Voxel based annealed particle filtering for markerless 3D articulated motion capture

This paper presents a view-independent approach to markerless human motion capture in low resolution sequences from multiple calibrated and synchronized cameras. Redundancy among cameras is exploited to generate a 3D voxelized representation of the scene and a human body model (HBM) is introduced towards analyzing these data. An annealed particle filtering scheme where every particle encodes an instance of the pose of the HBM is employed. Likelihood between particles and input data is performed using occupancy and surface information and kinematic constrains are imposed in the propagation step towards avoiding impossible poses. Test over the HumanEva annotated dataset yield quantitative results showing the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.Postprint (published version

Spatio-temporal alignment and hyperspherical radon transform for 3D gait recognition in multi-view environments

This paper presents a view-invariant approach to gait recognition in multi-camera scenarios exploiting a joint spatio-temporal data representation and analysis. First, multi-view information is employed to generate a 3D voxel reconstruction of the scene under study. The analyzed subject is tracked and its centroid and orientation allow recentering and aligning the volume associated to it, thus obtaining a representation invariant to translation, rotation and scaling. Temporal periodicity of the walking cycle is extracted to align the input data in the time domain. Finally, Hyperspherical Radon Transform is presented as an efficient tool to obtain features from spatio-temporal gait templates for classification purposes. Experimental results prove the validity and robustness of the proposed method for gait recognition tasks with several covariates.Postprint (published version

El Plan de comunicación UPC Sostenible 2015

Desde hace ya años, la UPC ha desarrollado dos Planes de Medio Ambiente. Actualmente, está vigente el Plan UPC Sostenible 2015, que supone un cambio en varios aspectos: la transición del enfoque ambiental hacia a el enfoque del desarrollo humano sostenible, el refuerzo del rol social de la universidad y la apertura al entorno, la orientación al futuro, y las prioridades temáticas.Peer Reviewe

Population norms and cut-off-points for suboptimal health related quality of life in two generic measures for adolescents: the Spanish VSP-A and KINDL-R

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Health-related quality of life (HRQL) outcome measures are complex and for further application in clinical practice and health service research the meaning of their scorings should be studied in depth. The aim of this study was to increase the interpretability of the Spanish VSP-A and KINDL-R scores.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A representative sample of adolescents aged 12 to 18 years old was selected in Spain. The Spanish VSP-A and KINDL-R, two generic HRQL measures (range: 0–100), were self-administered along with other external anchor measures (Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire, Oslo Social Support Scale and self-declaration of chronic conditions) and sent by post. Percentiles of both HRQL questionnaires were obtained by gender, and age group and effect sizes (ES) were calculated. Receiver Operating Characteristic curves and related sensitivity (SE) and specificity (SP) values were also computed.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The Spanish VSP-A and KINDL-R were completed by 555 adolescents. A moderate ES was shown in Psychological well-being between younger and older girls (ES: 0.77) in the VSP-A and small ES in the KINDL (ES: 0.41) between these groups. A SE and SP value close to 0.70 was associated to a global HRQL score of 65 in the VSP-A and 70 in the KINDL-R, when compared to anchors measuring mental and psychosocial health. Adolescents with scores bellow these cut-off points showed a moderate probability of presenting more impairment in their HRQL.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The results of this study will be of help to interpret the VSP-A AND KINDL-R questionnaires by comparing with the general population and also provide cut-off points to define adolescents with health problems.</p

3D human action recognition in multiple view scenarios

This paper presents a novel view-independent approach to the recognition of human gestures of several people in low resolution sequences from multiple calibrated cameras. In contraposition with other multi-ocular gesture recognition systems based on generating a classification on a fusion of features coming from different views, our system performs a data fusion (3D representation of the scene) and then a feature extraction and classification. Motion descriptors introduced by Bobick et al. for 2D data are extended to 3D and a set of features based on 3D invariant statistical moments are computed. Finally, a Bayesian classifier is employed to perform recognition over a small set of actions. Results are provided showing the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm in a SmartRoom scenario.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Association between Germline Single-Nucleotide Variants in ADME Genes and Major Molecular Response to Imatinib in Chronic Myeloid Leukemia Patients

Leucèmia mieloide crònica; Imatinib; Inhibidor de la tirosina quinasa:Chronic myeloid leukemia; Imatinib; Tyrosine kinase inhibitorLeucemia mieloide crónica; Imatinib; Inhibidor de la tirosina quinasaImatinib is the most common first-line tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) used to treat chronic-phase chronic myeloid leukemia (CP-CML). However, only a proportion of patients achieve major molecular response (MMR), so there is a need to find biological factors that aid the selection of the optimal therapeutic strategy (imatinib vs. more potent second-generation TKIs). The aim of this retrospective study was to understand the contribution of germline single-nucleotide variants (gSNVs) in the achievement of MMR with imatinib. In particular, a discovery cohort including 45 CP-CML patients was analyzed through the DMET array, which interrogates 1936 variants in 231 genes related to the absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion (ADME) process. Variants statistically significant in the discovery cohort were then tested in an extended and independent cohort of 137 CP-CML patients. Finally, a total of 7 gSNVs (ABCG1-rs492338, ABCB11-rs496550, ABCB11-rs497692, CYP2D6-rs1135840, CYP11B1-rs7003319, MAT1A-rs4934027 and SLC22A1-rs628031) and one haplotype in the ABCB11 gene were significantly associated with the achievement of MMR with first-line imatinibtreatment. In conclusion, we identified a genetic signature of response to imatinib in CP-CML patients that could be useful in selecting those patients that may benefit from starting imatinib as first-line therapy, therefore avoiding the toxicity related to second-generation TKIs

Audiovisual head orientation estimation with particle filtering in multisensor scenarios

This article presents a multimodal approach to head pose estimation of individuals in environments equipped with multiple cameras and microphones, such as SmartRooms or automatic video conferencing. Determining the individuals head orientation is the basis for many forms of more sophisticated interactions between humans and technical devices and can also be used for automatic sensor selection (camera, microphone) in communications or video surveillance systems. The use of particle filters as a unified framework for the estimation of the head orientation for both monomodal and multimodal cases is proposed. In video, we estimate head orientation from color information by exploiting spatial redundancy among cameras. Audio information is processed to estimate the direction of the voice produced by a speaker making use of the directivity characteristics of the head radiation pattern. Furthermore, two different particle filter multimodal information fusion schemes for combining the audio and video streams are analyzed in terms of accuracy and robustness. In the first one, fusion is performed at a decision level by combining each monomodal head pose estimation, while the second one uses a joint estimation system combining information at data level. Experimental results conducted over the CLEAR 2006 evaluation database are reported and the comparison of the proposed multimodal head pose estimation algorithms with the reference monomodal approaches proves the effectiveness of the proposed approach.Postprint (published version

Contactless electrical resistance of 2D materials using a rutile resonator

Measuring the electrical surface resistance of 2D materials without contact can provide a method for obtaining their intrinsic characterisation. The aim of this paper is to show that a rutile dielectric resonator (RDR) can be used to measure the electrical surface resistance of conducting coatings deposited on substrates, at the resonance frequency. Moreover, it is known that the substrate exerts a strong influence capable of intrinsically modify the properties of the 2D materials, as found in graphene. The RDR method is used for different samples of metals (Cu, Mo, Ti, brass), carbon nanotubes (bucky paper), a film of compacted graphene flakes, a film of compacted graphene oxide flakes and graphene obtained by CVD on different substrates (SiO2/Si, quartz and PET). The results show that reasonable values can be obtained for thin conducting materials with a thickness of not less than a few micrometers. In the case of graphene grown on a substrate, the presence of graphene is clearly detected but the resistivity value cannot be extracted.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft