Depth Estimation Through a Generative Model of Light Field Synthesis

Light field photography captures rich structural information that may facilitate a number of traditional image processing and computer vision tasks. A crucial ingredient in such endeavors is accurate depth recovery. We present a novel framework that allows the recovery of a high quality continuous depth map from light field data. To this end we propose a generative model of a light field that is fully parametrized by its corresponding depth map. The model allows for the integration of powerful regularization techniques such as a non-local means prior, facilitating accurate depth map estimation.Comment: German Conference on Pattern Recognition (GCPR) 201

Quality of life in first-admitted schizophrenia patients: a follow-up study

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Do different subjective evaluation criteria reflect distinct constructs?

This is not the published version. Published version available from: http://journals.lww.com/jonmd/pages/default.asp

Minimally invasive surgery when treating endometriosis has a positive effect on health and on quality of work life of affected women

STUDY QUESTION What is the effect of the minimally invasive surgical treatment of endometriosis on health and on quality of work life (e.g. working performance) of affected women? SUMMARY ANSWER Absence from work, performance loss and the general negative impact of endometriosis on the job are reduced significantly by the laparoscopic surgery. WHAT IS KNOWN ALREADY The benefits of surgery overall and of the laparoscopic method in particular for treating endometriosis have been described before. However, previous studies focus on medical benchmarks without including the patient's perspective in a quantitative manner. STUDY DESIGN, SIZE, DURATION A retrospective questionnaire-based survey covering 211 women with endometriosis and a history of specific laparoscopic surgery in a Swiss university hospital, tertiary care center. Data were returned anonymously and were collected from the beginning of 2012 until March 2013. PARTICIPANTS/MATERIALS, SETTING, METHODS Women diagnosed with endometriosis and with at least one specific laparoscopic surgery in the past were enrolled in the study. The study investigated the effect of the minimally invasive surgery on health and on quality of work life of affected women. Questions used were obtained from the World Endometriosis Research Foundation (WERF) Global Study on Women's Health (GSWH) instrument. The questionnaire was shortened and adapted for the purpose of the present study. MAIN RESULTS AND THE ROLE OF CHANCE Of the 587 women invited to participate in the study, 232 (232/587 = 40%) returned the questionnaires. Twenty-one questionnaires were excluded due to incomplete data and 211 sets (211/587 = 36%) were included in the study. Our data show that 62% (n = 130) of the study population declared endometriosis as influencing the job during the period prior to surgery, compared with 28% after surgery (P < 0.001). The mean (maximal) absence from work due to endometriosis was reduced from 2.0 (4.9) to 0.5 (1.4) hours per week (P < 0.001). The mean (maximal) loss in working performance after the surgery averaged out at 5.7% (12.6%) compared with 17.5% (30.5%) before this treatment (P < 0.001). LIMITATIONS, REASONS FOR CAUTION The mediocre response rate of the study weakens the representativeness of the investigated population. Considering the anonymous setting a non-responder investigation was not performed. A bias due to selection, information and negativity effects within a retrospective survey cannot be excluded, although study-sensitive questions were provided in multiple ways. The absence of a control group (sham group; e.g. patients undergoing specific diagnostic laparoscopy without treatment) is a further limitation of the study. WIDER IMPLICATIONS OF THE FINDINGS Our study shows that indicated minimally invasive surgery has a clear positive effect on the wellbeing and working performance of women suffering from moderate to severe endometriosis. Furthermore, national net savings in indirect costs with the present number of surgeries is estimated to be €10.7 million per year. In an idealized setting (i.e. without any diagnosis delay) this figure could be more than doubled. STUDY FUNDING/COMPETING INTEREST(S) The study was performed on behalf of the University Hospital of Bern (Inselspital) as one of the leading Swiss tertiary care centers. The authors do not declare any competing interest

Non-geometric tilt-to-length coupling in precision interferometry: mechanisms and analytical descriptions

This paper is the second in a set of two investigating tilt-to-length (TTL) coupling. TTL describes the cross-coupling of angular or lateral jitter into an interferometric phase signal and is an important noise source in precision interferometers, including space gravitational wave detectors like LISA. We discussed in 10.1088/2040-8986/ac675e the TTL coupling effects originating from optical path length changes, i.e. geometric TTL coupling. Within this work, we focus on the wavefront and detector geometry dependent TTL coupling, called non-geometric TTL coupling, in the case of two interfering fundamental Gaussian beams. We characterise the coupling originating from the properties of the interfering beams, i.e. their absolute and relative angle at the detector, their relative offset and the individual beam parameters. Furthermore, we discuss the dependency of the TTL coupling on the geometry of the detecting photodiode. Wherever possible, we provide analytical expressions for the expected TTL coupling effects. We investigate the non-geometric coupling effects originating from beam walk due to the angular or lateral jitter of a mirror or a receiving system. These effects are directly compared with the corresponding detected optical path length changes in 10.1088/2040-8986/ac675e. Both together provide the total interferometric readout. We discuss in which cases the geometric and non-geometric TTL effects cancel one-another. Additionally, we list linear TTL contributions that can be used to counteract other TTL effects. Altogether, our results provide key knowledge to minimise the total TTL coupling noise in experiments by design or realignment

Optimizing the parameters for hydro-jet dissection in fatty tissue — A morphological Ex Vivo analysis

Summary: Background: The advantage of water-jet dissection is the preservation of vessels and nerves. Especially in liver surgery, blood loss can be significantly decreased. The use of water-jet dissectors in other fields of surgery is currently under investigation. The preparation of vessels in fatty tissue is of special interest for plastic surgeons. The optimal technical parameters were investigated. Methods: Abdominal fat tissue of fresh cadavers was cut under standardized conditions with different parameters of the water-jet dissector. Results: One single pass at a cutting pressure between 20 and 60 Bar makes an incision of 8 mm. Deeper cuts can be achieved by repeated application on the same cut. Five passes at 40 Bar results in a depth of 1.7 cm without vessel damage. If the applied pressure is 50 or 60 Bar, up to 7% damaged vessels can be found. The water-jet dissection leads to a water uptake of the cut tissue. Conclusions: The optimal pressure for water-jet dissection of fatty tissue lies between 30 and 40 Bar. The effect of the mechanical irritation of the vessels has to be investigatedin vivo before using the water-jet dissector for preparation of blood vessels in humans, e.g. for flap dissectio

Investigating the consistency between proxy-based reconstructions and climate models using data assimilation: a mid-Holocene case study

The mid-Holocene (6 kyr BP; thousand years before present) is a key period to study the consistency between model results and proxy-based reconstruction data as it corresponds to a standard test for models and a reasonable number of proxy-based records is available. Taking advantage of this relatively large amount of information, we have compared a compilation of 50 air and sea surface temperature reconstructions with the results of three simulations performed with general circulation models and one carried out with LOVECLIM, a model of intermediate complexity. The conclusions derived from this analysis confirm that models and data agree on the large-scale spatial pattern but the models underestimate the magnitude of some observed changes and that large discrepancies are observed at the local scale. To further investigate the origin of those inconsistencies, we have constrained LOVECLIM to follow the signal recorded by the proxies selected in the compilation using a data-assimilation method based on a particle filter. In one simulation, all the 50 proxy-based records are used while in the other two only the continental or oceanic proxy-based records constrain the model results. As expected, data assimilation leads to improving the consistency between model results and the reconstructions. In particular, this is achieved in a robust way in all the experiments through a strengthening of the westerlies at midlatitude that warms up northern Europe. Furthermore, the comparison of the LOVECLIM simulations with and without data assimilation has also objectively identified 16 proxy-based paleoclimate records whose reconstructed signal is either incompatible with the signal recorded by some other proxy-based records or with model physics

Good Learning and Implicit Model Enumeration

MathSBML is an open-source, freely-downloadable Mathematica package that facilitates working with Systems Biology Markup Language (SBML) models. SBML is a toolneutral,computer-readable format for representing models of biochemical reaction networks, applicable to metabolic networks, cell-signaling pathways, genomic regulatory networks, and other modeling problems in systems biology that is widely supported by the systems biology community. SBML is based on XML, a standard medium for representing and transporting data that is widely supported on the internet as well as in computational biology and bioinformatics. Because SBML is tool-independent, it enables model transportability, reuse, publication and survival. In addition to MathSBML, a number of other tools that support SBML model examination and manipulation are provided on the sbml.org website, including libSBML, a C/C++ library for reading SBML models; an SBML Toolbox for MatLab; file conversion programs; an SBML model validator and visualizer; and SBML specifications and schemas. MathSBML enables SBML file import to and export from Mathematica as well as providing an API for model manipulation and simulation

The astroclimatological comparison of the Paranal Observatory and El Roque de Los Muchachos Observatory

The new extremely large telescope projects need accurate evaluation of the candidate sites. In this paper we present the astroclimatological comparison between the Paranal Observatory, located on the coast of the Atacama Desert (Chile), and the Observatorio del Roque de Los Muchachos (ORM), located in La Palma (Canary Islands). We apply a statistical analysis using long term databases from Paranal and Carlsberg Meridian Telescope (CAMC) weather stations. Significant differences between the two analyzed sites have been found.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS. 11 pages, 12 figures, 12 table