Examining and improving the effectiveness of relevance feedback for retrieval of scanned text documents

Important legacy paper documents are digitized and collected in online accessible archives. This enables the preservation, sharing, and significantly the searching of these documents. The text contents of these document images can be transcribed automatically using OCR systems and then stored in an information retrieval system. However, OCR systems make errors in character recognition which have previously been shown to impact on document retrieval behaviour. In particular relevance feedback query-expansion methods, which are often effective for improving electronic text retrieval, are observed to be less reliable for retrieval of scanned document images. Our experimental examination of the effects of character recognition errors on an ad hoc OCR retrieval task demonstrates that, while baseline information retrieval can remain relatively unaffected by transcription errors, relevance feedback via query expansion becomes highly unstable. This paper examines the reason for this behaviour, and introduces novel modifications to standard relevance feedback methods. These methods are shown experimentally to improve the effectiveness of relevance feedback for errorful OCR transcriptions. The new methods combine similar recognised character strings based on term collection frequency and a string edit-distance measure. The techniques are domain independent and make no use of external resources such as dictionaries or training data

Examining the contributions of automatic speech transcriptions and metadata sources for searching spontaneous conversational speech

The searching spontaneous speech can be enhanced by combining automatic speech transcriptions with semantically related metadata. An important question is what can be expected from search of such transcriptions and different sources of related metadata in terms of retrieval effectiveness. The Cross-Language Speech Retrieval (CL-SR) track at recent CLEF workshops provides a spontaneous speech test collection with manual and automatically derived metadata fields. Using this collection we investigate the comparative search effectiveness of individual fields comprising automated transcriptions and the available metadata. A further important question is how transcriptions and metadata should be combined for the greatest benefit to search accuracy. We compare simple field merging of individual fields with the extended BM25 model for weighted field combination (BM25F). Results indicate that BM25F can produce improved search accuracy, but that it is currently important to set its parameters suitably using a suitable training set

Dublin City University at CLEF 2004: experiments with the ImageCLEF St Andrew's collection

For the CLEF 2004 ImageCLEF St Andrew's Collection task the Dublin City University group carried out three sets of experiments: standard cross-language information retrieval (CLIR) runs using topic translation via machine translation (MT), combination of this run with image matching results from the VIPER system, and a novel document rescoring approach based on automatic MT evaluation metrics. Our standard MT-based CLIR works well on this task. Encouragingly combination with image matching lists is also observed to produce small positive changes in the retrieval output. However, rescoring using the MT evaluation metrics in their current form significantly reduced retrieval effectiveness

Dublin City University at CLEF 2004: experiments in monolingual, bilingual and multilingual retrieval

The Dublin City University group participated in the monolingual, bilingual and multilingual retrieval tasks this year. The main focus of our investigation this year was extending our retrieval system to document languages other than English, and completing the multilingual task comprising four languages: English, French, Russian and Finnish. Results from our French monolingual experiments indicate that working in French is more effective for retrieval than adopting document and topic translation to English. However, comparison of our multilingual retrieval results using different topic and document translation reveals that this result does not extend to retrieved list merging for the multilingual task in a simple predictable way

DCU at CLEF 2006: Robust cross language track

The main focus of the DCU group’s participation in the CLEF 2006 Robust Track in CLEF 2006 was not to identify and handle difficult topics in the topic set per se, but rather to explore a new method of re-ranking a retrieved document set. The initial query is used to re-rank documents retrieved using a query expansion method. The intention is to ensure that the query drift that might occur as a result of the addition of expansion terms chosen from irrelevant documents in pseudo relevance feedback (PRF) is minimised. By re-ranking using the initial query, the relevant set is forced to mimic the initial query more closely while not removing the benefits of PRF. Our results show that although our PRF is consistently effective for this task, the application of our re-ranking method generally has little effect on the ranked output

In-situ HVEM studies of radiation-induced segregation in Ni-Al alloys during simultaneous irradiation with electrons and ions

The effects of 75-keV Ne{sup +} and 300-keV Ni{sup +} bombardment on electron radiation-induced segregation (RIS) in a Ni-9at.% Al alloy were investigated in-situ using the HVEM (high voltage electron microscope) / Tandem accelerator facility at Argonne National Laboratory. The radial component of defect fluxes generated by a highly-focused 900-keV electron beam was used to induce segregation of Al atoms towards the center of the electron irradiated area via the inverse Kirkendall effect. The radial segregation rate was monitored by measuring the increase in the diameter of the Al enriched zone within which {gamma}{sup `}-Ni{sub 3}Al precipitates form during irradiation. Both dual electron-ion and pre-implanted ion- electron irradiations were performed in an attempt to separate the contributions of energetic displacement cascades and implanted ions acting as defect trapping sites to RIS suppression. It was found that 75-keV Ne{sup 3} implantation has a retarding effect on RIS

Indolinyl-Thiazole Based Inhibitors of Scavenger Receptor-BI (SR-BI)-Mediated Lipid Transport

A potent class of indolinyl-thiazole based inhibitors of cellular lipid uptake mediated by scavenger receptor, class B, type I (SR-BI) was identified via a high-throughput screen of the National Institutes of Health Molecular Libraries Small Molecule Repository (NIH MLSMR) in an assay measuring the uptake of the fluorescent lipid DiI from HDL particles. This class of compounds is represented by ML278 (17–11), a potent (average IC50 = 6 nM) and reversible inhibitor of lipid uptake via SR-BI. ML278 is a plasma-stable, noncytotoxic probe that exhibits moderate metabolic stability, thus displaying improved properties for in vitro and in vivo studies. Strikingly, ML278 and previously described inhibitors of lipid transport share the property of increasing the binding of HDL to SR-BI, rather than blocking it, suggesting there may be similarities in their mechanisms of action

Effects of ion implantation and temperature on radiation-induced segregation in Ni-9Al alloys

Effects of Ne and Sc implantation on radiation-induced segregation (RIS) in Ni-9at.%Al were studied in-situ using the high-voltage electron microscope/Tandem accelerator at ANL. A highly-focused 900- keV electron beam generated radial defect fluxes which, in turn, induced transport of Al atoms toward the center of the electron- irradiated area via the inverse Kirkendall effect. Radial segregation rate of Al atoms was monitored by measuring the diameter of the {gamma}{prime}-Ni{sub 3}Al zone which formed in the Al-enriched area during irradiation. Ne and Sc implantation effects on RIS were investigated at 550 C; Ne effects were also examined at 625 C to determine effect of temperature on ability of Ne to act as defect trapping sites, causing RIS suppression. It was found that the RIS suppression effect of Ne increased with irradiation temperature and that Sc had a small RIS suppression effect which increased with Sc implantation dose. Ne bubbles which formed during implantation are believed to be responsible for its strong suppression effect. 6 figs, 12 ref

Effects of Ion Implantation and Temperature on Radiation-Induced Segregation In Ni-9Al Alloys

Effects of Ne and Sc implantation on radiation-induced segregation (RIS) in Ni-9at.%Al were studied in-situ using the high-voltage electron microscope/Tandem accelerator at ANL. A highly-focused 900- keV electron beam generated radial defect fluxes which, in turn, induced transport of Al atoms toward the center of the electron- irradiated area via the inverse Kirkendall effect. Radial segregation rate of Al atoms was monitored by measuring the diameter of the {gamma}{prime}-Ni{sub 3}Al zone which formed in the Al-enriched area during irradiation. Ne and Sc implantation effects on RIS were investigated at 550 C; Ne effects were also examined at 625 C to determine effect of temperature on ability of Ne to act as defect trapping sites, causing RIS suppression. It was found that the RIS suppression effect of Ne increased with irradiation temperature and that Sc had a small RIS suppression effect which increased with Sc implantation dose. Ne bubbles which formed during implantation are believed to be responsible for its strong suppression effect. 6 figs, 12 ref

Comparative evaluation of three semi-quantitative radiographic grading techniques for knee osteoarthritis in terms of validity and reproducibility in 1759 X-rays: report of the OARSI–OMERACT task force

OBJECTIVE: The objective of this work was to compare the measurement properties of three categorical X-ray scoring methods of knee osteoarthritis (OA), both on semiflexed and extended views. METHODS: In data obtained from trials and cohorts, X-rays were graded using Kellgren and Lawrence (KL), the OA Research Society International (OARSI) joint space narrowing score, and measurement of joint space width (JSW). JSW was analyzed as a categorical variable. Construct validity was assessed through logistic regression between X-ray stages and Western Ontario and McMaster Universities OA Index. Inter-observer reliability was assessed in 50 subjects for extended views by weighted kappa. Intra-observer reliability and sensitivity to change were assessed separately for extended and semiflexed views in 50 patients who had both views performed, over a 30-month interval, by weighted kappa and standardized response mean (SRM). RESULTS: Extended views were available from three trials and two cohorts (1759 X-rays), including one trial in which both extended and semiflexed views (antero-posterior) were obtained. Correlation with clinical parameters was low for the three scoring methods, except for the single community-based cohort. Inter-rater reliability was higher for categorical JSW in extended views (kappa, 0.86 vs 0.56 and 0.48 for KL and OARSI, respectively). Intra-rater reliability was higher for categorical JSW, both in extended views (0.83 vs 0.61 and 0.71) and in semiflexed views (0.89 vs 0.50 and 0.67). Sensitivity to change was also higher for categorical JSW, particularly in semiflexed views (SRM, 0.49 vs 0.22 and 0.34). CONCLUSION: These results indicate categorical JSW, in particular on semiflexed views, may be the preferred method to evaluate structural severity in knee OA clinical trials