Low-bitrate video coding with third order geometric transformations

This paper describes low-bitrate video compression based upon the characterization of the new frame as a set of geometric transformations of objects of the previous frame. Objects with motion are detected and the motion is estimated. The estimated motion (motion field) is used to obtain the parameters for the geometric transformations. The pertinent geometric transformations are rotation, translation, zooming and isotropic and anisotropic distortion. The motivation for choosing this set of third-order transformations is that we have at our disposal special ASICS for real-time video processing. We only want to transform moving objects and therefore the boundaries of the moving objects must be known. The boundaries of the objects are represented by closed contours

Paroxetine reduces crying in young women watching emotional movies

Rationale: Crying is a unique human emotional reaction that has not received much attention from researchers. Little is known about its underlying neurobiological mechanisms, although there is some indirect evidence suggesting the involvement of central serotonin. Objectives: We examined the acute effects of the administration of 20 mg paroxetine on the crying of young, healthy females in response to emotional movies. Methods: We applied a double-blind, crossover randomised design with 25 healthy young females as study participants. On separate days, they received either paroxetine or placebo and were exposed to one of two emotional movies: 'Once Were Warriors' and 'Brian's Song'. Crying was assessed by self-report. In addition, the reactions to emotional International Affective Picture System (IAPS) pictures and mood were measured. Results: Paroxetine had a significant inhibitory effect on crying. During both films, the paroxetine group cried significantly less than the placebo group. In contrast, no effects on mood and only minor effects on the reaction to the IAPS pictures were observed. Conclusions: A single dose of paroxetine inhibits emotional crying significantly. It is not sure what the underlying mechanism is. However, since there was no effect on mood and only minor effects on the response to emotional pictures, we postulate that paroxetine mainly acts on the physiological processes involved in the crying response

Lossy Cardiac X-Ray Image Compression Based on Acquisition Noise

In lossy medical image compression, the requirements for the preservation of diagnostic integrity cannot be easily formulated in terms of a perceptual model. Especially since, in reality, human visual perception is dependent on numerous factors such as the viewing conditions and psycho-visual factors. Therefore, we investigate the possibility to develop alternative measures for data loss, based on the characteristics of the acquisition system, in our case, a digital cardiac imaging system. In general, due to the low exposure, cardiac x-ray images tend to be relatively noisy. The main noise contributions are quantum (detection) noise and electrical (camera) noise. The electrical noise is not correlated with the signal. In addition, the signal can be transformed such that the correlated Poisson-distributed quantum noise is transformed into an additional zero-mean Gaussian noise source which is uncorrelated with the signal. Furthermore, the systems modulation transfer function (MTF) impos..

Low-Bitrate Video Coding Based Upon Geometric Transformations

Low-bitrate video coding receives much attention lately. Applications such as video-phone or real-time video transmissions over ATM networks or multi media have increased the interest to this challenging field. This paper describes low-bitrate video compression based upon the characterization of the new frame as a set of geometric transformations of objects of the previous frame. Objects with motion are detected and the motion is estimated. The estimated motion (motion field) is used to obtain the parameters for the geometric transformations. The pertinent geometric transformations are rotation, translation, zooming and isotropic and anisotropic distortion. The motivation for choosing this set of third-order transformations is that we have at our disposal special ASICS for realtime video processing. We only want to transform moving objects and therefore the boundaries of the moving objects must be known. The boundaries of the objects are represented by closed contours. Keywords--- Geo..

Compression of Cardiac X-Ray Images Based on Acquisition Noise

The goal of this work is to illustrate the feasibility to use noise as a measure for data loss in compression of cardiac X-ray images. In lossy medical image compression, the requirements for the preservation of diagnostic integrity cannot be easily formulated in terms of a perceptual model. Especially since, in reality, human visual perception is dependent on numerous factors such as the viewing conditions and psycho-visual factors. In general, due to the low exposure, cardiac X-ray images tend to be relatively noisy. In the assumption that noise, in case it is not correlated with the signal, contains no diagnostic information, we propose a compression scheme, based on (overlapping) block transforms, exploiting the different spectral distributions of signal and noise. 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Perception- versus noise-based quantization An important issue in lossy compression of medical images is the risk of destroying diagnostically relevant information. Current lossy compression standard..

IL REDDITO IMPONIBILE AI FINI CONTRIBUTIVI,

Il d.lgs. n. 314/1997 ha avuto un impatto rilevante non solo sul piano dell'imponibilit\ue0 fiscale e contributiva (nel senso di una loro armonizzazione, senza arrivare per\uf2 alla loro unificazione), ma anche su quello pi\uf9 generale della nozione di retribuzione che appare sempre pi\uf9 estranea alla configurazione civilistica di corrispettivo della prestazione di lavoro. Il passaggio dalla nozione causale a quella relativistica dell'imponibile ha finito inevitabilmente con l'incidere su tutte quelle erogazioni non qualificabili prima della riforma come causalmente collegate al rapporto di lavoro, in tal modo rendendo sostenibile la teorizzazione di una nozione di retribuzione quantificatoria sganciata non solo dal principio di corrispettivit\ue0 ma finanche da quello di onerosit\ue0, che ricomprenda tutto quanto a vario titolo il datore eroga al proprio dipendente in quanto tale, e cio\ue8 una nozione quantificatoria di retribuzione sinonimo di quella di reddito

On the Assessment of Image Compression Quality By Means of Quantitative Coronary Angiography

Many techniques for image compression do exist and are well described in the literature. Lossless image compression is for digital coronary angiograms limited to compression ratios in the order of 3--4. The purpose of this work is about the assessment of the diagnostic image quality of lossy compressed coronary angiograms by means of Quantitative Coronary Angiography (QCA). We measure in the compressed images the diameter of the vessel at several places as a function of the compression ratio and compare this with the original image. The set of representative images (512 by 512 pixels at 8 bits/pixel) is compressed with the ratios 4, 8, 12 and 16. The selected compression algorithms are JPEG, Lapped Orthogonal Transform (LOT) and Modified Fast Lapped Transform (MFLT). The obtained quantitative diameter values start to deviate at images representations down at 0.5 bit per pixel with the JPEG giving the greatest differences (typ. ? 5%). The results of LOT and MFLT are performing better wi..