Part Affinity Field based Activity Recognition

This report presents work and results on Activity Recognition using Part Affinity Fields for real-time surveillance applications. Starting with a short introduction to the motivation, this report gives a detailed overview over the key idea of the pursued approach and explains the basic ideas. In addition a variety of experiments on various subjects are presented, like i) the impact of the number of input frames, ii) the impact of different simple dimensionality reduction approaches, and iii) a comparison on how multi-class and binary problem formulation influence the performance

Image-based Anomaly Detection within Crowds

Authorities and security services have to deal with more and more data collected during events and on public places. Two reasons for that are the rising number of huge events, as well as the expanding coverage with CCTV cameras of areas within cities. Even the number of ground crew teams, that are equipped with mobile cameras, rises continuously. These examples show that modern surveillance and location monitoring systems come with need of suited assistance systems, which help the associated security workers to keep track of the situations. In this report, we present a first idea how such a system using modern machine learning algorithms could look like. Furthermore, a more detailed look on two state-of-the-art methods for human pose estimation is given. These algorithms are then investigated for their performance on the target domain of crowd surveillance scenarios using a small dataset called CrowdPose

"Let’s get ready to bundle!":Crowd-level Human Keypoint Tracking

This work examines the suitability of a state-of-the-art human pose trackingmethod for application within surveillance scenarios and focuses on publicplaces in urban areas that tend to suffer from crowdedness, such as city centers.Starting with a short introduction to motivate keypoint tracking in surveillanceapplications, this report will present details about the adapted method, whichfollows an LSTM-based approach. Afterwards, different changes that had tobe incorporated in order to successfully apply the given method to our targetsetting will be presented. Finally, various experiments will show how the chosenmethod performs, based on experiments with simulated data

Benchmarking von Navigationsleistungen eines mobilen Roboters

Zusammenfassung: Serviceroboter benötigen eine Vielzahl von Navigationsfunktionen zum Beispiel zur Kartierung ihrer Umgebung, Selbstlokalisation, Bewegungsplanung und Kollisionsvermeidung. Für diese Funktionen existieren verschiedene Algorithmen, die hinsichtlich ihrer Leistungsfähigkeit bewertet werden müssen. Dabei handelt es sich um keine triviale Aufgabe. Im Rahmen dieser Arbeit wurden einige Bewertungsmaße ausgewählt und ein Tool entwickelt, welches diese Bewertungsmaße in die Praxis umsetzt. Das Tool und der Ablauf dessen Entwicklung werden dabei in dieser Arbeit näher vorgestellt. Die Aufgabe des Tools soll es sein, dem Nutzer Aufgaben abzunehmen und die Durchführung solcher Benchmarks zu vereinfachen bzw. weitestgehend zu automatisieren.Abstract: A service robot needs many different navigation functions for example for mapping, self-loclization, motion planning and collision avoidance. For these function, there exists a huge variety of algorithms, which need to be compared concerning their performance. This is not an easy task. Within the scope of this thesis there have been selected some metrics for evaluating the navigation functionality and implemented within a tool, which offers the user an easy way to perform own benchmarks. Moreover its purpose is the automation and simplification of a whole benchmark process. This tool and its development will be introduced to the reader within this thesis.Ilmenau, Techn. Univ., Bachelor-Arbeit, 201

Perception of Risks and Usefulness of Smart Video Surveillance Systems

The number of video cameras in public places increases due to different reasons such as detecting dangers (e.g., thefts, robberies, terrorist attacks) and security breaches in crowds. The application of video surveillance systems is sometimes evaluated ambivalently; therefore, the presented study focuses on factors influencing the acceptance of a privacy-friendly, smart video surveillance system. Overall, 216 persons aged between 18 and 81 years participated in an online survey. In terms of the perceived usefulness, there are significant interactions of public spaces × gender and public spaces × time of day. In addition, the assessment of different privacy levels of a video surveillance system differ significantly in terms of perceived risk. Interestingly, men rate the risk concerning their own privacy significantly higher than women do. Participants rate the presented system as fairly useful and slightly risky for their own privacy. The findings of the presented exploratory study provide insight into how people perceive smart video surveillance. These findings have the potential to support the conditions of the use of smart video surveillance systems and to address the possibly affected individuals

Differential expression of VEGF-Axxx isoforms is critical for development of pulmonary fibrosis

RATIONALE Fibrosis after lung injury is related to poor outcome, and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) can be regarded as an exemplar. Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF)-A has been implicated in this context, but there are conflicting reports as to whether it is a contributory or protective factor. Differential splicing of the VEGF-A gene produces multiple functional isoforms including VEGF-Aa and VEGF-Ab, a member of the inhibitory family. To date there is no clear information on the role of VEGF-A in IPF. OBJECTIVES To establish VEGF-A isoform expression and functional effects in IPF. METHODS We used tissue sections, plasma, and lung fibroblasts from patients with IPF and control subjects. In a bleomycin-induced lung fibrosis model we used wild-type MMTV mice and a triple transgenic mouse SPC-rtTATetoCreLoxP-VEGF-Ato conditionally induce VEGF-A isoform deletion specifically in the alveolar type II (ATII) cells of adult mice. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS IPF and normal lung fibroblasts differentially expressed and responded to VEGF-Aa and VEGF-Ab in terms of proliferation and matrix expression. Increased VEGF-Ab was detected in plasma of progressing patients with IPF. In a mouse model of pulmonary fibrosis, ATII-specific deficiency of VEGF-A or constitutive overexpression of VEGF-Ab inhibited the development of pulmonary fibrosis, as did treatment with intraperitoneal delivery of VEGF-Ab to wild-type mice. CONCLUSIONS These results indicate that changes in the bioavailability of VEGF-A sourced from ATII cells, namely the ratio of VEGF-Aa to VEGF-Ab, are critical in development of pulmonary fibrosis and may be a paradigm for the regulation of tissue repair

BibGlimpse: The case for a light-weight reprint manager in distributed literature research

Background While text-mining and distributed annotation systems both aim at capturing knowledge and presenting it in a standardized form, there have been few attempts to investigate potential synergies between these two fields. For instance, distributed annotation would be very well suited for providing topic focussed, expert knowledge enriched text corpora. A key limitation for this approach is the availability of literature annotation systems that can be routinely used by groups of collaborating researchers on a day to day basis, not distracting from the main focus of their work. Results For this purpose, we have designed BibGlimpse. Features like drop-to-file, SVM based automated retrieval of PubMed bibliography for PDF reprints, and annotation support make BibGlimpse an efficient, light-weight reprint manager that facilitates distributed literature research for work groups. Building on an established open search engine, full-text search and structured queries are supported, while at the same time making shared collections of annotated reprints accessible to literature classification and text-mining tools. Conclusion BibGlimpse offers scientists a tool that enhances their own literature management. Moreover, it may be used to create content enriched, annotated text corpora for research in text-mining

Immune responses and clinical outcomes after COVID-19 vaccination in patients with liver disease and liver transplant recipients

Background &amp; Aims: Comparative assessments of immunogenicity following different COVID-19 vaccines in patients with distinct liver diseases are lacking. SARS-CoV-2-specific T-cell and antibody responses were evaluated longitudinally after one to three vaccine doses, with long-term follow-up for COVID-19-related clinical outcomes. Methods: A total of 849 participants (355 with cirrhosis, 74 with autoimmune hepatitis [AIH], 36 with vascular liver disease [VLD], 257 liver transplant recipients [LTRs] and 127 healthy controls [HCs]) were recruited from four countries. Standardised immune assays were performed pre and post three vaccine doses (V1-3). Results: In the total cohort, there were incremental increases in antibody titres after each vaccine dose (p &lt;0.0001). Factors associated with reduced antibody responses were age and LT, whereas heterologous vaccination, prior COVID-19 and mRNA platforms were associated with greater responses. Although antibody titres decreased between post-V2 and pre-V3 (p = 0.012), patients with AIH, VLD, and cirrhosis had equivalent antibody responses to HCs post-V3. LTRs had lower and more heterogenous antibody titres than other groups, including post-V3 where 9% had no detectable antibodies; this was heavily influenced by intensity of immunosuppression. Vaccination increased T-cell IFNγ responses in all groups except LTRs. Patients with liver disease had lower functional antibody responses against nine Omicron subvariants and reduced T-cell responses to Omicron BA.1-specific peptides compared to wild-type. 122 cases of breakthrough COVID-19 were reported of which 5/122 (4%) were severe. Of the severe cases, 4/5 (80%) occurred in LTRs and 2/5 (40%) had no serological response post-V2. Conclusion: After three COVID-19 vaccines, patients with liver disease generally develop robust antibody and T-cell responses to vaccination and have mild COVID-19. However, LTRs have sustained no/low antibody titres and appear most vulnerable to severe disease. Impact and implications: Standardised assessments of the immune response to different COVID-19 vaccines in patients with liver disease are lacking. We performed antibody and T-cell assays at multiple timepoints following up to three vaccine doses in a large cohort of patients with a range of liver conditions. Overall, the three most widely available vaccine platforms were immunogenic and appeared to protect against severe breakthrough COVID-19. This will provide reassurance to patients with chronic liver disease who were deemed at high risk of severe COVID-19 during the pre-vaccination era, however, liver transplant recipients had the lowest antibody titres and remained vulnerable to severe breakthrough infection. We also characterise the immune response to multiple SARS-CoV-2 variants and describe the interaction between disease type, severity, and vaccine platform. These insights may prove useful in the event of future viral infections which also require rapid vaccine development and delivery to patients with liver disease.</p