A dual adaptive watermarking scheme in contourlet domain for DICOM images

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Nowadays, medical imaging equipments produce digital form of medical images. In a modern health care environment, new systems such as PACS (picture archiving and communication systems), use the digital form of medical image too. The digital form of medical images has lots of advantages over its analog form such as ease in storage and transmission. Medical images in digital form must be stored in a secured environment to preserve patient privacy. It is also important to detect modifications on the image. These objectives are obtained by watermarking in medical image.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>In this paper, we present a dual and oblivious (blind) watermarking scheme in the contourlet domain. Because of importance of ROI (region of interest) in interpretation by medical doctors rather than RONI (region of non-interest), we propose an adaptive dual watermarking scheme with different embedding strength in ROI and RONI. We embed watermark bits in singular value vectors of the embedded blocks within lowpass subband in contourlet domain.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The values of PSNR (peak signal-to-noise ratio) and SSIM (structural similarity measure) index of ROI for proposed DICOM (digital imaging and communications in medicine) images in this paper are respectively larger than 64 and 0.997. These values confirm that our algorithm has good transparency. Because of different embedding strength, BER (bit error rate) values of signature watermark are less than BER values of caption watermark. Our results show that watermarked images in contourlet domain have greater robustness against attacks than wavelet domain. In addition, the qualitative analysis of our method shows it has good invisibility.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The proposed contourlet-based watermarking algorithm in this paper uses an automatically selection for ROI and embeds the watermark in the singular values of contourlet subbands that makes the algorithm more efficient, and robust against noise attacks than other transform domains. The embedded watermark bits can be extracted without the original image, the proposed method has high PSNR and SSIM, and the watermarked image has high transparency and can still conform to the DICOM format.</p

Histomorphometrical Study of the Prebiotic Effects on Intestine Morphology and Growth Performance of Broiler Chickens

This experiment was conducted to compare the effects of prebiotic as alternative feed additive to an antibiotic growth promoter (bacitracin methylene disalicyate) on the growth performance and morphometrical parameters of the small intestine of broiler chickens. One hundred and forty four day old broiler chicks were randomly assigned to one of three dietary treatments for 6 wk and each treatment contained four replicates (12 birds each). Dietary treatments were as follow: 1- Control (basal diet), 2- basal diet + antibiotic growth promoter and 3- basal diet + prebiotic. During the feeding experimental period, body weight, weight gain, feed intake and feed conversion ratio were measured. At the end of the experiment, small intestine segments were sampled and routine histological laboratory methods containing fixation, dehydration, clearing and paraffin embedding were used. Sections stained with haematoxylin and eosin for light microscopy evaluation and the height and width of villi and depth of crypts were measured. The results showed that body weight, weight gain and feed conversion ratio were not affected by dietary treatments. Prebiotic and antibiotic had significant (P < 0.05) effect on improvement of feed intake in 22 - 42 days and total period compared with the control. The addition of prebiotic or antibiotic increased the villus height in duodenum (P < 0.05) and prebiotic increased villus width of duodenum and ileum compared with other treatments. The duodenal crypt depth was increased by antibiotic compared with the prebiotic and control group. In conclusion, prebiotic can be used as a suitable alternative to antibiotic growth promoter

MONITORING THE LONG TERM URBAN EXPANSION OF ZANJAN CITY USING REMOTE SENSING AND GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS

The growing phenomenon of urbanization, especially in developing countries, has led to the enlargement of urban areas. Due to the complex structure of cities, changes in the boundaries of a city, whether horizontally or vertically, affects the ecosystem and the quality of life of the corresponding communities. It is also important for the urban planners from the perspective of sustainable development to identify land use/cover changes. The purpose of this paper is to study and evaluate the spatiotemporal expansion of Zanjan city in five time periods. In this research, aerial photographs of 1973, 1982, 1998 as well as satellite images of 2008 and 2016 of the Zanjan city were used. After data preparation in GIS environment, each produced map was classified into two classes of built and not built. Two spatial distribution indexes (PD and CONTAG) as well as land surface and class level measurements were used to determine the characteristics of urban physical development in Zanjan. The results revealed that during the assessed time period, the city has become more sprawled, discontinuous, and in terms of variety of land uses has become more diversified. These results warn that if the urban expansion continues with the existing trend, historical contiguity and compactness of Zanjan city will loss in the near future. This trend may cause several problems

Long-term resveratrol administration improves diabetes-induced pancreatic oxidative stress, inflammatory status, and β cell function in male rats

Diabetes is a metabolic disorder caused by insulin resistance or a defect in the pancreatic beta cells in insulin secretion. The aim of this study was to evaluate the possible effectiveness of long-term administration of resveratrol on inflammatory and oxidative stress markers in the pancreatic tissue of diabetic rats. Male Wistar rats (n = 24) were randomly divided into four groups of six animals, namely a healthy group, a healthy group receiving resveratrol, a diabetic control group, and a diabetic group receiving resveratrol. Diabetes was induced by single dose injection of streptozotocin (50 mg/kg; ip), 15 min after injection of nicotinamide (110 mg/kg; ip). Resveratrol was also administered by gavage (5 mg/kg/day) for 4 months. Administration of resveratrol alleviated hyperglycemia, weight loss and pancreatic β cell function measured by HOMA-β. Resveratrol improved oxidative stress (nitrate/nitrite, 8-isoprostane and glutathione) and proinflammatory markers (tumor necrosis factor α, cyclooxygenase 2, interleukin 6 and nuclear factor kappa B) in the pancreatic tissue of diabetic rats. Resveratrol administration had no significant effect on the activity of superoxide dismutase and catalase enzyme. These observations indicate that resveratrol administration may be effective as a beneficial factor in improving pancreatic function and reducing the complications of diabetes

Comparative Screening of Chloramphenicol Residue in Chicken Tissues Using Four Plate Test and Premi®Test Methods

Background: The safety of food with animal origin means that the food consumed is considered as safe when synthetic chemical agents are absent or present at very low concentrations. The aims of the present study were to validate the Premi®Test and four plate test (FPT) methods as well as screen and estimate the occurrence of chloramphenicol (CAP) residue in collected chicken tissues including liver, kidney and thigh muscle from Kermanshah, west of Iran. Methods: A total of 150 chicken samples were purchased from different poultry slaughterhouses in Kermanshah province, west of Iran and subjected to the FPT and Premi®Test. Results: The Premi®Test could not detect CAP residue at concentrations below 3 and 6 ppm in aqueous solution and kidney fluid, respectively. The highest sensitivity of FPT in the detection of CAP residue was optimally found in the agar medium inoculated with Bacillus subtilis at pH 7.2. The Premi®Test was more sensitive than FPT in the kidney fluid and aqueous solution. Regarding FPT results, CAP residue was found in 20% (n=30), 8.66% (n=28) and 11.33% (n=17) of liver, kidney and muscle samples, respectively. In the case of Premi®Test, the most contaminated samples were liver (24%), followed by kidney (22.66%) and muscle (19.33%). Conclusion: It can be concluded that illegal use of CAP in Iranian poultry industries should be taken into account seriously

Educational analysis on the pathology of the Civil Service Management Law with emphasis on the prevailing systemic approach to various areas of human resource management in government organizations in Iran

The purpose of this study is to examine the pathology of the Civil Service Management Law by emphasizing the prevailing systemic approach to various areas of human resource management in government organizations in Iran. The method of this research is descriptive-survey. Statistical samples were selected through quota and judgmental sampling. First, the interview was conducted with a statistical sample and then with the Delphi method of three stages and exploratory factor analysis. The classification of injuries in the Civil Service Law was performed according to the system characteristics in seven categories. The results showed that pathology has been studied in terms of generalization characteristics such as lack of systems, severe bureaucracy and neglect of the environment. This factor can be divided into four categories of recruitment, employment and supply and maintenance of human resources. Other pathologies include ignoring the environment despite extensive communication. According to the results we can said that Civil service management law for various reasons such as inflexibility, uncoordinated subsystems, static, non-dependence and interaction of subsystems, etc. has led to various consequences in the input and output sections of the system in the administrative system of government organizations