Document Layout Analysis and Recognition Systems

Automatic extraction of relevant knowledge to domain-specific questions from Optical Character Recognition (OCR) documents is critical for developing intelligent systems, such as document search engines, sentiment analysis, and information retrieval, since hands-on knowledge extraction by a domain expert with a large volume of documents is intensive, unscalable, and time-consuming. There have been a number of studies that have automatically extracted relevant knowledge from OCR documents, such as ABBY and Sandford Natural Language Processing (NLP). Despite the progress, there are still limitations yet-to-be solved. For instance, NLP often fails to analyze a large document. In this thesis, we propose a knowledge extraction framework, which takes domain-specific questions as input and provides the most relevant sentence/paragraph to the given questions in the document. Overall, our proposed framework has two phases. First, an OCR document is reconstructed into a semi-structured document (a document with hierarchical structure of (sub)sections and paragraphs). Then, relevant sentence/paragraph for a given question is identified from the reconstructed semi structured document. Specifically, we proposed (1) a method that converts an OCR document into a semi structured document using text attributes such as font size, font height, and boldface (in Chapter 2), (2) an image-based machine learning method that extracts Table of Contents (TOC) to provide an overall structure of the document (in Chapter 3), (3) a document texture-based deep learning method (DoT-Net) that classifies types of blocks such as text, image, and table (in Chapter 4), and (4) a Question & Answer (Q&A) system that retrieves most relevant sentence/paragraph for a domain-specific question. A large number of document intelligent systems can benefit from our proposed automatic knowledge extraction system to construct a Q&A system for OCR documents. Our Q&A system has applied to extract domain specific information from business contracts at GE Power

Cellular Analysis Of Hepg2 Cells On Gastrin Releasing Peptide (Grp) Nanostructure

Artificial juxtacrine stimulation arises from the covalent attachment of growth factors onto biomaterials. Incorporation of growth factors onto cell culture substrates has been found to enhance the functionality of cells in vitro. In this study, we describe how the immobilization of Gastrin Releasing Peptide (GRP) enhances the viability of hepatocarcinoma cell line, HepG2 up to 4 days. The biomaterial for immobilization of GRP was prepared using indium tin oxide (ITO) sputtered on polyethylene terephthalate (PET). A self-assembled monolayer (SAM) of 3-aminopropyl triethoxysilane (3-APTES) on ITO was covalently attached to GRP. Characterization of the substrates before and after immobilization of GRP was carried out using contact angle measurements, FTIR and AFM techniques. HepG2 cells were cultured on immobilized GRP-SAM-ITO substrate for 24, 48, 72 and 96 hours and compared to cell viability of soluble GRP under similar conditions. The cell viability on immobilized GRP-SAM-ITO after 48 hours was less than that of soluble GRP by 19%. Lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) production after 48 hours was significantly reduced by 44% for immobilized GRP when compared to that with soluble GRP. After 96 hours, cell viability increased and cytotoxicity decreased for HepG2 cells on GRP-SAM-ITO substrates, suggesting viability was successfully extended. A similar experiment (LDH assay) with immobilized epidermal growth facor (EGF), obtained by covalent attachment of EGF shows that the cell viability can be extended to 5 days. These data may provide insight towards the development of bioreactors for drug toxicity screening

Novel VLSI Architecture for Quantization and Variable Length Coding for H-264/AVC Video Compression Standard

Integrated multimedia systems process text, graphics, and other discrete media such as digital audio and video streams. In an uncompressed state, graphics, audio and video data, especially moving pictures, require large transmission and storage capacities which can be very expensive. Hence video compression has become a key component of any multimedia system or application. The ITU (International Telecommunications Union) and MPEG (Moving Picture Experts Group) have combined efforts to put together the next generation of video compression standard, the H.264/MPEG-4 PartlO/AVC, which was finalized in 2003. The H.264/AVC uses significantly improved and computationally intensive compression techniques to maximize performance. H.264/AVC compliant encoders achieve the same reproduction quality as encoders that are compliant with the previous standards while requiring 60% or less of the bit rate [2]. This thesis aims at designing two basic blocks of an ASIC capable of performing the H.264 video compression. These two blocks, the Quantizer, and Entropy Encoder implement the Baseline Profile of the H.264/AVC standard. The architecture is implemented in Register Transfer Level HDL and synthesized with Synopsys Design Compiler using TSMC 0.25(xm technology, giving us an estimate of the hardware requirements in real-time implementation. The quantizer block is capable of running at 309MHz and has a total area of 785K gates with a power requirement of 88.59mW. The entropy encoder unit is capable of running at 250 MHz and has a total area of 49K gates with a power requirement of 2.68mW. The high speed that is achieved in this thesis simply indicates that the two blocks Quantizer and Entropy Encoder can be used as IP embedded in the HDTV systems

Solvent resistant microporous/nanoporous polymeric hollow fiber and flat film membranes and their applications

The separation and purification of organic-solvent-based process streams may be carried out by membrane processes such as nanofiltration/ultrafiltration/microfiltration and membrane solvent extraction. Lack of solvent stability and chemical stability of most commercially available membranes is limiting the utilization of the above mentioned membrane technologies. This dissertation was primarily focused on developing solvent resistant hollow fiber and flat film membranes for separation and purification of organic-solvent-based process streams. Available porous polymeric supports (Polypropylene (PP), Polyethersulfone (PES) and Nylon) suitable for the required solvent-stable applications were chosen first and then the supports were modified to satisfy the requirements for the applications. Membrane modification techniques employed were interfacial polymerization (IP) and poly(ethyleneimine) (PEI) self crosslinking. Thin film composite (TFC) nanofiltration and ultrafiltration membranes were fabricated on PBS, Nylon and hydrophilized PP support membranes. Before carrying out IP, PP was hydrophilized by pre-wetting with acetone and treating with hot chromic acid solution. The introduced procedure of “modified IP” involved wetting next with the aqueous monomer solution followed by the organic monomer solution. Nanofiltration membranes were characterized using solutes, safranin 0 (MW 351) and brilliant blue R (MW 826) dyes in methanol; ultrafiltration membranes were characterized with a 70% alcoholic solution of zein (MW 35,000). These membranes were also studied for long term solvent stability in ethanol and toluene. The membrane based on PP was first hydrophilized by the techniques of “modified [P” and PHI self crosslinking. For possible applications in microfiltration of aqueous systems, these hydrophilized membranes were characterized by the water permeation rate. Crosslinking of PHI was implemented on the lumen side of the Nylon hollow fibers to reduce the pore size; then, their performance in membrane solvent back extraction was studied. Extraction of phenol from MIBK into an aqueous caustic solution was studied as a model system for reactive back extraction; extraction of acetic acid from MIBK into water was studied as a model system for nonreactive back extraction. Hollow fibers of PBS were coated on the lumen side by IP. The IP layer was again coated with silicone to make the IP coating impervious to water. The coated PES fibers were then tested for heat transfer performance. All modified membranes were also characterized using scanning electron microscopy. Thin film composite nanofiltration and ultrafiltration membranes were successfully fabricated on PP and PBS hollow fiber supports; high rejections of solutes and high solvent fluxes were achieved in UF and NT membranes. However, only the PP-based TFC membranes retained their characteristics after solvent exposure for the studied period of time. Permanent hydrophilization of PP was achieved by the “modified IP procedure. Reduced pores on the lumen side of Nylon hollow fibers provided stable aqueous-organic interface for solute transport in membrane solvent back extraction; the coating improved the extraction performance of the membranes. Better heat transfer performance was achieved in the coated PBS hollow fibers when compared with the nonporous PP hollow fibers

Krasovskii's Passivity

In this paper we introduce a new notion of passivity which we call Krasovskii's passivity and provide a sufficient condition for a system to be Krasovskii's passive. Based on this condition, we investigate classes of port-Hamiltonian and gradient systems which are Krasovskii's passive. Moreover, we provide a new interconnection based control technique based on Krasovskii's passivity. Our proposed control technique can be used even in the case when it is not clear how to construct the standard passivity based controller, which is demonstrated by examples of a Boost converter and a parallel RLC circuit

Optimization of Laser Shock Peening Process Using Finite Element Modeling

Laser shock peening is a cold working process which is used to improve material properties like surface hardness, fatigue life, wear and corrosion resistance, etc. It is widely used to treat turbines, fans, compressor blades, aircraft and automotive parts. When the material is irradiated by high power density laser beams, shock waves are generated, which plastically deforms the material surface and induces high compressive stresses within subsurface area. The amount of residual compressive stress and plastically affected depth depend on laser parameters (laser power density, pulse duration, wavelength, repetition rate, spot size and shape), materials, ambient environment, etc. To improve the application of laser shock peening, it is of critical importance to optimize the process by fully understanding the effects of different parameters. Extensive studies have been devoted to this area. Recently, thanks to the advance of laser technology, high repetition rate lasers could significantly improve this technique by increasing compressive residual stress and plastically affected depth. This research studies the effect of laser repetition rate at different spot sizes and different scanning patterns of shot application on the final shock peening results by finite element modeling. A two-dimensional finite element model is developed to simulate the interaction between metal samples and laser-induced shock waves. Multiple laser impacts are applied at each location to increase plastically affected depth and compressive stress. The in-depth and surface residual stress profiles are analyzed at various repetition rates and spot sizes. It is found that the residual stress is not sensitive to repetition rate until it reaches a very high level. At extremely high repetition rate (100 MHz), the delay between two shock waves is even shorter than their duration, and there will be shock wave superposition. It is revealed that the interaction of metal with shock wave is significantly different, leading to a different residual stress profiles. Stronger residual stress with deeper distribution will be obtained comparing with lower repetition rate cases. The effect of repetition rate at different spot sizes is also studied. It is found that with larger laser spot, the peak compressive residual stress decreases but the distribution is deeper at extremely high repetition rates. A three-dimensional finite element model is developed to study the effect of scanning pattern and repetition rate. The final residual stress distributions are studied at repetition rates of 0.1 MHz, 1 MHz, 10 MHz and 20 MHz for 5 different patterns. It is found that there are no major differences in residual stress profiles due to variation of scanning patterns except for circular pattern. It is also revealed that the minimum residual stress decreases and non-uniformity increases with increase in repetition rate due to interaction of relaxation waves with incoming pressure pulses. To minimize the effect of relaxation waves, two zig-zag patterns are studied. The overlap between successive spots is less in zig-zag pattern-1, and it is completely absent in zig-zag pattern-2. It is found that by applying the newly proposed zig-zag pattern-2, the residual stress uniformity can be significantly improved at repetition rates higher than 0.1 MHz