Self-Supervised CSF Inpainting with Synthetic Atrophy for Improved Accuracy Validation of Cortical Surface Analyses

Accuracy validation of cortical thickness measurement is a difficult problem due to the lack of ground truth data. To address this need, many methods have been developed to synthetically induce gray matter (GM) atrophy in an MRI via deformable registration, creating a set of images with known changes in cortical thickness. However, these methods often cause blurring in atrophied regions, and cannot simulate realistic atrophy within deep sulci where cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) is obscured or absent. In this paper, we present a solution using a self-supervised inpainting model to generate CSF in these regions and create images with more plausible GM/CSF boundaries. Specifically, we introduce a novel, 3D GAN model that incorporates patch-based dropout training, edge map priors, and sinusoidal positional encoding, all of which are established methods previously limited to 2D domains. We show that our framework significantly improves the quality of the resulting synthetic images and is adaptable to unseen data with fine-tuning. We also demonstrate that our resulting dataset can be employed for accuracy validation of cortical segmentation and thickness measurement.Comment: Accepted at Medical Imaging with Deep Learning (MIDL) 202

Excitation-Induced Germanium Quantum Dot Formation on Si (100)-(2×1)

The effect of nanosecond pulsed laser excitation on the self-assembly of Ge quantum dots grown by pulsed laser deposition on Si (100)-(2×1) was studied. In situ reflection high-energy electron diffraction and ex situ atomic force microscopy were used to probe the quantum dot structure and morphology. At room temperature, applying the excitation laser decreased the surface roughness of the grown Ge film. With surface electronic excitation, crystalline Ge quantum dots were formed at 250 °C, a temperature too low for their formation without excitation. At a substrate temperature of 390 °C, electronic excitation during growth was found to improve the quantum dot crystalline quality, change their morphology, and decrease their size distribution almost by half. A purely electronic mechanism of enhanced surface hopping of the Ge adatoms is proposed. © 2010 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3462436

Life cycle and cost performance analysis on ship structural maintenance strategy of a short route hybrid

This paper presents the importance of coating maintenance and suggests an optimal strategy from economic and environmental points of view. Life cycle analysis is introduced to estimate the economy and environment impacts so particular decision can be made. A case study of a hybrid ferry is carried out where cash, energy and emission flows are tracked and evaluated. With different maintenance intervals, the consumptions of energy, materials and fuels are evaluated to estimate their cost benefits. Emissions normalization is also applied to determine environmental potentials to determine the relation of environmental impacts which are converted and compared in monetary terms. Annual-based hull inspection and re-coating is proved to reduce hull resistance and fuel consumptions which is a way to achieve cost-saving operations. The assessment has been proven to be able to make reliable decision, so it is suggested to facilitate life cycle assessment in the marine industry

An investigation on the impact fatigue characteristics of valve leaves for small hermetic reciprocating compressors in a new automated test system

This paper presents an investigation on the impact fatigue characteristics of valve leaves that are prevalently used in hermetic reciprocating compressors especially for the household type refrigerators. A unique automated impact fatigue test system has been designed and produced, which enables to carry out impact fatigue tests of the compressor valve leaves under the desired impact velocities. The test system serves investigations on the impact fatigue characteristics with the ability of crack detection and as the subsequent step of automatically terminating the test. The crack detection technique incorporates a non-contact actuation, a data acquisition system and a microphone. The investigation relates the impact fatigue lifetime of the valve leaves with the impact velocity, asymmetrical impact, operation temperature, material type (carbon strip steel, stainless strip steel and new stainless strip steel grade) and tumbling operation duration. Microscopic and metallographic observations were performed on the specimens. It was observed that the crack initiated at the edge of the valve leaves on the contact surface of valve leaf and vale plate and a particle is torn away from the edge before propagation. As the crack propagates, branching along the crack path is caused by the geometrical shape and stress waves on the valve leaves. The investigation and introduced test system guide the design optimization of valve leaves in terms of compressor performance due to energy consumption and lifetime of the valve leaf

Motion-compensated prediction based algorithm for medical image sequence compression

Cataloged from PDF version of article.A method for irreversible compression of medical image sequences is described. The method relies on discrete cosine transform and motion-compensated prediction to reduce intra- and inter-frame redundancies in medical image sequences. Simulation examples are presented

Low Temperature Epitaxial Growth of Ge Quantum Dot on Si (100) - (2×1) by Femtosecond Laser Excitation

Low temperature epitaxy of Ge quantum dots on Si (100) - (2×1) by femtosecond pulsed laser deposition under femtosecond laser excitation was investigated. Reflection high-energy electron diffraction and atomic force microscopy were used to analyze the growth mode and morphology. Epitaxial growth was achieved at ∼70 °C by using femtosecond laser excitation of the substrate. A purely electronic mechanism of enhanced surface diffusion of the Ge adatoms is proposed. © 2011 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3537813