Study of passenger subjective response to ideal and real-vehicle vibration environments

The stimulus received by subjects tested on the passenger ride quality apparatus (PRQA) is defined. Additional analyses on the data collected from field tests using buses, were conducted to assess the relation between subjective ratings of ride quality and vibrations measured on the buses, and to better define the vibration stimulus measured in the field. The relation of subjective evaluation of simulations of bus rides produced by the DRQA to subjective evaluations of the actual bus rides is discussed. The relative contribution of the seat and floor vibration to human comfort in a simulated aircraft ride environment is discussed along with the determination of equal comfort curves through magnitude estimation

Classification of Jaw Bone Cysts and Necrosis via the Processing of Orthopantomograms

The authors analyze the design of a method for automatized evaluation of parameters in orthopantomographic images capturing pathological tissues developed in human jaw bones. The main problem affecting the applied medical diagnostic procedures consists in low repeatability of the performed evaluation. This condition is caused by two aspects, namely subjective approach of the involved medical specialists and the related exclusion of image processing instruments from the evaluation scheme. The paper contains a description of the utilized database containing images of cystic jaw bones; this description is further complemented with appropriate schematic repre¬sentation. Moreover, the authors present the results of fast automatized segmentation realized via the live-wire method and compare the obtained data with the results provided by other segmentation techniques. The shape parameters and the basic statistical quantities related to the distribution of intensities in the segmented areas are selected. The evaluation results are provided in the final section of the study; the authors correlate these values with the subjective assessment carried out by radiologists. Interestingly, the paper also comprises a discussion presenting the possibility of using selected parameters or their combinations to execute automatic classification of cysts and osteonecrosis. In this context, a comparison of various classifiers is performed, including the Decision Tree, Naive Bayes, Neural Network, k-NN, SVM, and LDA classifica¬tion tools. Within this comparison, the highest degree of accuracy (85% on the average) can be attributed to the Decision Tree, Naive Bayes, and Neural Network classifier

Bluetooth and IEEE 802.11b/g Coexistence Simulation

This paper deals with the coexistence simulation of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi physical layers. Bluetooth and Wi-Fi systems share the same ISM 2.4 GHz frequency band and therefore using both systems in the same area may cause interference. A model of Bluetooth and IEEE 802.11b/g physical layers was made in Mathworks Matlab Simulink environment. A new simulation of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi coexistence is presented. The results in graphical form are introduced as a dependence of BER on Eb/N0 and BER on power ratio of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi systems

Development of ride comfort criteria for mass transit systems

Two studies were conducted on the effects of simultaneous sinusoidal vibration in the vertical and lateral axes on ratings of discomfort in human subjects in a simulated passenger aircraft. In the first experiment each of 24 subjects experienced each of ten levels of vertical frequency in combination with each of ten levels of lateral frequency vibration and rated the discomfort produced on a nine-point, unipolar scale. In the second experiment 72 subjects experienced one of four levels of vertical frequency at each of four levels of vertical amplitude combined with 16 (or 4 x 4) lateral frequency and amplitude conditions. The results of these two studies strongly suggest that there are effects on discomfort that occur when subjects are vibrated in several axes at once that cannot be assessed with research using vibration in only one axis

Numerical Modeling of Magnetic Field Deformation as Related to Susceptibility Measured with an MR System

The possibility is studied of numerical modeling of magnetic field deformations in the environment of measured diamagnetic and paramagnetic samples for the purposes of studying magnetic resonance (MR) image deformations owing to the susceptibility of heterogeneous materials (objects). The verification was realized using a simple sample configuration (circular plate), and the numerically modeled cross-sections were compared with the experimentally obtained values of the magnetic field measured by the MR gradient echo technology. The results show that it is possible – via a technical calculation – to determine a magnetic field deformation in the environment of complex-shaped or non-homogeneous structures in the MR experiments

Effect of vibration in combined axes on subjective evaluation of ride quality

The effects of simultaneous sinusoidal vibration in the vertical and lateral axes on ratings of discomfort were investigated. The first experiment concentrated on the effects of variation of frequency in the two axes, and the second study concentrated on the effects of amplitude variation in the two axes

Using GPGPU in MR Data Processing

The main tissue parameters targeted by MR tomography include, among others, relaxation times T-1 and T-2. This paper focuses on the computation of the relaxation time T-2 measured with the Spin Echo method. The maxima of measured echoes must be interleaved with an exponential function to compute the T2 relaxation. As this procedure needs to be repeated for each pixel of the scanned tissue, the processing of large images then becomes very intensive. This paper introduces the results provided by accelerated computation based on parallelization and carried out with a graphics card. By using the simple method of linear regression, we obtain a processing time of less than 36 ms. In the case of the Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm, the reconstruction was done in 96 ms. This period is at least 900 times shorter than that achievable with professional software

Extraction of Mandibular Disc in MR Images

This article deals with a segmentation of MR images in temporomandibular joint (TMJ) area. The article shows our results of the segmentation of some MR slices with visible mandibular disc. These results are poised to following postprocessing which will be the 3D model of the mandibular disc creation