ActiveStereoNet: End-to-End Self-Supervised Learning for Active Stereo Systems

In this paper we present ActiveStereoNet, the first deep learning solution for active stereo systems. Due to the lack of ground truth, our method is fully self-supervised, yet it produces precise depth with a subpixel precision of $1/30th$ of a pixel; it does not suffer from the common over-smoothing issues; it preserves the edges; and it explicitly handles occlusions. We introduce a novel reconstruction loss that is more robust to noise and texture-less patches, and is invariant to illumination changes. The proposed loss is optimized using a window-based cost aggregation with an adaptive support weight scheme. This cost aggregation is edge-preserving and smooths the loss function, which is key to allow the network to reach compelling results. Finally we show how the task of predicting invalid regions, such as occlusions, can be trained end-to-end without ground-truth. This component is crucial to reduce blur and particularly improves predictions along depth discontinuities. Extensive quantitatively and qualitatively evaluations on real and synthetic data demonstrate state of the art results in many challenging scenes.Comment: Accepted by ECCV2018, Oral Presentation, Main paper + Supplementary Material

Membrane-based processes for wastewater nutrient recovery: Technology, challenges, and future direction

© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. Wastewater nutrient recovery holds promise for more sustainable water and agricultural industries. We critically review three emerging membrane processes - forward osmosis (FO), membrane distillation (MD) and electrodialysis (ED) - that can advance wastewater nutrient recovery. Challenges associated with wastewater nutrient recovery were identified. The advantages and challenges of applying FO, MD, and ED technologies to wastewater nutrient recovery are discussed, and directions for future research and development are identified. Emphasis is given to exploration of the unique mass transfer properties of these membrane processes in the context of wastewater nutrient recovery. We highlight that hybridising these membrane processes with existing nutrient precipitation process will lead to better management of and more diverse pathways for near complete nutrient recovery in wastewater treatment facilities

Evaluation of Phage Display Discovered Peptides as Ligands for Prostate-Specific Membrane Antigen (PSMA)

The aim of this study was to identify potential ligands of PSMA suitable for further development as novel PSMA-targeted peptides using phage display technology. The human PSMA protein was immobilized as a target followed by incubation with a 15-mer phage display random peptide library. After one round of prescreening and two rounds of screening, high-stringency screening at the third round of panning was performed to identify the highest affinity binders. Phages which had a specific binding activity to PSMA in human prostate cancer cells were isolated and the DNA corresponding to the 15-mers were sequenced to provide three consensus sequences: GDHSPFT, SHFSVGS and EVPRLSLLAVFL as well as other sequences that did not display consensus. Two of the peptide sequences deduced from DNA sequencing of binding phages, SHSFSVGSGDHSPFT and GRFLTGGTGRLLRIS were labeled with 5-carboxyfluorescein and shown to bind and co-internalize with PSMA on human prostate cancer cells by fluorescence microscopy. The high stringency requirements yielded peptides with affinities KD∼1 μM or greater which are suitable starting points for affinity maturation. While these values were less than anticipated, the high stringency did yield peptide sequences that apparently bound to different surfaces on PSMA. These peptide sequences could be the basis for further development of peptides for prostate cancer tumor imaging and therapy. © 2013 Shen et al

Chemical profiles and simultaneous quantification of Aurantii fructus by use of HPLC-Q-TOF-MS combined with GC-MS and HPLC methods

Aurantii fructus (AF) is a traditional Chinese medicine that has been used to improve gastrointestinal motility disorders for over a thousand years, but there is no exhaustive identification of the basic chemical components and comprehensive quality control of this herb. In this study, high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with quadrupole time of flight mass spectrometry (HPLC-Q-TOF-MS) and gas chromatography coupled mass spectrometry (GC-MS) were employed to identify the basic chemical compounds, and high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) was developed to determine the major biochemical markers from AF extract. There were 104 compounds belonging to eight structure types, including 13 amino acids or peptides, seven alkaloids, 18 flavanones, 14 flavones, 15 polymethoxyflavonoids, six triterpenoids, nine coumarins, and 18 volatile oils, as well as four other compounds that were systematically identified as the basic components from AF, and among them, 41 compounds were reported for the first time. Twelve bioactive ingredients were chosen as the benchmark markers to evaluate the quality of AF. The analysis was completed with a gradient elution at a flow rate of 0.7 mL/min within 55 min. This efficient method was validated showing good linearity, precision, stability, repeatability and recovery. Furthermore, the method was successfully applied to the simultaneous determination of 12 chemical markers in different samples of AF. This study could be applied to the identification of multiple bioactive substances and improve the quality control of AF

A protocol for manual segmentation of medial temporal lobe subregions in 7 Tesla MRI

Recent advances in MRI and increasing knowledge on the characterization and anatomical variability of medial temporal lobe (MTL) anatomy have paved the way for more specific subdivisions of the MTL in humans. In addition, recent studies suggest that early changes in many neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric diseases are better detected in smaller subregions of the MTL rather than with whole structure analyses. Here, we developed a new protocol using 7 Tesla (T) MRI incorporating novel anatomical findings for the manual segmentation of entorhinal cortex (ErC), perirhinal cortex (PrC; divided into area 35 and 36), parahippocampal cortex (PhC), and hippocampus; which includes the subfields subiculum (Sub), CA1, CA2, as well as CA3 and dentate gyrus (DG) which are separated by the endfolial pathway covering most of the long axis of the hippocampus. We provide detailed instructions alongside slice-by-slice segmentations to ease learning for the untrained but also more experienced raters. Twenty-two subjects were scanned (19–32 yrs, mean age = 26 years, 12 females) with a turbo spin echo (TSE) T2-weighted MRI sequence with high-resolution oblique coronal slices oriented orthogonal to the long axis of the hippocampus (in-plane resolution 0.44 × 0.44 mm2) and 1.0 mm slice thickness. The scans were manually delineated by two experienced raters, to assess intra- and inter-rater reliability. The Dice Similarity Index (DSI) was above 0.78 for all regions and the Intraclass Correlation Coefficients (ICC) were between 0.76 to 0.99 both for intra- and inter-rater reliability. In conclusion, this study presents a fine-grained and comprehensive segmentation protocol for MTL structures at 7 T MRI that closely follows recent knowledge from anatomical studies. More specific subdivisions (e.g. area 35 and 36 in PrC, and the separation of DG and CA3) may pave the way for more precise delineations thereby enabling the detection of early volumetric changes in dementia and neuropsychiatric diseases

Intraoperative hyperspectral label-free imaging: from system design to first-in-patient translation.

Despite advances in intraoperative surgical imaging, reliable discrimination of critical tissue during surgery remains challenging. As a result, decisions with potentially life-changing consequences for patients are still based on the surgeon's subjective visual assessment. Hyperspectral imaging (HSI) provides a promising solution for objective intraoperative tissue characterisation, with the advantages of being non-contact, non-ionising and non-invasive. However, while its potential to aid surgical decision-making has been investigated for a range of applications, to date no real-time intraoperative HSI (iHSI) system has been presented that follows critical design considerations to ensure a satisfactory integration into the surgical workflow. By establishing functional and technical requirements of an intraoperative system for surgery, we present an iHSI system design that allows for real-time wide-field HSI and responsive surgical guidance in a highly constrained operating theatre. Two systems exploiting state-of-the-art industrial HSI cameras, respectively using linescan and snapshot imaging technology, were designed and investigated by performing assessments against established design criteria and ex vivo tissue experiments. Finally, we report the use of our real-time iHSI system in a clinical feasibility case study as part of a spinal fusion surgery. Our results demonstrate seamless integration into existing surgical workflows

Mammary cancer and epithelial stem cells: a problem or a solution?

The existing paradigms for stem cells in adult tissues include the integument, the alimentary canal, the lung, the liver, skeletal muscle and bone marrow. The mammary gland, by contrast, is the 'new kid on the block'. What little is known about stem cells in the mammary gland indicates that they possess a prodigious capacity for self-renewal. More importantly, in rodents, they persist with undiminished reproductive vigor throughout the organism's lifetime without regard to age or reproductive history. Do these stem cells represent primary targets for mammary neoplasia? If so, what are the implications for prevention/therapy

Measurements and computations of flow in an urban street system

We present results from laboratory and computational experiments on the turbulent flow over an array of rectangular blocks modelling a typical, asymmetric urban canopy at various orientations to the approach flow. The work forms part of a larger study on dispersion within such arrays (project DIPLOS) and concentrates on the nature of the mean flow and turbulence fields within the canopy region, recognising that unless the flow field is adequately represented in computationalmodels there is no reason to expect realistic simulations of the nature of the dispersion of pollutants emitted within the canopy. Comparisons between the experimental data and those obtained from both large-eddy simulation (LES) and direct numerical simulation (DNS) are shown and it is concluded that careful use of LES can produce generally excellent agreement with laboratory and DNS results, lending further confidence in the use of LES for such situations. Various crucial issues are discussed and advice offered to both experimentalists and those seeking to compute canopy flows with turbulence resolving models

Combining comparative genomics with de novo motif discovery to identify human transcription factor DNA-binding motifs

BACKGROUND: As more and more genomes are sequenced, comparative genomics approaches provide a methodology for identifying conserved regulatory elements that may be involved in gene regulations. RESULTS: We developed a novel method to combine comparative genomics with de novo motif discovery to identify human transcription factor binding motifs that are overrepresented and conserved in the upstream regions of a set of co-regulated genes. The method is validated by analyzing a well-characterized muscle specific gene set, and the results showed that our approach performed better than the existing programs in terms of sensitivity and prediction rate. CONCLUSION: The newly developed method can be used to extract regulatory signals in co-regulated genes, which can be derived from the microarray clustering analysis