Unobtrusive and pervasive video-based eye-gaze tracking

Eye-gaze tracking has long been considered a desktop technology that finds its use inside the traditional office setting, where the operating conditions may be controlled. Nonetheless, recent advancements in mobile technology and a growing interest in capturing natural human behaviour have motivated an emerging interest in tracking eye movements within unconstrained real-life conditions, referred to as pervasive eye-gaze tracking. This critical review focuses on emerging passive and unobtrusive video-based eye-gaze tracking methods in recent literature, with the aim to identify different research avenues that are being followed in response to the challenges of pervasive eye-gaze tracking. Different eye-gaze tracking approaches are discussed in order to bring out their strengths and weaknesses, and to identify any limitations, within the context of pervasive eye-gaze tracking, that have yet to be considered by the computer vision community.peer-reviewe

What is the Role of Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) in an Image Caption Generator?

In neural image captioning systems, a recurrent neural network (RNN) is typically viewed as the primary `generation' component. This view suggests that the image features should be `injected' into the RNN. This is in fact the dominant view in the literature. Alternatively, the RNN can instead be viewed as only encoding the previously generated words. This view suggests that the RNN should only be used to encode linguistic features and that only the final representation should be `merged' with the image features at a later stage. This paper compares these two architectures. We find that, in general, late merging outperforms injection, suggesting that RNNs are better viewed as encoders, rather than generators.Comment: Appears in: Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Natural Language Generation (INLG'17

Investigating user preferences in utilizing a 2D paper or 3D sketch based interface for creating 3D virtual models

Computer modelling of 2D drawings is becoming increasingly popular in modern design as can be witnessed in the shift of modern computer modelling applications from software requiring specialised training to ones targeted for the general consumer market. Despite this, traditional sketching is still prevalent in design, particularly so in the early design stages. Thus, research trends in computer-aided modelling focus on the the development of sketch based interfaces that are as natural as possible. In this report, we present a hybrid sketch based interface which allows the user to make draw sketches using offline as well as online sketching modalities, displaying the 3D models in an immersive setup, thus linking the object interaction possible through immersive modelling to the flexibility allowed by paper-based sketching. The interface was evaluated in a user study which shows that such a hybrid system can be considered as having pragmatic and hedonic value.peer-reviewe

Infertility in fertile couples

A paper read at the Annual Conference of the Society for the Study of Fertility, at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 11th July, 1968. In selecting this title for my brief contribution I felt that a little time of this Conference could deservedly be devoted to the plight of those married couples whom we know to be fertile who yet remain childless. It is in this sense that I speak of infertility in those cases where the husband's semen is normal, the wife ovulates regularly, and indeed fertilization occurs repeatedly, but where yet the pitiful couple continue to yearn for a viable child. Too many childless couples actually owe their plight to recurrent abortion. This is particularly tragic because here the deficiency is not one of ovulation or fertilization. At a time when abortion is so readily treated with depot progesterone, it is important to realize that three causes of habitual abortion are: Congenital malformation of the uterus, cervical incompetence and intra-uterine adhesions. Heterography is indicated routinely after two spontaneous abortions.peer-reviewe

Prospects for the childless

The sorry plight of infertile couples has attracted the interest of the author for several years. His experience suggests that their silent suffering deserves to be shared and relieved. In private practice between 1969 and 1975 his records show that 332 couples sought advice about their infertility, an average of 47 per year. Yet so many of them seemed to become readily disheartened, in some cases because they expected "miracle" pills or injections, in others because the husband would not countenance the idea that he should be investigated, and in many cases for no clear reason at all. In this paper a study of perseverance in relation to childless couples is presented and discussed, emphasizing that with determination the success rate can reach satisfying proportions and that the prospects are becoming brighter.peer-reviewe

Cysts of the jaws

The clinical behaviour of cysts of the jaws has been under close scrutiny over the last few years as it has been found that there is in some types a distinct risk of recurrence. This recurrence may occur even after as long as 20 years, so that long term follow-up is essential. The clinical and histological features may be important clues in determining the prognosis and the risk of recurrence of the various jaw cysts. The data of jaw cysts seen at the Dental Department, St. Luke's Hospital, Malta during the decade 1960 – 1969 is collected in order to establish a base line for future comparative studies. There were 49 patients with cysts of the jaws and histological examination was made in 31 cases. The preponderance of periodontal cysts (30.6%) agrees with most large surveys reported, as does the percentage incidence (16.3%) of dentigerous cysts.peer-reviewe

Using switching multiple models for the automatic detection of spindles

Sleep EEG data is characterised by various events that allow for the identification of the different sleep stages. Stage 2 in particular is characterised by two morphologically distinct waveforms, specifically spindles and K-complexes. Manual scoring of these events is time consuming and risks being subjectively interpreted; hence there is the need of robust automatic detection techniques. Various approaches have been adopted in the literature, ranging from period-amplitude analysis, to spectral analysis and autoregressive modelling. Most of the adopted techniques follow an episodic approach where the goal is to identify whether an epoch of EEG data contains an event, such as a spindle, or otherwise. The disadvantage of this approach is that it requires the data to be segmented into epochs, risking that an event falls at an epoch boundary, and it has low temporal resolution. This work proposes the use of an autoregressive switching multiple model for the automatic segmentation and labelling of Stage 2 sleep EEG data characterised by spindles and K-complexes. When this modelling technique was used to identify spindles from background EEG, quantitative results based on a sample by sample basis gave a sensitivity score between 72.39% to 87.51%, depending to which scorer performance was compared. This score corresponds to a specificity that ranges between 78.89% and 90.55% and which increases to a range between 75.52% and 94.64% when performance is measured on an event basis instead [1]. This performance compares well with other spindle detection techniques published in the literature [2,3]. The advantage of the proposed technique is that it allows for the continuous segmentation of EEG data, it offers a unified framework to detect multiple events with little training data, and it can also be extended to a semi-supervised approach. The latter, which has also been applied to Stage 2 sleep EEG data, can identify new states in real time, providing a solution that not only replaces the time consuming manual scoring process but it may also provide the clinician with new insights on the data that is being analysed.peer-reviewe