Importance driven environment map sampling

In this paper we present an automatic and efficient method for supporting Image Based Lighting (IBL) for bidirectional methods which improves both the sampling of the environment, and the detection and sampling of important regions of the scene, such as windows and doors. These often have a small area proportional to that of the entire scene, so paths which pass through them are generated with a low probability. The method proposed in this paper improves this by taking into account view importance, and modifies the lighting distribution to use light transport information. This also automatically constructs a sampling distribution in locations which are relevant to the camera position, thereby improving sampling. Results are presented when our method is applied to bidirectional rendering techniques, in particular we show results for Bidirectional Path Tracing, Metropolis Light Transport and Progressive Photon Mapping. Efficiency results demonstrate speed up of orders of magnitude (depending on the rendering method used), when compared to other methods

Precision medicine in bronchiectasis

Bronchiectasis, due to its highly heterogenous nature, requires an individualised approach to therapy. Patients experience symptoms and exacerbations driven by a combination of impaired mucociliary clearance, airway inflammation and airway infection. Treatment of bronchiectasis aims to enhance airway clearance and to address the underlying causes of inflammation and infection susceptibility. Bronchiectasis has multiple causes and so the pathophysiology leading to individual symptoms and exacerbations are different between individuals. Standardised investigations are recommended by international guidelines to identify the underlying causes of bronchiectasis. The process of identifying the underlying biology within an individual is called “endotyping” and is an emerging concept across chronic diseases. Endotypes that have a specific treatment are referred to as “treatable traits” and a treatable traits approach to managing patients with bronchiectasis in a holistic and evidence-based manner is the key to improved outcomes. Bronchiectasis is an area of intense research. Endotyping allows identification of subsets of patients to allow medicines to be tested differently in the future where trials, rather than trying to achieve a “one size fits all” solution, can test efficacy in subsets of patients where the treatment is most likely to be efficacious

Institutional and Post-Institutional Treatment of the Sex Offender

The problem of the sex offender is as old as society itself. Today, as in the distant past, man is more concerned, in the first instance, with protecting himself and his loved ones from the corrupting touch of the so-called sex-fiend than he is with the punishment, treatment or cure of such persons. This phenomenon of social psychology still prevails in spite of the growing preachments of the doctor, psychologist, criminologist and more recently, of the lawyer prosecutor, the lawyer law-maker and the lawyer practitioner,\u27 to the effect that the primarily desirable end of protecting society can best be achieved by a greater emphasis on penological, therapeutic and hygienic techniques applicable in the institutional and post-institutional treatment of such offenders. Much of what is herein proposed in the way of legislative and administrative improvement is generally applicable to the whole field of correction, but the special problem of the sex offender requires that it be underlined

Institutional and Post-Institutional Treatment of the Sex Offender

The problem of the sex offender is as old as society itself. Today, as in the distant past, man is more concerned, in the first instance, with protecting himself and his loved ones from the corrupting touch of the so-called sex-fiend than he is with the punishment, treatment or cure of such persons. This phenomenon of social psychology still prevails in spite of the growing preachments of the doctor, psychologist, criminologist and more recently, of the lawyer prosecutor, the lawyer law-maker and the lawyer practitioner,\u27 to the effect that the primarily desirable end of protecting society can best be achieved by a greater emphasis on penological, therapeutic and hygienic techniques applicable in the institutional and post-institutional treatment of such offenders. Much of what is herein proposed in the way of legislative and administrative improvement is generally applicable to the whole field of correction, but the special problem of the sex offender requires that it be underlined

A study on user preference of high dynamic range over low dynamic range video

The increased interest in High Dynamic Range (HDR) video over existing Low Dynamic Range (LDR) video during the last decade or so was primarily due to its inherent capability to capture, store and display the full range of real-world lighting visible to the human eye with increased precision. This has led to an inherent assumption that HDR video would be preferable by the end-user over LDR video due to the more immersive and realistic visual experience provided by HDR. This assumption has led to a considerable body of research into efficient capture, processing, storage and display of HDR video. Although, this is beneficial for scientific research and industrial purposes, very little research has been conducted in order to test the veracity of this assumption. In this paper, we conduct two subjective studies by means of a ranking and a rating based experiment where 60 participants in total, 30 in each experiment, were tasked to rank and rate several reference HDR video scenes along with three mapped LDR versions of each scene on an HDR display, in order of their viewing preference. Results suggest that given the option, end-users prefer the HDR representation of the scene over its LDR counterpart

Optimal exposure compression for high dynamic range content

High dynamic range (HDR) imaging has become one of the foremost imaging methods capable of capturing and displaying the full range of lighting perceived by the human visual system in the real world. A number of HDR compression methods for both images and video have been developed to handle HDR data, but none of them has yet been adopted as the method of choice. In particular, the backwards-compatible methods that always maintain a stream/image that allow part of the content to be viewed on conventional displays make use of tone mapping operators which were developed to view HDR images on traditional displays. There are a large number of tone mappers, none of which is considered the best as the images produced could be deemed subjective. This work presents an alternative to tone mapping-based HDR content compression by identifying a single exposure that can reproduce the most information from the original HDR image. This single exposure can be adapted to fit within the bit depth of any traditional encoder. Any additional information that may be lost is stored as a residual. Results demonstrate quality is maintained as well, and better, than other traditional methods. Furthermore, the presented method is backwards-compatible, straightforward to implement, fast and does not require choosing tone mappers or settings