitary attention is not priority, absence of the bioethics committees. In what respects to Social Responsibility, the commercial associates prioritize over the patients and local communities. It is given major importance to the good image about the social capital. A bioethical alignment theoretical model.El propósito del estudio fue describir la Bioética como marco de la Responsabilidad Social en Hospitales Públicos. Se ubicó como explicativo, de campo, diseño no experimental y transeccional. La población estuvo conformada por 30 supervisores de enfermería. Entre los resultados destaca; los principios bioéticos son tomados en cuenta, pero sin jerarquización en caso de conflictos entre ellos. El derecho a la información clara y completa, el derecho a la atención sanitaria de calidad no son prioritarios, poca presencia de los comités de Bioética. En cuanto a Responsabilidad Social los socios comerciales se priorizan sobre los pacientes y comunidades locales: Se otorga mayor importancia a la buena imagen sobre el capital social. Se construye un modelo teórico