Texture spectrum coupled with entropy and homogeneity image features for myocardium muscle characterization

People in middle/later age often suffer from heart muscle damage due to coronary artery disease associated to myocardial infarction. In young people, the genetic forms of cardiomyopathies (heart muscle disease) are the utmost protuberant cause of myocardial disease. Accurate early detected information regarding the myocardial tissue structure is a key answer for tracking the progress of several myocardial diseases. The present work proposes a new method for myocardium muscle texture classification based on entropy, homogeneity and on the texture unit-based texture spectrum approaches. Entropy and homogeneity are generated in moving windows of size 3x3 and 5x5 to enhance the texture features and to create the premise of differentiation of the myocardium structures. Texture is then statistically analyzed using the texture spectrum approach. Texture classification is achieved based on a fuzzy c–means descriptive classifier. The noise sensitivity of the fuzzy c–means classifier is overcome by using the image features. The proposed method is tested on a dataset of 80 echocardiographic ultrasound images in both short-axis and long-axis in apical two chamber view representations, for normal and infarct pathologies. The results established that the entropy-based features provided superior clustering results compared to homogeneity

A note on a Couette flow of a dusty fluid

The study of the flow of a viscous incompressible dusty fluid between two parallel plates is undertaken, one of the plates being stationary and the other being impulsively brought to rest from a uniform motion parallel to itself detailing the effects of gravity. © 1983 Società Italiana di Fisica

Antimicrobial activity of selected corticolous macrolichens

The present study was conducted to screen antimicrobial activity of three foliose macrolichens viz., Parmotrema reticulatum (Taylor) M. Choisy (Parmeliaceae), Heterodermia  obscurata (Nyl.) Trevis (Physciaceae) and Dirinaria consimilis (Stirt.) D.D. Awasthi (Physciaceae) and two fruticose macrolichens viz., Ramalina pacifica Asahina (Ramalinaceae), and Ramalina hossei H. Magn & G. Awasthi (Ramalinaceae) growing on barks of areca trees. The lichens were identified on the basis of morphological, anatomical and color tests and the secondary metabolites (lichen substances) were identified by thin layer chromatography. Antibacterial activity of lichen extracts was evaluated against three Gram positive and five Gram negative bacteria by Agar well diffusion assay. The lichen extracts were effective in inhibiting all test bacteria. Overall, extract of D. consimilis and P. reticulatum displayed marked and least antibacterial efficacy. Marked inhibitory activity was observed against Klebsiella pneumoniae. Antifungal effect of lichen extracts was determined against four molds by Poisoned food technique. Among fungi, the growth of Colletrotrichum capsici was suppressed to higher extent by lichen extracts. The observed inhibitory activity of lichens could be ascribed to the presence of lichen substances.Keywords: Lichens, Antimicrobial, Agar well diffusion, Poisoned food technique

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Not AvailableThe residual effect on soil properties on application of composts made out of composting enzyme industrial wastes and municipal solid wastes namely MEES compost (multiple effect evaporator salts + municipal solid waste) and primary sludge (PS) compost (Primary sludge + municipal solid waste) were evaluated in this study. Application of composts recorded a marginal increase in soil pH towards harvest (6.70 and 6.68) in treatment T8 (50% N through MEES + 50 % N) through FYM and T7 (PS compost @ 10 t ha - 1 respectively) in comparison to the initial pH and a higher organic carbon content of 0.56 and 0.57 per cent at 30 DAS and 0.52 and 0.53 in T6 (MEES Compost @10 t ha-1) and T7 (PS Compost @ 10 t ha-1) respectively after the harvest of cowpea which was grown as the residual crop. A positive residual effect was evident in compost treatments with an increased status of available major and micro nutrients.Not Availabl

Computer-aided diagnosis of Myocardial Infarction using ultrasound images with DWT, GLCM and HOS methods: A comparative study

Myocardial Infarction (MI) or acute MI (AMI) is one of the leading causes of death worldwide. Precise and timely identification of MI and extent of muscle damage helps in early treatment and reduction in the time taken for further tests. MI diagnosis using 2D echocardiography is prone to inter-/intra-observer variability in the assessment. Therefore, a computerised scheme based on image processing and artificial intelligent techniques can reduce the workload of clinicians and improve the diagnosis accuracy. A Computer-Aided Diagnosis (CAD) of infarcted and normal ultrasound images will be useful for clinicians. In this study, the performance of CAD approach using Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT), second order statistics calculated from Gray-Level Co-Occurrence Matrix (GLCM) and Higher-Order Spectra (HOS) texture descriptors are compared. The proposed system is validated using 400 MI and 400 normal ultrasound images, obtained from 80 patients with MI and 80 normal subjects. The extracted features are ranked based on t-value and fed to the Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier to obtain the best performance using minimum number of features. The features extracted from DWT coefficients obtained an accuracy of 99.5%, sensitivity of 99.75% and specificity of 99.25%; GLCM have achieved an accuracy of 85.75%, sensitivity of 90.25% and specificity of 81.25%; and HOS obtained an accuracy of 93.0%, sensitivity of 94.75% and specificity of 91.25%. Among the three techniques presented DWT yielded the highest classification accuracy. Thus, the proposed CAD approach may be used as a complementary tool to assist cardiologists in making a more accurate diagnosis for the presence of MI

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Not AvailableTraditionally farmers cultivate conventional crops like sorghum, bajra, castor, paddy, red gram, etc. in the drylands depending on their resources which are vulnerable to vagaries of monsoon, pests and diseases leading to crop failure. The problem is further aggravated with fluctuating market price of their produce for various reasons like drought, government policies, transient waterlogging, interference by middlemen, etc. Although the productivity of these crops has improved significantly with the advent of new technologies (variety, agronomic practices, etc), improved income to the farmers in the same tune is missing. In the last ten years, area under green chilly and green leafy vegetables (coriander, mint, fenugreek) cultivation has increased almost 10% over 2010, which indicates the increasing preference of farmers towards them1 (Figure 1). Though the Government of India (GoI) is encouraging doubling the income of farmers, the risk-taking capacity of marginal farmers with marginal soil type is poor. Hence, an enterprise with low investment for a portable piece of land with tremendous income opportunities is highly profitable.Not Availabl

Sunlight photocatalytic performance of Mg-doped nickel ferrite synthesized by a green sol-gel route

We report an environmentally friendly synthetic strategy to synthesize new nickel ferrite and Mg doped nickel ferrite photocatalysts under modified green sol-gel route in which Aloe Vera gel acts as a natural template. The crystalline phase, surface morphology and size of the prepared photocatalysts were characterized by PXRD, SEM, TEM and HRTEM analysis. The energy band gap of the nanoparticles (NPs) can be tuned in the range of 2.55–2.34 eV by varying the dopant concentration. The photoluminescence analysis indicates that the present NPs are an effective white component in display applications. These synthesized NPs were used for photocatalytic decomposition of recalcitrant pollutants in aqueous media under sunlight irradiation. Among investigated samples, the NiFe2O4: Mg2+ (1 mol %) exhibits the highest photocatalytic efficiency for the decomposition of recalcitrant pollutants, which is higher than that of the commercial P25. This enhancement in photocatalytic performance can be mainly attributed to the balance between the parameters, crystallanity, band gap, morphology, crystallite size, defects, dopant amount and combined facets of photocatalysis. It opens a new window to use this simple greener route to synthesize bi-functional NPs in the area of photocatalysis particularly waste water treatment and display applications. Keywords: NiFe2O4:Mg2+NPs, Green sol-gel route, Photoluminescence, Photo-Fenton catalytic performanc