SEGCloud: Semantic Segmentation of 3D Point Clouds

3D semantic scene labeling is fundamental to agents operating in the real world. In particular, labeling raw 3D point sets from sensors provides fine-grained semantics. Recent works leverage the capabilities of Neural Networks (NNs), but are limited to coarse voxel predictions and do not explicitly enforce global consistency. We present SEGCloud, an end-to-end framework to obtain 3D point-level segmentation that combines the advantages of NNs, trilinear interpolation(TI) and fully connected Conditional Random Fields (FC-CRF). Coarse voxel predictions from a 3D Fully Convolutional NN are transferred back to the raw 3D points via trilinear interpolation. Then the FC-CRF enforces global consistency and provides fine-grained semantics on the points. We implement the latter as a differentiable Recurrent NN to allow joint optimization. We evaluate the framework on two indoor and two outdoor 3D datasets (NYU V2, S3DIS, KITTI, Semantic3D.net), and show performance comparable or superior to the state-of-the-art on all datasets.Comment: Accepted as a spotlight at the International Conference of 3D Vision (3DV 2017

Procalcitonin Correlates With Cardiovascular Risk Better Than Highly Sensitive C-Reactive Protein in Patients With Type 2 Diabetes in Sub-Saharan Africa: Results From a Cross-Sectional Study.

Objective Inflammatory markers such as C-reactive protein and procalcitonin have been shown to be independent markers of cardiovascular diseases. We aimed to assess the correlation between serum levels of procalcitonin, C-reactive protein and cardiovascular risk in type 2 diabetes. Methods We carried out a cross-sectional study at a tertiary level reference hospital in Yaounde, Cameroon. We assessed the cardiovascular risk using the Action in Diabetes and Vascular Disease: Preterax and Diamicron-MR Controlled Evaluation (ADVANCE) cardiovascular risk prediction model in 80 adults with type 2 diabetes. Serum procalcitonin and C-reactive protein were measured in 80 and 76 subjects respectively, using a highly sensitive quantitative enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) method. Correlations were examined using Spearman's rank correlation test and the correlation coefficients were compared using the Z-test statistic. Results Females represented the majority of the study population (62.5%). The median duration of diabetes was 5 (3-10) years and 62.5% of participants had a high cardiovascular risk score. Median serum procalcitonin levels was significantly higher in females compared to male participants: 2.48 (1.76-3.01 ng/mL) vs 1.42 (0.86-1.87 ng/mL); p<0.001. There was no difference in the serum C-reactive protein levels between females and males: 1.20 (0.33-3.33) mg/L vs 0.85 (0.36-2.77) mg/L; p=0.669. Procalcitonin was moderately correlated with cardiovascular risk (r=0.58, p<0.001). The correlation was slightly higher in females (R=0.56, p<0.001) versus males (R=0.49, p=0.005) although not significantly different (Z-statistic=0.734, p=0.463). Serum C-reactive protein did not show a meaningful correlation with cardiovascular risk (R=0.23, p=0.050). At a threshold of 2 ng/ml, serum procalcitonin identified participants with a high cardiovascular risk score, with a sensitivity and specificity of 64% and 80% respectively. Conclusion Compared to C-reactive protein, procalcitonin may be a better surrogate marker for cardiovascular risk prediction in this population with type 2 diabetes

Wide-bandwidth digital controller for multi-phase converters

Thesis: M. Eng., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2014.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (page 63).DC-DC converters with high bandwidth are essential for today's high efficiency and high-speed micro-processing applications. In order to satisfy the requirements of those systems, we propose the implementation of a practical wide bandwidth digital controller for multiphase buck converters. Traditional implementations of multiphase converters have a performance comparable to single-phase implementations, with a bandwidth limited to a fraction of the per-phase switching frequency Fsw. The goal of this project is to take advantage of multiphase to achieve a higher bandwidth for any given switching frequency. Specifically, we target a bandwidth that scales with N x Fsw, rather than Fsw, with N being the number of phases in the system. This work focuses on the evaluation of a previously proposed digital modulator that is able to react to duty cycle changes at a speed equal to N x Fsw. Using this modulator, we design a few digital controllers and compare their performance to that of traditional digital controllers.by Lyne Petse Tchapmi.M. Eng

WiCV 2018: The Fourth Women In Computer Vision Workshop

We present WiCV 2018 - Women in Computer Vision Workshop to increase the visibility and inclusion of women researchers in computer vision field, organized in conjunction with CVPR 2018. Computer vision and machine learning have made incredible progress over the past years, yet the number of female researchers is still low both in academia and industry. WiCV is organized to raise visibility of female researchers, to increase the collaboration, and to provide mentorship and give opportunities to female-identifying junior researchers in the field. In its fourth year, we are proud to present the changes and improvements over the past years, summary of statistics for presenters and attendees, followed by expectations from future generations

Clinical and electrocardiographic profile of patients with palpitations in cardiology outpatient consultations in Yaounde

Introduction: Palpitation is a major cause of consultation in Cardiology clinics and Emergency departments. In Cameroon, there are few studies done on this frequent symptom and therefore is poorly understood in our setting. Purpose: To describe the clinical and electrocardiographic profile of patients presenting with palpitations at the cardiology outpatient consultations of two reference hospitals in Yaoundé Methods: We carried out a descriptive cross-sectional study from November 2016 to May 2017 in two reference hospitals in Yaoundé: General Hospital and Central Hospital. Participants in the outpatient unit with palpitation as presenting complain were recruited after giving their consent. Data collected were analysed using IBM SPSS 23.0. Results: 210 participants were included. The hospital prevalence of palpitation was 18.7% for the General Hospital and 25.9% for the Central Hospital and an overall prevalence of 21%. The mean age of the participants was 47.3 +/- 18 years. The most represented age group was “56 and older” group (n=69, 32.8%). Females constituted 75% (n=157) of our study population. Hypertension was the most frequent predisposing factor (n=59, 28.1%). The most frequent associated symptom was dyspnea (n=80, 38.1%); 28.6% (n=60) of participants had chest pain. The most observed sign on physical examination was a heart murmur (n=45, 21.4%). On electrocardiography, 86.8% (n=182) of the study population had a normal sinus rhythm. The most common abnormality on ECG was a left ventricular hypertrophy (n=26, 12.4%). Sinus tachycardia was found to be the most frequent rhythm disturbance (n=25, 11.9%) followed by sinus bradycardia (n=12, 5.7%) and atrial fibrillation (n=8, 3.8%). Conclusion: Palpitation is a very frequent symptom in our setting. It is mostly associated was dyspnea. The most frequent findings on ECG are left ventricular hypertrophy and sinus tachycardia. Keywords: Palpitation, Clinical aspects, ECG, Hospita