Aggregated Deep Local Features for Remote Sensing Image Retrieval

Remote Sensing Image Retrieval remains a challenging topic due to the special nature of Remote Sensing Imagery. Such images contain various different semantic objects, which clearly complicates the retrieval task. In this paper, we present an image retrieval pipeline that uses attentive, local convolutional features and aggregates them using the Vector of Locally Aggregated Descriptors (VLAD) to produce a global descriptor. We study various system parameters such as the multiplicative and additive attention mechanisms and descriptor dimensionality. We propose a query expansion method that requires no external inputs. Experiments demonstrate that even without training, the local convolutional features and global representation outperform other systems. After system tuning, we can achieve state-of-the-art or competitive results. Furthermore, we observe that our query expansion method increases overall system performance by about 3%, using only the top-three retrieved images. Finally, we show how dimensionality reduction produces compact descriptors with increased retrieval performance and fast retrieval computation times, e.g. 50% faster than the current systems.Comment: Published in Remote Sensing. The first two authors have equal contributio

Unique association of cardiac amyloidosis and right atrial tumor thrombus in a patient with hepatocellular carcinoma

Tumor thrombus is a very rare complication observed in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma. We report a unique case of hepatocellular carcinoma with extension of tumor along the inferior vein cava into the right atrium, in a patient with cardiac amyloidosis and without any cardio respiratory distress or typical clinical findings suggestive of cardiovascular involvement from cardiac amyloidosis. Cardiac magnetic resonance imaging is a useful tool to assess intracardiac tumor extension as well as to provide myocardial tissue characterization

Mosca mostruosa. La figura del dinosauro nella produzione postmoderna moscovita

The article offers an interpretation of the dinosaur in the Moscow imagery of the late 20th century as an allegory of the state in which the Marxist-Leninist ideology found itself in those years: more and more inflated with rhetoric, while more and more devoid of contents. In V. Aksyonov's The Burn (1975-76), in the paintings of the duo Komar and Melamid (Ancestral Portraits, Bolsheviks Returning Home After a Demonstration, 1978-82), in D. Prigov's drawing Horror (1990s) and verses “For the Little George”, in V. Erofeyev's Russian Beauty (1990), and in V. Sorokin's Ice (2002), the prehistoric monster in its different inflections is the embodiment of a black humour, characterized by an ambiguity typical of both the postmodern parody described by L. Hutcheon and the grotesque realism analyzed by M. Bachtin. The artist's effort in becoming another to himself, simultaneously engaging his own culture and disengaging himself from it by way of a sharp irony, is portrayed in Prigov's Bestiary (1977-2004), where his colleagues are the more 'monstrous' the more they are 'geniuses'. The monster creates a tragicomic and destabilizing clash on different levels, thus prompting reflection about a tormented historical period and about Art's willy-nilly complicity in the rhetorical construction of the official discourses.Il saggio offre un'interpretazione della figura del dinosauro nell'imagérie di Mosca alla fine del XX secolo come allegoria sardonica dello stato in cui l'ideologia marxista-leninista imperversava in quegli anni, sempre più gonfiata dall'aria della retorica mentre sotto la superficie si apriva un vuoto di contenuto, sempre più incolmabile. Nell'Ustione di V. Aksenov (1975-76), nelle tele del duo soc-artistico Komar e Melamid (Ritratti ancestrali, Bolscevichi di ritorno a casa dopo la dimostrazione, 1978-82), nel disegno Horror di D. Prigov (anni Novanta), in La bella di Mosca di V. Erofeev (1990) e infine in Ghiaccio di V. Sorokin (2002), il mostro preistorico nelle sue diverse declinazioni è incarnazione di uno humour nero caratterizzato da un'ambiguità e un'ambivalenza tipiche sia della parodia postmoderna analizzata da L. Hutcheon, che del realismo grottesco descritto da M. Bachtin. Lo sforzo dell'artista di diventare altro da sé, inserendosi nella e insieme astraendosi dalla propria cultura attraverso l'uso dell'ironia, è ritratto nel Bestiario prigoviano (1977-2004), dove i suoi colleghi sono tanto più 'mostruosi' quanto più 'geniali'. La figura del dinosauro crea uno scontro, tragicomico e destabilizzante, che fa riflettere su un periodo storico travagliato e sulla volente o nolente complicità dell'Arte nella costruzione retorica dei discorsi dell'ufficialità

Dual Embedding Expansion for Vehicle Re-identification

Vehicle re-identification plays a crucial role in the management of transportation infrastructure and traffic flow. However, this is a challenging task due to the large view-point variations in appearance, environmental and instance-related factors. Modern systems deploy CNNs to produce unique representations from the images of each vehicle instance. Most work focuses on leveraging new losses and network architectures to improve the descriptiveness of these representations. In contrast, our work concentrates on re-ranking and embedding expansion techniques. We propose an efficient approach for combining the outputs of multiple models at various scales while exploiting tracklet and neighbor information, called dual embedding expansion (DEx). Additionally, a comparative study of several common image retrieval techniques is presented in the context of vehicle re-ID. Our system yields competitive performance in the 2020 NVIDIA AI City Challenge with promising results. We demonstrate that DEx when combined with other re-ranking techniques, can produce an even larger gain without any additional attribute labels or manual supervision

Insights into Myocardial Perfusion PET Imaging: the Coronary Flow Capacity

Purpose of Review The present work summarizes the clinical relevance of coronary flow capacity (CFC) with an eye on future perspectives. Recent findings CFC concept has been recently introduced providing a comprehensive framework for coronary physiology evaluation. Summary It has been widely demonstrated that coronary artery disease (CAD) is a complex disease with a multifactorial etiology resulting from different pathogenic mechanisms. Cardiac positron emission tomography (PET) currently represents the gold standard for CAD assessment, providing absolute myocardial perfusion data including coronary flow reserve (CFR), calculated as the ratio of hyperemic to rest absolute myocardial blood flows. CFC can be obtained from dynamic PET images by plotting the primary stress perfusion data and CFR values for each pixel on a graph of predefined exact ranges. The routine evaluation of this parameter may add diagnostic and prognostic value to clinical and conventional imaging data

The organization of ambulance decontamination during the COVID-19 pandemic: a process analysis based on the Lean Thinking philosophy

The COVID-19 pandemic led to massively increased emergency medical services (EMS) activity. The need to decontaminate emergency vehicles after conveying a suspected or confirmed patient to the hospital represented a critical step, slowing the activities and impacting the number of available ambulances. This brief paper analyzes the flow of EMS processes according to the Lean Thinking management approach, which focuses on reducing waste in a production cycle. The different steps of the whole process (arrival to the Emergency Department, handover phase, decontamination, return to service, and the required transfers) and a series of strategies are discussed. The organization (centralized or delocalized), number, and location of the decontamination centers impact transfers and waiting times and, consequently, the availability of ambulances. Optimizing these processes may lead to a global performance improvement, reducing transfers and time, with greater availability of emergency vehicles