Gabor Barcodes for Medical Image Retrieval

In recent years, advances in medical imaging have led to the emergence of massive databases, containing images from a diverse range of modalities. This has significantly heightened the need for automated annotation of the images on one side, and fast and memory-efficient content-based image retrieval systems on the other side. Binary descriptors have recently gained more attention as a potential vehicle to achieve these goals. One of the recently introduced binary descriptors for tagging of medical images are Radon barcodes (RBCs) that are driven from Radon transform via local thresholding. Gabor transform is also a powerful transform to extract texture-based information. Gabor features have exhibited robustness against rotation, scale, and also photometric disturbances, such as illumination changes and image noise in many applications. This paper introduces Gabor Barcodes (GBCs), as a novel framework for the image annotation. To find the most discriminative GBC for a given query image, the effects of employing Gabor filters with different parameters, i.e., different sets of scales and orientations, are investigated, resulting in different barcode lengths and retrieval performances. The proposed method has been evaluated on the IRMA dataset with 193 classes comprising of 12,677 x-ray images for indexing, and 1,733 x-rays images for testing. A total error score as low as $351$ ($\approx 80\%$ accuracy for the first hit) was achieved.Comment: To appear in proceedings of The 2016 IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP 2016), Sep 25-28, 2016, Phoenix, Arizona, US

Radon-Gabor Barcodes for Medical Image Retrieval

In recent years, with the explosion of digital images on the Web, content-based retrieval has emerged as a significant research area. Shapes, textures, edges and segments may play a key role in describing the content of an image. Radon and Gabor transforms are both powerful techniques that have been widely studied to extract shape-texture-based information. The combined Radon-Gabor features may be more robust against scale/rotation variations, presence of noise, and illumination changes. The objective of this paper is to harness the potentials of both Gabor and Radon transforms in order to introduce expressive binary features, called barcodes, for image annotation/tagging tasks. We propose two different techniques: Gabor-of-Radon-Image Barcodes (GRIBCs), and Guided-Radon-of-Gabor Barcodes (GRGBCs). For validation, we employ the IRMA x-ray dataset with 193 classes, containing 12,677 training images and 1,733 test images. A total error score as low as 322 and 330 were achieved for GRGBCs and GRIBCs, respectively. This corresponds to $\approx 81\%$ retrieval accuracy for the first hit.Comment: To appear in proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Pattern Recognition (ICPR 2016), Cancun, Mexico, December 201

Water purification of arsenic-contaminated drinking water via air gap membrane distillation (AGMD)

Arsenic contamination in shallow tubewell water is a serious health issue in Bangladesh and other Southeast Asian countries. Rural and remote areas in these locations continue to face tremendous challenges in providing access to affordable and safe arsenic-free drinking water. In recent years, intensive efforts have been undertaken to identify appropriate technologies for arsenic removal. This study examines one approach by investigating the application of suitable membrane technologies, specifically air gap membrane distillation (AGMD), as a promising method for small-scale, low cost deployment. The objective of this study was to test an AGMD commercial prototype (nominal capacity of 2 L/hr) with three different feedstocks: arsenic-containing groundwater (medium concentration) and arsenic-spiked tap water (medium and high concentrations). Results show that the tested AGMD prototype is capable of achieving excellent separation efficiency, as all product water samples showed arsenic levels well below WHO accepted limits (10 µg/L) even for initial concentrations over 1800 µg/L. Parametric studies with focus on variation of coolant temperature illustrate the possibility of integrating AGMD in various thermal systems

Comparative Study on Serum Enzyme Levels in Cirrhosis of Liver and Alcoholic Liver Disease

Patients with chronic liver diseases are asymptomatic or have only vague non-specific symptoms. Effective medical treatments for chronic liver disease (before cirrhosis is established) are becoming increasingly available and since abnormal LFTs may be the only indication of this diseases. Aims: comparative study on serum Enzyme levels in various liver diseases. Discussion: serum Alkaline phosphatase(ALP), Gamma Glutamyl transferase (Gamma GT), Alanine and Aspartate amino transferases were estimated in viral Hepatitis, Alcoholic liver diseases, Obstructive jaundice, cirrhosis of the liver. It was observed that obstructive jaundice shows higher levels of ALP levels followed by alcoholic liver disease, viral hepatitis, cirrhosis of liver. Viral hepatitis shows higher rise of SGOT, SGPT levels, followed by alcoholic liver disease, obstructive jaundice, and cirrhosis of liver. Gamma Glutamyl transferase enzymes highest levels are seen in alcoholic liver disease. Conclusion: These enzymatic variations are useful to diagnose the disease and classify them according to etiology

Comparison of Bibliographic Databases in Retrieving Information on Telemedicine

Abstract: Background & Aims: Some of the main questions which can be of importance for those researchers who intend to perform a systematic review in a field of science are: ‘What databases should I use for my review?’; ‘Do all these databases have the same value?’; and ‘Which sources retrieved the highest of relevant references?’. The main aim of this work was the identification of the best database for retrieving information on telemedicine by comparing the percentage of relevant references among the total literature available that can be retrieved from each database. Methods: Databases (Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science) were searched on the topic of telemedicine and education, telemedicine and cost benefit, and also telemedicine and patient satisfaction. Results of analysis and accuracy coefficient, sensitivity, uniqueness, and the overlap of databases were calculated. Results: The number of studies retrieved from each database varied for each topic. PubMed with 50.7% in accuracy and 61.4% in sensitivity was the most effective database for retrieving information on the abovementioned topics. Databases with the highest proportion of unique records in retrieved relevant references varied between the 38% for PubMed to 3% for CINAHL. The largest overlap in the four databases was between PubMed and the Web of Science (18.6%). Few papers (0.7%) were indexed by all four databases. Conclusion: Our analysis suggests that information scientists, librarians, and researchers who want to access the best references on telemedicine should start by searching PubMed. Searching PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science, respectively, will provide about 90% of the relevant available literature. Keywords: Bibliographic databases, Telemedicine, Sensitivity, Precision, Information retrieva

Statistical inference of the mechanisms driving collective cell movement

Numerous biological processes, many impacting on human health, rely on collective cell movement. We develop nine candidate models, based on advection-diffusion partial differential equations, to describe various alternative mechanisms that may drive cell movement. The parameters of these models were inferred from one-dimensional projections of laboratory observations of Dictyostelium discoideum cells by sampling from the posterior distribution using the delayed rejection adaptive Metropolis algorithm (DRAM). The best model was selected using the Widely Applicable Information Criterion (WAIC). We conclude that cell movement in our study system was driven both by a self-generated gradient in an attractant that the cells could deplete locally, and by chemical interactions between the cells

Road-map of aquatic-food processing development of I.R. of IRAN

Scientific and practical planning for achieving the lofty goals of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the framework of development plan of 1404 is the requirement to achieve sustainable development. Establishing roadmap of industries and products was considered by the scientific and technology office of the deputy president, in order to achieve the abovementioned objectives and in line with the national scientific comprehensive map. Therefore, present study was conducted as the roadmap of national aquatic-food processing development using available approved documents e.g. Iran perspective of 1404, fifth developing plan of I.R. of Iran, developing plan of Iranian fisheries organization in 1400 and the available approved statistical data. Current perspective of the aquatic-food processing is presented at the first chapter of the study. The second chapter reviewed the problems and obstacles. Third chapter tabulated the published studies and researches in fish handling and processing so far. Finally fourth chapter recommends executive and research projects considering quantitative and qualitative objectives of Iran 1400 plan as well as fifth developing plan of Shilat-Iran (Iranian fisheries organization). Authors hope the study to be useful in the national planning of I. R. of Iran in the future

Meeting Future Energy Needs in the Hindu Kush Himalaya

As mentioned in earlier chapters, the HKH regions form the entirety of some countries, a major part of other countries, and a small percentage of yet others. Because of this, when we speak about meeting the energy needs of the HKH region we need to be clear that we are not necessarily talking about the countries that host the HKH, but the clearly delineated mountainous regions that form the HKH within these countries. It then immediately becomes clear that energy provisioning has to be done in a mountain context characterized by low densities of population, low incomes, dispersed populations, grossly underdeveloped markets, low capabilities, and poor economies of scale. In other words, the energy policies and strategies for the HKH region have to be specific to these mountain contexts

Review of biogas digester technology in rural Bangladesh

Bangladesh has been facing severe energy crises (lack of electricity and gas supply network) during the last three decades, especially in rural areas. These areas are characterized by their often inefficient use of woody biomass, mainly for cooking purposes. To avoid the resulting environmental degradation and achieve sustainable development, access to clean and affordable energy is essential. Upgrading existing biomass resources (i.e., animal manure, crop residues, kitchen waste and green wastes) to biogas shows significant promise in this respect. This article presents a review of the current status of biogas digester technology in Bangladesh with focus on households in rural areas, covering 75% of the total population. Currently there exists a substantial gap between technical and cost-effective potential and the achievable potential due to lack of technical knowledge, high installation and operation costs, feedstock availability and limited end user applications. As a result only one percent of the overall biogas potential, estimated at 14.5x106 m3/yr, has been achieved despite government programs for promoting digester installation. Via in-field surveys this review has identified problems in the construction, maintenance and operation of biogas digesters, particularly in overall performance of household digesters. Based on these results a number of operational and technology improvements are suggested. Three digester implementation scenarios are introduced, and performance and cost estimates are projected to 2040. The most ambitious scenario leads to a five-fold increase in biogas output as compared to today’s levels; levelized energy costs can be halved with proper choice of digester technology.QC 20160610</p