Quality Assessment for CRT and LCD Color Reproduction Using a Blind Metric

This paper deals with image quality assessment that is capturing the focus of several research teams from academic and industrial parts. This field has an important role in various applications related to image from acquisition to projection. A large numbers of objective image quality metrics have been developed during the last decade. These metrics are more or less correlated to end-user feedback and can be separated in three categories: 1) Full Reference (FR) trying to evaluate the impairment in comparison to the reference image, 2) Reduced Reference (RR) using some features extracted from an image to represent it and compare it with the distorted one and 3) No Reference (NR) measures known as distortions such as blockiness, blurriness,. . .without the use of a reference. Unfortunately, the quality assessment community have not achieved a universal image quality model and only empiricalmodels established on psychophysical experimentation are generally used. In this paper, we focus only on the third category to evaluate the quality of CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) and LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) color reproduction where a blind metric is, based on modeling a part of the human visual system behavior. The objective results are validated by single-media and cross-media subjective tests. This allows to study the ability of simulating displays on a reference one

Comparative performance between human and automated face recognition systems, using CCTV imagery, different compression levels and scene parameters

In this investigation we identify relationships between human and automated face recognition systems with respect to compression. Further, we identify the most influential scene parameters on the performance of each recognition system. The work includes testing of the systems with compressed Closed-Circuit Television (CCTV) footage, consisting of quantified scene (footage) parameters. Parameters describe the content of scenes concerning camera to subject distance, facial angle, scene brightness, and spatio-temporal busyness. These parameters have been previously shown to affect the human visibility of useful facial information, but not much work has been carried out to assess the influence they have on automated recognition systems. In this investigation, the methodology previously employed in the human investigation is adopted, to assess performance of three different automated systems: Principal Component Analysis, Linear Discriminant Analysis, and Kernel Fisher Analysis. Results show that the automated systems are more tolerant to compression than humans. In automated systems, mixed brightness scenes were the most affected and low brightness scenes were the least affected by compression. In contrast for humans, low brightness scenes were the most affected and medium brightness scenes the least affected. Findings have the potential to broaden the methods used for testing imaging systems for security applications

Visual quality enhancement for color images in the framework of the JPEG2000 compression standard

In the last years, the consideration of different models of the Human Visual System (HVS) in the final perceived quality of the compressed images becomes a major research subject. Therefore, it is natural to take advantage of the recent knowledge on both perception and models of the human vision in an image compression system. Thus, in this paper we propose an integration method of that knowledge for the improvement of perceptual JPEG2000 image compression quality. This method consists on two parts : a laboratory evaluation of the HVS model by the Contrast Sensitivity Function (CSF), and an implementation technique of visual weightings for the JPEG2000 scheme, using the evaluated HVS model in the Fourier domain of the color image.Durant les dernières années, la prise en compte de modèles du Système Visuel Humain (SVH) dans l'évaluation de la qualité visuelle des images couleur compressées, est devenu un sujet de recherche majeur. Il semble naturel d'intégrer davantage les connaissances récentes sur la perception et la modélisation de la vision humaine, dans les systèmes de compression d'images. Ainsi, dans cet article, nous proposons une méthode d'intégration de ces connaissances pour l'augmentation de la qualité visuelle d'images compressées JPEG2000. Cette méthode consiste en deux parties : une évaluation de laboratoire pour la modélisation du SVH par la Fonction de Sensibilité au Contraste (CSF) et une technique de calcul de facteurs de pondération visuelle pour la compression JPEG2000, utilisant le modèle SVH évalué, dans le domaine de Fourier de l'image couleur

A case study in identifying acceptable bitrates for human face recognition tasks

Face recognition from images or video footage requires a certain level of recorded image quality. This paper derives acceptable bitrates (relating to levels of compression and consequently quality) of footage with human faces, using an industry implementation of the standard H.264/MPEG-4 AVC and the Closed-Circuit Television (CCTV) recording systems on London buses. The London buses application is utilized as a case study for setting up a methodology and implementing suitable data analysis for face recognition from recorded footage, which has been degraded by compression. The majority of CCTV recorders on buses use a proprietary format based on the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC video coding standard, exploiting both spatial and temporal redundancy. Low bitrates are favored in the CCTV industry for saving storage and transmission bandwidth, but they compromise the image usefulness of the recorded imagery. In this context, usefulness is determined by the presence of enough facial information remaining in the compressed image to allow a specialist to recognize a person. The investigation includes four steps: (1) Development of a video dataset representative of typical CCTV bus scenarios. (2) Selection and grouping of video scenes based on local (facial) and global (entire scene) content properties. (3) Psychophysical investigations to identify the key scenes, which are most affected by compression, using an industry implementation of H.264/MPEG-4 AVC. (4) Testing of CCTV recording systems on buses with the key scenes and further psychophysical investigations. The results showed a dependency upon scene content properties. Very dark scenes and scenes with high levels of spatial–temporal busyness were the most challenging to compress, requiring higher bitrates to maintain useful information

Antifungal activity of amphotericin B conjugated to nanosized magnetite in the treatment of paracoccidioidomycosis

This study reports on in vitro and in vivo tests that sought to assess the antifungal activity of a newly developed magnetic carrier system comprising amphotericin B loaded onto the surface of pre-coated (with a double-layer of lauric acid) magnetite nanoparticles. The in vitro tests compared two drugs; i.e., this newly developed form and free amphotericin B. We found that this nanocomplex exhibited antifungal activity without cytotoxicity to human urinary cells and with low cytotoxicity to peritoneal macrophages. We also evaluated the efficacy of the nanocomplex in experimental paracoccidioidomycosis. BALB/c mice were intratracheally infected with Paracoccidioides brasiliensis and treated with the compound for 30 or 60 days beginning the day after infection. The newly developed amphotericin B coupled with magnetic nanoparticles was effective against experimental paracoccidioidomycosis, and it did not induce clinical, biochemical or histopathological alterations. The nanocomplex also did not induce genotoxic effects in bone marrow cells. Therefore, it is reasonable to believe that amphotericin B coupled to magnetic nanoparticles and stabilized with bilayer lauric acid is a promising nanotool for the treatment of the experimental paracoccidioidomycosis because it exhibited antifungal activity that was similar to that of free amphotericin B, did not induce adverse effects in therapeutic doses and allowed for a reduction in the number of applications

Using random forest and decision tree models for a new vehicle prediction approach in computational toxicology

yesDrug vehicles are chemical carriers that provide beneficial aid to the drugs they bear. Taking advantage of their favourable properties can potentially allow the safer use of drugs that are considered highly toxic. A means for vehicle selection without experimental trial would therefore be of benefit in saving time and money for the industry. Although machine learning is increasingly used in predictive toxicology, to our knowledge there is no reported work in using machine learning techniques to model drug-vehicle relationships for vehicle selection to minimise toxicity. In this paper we demonstrate the use of data mining and machine learning techniques to process, extract and build models based on classifiers (decision trees and random forests) that allow us to predict which vehicle would be most suited to reduce a drug’s toxicity. Using data acquired from the National Institute of Health’s (NIH) Developmental Therapeutics Program (DTP) we propose a methodology using an area under a curve (AUC) approach that allows us to distinguish which vehicle provides the best toxicity profile for a drug and build classification models based on this knowledge. Our results show that we can achieve prediction accuracies of 80 % using random forest models whilst the decision tree models produce accuracies in the 70 % region. We consider our methodology widely applicable within the scientific domain and beyond for comprehensively building classification models for the comparison of functional relationships between two variables

TBK1: a new player in ALS linking autophagy and neuroinflammation.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is an adult-onset neurodegenerative disorder affecting motor neurons, resulting in progressive muscle weakness and death by respiratory failure. Protein and RNA aggregates are a hallmark of ALS pathology and are thought to contribute to ALS by impairing axonal transport. Mutations in several genes known to contribute to ALS result in deposition of their protein products as aggregates; these include TARDBP, C9ORF72, and SOD1. In motor neurons, this can disrupt transport of mitochondria to areas of metabolic need, resulting in damage to cells and can elicit a neuroinflammatory response leading to further neuronal damage. Recently, eight independent human genetics studies have uncovered a link between TANK-binding kinase 1 (TBK1) mutations and ALS. TBK1 belongs to the IKK-kinase family of kinases that are involved in innate immunity signaling pathways; specifically, TBK1 is an inducer of type-1 interferons. TBK1 also has a major role in autophagy and mitophagy, chiefly the phosphorylation of autophagy adaptors. Several other ALS genes are also involved in autophagy, including p62 and OPTN. TBK1 is required for efficient cargo recruitment in autophagy; mutations in TBK1 may result in impaired autophagy and contribute to the accumulation of protein aggregates and ALS pathology. In this review, we focus on the role of TBK1 in autophagy and the contributions of this process to the pathophysiology of ALS

Therapeutic and immunomodulatory activities of short-course treatment of murine visceral leishmaniasis with KALSOME™10, a new liposomal amphotericin B

Visceral leishmaniasis (VL), a potentially fatal disease, is most prevalent in the Indian subcontinent, East Africa and South America. Since the conventional antileishmanial drugs have many limitations we evaluated a new ergosterol rich liposomal amphotericin B formulation, KALSOME™10 for its leishmanicidal efficacy, tolerability and immunomodulatory activity. Normal healthy mice were treated with 3.5 mg/kg single and 7.5 mg/kg single and double doses ofKALSOME™10. Liver and kidney function tests were performed fourteen days after treatment. Next, normal mice were infected with Leishmania donovani amastigotes. Two months post infection they were treated with the above mentioned doses of KALSOME™10 and sacrificed one month after treatment for estimation of parasite burden in the liver and spleen by Limiting Dilution Assay. Leishmanial antigen stimulated splenocyte culture supernatants were collected for cytokine detection through ELISA. Flow cytometric studies were performed on normal animals treated with KALSOME™10, Amphotericin B (AmB) and AmBiosome to compare their immunomodulatory activities. The drug was found to induce no hepato- or nephrotoxicities at the studied doses. Moreover, at all doses, it led to significant reduction in parasite burden in two month infected BALB/c mice, with 7.5 mg/kg double dose resulting in almost complete clearance of parasites from both liver and spleen. Interestingly, the drug at 7.5 mg/kg double dose could almost completely inhibit the secretion of disease promoting cytokines, IL-10 and TGFβ, and significantly elevate the levels of IFNγ and IL-12, cytokines required for control of the disease. Mice treated with KALSOME™10 showed elevated levels of IFNγ and suppressed IL-10 secretion from both CD4+ and CD8+ subsets of T cells, as well as from culture supernatants of splenocytes, compared to that of normal, AmB and AmBisome treated animal Treatment of infected mice with 7.5 mg/kg double dose of KALSOME™10 was safe and effective in clearing the parasites from the sites of infection. The drug maintains the inherent immunomodulatory activities of AmB by effectively suppressing disease promoting cytokines IL-10 and TGFβ, thereby boosting IL-12 and IFNγ levels. This emphasizes KALSOME™10 as a promising drug alternative for lifelong protection from VL

Hippo signalling governs cytosolic nucleic acid sensing through YAP/TAZ-mediated TBK1 blockade

The Hippo pathway senses cellular conditions and regulates YAP/TAZ to control cellular and tissue homeostasis, while TBK1 is central for cytosolic nucleic acid sensing and antiviral defence. The correlation between cellular nutrient/physical status and host antiviral defence is interesting but not well understood. Here we find that YAP/TAZ act as natural inhibitors of TBK1 and are vital for antiviral physiology. Independent of transcriptional regulation and through the transactivation domain, YAP/TAZ associate directly with TBK1 and abolish virus-induced TBK1 activation, by preventing TBK1 Lys63-linked ubiquitylation and the binding of adaptors/substrates. Accordingly, YAP/TAZ deletion/depletion or cellular conditions inactivating YAP/TAZ through Lats1/2 kinases relieve TBK1 suppression and boost antiviral responses, whereas expression of the transcriptionally inactive YAP dampens cytosolic RNA/DNA sensing and weakens the antiviral defence in cells and zebrafish. Thus, we describe a function of YAP/TAZ and the Hippo pathway in innate immunity, by linking cellular nutrient/physical status to antiviral host defence