452 research outputs found
Pixel classification for automated diabetic foot diagnosis
Worldwide, more than 180 million people suffer from diabetes mellitus. Approximately 50% of these patients will develop complications to their feet. Neuropathy, combined with poor blood supply and biomechanical changes results in a high risk for foot ulcers, which is a key problem in the diabetic foot; when these wounds become infected, this can ultimately result in lower extremity amputation, which has a serious effect on the quality of life of the patient, and causes a large economic burden on society.\ud
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This was the motivation for a collaborate project (Vincent50) in which a photographic foot imaging device was developed. The system allows scanning of the foot soles on a daily basis which may lead to early recognition of foot problems. The goal of the present study is to determine whether pixel classification is a useful intermediate step towards automatically assessing the images of the foot soles for signs of diabetic foot disease. If successful, this approach will further relief health care professionals in assessing the foot and enable the placement of more devices in the future. \ud
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The best agreement between automated recognition and expert diagnosis was achieved with a combination of RGB and derived features, proves that the RGB data is informative with respect to detection of ulcers. However, the automatic detection of pre-signs of ulcers and other anomalies needs more sophistication than pixel classification alone. Firstly, other physical features, such as hyperspectral data, infrared and/or textural features are expected to be more informative. Secondly, we expect to be able to boost the performance by using the context between neighboring pixels. Thirdly, an individualized and normalized classification process might help with the large variability in foot soles between individuals. \u
Small volume expansion of almost supersymmetric large N theories
We consider the small-volume dynamics of nonsupersymmetric orbifold and
orientifold field theories defined on a three-torus, in a test of the claimed
planar equivalence between these models and appropriate supersymmetric ``parent
models". We study one-loop effective potentials over the moduli space of flat
connections and find that planar equivalence is preserved for suitable averages
over the moduli space. On the other hand, strong nonlinear effects produce
local violations of planar equivalence at special points of moduli space. In
the case of orbifold models, these effects show that the "twisted" sector
dominates the low-energy dynamics.Comment: 20 pages, 3 figures; added references, minor change
Construction of topological field theories using BV
We discuss in detail the construction of topological field theories using the
Batalin--Vilkovisky (BV) quantisation scheme. By carefully examining the
dependence of the antibracket on an external metric, we show that
differentiating with respect to the metric and the BRST charge do not commute
in general. We introduce the energy momentum tensor in this scheme and show
that it is BRST invariant, both for the classical and quantum BRST operators.
It is antifield dependent, guaranteeing gauge independence. For topological
field theories, this energy momentum has to be quantum BRST exact. This leads
to conditions at each order in . As an example of this procedure, we
consider topological Yang--Mills theory. We show how the reducible set of
symmetries used in topological Yang--Mills can be recovered by means of trivial
systems and canonical transformations. Self duality of the antighosts is
properly treated by introducing an infinite tower of auxiliary fields. Finally,
it is shown that the full energy momentum tensor is classically BRST exact in
the antibracket sense.Comment: 15
Center-stabilized Yang-Mills theory: confinement and large volume independence
We examine a double trace deformation of SU(N) Yang-Mills theory which, for
large and large volume, is equivalent to unmodified Yang-Mills theory up to
corrections. In contrast to the unmodified theory, large volume
independence is valid in the deformed theory down to arbitrarily small volumes.
The double trace deformation prevents the spontaneous breaking of center
symmetry which would otherwise disrupt large volume independence in small
volumes. For small values of , if the theory is formulated on with a sufficiently small compactification size , then an analytic
treatment of the non-perturbative dynamics of the deformed theory is possible.
In this regime, we show that the deformed Yang-Mills theory has a mass gap and
exhibits linear confinement. Increasing the circumference or number of
colors decreases the separation of scales on which the analytic treatment
relies. However, there are no order parameters which distinguish the small and
large radius regimes. Consequently, for small the deformed theory provides
a novel example of a locally four-dimensional pure gauge theory in which one
has analytic control over confinement, while for large it provides a simple
fully reduced model for Yang-Mills theory. The construction is easily
generalized to QCD and other QCD-like theories.Comment: 29 pages, expanded discussion of multiple compactified dimension
Abelian gauge theories on compact manifolds and the Gribov ambiguity
We study the quantization of abelian gauge theories of principal torus
bundles over compact manifolds with and without boundary. It is shown that
these gauge theories suffer from a Gribov ambiguity originating in the
non-triviality of the bundle of connections whose geometrical structure will be
analyzed in detail. Motivated by the stochastic quantization approach we
propose a modified functional integral measure on the space of connections that
takes the Gribov problem into account. This functional integral measure is used
to calculate the partition function, the Greens functions and the field
strength correlating functions in any dimension using the fact that the space
of inequivalent connections itself admits the structure of a bundle over a
finite dimensional torus. The Greens functions are shown to be affected by the
non-trivial topology, giving rise to non-vanishing vacuum expectation values
for the gauge fields.Comment: 33 page
Waves in Thin Oceans on Oblate Neutron Stars
Waves in thin fluid layers are important in various stellar and planetary
problems. Due to rapid rotation such systems will become oblate, with a
latitudinal variation in the gravitational acceleration across the surface of
the object. In the case of accreting neutron stars, rapid rotation could lead
to a polar radius smaller than the equatorial radius by a factor . We
investigate how the oblateness and a changing gravitational acceleration affect
different hydrodynamic modes that exist in such fluid layers through analytic
approximations and numerical calculations. The wave vectors of -modes and
Yanai modes increase for more oblate systems compared to spherical
counterparts, although the impact of variations in the changing gravitational
acceleration is effectively negligible. We find that for increased oblateness,
Kelvin modes show less equatorial confinement and little change in their wave
vector. For -modes, we find that for more oblate systems the wave vector
decreases. The exact manner of these changes for the -modes depends on the
model for the gravitational acceleration across the surface.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures Accepted for publication in MNRA
Forecasting differences in life expectancy by education
Forecasts of life expectancy (LE) have fuelled debates about the sustainability and dependability of pension and healthcare systems. O
Isolated vacua in supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories
An explicit proof of the existence of nontrivial vacua in the pure
supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories with higher orthogonal SO(N), N>=7 or the
G_2 gauge group defined on a 3-torus with periodic boundary conditions is
given. Extra vacuum states are separated by an energy barrier from the
perturbative vacuum A_i=0 and its gauge copies.Comment: 8 pages, no figures, late
Probing for Instanton Quarks with epsilon-Cooling
We use epsilon-cooling, adjusting at will the order a^2 corrections to the
lattice action, to study the parameter space of instantons in the background of
non-trivial holonomy and to determine the presence and nature of constituents
with fractional topological charge at finite and zero temperature for SU(2). As
an additional tool, zero temperature configurations were generated from those
at finite temperature with well-separated constituents. This is achieved by
"adiabatically" adjusting the anisotropic coupling used to implement finite
temperature on a symmetric lattice. The action and topological charge density,
as well as the Polyakov loop and chiral zero-modes are used to analyse these
configurations. We also show how cooling histories themselves can reveal the
presence of constituents with fractional topological charge. We comment on the
interpretation of recent fermion zero-mode studies for thermalized ensembles at
small temperatures.Comment: 26 pages, 14 figures in 33 part
Some universal features of the effective string picture of pure gauge theories
The effective string describing the large distance behaviour of the quark
sources of gauge field theories in the confining phase in D=3 or D=4 space-time
dimensions can be formulated, in the infrared limit, as a suitable 2D conformal
field theory on surfaces with quark loops as boundaries. Recent results on
self-avoiding random surfaces allow to fix almost uniquely such a conformal
theory. As a consequence, some universal relationships among the string tension
, the thickness of the colour flux tube, the deconfinement temperature and a
lower bound of the glueball mass spectrum are found. The general agreement with
the data extracted from recent lattice simulations with different gauge groups
is rather impressive.(Talk held by F.Gliozzi at Lattice'92 , Amsterdam)Comment: 9 pages(LaTeX),DFTT61/9
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