1,125 research outputs found
Machine vision based system for flower counting in strawberry plants
Background: For strawberry production, accurate yield prediction is very important to help growers increase their profit by efficiently managing their harvesting operation and setting their contracts with buyers. Strawberry plants produce flowers and fruits simultaneously throughout the season. Strawberry flowers are white in color with a yellow pollen at the center, which later becomes a fruit. Strawberry yield can be estimated by counting the number of flowers in a field in advance of harvesting. The objective of this project is to count the number of flowers using image processing techniques, create a map of flower counts using gee-tagging and provide farmers with an estimate of the yield in a given area.
Methods: Strawberry flowers could be at different stages of maturation during imaging. We pre-process images using edge-preserving smoothing filter to remove noise without removing fine features. The next stage involves segmentation of flowers from the background. Since flowers are brighter than most other components of plants, simple thresholding with segmentation algorithm will produce candidate pixels. Then flower detection will be conducted using traditional feature engineering along with a classifier such as Histogram of Oriented Gradients, Wavelet Transform, Local Binary Patterns, and the Deep Learning based techniques.
Results: Once flowers are detected, the number of flowers is counted to provide farmers with an estimate of yield and variability at different locations in the field.
Discussions: One of the biggest challenges with outdoor imaging is the variable lighting conditions. We propose a camera mounted autonomous system to go over rows of strawberry plants to capture images with geo-tags. Cameras are positioned to capture images from different angles to capture occluded flowers.
Conclusion: A novel image processing method for accurate strawberry yield prediction is proposed by counting the number of flowers from images for efficient crop management
Hereditary sensory and autonomic neuropathy type IV and orthopaedic complications
SummaryHereditary sensory and autonomic neuropathy type IV (HSAN-IV) is a very rare autosomal recessive disorder characterized by recurrent episodes of unexplained fever, extensive anhidrosis, total insensitivity to pain, hypotonia, and mental retardation. The most frequent complications of this disease are corneal scarring, multiple fractures, joint deformities, osteomyelitis, and disabling self-mutilations. We reported the case of a 12-year-old boy. The goal was to discuss our decision-making and compare this case with cases described in the literature
CMBPol Mission Concept Study: Foreground Science Knowledge and Prospects
We report on our knowledge of Galactic foregrounds, as well as on how a CMB
satellite mission aiming at detecting a primordial B-mode signal (CMBPol) will
contribute to improving it. We review the observational and analysis techniques
used to constrain the structure of the Galactic magnetic field, whose presence
is responsible for the polarization of Galactic emissions. Although our current
understanding of the magnetized interstellar medium is somewhat limited,
dramatic improvements in our knowledge of its properties are expected by the
time CMBPol flies. Thanks to high resolution and high sensitivity instruments
observing the whole sky at frequencies between 30 GHz and 850 GHz, CMBPol will
not only improve this picture by observing the synchrotron emission from our
galaxy, but also help constrain dust models. Polarized emission from
interstellar dust indeed dominates over any other signal in CMBPol's highest
frequency channels. Observations at these wavelengths, combined with
ground-based studies of starlight polarization, will therefore enable us to
improve our understanding of dust properties and of the mechanism(s)
responsible for the alignment of dust grains with the Galactic magnetic field.
CMBPol will also shed new light on observations that are presently not well
understood. Morphological studies of anomalous dust and synchrotron emissions
will indeed constrain their natures and properties, while searching for
fluctuations in the emission from heliospheric dust will test our understanding
of the circumheliospheric interstellar medium. Finally, acquiring more
information on the properties of extra-Galactic sources will be necessary in
order to maximize the cosmological constraints extracted from CMBPol's
observations of CMB lensing. (abridged)Comment: 43 pages, 7 figures, 2 table
Cosmic strings and Natural Inflation
In the present work we discuss cosmic strings in natural inflation. Our
analysis is based entirely on the CMB quadrupole temperature anisotropy and on
the existing upper bound on the cosmic string tension. Our results show that
the allowed range for both parameters of the inflationary model is very
different from the range obtained recently if cosmic strings are formed at the
same time with inflation, while if strings are formed after inflation we find
that the parameters of the inflationary model are similar to the ones obtained
recently.Comment: 12 pages, 0 tables, 4 figures, accepted for publication in JHE
CMBPol Mission Concept Study: Prospects for polarized foreground removal
In this report we discuss the impact of polarized foregrounds on a future
CMBPol satellite mission. We review our current knowledge of Galactic polarized
emission at microwave frequencies, including synchrotron and thermal dust
emission. We use existing data and our understanding of the physical behavior
of the sources of foreground emission to generate sky templates, and start to
assess how well primordial gravitational wave signals can be separated from
foreground contaminants for a CMBPol mission. At the estimated foreground
minimum of ~100 GHz, the polarized foregrounds are expected to be lower than a
primordial polarization signal with tensor-to-scalar ratio r=0.01, in a small
patch (~1%) of the sky known to have low Galactic emission. Over 75% of the sky
we expect the foreground amplitude to exceed the primordial signal by about a
factor of eight at the foreground minimum and on scales of two degrees. Only on
the largest scales does the polarized foreground amplitude exceed the
primordial signal by a larger factor of about 20. The prospects for detecting
an r=0.01 signal including degree-scale measurements appear promising, with 5
sigma_r ~0.003 forecast from multiple methods. A mission that observes a range
of scales offers better prospects from the foregrounds perspective than one
targeting only the lowest few multipoles. We begin to explore how optimizing
the composition of frequency channels in the focal plane can maximize our
ability to perform component separation, with a range of typically 40 < nu <
300 GHz preferred for ten channels. Foreground cleaning methods are already in
place to tackle a CMBPol mission data set, and further investigation of the
optimization and detectability of the primordial signal will be useful for
mission design.Comment: 42 pages, 14 figures, Foreground Removal Working Group contribution
to the CMBPol Mission Concept Study, v2, matches AIP versio
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