SIMAM - Sviluppo e Integrazione di Metodologie di AR per l'Analisi non invasiva della Microcircolazione arteriosa-venosa per il supporto alla diagnosi

Presentazione del caso d'uso "SIMAM"

Underwater archaeological mosaicing

Archaeological mosaicing is one of the challenges of the computer vision community and it can be faced in a 2D or 3D approach. This contribution regards a methodology to do a mosaic of an underwater bi-dimensional scene. A number of problems arise from the acquisition of images by a remote operated vehicle. Radial distortion, poor luminosity, cloud water, presence of artefacts are part of the issues that can occur; for instance, the radial distortion has been corrected to improve the quality of the input images. Keypoints detection (through SIFT transform), Singular Value Decomposition, Random Samples Consensus are some of the techniques applied in our method. This contribution regards the mosaicing of seabed landscapes, in order to represent higher resolution photos of whole sites with wrecks in a fast and safe fashion. A stereo vision system has been arranged by adding two cameras to the payload aboard a Remotely Operated Vehicle. A number of problems arise due to poor luminosity, cloudy water, water distortion and presence of artifacts. A robust algorithm has been de¯ned to reduce the radial distortion of the camera lenses and to enhance the results

AUTOMATIC DETECTION AND CLASSIFICATION OF RETINAL VASCULAR LANDMARKS

The main contribution of this paper is introducing a method to distinguish between different landmarks of the retina: bifurcations and crossings. The methodology may help in differentiating between arteries and veins and is useful in identifying diseases and other special pathologies, too. The method does not need any special skills, thus it can be assimilated to an automatic way for pinpointing landmarks; moreover it gives good responses for very small vessels. A skeletonized representation, taken out from the segmented binary image (obtained through a preprocessing step), is used to identify pixels with three or more neighbors. Then, the junction points are classified into bifurcations or crossovers depending on their geometrical and topological properties such as width, direction and connectivity of the surrounding segments. The proposed approach is applied to the public-domain DRIVE and STARE datasets and compared with the state-of-the-art methods using proper validation parameters. The method was successful in identifying the majority of the landmarks; the average correctly identified bifurcations in both DRIVE and STARE datasets for the recall and precision values are: 95.4% and 87.1% respectively; also for the crossovers, the recall and precision values are: 87.6% and 90.5% respectively; thus outperforming other studies

A Fast Multiresolution Approach Useful for Retinal Image Segmentation

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Megakaryocytic features useful for the diagnosis of myeloproliferative disorders can be obtained by a novel unsupervised software analysis

An unsupervised method for megakaryocyte detection and analysis is proposed, in order to validate supplementary tools which can be of help in supporting the pathologist in the classification of Philadelphia negative chronic myeloproliferative disorders with thrombocytosis. The experiment was conducted on high power magnification photomicrographs taken from hematoxylin-and-eosin 3 μm thick sections of formalin fixed, paraffin embedded bone marrow biopsies from patients with reactive thrombocytosis or chronic myeloproliferative disorders. Each megakaryocyte has been isolated in the photos through an image segmentation process, mainly based on mathematical morphology and wavelet analysis. A set of features (e.g. area, perimeter and fractal dimension of the cell and its nucleus, shape complexity via elliptic Fourier transform, and so on) is used to characterize the disorders and discriminate between essential thrombocythemia and idiopathic myelofibrosis. Features related to the general contour of the cell like cytoplasmic area and perimeter are good markers in distinguishing between normal or reactive and pathologic megakaryocytes while nuclear features and global circularity are helpful in the differential diagnosis between ET and prefibrotic IMF. The method proposed should be considered as a fast preprocessing tool for the diagnostic phase and its use can be extended to solve different object recognition problem

Field-Induced Quantum Criticality of Systems with Ferromagnetically Coupled Structural Spin Units

The field-induced quantum criticality of compounds with ferromagnetically coupled structural spin units (as dimers and ladders) is explored by applying Wilson's renormalization group framework to an appropriate effective action. We determine the low-temperature phase boundary and the behavior of relevant quantities decreasing the temperature with the applied magnetic field fixed at its quantum critical point value. In this context, a plausible interpretation of some recent experimental results is also suggested.Comment: to be published in Physics Letters

Novel analgesic/anti-inflammatory agents: 1,5-diarylpyrrole nitrooxyalkyl ethers and related compounds as cyclooxygenase-2 inhibiting nitric oxide donors

A series of 3-substituted 1,5-diarylpyrroles bearing a nitrooxyalkyl side chain linked to different spacers were designed. New classes of pyrrole-derived nitrooxyalkyl inverse esters, carbonates, and ethers (7-10) as COX-2 selective inhibitors and NO donors were synthesized and are herein reported. By taking into account the metabolic conversion of nitrooxyalkyl ethers (9, 10) into corresponding alcohols, derivatives 17 and 18 were also studied. Nitrooxy derivatives showed NO-dependent vasorelaxing properties, while most of the compounds proved to be very potent and selective COX-2 inhibitors in in vitro experimental models. Further in vivo studies on compounds 9a,c and 17a highlighted good anti-inflammatory and antinociceptive activities. Compound 9c was able to inhibit glycosaminoglycan (GAG) release induced by interleukin-1β (IL-1β), showing cartilage protective properties. Finally, molecular modeling and (1)H- and (13)C-NMR studies performed on compounds 6c,d, 9c, and 10b allowed the right conformation of nitrooxyalkyl ester and ether side chain of these molecules within the COX-2 active site to be assessed

D3.1 - Architettura dell'infrastruttura 3DLab-Sicilia e del "liquid lab"

Questo documento definisce due elementi fondamentali per il Progetto 3DLab-Sicilia sui quali si costruiscono le numerose applicazioni e i casi d’uso applicativi che sono stati discussi con ampio dettaglio nel deliverable “D4.1 – Analisi dettagliata dei requisiti dei casi d’uso“. Tali elementi sono rappresentati da: l’infrastruttura del progetto, comprensiva dei relativi elementi hardware e software; il “liquid lab”. Un ulteriore punto di contatto tra il presente rapporto e il deliverable D4.1 è rappresentato dall’adozione condivisa trasversalmente della tassonomia dell’hardware e del software relativi al progetto 3DLab-Sicilia. Per la descrizione dettagliata della tassonomia in oggetto si rimanda alla Sezione 2.1 e all’Appendice 1 del deliverable D4.1. Il presente documento è organizzato come segue. La Sezione 2 tratta, insieme ad una introduzione ai contenuti e alle finalità del presente deliverable, la descrizione dello stato dell’arte delle soluzioni oggetto di analisi in queste pagine. La Sezione 3 dettaglia ad alto livello l’architettura dell’infrastruttura del progetto per la Realtà Virtuale nelle 3 sedi selezionate in 3DLab-Sicilia: Catania, presso SWING:IT; Palermo, presso lo IEMEST; e Troina (EN), presso l’IRCCS-OASI. Nella Sezione 4 la descrizione e l’analisi tecnica dell’infrastruttura sono illustrate approfonditamente, ponendo il fuoco sui diversi elementi compresi al suo interno. Sono state analizzate le caratteristiche tecniche delle VR CAVE e dei Visori per Realtà Virtuale (VR) nonché dei dispositivi per la Realtà Aumentata (AR), i laser scanner 3D per i rilievi, i droni, il videocapillaroscopio e l’archivio digitale. La Sezione 5 dettaglia, infine, gli obiettivi, l’architettura e le caratteristiche del “liquid lab” che sarà realizzato nell’ambito del progetto