Ultra-Shallow DoF Imaging Using Faced Paraboloidal Mirrors

Computer Vision - ACCV 2016: 13th Asian Conference on Computer Vision, Nov 20-24, 2016, Taipei, TaiwanWe propose a new imaging method that achieves an ultra-shallow depth of field (DoF) to clearly visualize a particular depth in a 3-D scene. The key optical device consists of a pair of faced paraboloidal mirrors with holes around their vertexes. In the device, a lens-less image sensor is set at one side of their holes and an object is set at the opposite side. The characteristic of the device is that the shape of the point spread function varies depending on both the positions of the target 3-D point and the image sensor. By leveraging this characteristic, we reconstruct a clear image for a particular depth by solving a linear system involving position-dependent point spread functions. In experiments, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method using both simulation and an actually developed prototype imaging system

Label-free observation of tissues by high-speed stimulated Raman spectral microscopy and independent component analysis

SPIE BiOS, 2013, San Francisco, California, United StatesYasuyuki Ozeki, Yoichi Otsuka, Shuya Sato, Hiroyuki Hashimoto, Wataru Umemura, Kazuhiko Sumimura, Norihiko Nishizawa, Kiichi Fukui, Kazuyoshi Itoh, "Label-free observation of tissues by high-speed stimulated Raman spectral microscopy and independent component analysis," Proc. SPIE 8588, Multiphoton Microscopy in the Biomedical Sciences XIII, 858806 (22 February 2013); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.200277

トクシマ ダイガク キョウツウ キョウイク ニオケル コウダイ セツゾク ノ タメ ノ カイカク : リスウ カモク ノ ホシュウテキ ジュギョウ ノ ジッシ ト カダイ

平成15年度より、徳島大学共通教育において、高等学校の範囲で補習的授業を実施している。今回の補習的授業は、高等学校の数学、理科の科目の理解が不十分な学生に対して、基礎的理解を深めること目的とした。また、点数をとるための勉強ではなく、そこに含まれる勉学の楽しさを体得するとともに、大学での教養科目や専門分野との関連において体系的な理解につなげることを目指してきた。受講生に対するアンケート調査の結果では、「補習的授業の充実を望む」や、「高等学校で履修できる科目を増やすべき」とする声が多かった。来たるべき、大学全入時代に対応するために、共通教育のカリキュラム体系の見直しなどの改革が必須になっている。補習的授業に関しても、今後は数学、物理、生物以外の多様な科目で実施する必要がある。全国的に見て、高等学校の範囲の補習的授業を予備校などの外部に委託する大学も多いが、徳島大学では、大学教員による実施を柱としている。これは、高等学校の内容は、大学教育の中でも重要な基礎知識の礎であるため、補習的授業を共通教育の体系の中に取り入れた系統的な教育プログラムを構築する上で、大学教員の担当が望ましいと考えられるためである。さらに学生の多様な学習レベルや目的に対して高大接続カリキュラムを組み入れることにより、大学全入時代に適合した共通教育のカリキュラムの全体像を構築する必要がある。Supplementary lessons in Mathematics and Sciences were introduced in the general education of Tokushima University from 2003 in order to seal the gap of fundamental studies between the courses of high school and University. The main purpose of these lessons is to cultivate the novel interests on these subjects for students themselves by using textbooks for high school students. The results of student evaluation survey revealed the potential needs of supplementary lessons in other subjects and reevaluation for crowded curriculum of sciences in the course of high school. A designed new curriculum is indispensable including supplementary lessons in other subjects for a coming society with fewer children in Japan. Establishment of systematic course of general education is needed including the fundamental studies by the teaching staff of the university. Further development of the supplementary lessons should be undertaken for students various in their understanding levels or interests

NIASGBdb: NIAS Genebank databases for genetic resources and plant disease information

The National Institute of Agrobiological Sciences (NIAS) is implementing the NIAS Genebank Project for conservation and promotion of agrobiological genetic resources to contribute to the development and utilization of agriculture and agricultural products. The project’s databases (NIASGBdb; http://www.gene.affrc.go.jp/databases_en.php) consist of a genetic resource database and a plant diseases database, linked by a web retrieval database. The genetic resources database has plant and microorganism search systems to provide information on research materials, including passport and evaluation data for genetic resources with the desired properties. To facilitate genetic diversity research, several NIAS Core Collections have been developed. The NIAS Rice (Oryza sativa) Core Collection of Japanese Landraces contains information on simple sequence repeat (SSR) polymorphisms. SSR marker information for azuki bean (Vigna angularis) and black gram (V. mungo) and DNA sequence data from some selected Japanese strains of the genus Fusarium are also available. A database of plant diseases in Japan has been developed based on the listing of common names of plant diseases compiled by the Phytopathological Society of Japan. Relevant plant and microorganism genetic resources are associated with the plant disease names by the web retrieval database and can be obtained from the NIAS Genebank for research or educational purposes

Disease-Free Interval Length Correlates to Prognosis of Patients Who Underwent Metastasectomy for Esophageal Lung Metastases

BackgroundPulmonary metastasectomy is a standard method for treatment of selected pulmonary metastases cases. Nevertheless, because prognosis for patients with lung metastases from esophageal cancer who have undergone pulmonary metastasectomy is poor, candidates for this method of treatment are rare. Therefore, the efficacy of surgical treatment for pulmonary metastatic lesions from esophageal cancer has not been thoroughly examined.MethodsBetween March 1984 and May 2006, 57 patients underwent resection of pulmonary metastases from primary esophageal cancer. These cases were registered in the database developed by the Metastatic Lung Tumor Study Group of Japan and were retrospectively reviewed from the registry. After excluding eight cases because of missing information, we reviewed the remaining 49 cases and examined the prognostic factors for pulmonary metastasectomy for metastases from esophageal cancer.ResultsThere were no perioperative deaths. After pulmonary metastasectomy, disease recurred in 16 (33%) of the 49 patients. The overall 5-year survival was 29.6%. Median survival time was 18 months. The survival of patients with a disease-free interval (DFI) less than 12 months was significantly lower than patients with a DFI greater than 12 months. Through multivariate analysis, we identified DFI as a clinical factor significantly related to overall survival (p = 0.04).ConclusionsWe identified that patients with a DFI less than 12 months who underwent pulmonary metastasectomy for metastases from esophageal cancer had a worse prognosis. Pulmonary metastasectomy for esophageal cancer should be considered for selected patients with a DFI ≥12 months

Up-regulation of brain-derived neurotrophic factor in the dorsal root ganglion of the rat bone cancer pain model

Metastatic bone cancer causes severe pain, but current treatments often provide insufficient pain relief. One of the reasons is that mechanisms underlying bone cancer pain are not solved completely. Our previous studies have shown that brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), known as a member of the neurotrophic family, is an important molecule in the pathological pain state in some pain models. We hypothesized that expression changes of BDNF may be one of the factors related to bone cancer pain; in this study, we investigated changes of BDNF expression in dorsal root ganglia in a rat bone cancer pain model. As we expected, BDNF mRNA (messenger ribonucleic acid) and protein were significantly increased in L3 dorsal root ganglia after intra-tibial inoculation of MRMT-1 rat breast cancer cells. Among the eleven splice-variants of BDNF mRNA, exon 1–9 variant increased predominantly. Interestingly, the up-regulation of BDNF is localized in small neurons (mostly nociceptive neurons) but not in medium or large neurons (non-nociceptive neurons). Further, expression of nerve growth factor (NGF), which is known as a specific promoter of BDNF exon 1–9 variant, was significantly increased in tibial bone marrow. Our findings suggest that BDNF is a key molecule in bone cancer pain, and NGF-BDNF cascade possibly develops bone cancer pain

Moving object detection from a point cloud using photometric and depth consistencies

ICPR 2016: 23rd International Conference on Pattern Recognition, Dec 4-8, 2016, Cancun, Mexico3D models of outdoor environments have been used for several applications such as a virtual earth system and a vision-based vehicle safety system. 3D data for constructing such 3D models are often measured by an on-vehicle system equipped with laser rangefinders, cameras, and GPS/IMU. However, 3D data of moving objects on streets lead to inaccurate 3D models when modeling outdoor environments. To solve this problem, this paper proposes a moving object detection method for point clouds by minimizing an energy function based on photometric and depth consistencies assuming that input data consist of synchronized point clouds, images, and camera poses from a single sequence captured with a moving on-vehicle system

A Crowdsourcing Approach for Finding Misidentifications of Bibliographic Records

Because there is no perfect technique for automatic identification of bibliographic records, cleaning the identification results manually is indispensable. However, to recruit human resources for the task is often difficult. This paper discusses a microtask-based crowdsourcing approach to the problem. An important issue is to design a good strategy for generating tasks to be assigned to workers, maintaining the quality and reducing the number of tasks. In this study, we explore a design space defined by two criteria to reduce the number of assigned microtasks for finding misidentifications caused by automatic identification techniques. We compare four task-generation strategies using bibliographic records of the National Diet Library. One of the strategies reduced 55.7% of tasks from the baseline strategy and statistic analysis showed that the quality of its result is comparable to those of the other three strategies.published or submitted for publicationis peer reviewe

Model of lung cancer surgery risk derived from a Japanese nationwide web-based database of 78 594 patients during 2014–2015

OBJECTIVESUsing data obtained from a Japanese nationwide annual database with web-based data entry, we developed a risk model of mortality and morbidity after lung cancer surgery.METHODSThe characteristics and operative and postoperative data from 80 095 patients who underwent lung cancer surgery were entered into the annual National Clinical Database of Japan data sets for 2014 and 2015. After excluding 1501 patients, the development data set for risk models included 38 277 patients entering in 2014 and the validation data set included 40 317 patients entering in 2015. Receiver–operating characteristic curves were generated for the outcomes of mortality and composite mortality/major morbidity. The concordance index was used to assess the discriminatory ability and validity of the model.RESULTSThe 30-day mortality and overall mortality rates, including in-hospital deaths, were 0.4% and 0.8%, respectively, in 2014, and 0.4% and 0.8%, respectively, in 2015. The rate of major morbidity was 5.6% in 2014 and 5.6% in 2015. Several risk factors were significantly associated with mortality, namely, male sex, performance status, comorbidities of interstitial pneumonia and liver cirrhosis, haemodialysis and the surgical procedure pneumonectomy. The concordance index for mortality and composite mortality/major morbidity was 0.854 (P < 0.001) and 0.718 (P < 0.001), respectively, for the development data set and 0.849 (P < 0.001) and 0.723 (P < 0.001), respectively, for the validation data set.CONCLUSIONSThis model was satisfactory for predicting surgical outcomes after pulmonary resection for lung cancer in Japan and will aid preoperative assessment and improve clinical outcomes for lung cancer surgery