Copy-Paste Image Augmentation with Poisson Image Editing for Ultrasound Instance Segmentation Learning

Deep learning has shown great success in high-level image analysis problems; yet its efficacy relies on the quality and diversity of the training data. In this work, we introduce a copypaste image augmentation for ultrasound images. The Poisson image editing technique is used to generate realistic and seamless boundary transitions around the pasted image. Results showed that the proposed image augmentation technique improves training performance in terms of higher objective metrics and more stable training results

Identifiability of the Simplex Volume Minimization Criterion for Blind Hyperspectral Unmixing: The No Pure-Pixel Case

In blind hyperspectral unmixing (HU), the pure-pixel assumption is well-known to be powerful in enabling simple and effective blind HU solutions. However, the pure-pixel assumption is not always satisfied in an exact sense, especially for scenarios where pixels are heavily mixed. In the no pure-pixel case, a good blind HU approach to consider is the minimum volume enclosing simplex (MVES). Empirical experience has suggested that MVES algorithms can perform well without pure pixels, although it was not totally clear why this is true from a theoretical viewpoint. This paper aims to address the latter issue. We develop an analysis framework wherein the perfect endmember identifiability of MVES is studied under the noiseless case. We prove that MVES is indeed robust against lack of pure pixels, as long as the pixels do not get too heavily mixed and too asymmetrically spread. The theoretical results are verified by numerical simulations

An SoC-Based System for Real-time Contactless Measurement of Human Vital Signs and Soft Biometrics

Computer vision (CV) plays big role in our current society's life style. The advancement of CV technology brings the capability to sense human vital sign and soft biometric parameters in contactless way. In this work, we design and implement the contactless human vital sign parameters measurement including pulse rate (PR) and respiration rate (RR) and also for assessment of human soft biometric parameters i.e. age, gender, skin color type, and body height. Our designed system is based on system on chip (SoC) device which run both FPGA and hard processor while provides real-time operation and small form factor. Experimental results shows our device performance has mean absolute error (MAE) 2.85 and 1.46 bpm for PR and RR respectively compared to clinical apparatus. While, for soft biometric parameters measurement we got unsatisfied results on age and gender estimation with accuracy of 58% and 74% respectively. However, for skin color type and body height measurement we reach high accuracy with 98 % and 2.28 cm respectively on both parameters

The association between tyrosine kinase inhibitors and fatal arrhythmia in patients with non-small cell lung cancer in Taiwan

ObjectiveAs a standard therapy, tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) improved survival in patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutation. However, treatment-related cardiotoxicity, particularly arrhythmia, cannot be ignored. With the prevalence of EGFR mutations in Asian populations, the risk of arrhythmia among patients with NSCLC remains unclear.MethodsUsing data from the Taiwanese National Health Insurance Research Database and National Cancer Registry, we identified patients with NSCLC from 2001 to 2014. Using Cox proportional hazards models, we analyzed outcomes of death and arrhythmia, including ventricular arrhythmia (VA), sudden cardiac death (SCD), and atrial fibrillation (AF). The follow-up duration was three years.ResultsIn total, 3876 patients with NSCLC treated with TKIs were matched to 3876 patients treated with platinum analogues. After adjusting for age, sex, comorbidities, and anticancer and cardiovascular therapies, patients receiving TKIs had a significantly lower risk of death (adjusted HR: 0.767; CI: 0.729–0.807, p < 0.001) than those receiving platinum analogues. Given that approximately 80% of the studied population reached the endpoint of mortality, we also adjusted for mortality as a competing risk. Notably, we observed significantly increased risks of both VA (adjusted sHR: 2.328; CI: 1.592–3.404, p < 0.001) and SCD (adjusted sHR: 1.316; CI: 1.041–1.663, p = 0.022) among TKI users compared with platinum analogue users. Conversely, the risk of AF was similar between the two groups. In the subgroup analysis, the increasing risk of VA/SCD persisted regardless of sex and most cardiovascular comorbidities.ConclusionsCollectively, we highlighted a higher risk of VA/SCD in TKI users than in patients receiving platinum analogues. Further research is needed to validate these findings

Impacts of Techno-Dependence in The Mobile Instant Messaging Environment

Mobile Instant Messaging (MIM) services such as LINE, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and WeChat have already established a mobile communication environment that extends beyond words and sounds. As MIM provides an effective way to communicate, it can improve workplace efficiency, whether within an organization or among offices spread around the world. Nowadays, MIM has been widely accepted as both a social and work tool. The social interaction overload generated by SNSs contributes to emotional exhaustion. Emotional exhaustion, on the other hand, leads to dissatisfaction and discontinuous usage intentions. In the context of MIMs (since they are relative new apps), users whether are likely to experience emotional exhaustion that is generated by social interaction overload, and therefore discontinue their use of MIMs. In contrast to traditional research on IS continued use in the past which defines dependence as a routine and unconscious usage pattern. MIMs offer a communication method that is faster and easier than phone calls or SMS. It is possible that MIMs bring people closer by allowing their users to understand more of the situational matters related to their friends or family, without being limited by distance. Specifically, social-group functions offered by LINE can encourage users to join certain social groups (for instance, family, colleagues, classmates, or friends). Group members can not only discuss common topics, they can also share their “photo albums,” enabling members to enhance their sense of belonging. At the same time, they have the opportunity to feel a sense of being valued, loved, and needed. Although the mobility and accessibility of mobile devices allow users to instantly contact each other on MIMs and on real-time basis, excessive use of MIMs, or MIM techno-dependence, is likely to generate social-related stress among their users. Therefore, this research attempts to explore the possibility that MIM techno-dependency can have non-detrimental effects, and considers the positive and healthy results from MIM techno-dependency due to an increased sense of belonging. The questions explored include: do MIMs users develop a positive techno-dependence? Does this positive emotional reaction encourage MIMs users to continue their use of MIMs? Since LINE is a relative newcomer to MIM, there is still a dearth of research needed to explore issues related to using MIM as a research tool. This study considers how LINE combines a diverse range of communication approaches—such as voice, texts, maps, pictures, photos, locations, video, and audio—with a variety of community groups such as friends chat, group chat, dynamic news, and official accounts. It seems worthwhile to study characteristics of LINE’s users in order to further explore the issues related to MIM. Through the hypotheses development and a survey research on 685 LINE users, this study inferred that users make frequent use of LINE in the long-term mainly because of four kinds of techno-dependence: people, fun, information, and work. Such techno-dependence generates positive and negative consequences concurrently. On the one hand, because the user’s dependence on LINE enhances his or her belongingness through friends, colleagues, and family, this positive social and emotional reaction will make users satisfied with LINE, and thus increase continuous usage intention for LINE. On the other hand, the user’s dependence on LINE means that they experience social interaction overload resulting in emotional exhaustion. Dependence on LINE leads to users experiencing pressure from both social message overload and social demand overload, resulting in social interaction overload. This negative social and emotional reaction will cause a decrease in user satisfaction with LINE, thereby reducing the continuous usage intention of LINE. Based on these findings, we suggest that LINE-related techno-dependence can enable users to increase their sense of positive social belongingness, but can also cause negative social interaction overload. It is concluded that the consequences of techno-dependence are characterized by both positive and negative emotions. Users’ evaluations of LINE are simultaneously affected by positive and negative social and emotional factors

MAAIG: Motion Analysis And Instruction Generation

Many people engage in self-directed sports training at home but lack the real-time guidance of professional coaches, making them susceptible to injuries or the development of incorrect habits. In this paper, we propose a novel application framework called MAAIG(Motion Analysis And Instruction Generation). It can generate embedding vectors for each frame based on user-provided sports action videos. These embedding vectors are associated with the 3D skeleton of each frame and are further input into a pretrained T5 model. Ultimately, our model utilizes this information to generate specific sports instructions. It has the capability to identify potential issues and provide real-time guidance in a manner akin to professional coaches, helping users improve their sports skills and avoid injuries.Comment: Accepted to the ACM Multimedia Asia 2023 Workshop on Intelligent Sports Technologies (WIST