An automatic fingerprint classification technique based on global features

Fingerprint classification is an important stage in automatic fingerprint identification system (AFIS) because it significantly reduces the processing time to search and retrieve in a large-scale fingerprint database. However, its performance is heavily relied on image quality that comes in various forms such as low contrast, wet, dry, bruise, cuts, stains, etc. This paper proposed an automatic fingerprint classification scheme based on singular points and structural shape of orientation fields. It involves several steps, amongst others: firstly, fingerprint foreground is extracted and then noise patches in the foreground are detected and enhanced. Next, the orientation fields are estimated, and a corrective procedure is performed on the false ones. Afterward, an orientation image is created and singular points are detected. Based on the number of core and delta and their locations, an exclusive membership of the fingerprint can be discovered. Should it fail, the structural shape of the orientation fields neighboring the core or delta is analyzed. The performance of the proposed method is tested using 27,000 fingerprints of NIST Special Database 14. The results obtained are very encouraging with an accuracy rate of 89.31% that markedly outperformed the latest work

A technique to improve ridge flows of fingerprint orientation fields estimation

An accurate estimated fingerprint orientation fields is a significant step for detection of singular points. Gradient-based methods are frequently used for estimating orientation fields but those methods are sensitive to noise. Fingerprints that perfect quality are seldom. They may be corrupted and degraded due to impression conditions or variations on skin. Enhancement of ridge flows improved the structure of orientation fields and hence increased the number of true singular points thereby conducting the overall performance of the classification process. In this paper, we provided discussion on the technique and implementation to improve local ridge flows of fingerprint orientation fields. That main technique have four steps; firstly, fingerprint segmentation; secondly, identification of noise areas and marking; thirdly, estimation of fingerprint orientation fields, and finally, enhancement of ridge flows using minimum variance of the cross centre block direction in squared gradients. A standard fingerprint database is used for testing of proposed technique to verify the tier of effectivity of algorithm. The experimental results suggest that our enhanced algorithm achieves visibly better ridge flows compare to other methods

Realistic Lip Syncing for Virtual Character Using Common Viseme Set

Speech is one of the most important interaction methods between the humans. Therefore, most of avatar researches focus on this area with significant attention. Creating animated speech requires a facial model capable of representing the myriad shapes the human face expressions during speech. Moreover, a method to produce the correct shape at the correct time is also in order. One of the main challenges is to create precise lip movements of the avatar and synchronize it with a recorded audio. This paper proposes a new lip synchronization algorithm for realistic applications, which can be employed to generate synchronized facial movements among the audio generated from natural speech or through a text-to-speech engine. This method requires an animator to construct animations using a canonical set of visemes for all pair wise combination of a reduced phoneme set. These animations are then stitched together smoothly to construct the final animation

Classification of novel selected region of interest for color image encryption

Securing digital image in exchanging huge multimedia data over internet with limited bandwidth is a significant and sensitive issue. Selective image encryption being an effective method for reducing the amount of encrypted data can achieve adequate security enhancement. Determining and selecting the region of interest in digital color images is challenging for selective image encryption due to their complex structure and distinct regions of varying importance. We propose a new feature in acquiring and selecting Region of Interest (ROI) for the color images to develop a selective encryption scheme. The hybrid domain is used to encrypt regions based on chaotic map approach which automatically generates secret key. This new attribute is a vitality facet representing the noteworthy part of the color image. The security performance of selective image encryption is found to enhance considerably based on the rates of encrypted area selection. Computation is performed using MATLAB R2008a codes on eight images (Lena, Pepper, Splash, Airplane, House, Tiffany, Baboon and Sailboat) each of size 512*512 pixels obtained from standard USC-SIPI Image Database. A block size of 128*128 pixels with threshold levels 0.0017 and 0.48 are employed. Results are analyzed and compared with edge detection method using the same algorithm. Encrypted area, entropy and correlation coefficients performances reveal that the proposed scheme achieves good alternative in the confined region of interest, fulfills the desired confidentiality and protects image privacy

An expert botanical feature extraction technique based on phenetic features for identifying plant species

In this paper, we present a new method to recognise the leaf type and identify plant species using phenetic parts of the leaf; lobes, apex and base detection. Most of the research in this area focuses on the popular features such as the shape, colour, vein, and texture, which consumes large amounts of computational processing and are not efficient, especially in the Acer database with a high complexity structure of the leaves. This paper is focused on phenetic parts of the leaf which increases accuracy. Detecting the local maxima and local minima are done based on Centroid Contour Distance for Every Boundary Point, using north and south region to recognise the apex and base. Digital morphology is used to measure the leaf shape and the leaf margin. Centroid Contour Gradient is presented to extract the curvature of leaf apex and base. We analyse 32 leaf images of tropical plants and evaluated with two different datasets, Flavia, and Acer. The best accuracy obtained is 94.76% and 82.6% respectively. Experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed technique without considering the commonly used features with high computational cost

Real Time Talking System for Virtual Human based on ProPhone

Lip-syncing is a process of speech assimilation with the lip motions of a virtual character. A virtual talking character is a challenging task because it should provide control on all articulatory movements and must be synchronized with the speech signal. This study presents a virtual talking character system aimed to speeding and easing the visual talking process as compared to the previous techniques using the blend shapes approach. This system constructs the lip-syncing using a set of visemes for reduced phonemes set by a new method named Prophone. This Prophone depend on the probability of appearing the phoneme in the sentence of English Language. The contribution of this study is to develop real-time automatic talking system for English language based on the concatenation of the visemes, followed by presenting the results that was evaluated by the phoneme to viseme table using the Prophone

High imperceptibility and robustness watermarking scheme for brain MRI using Slantlet transform coupled with enhanced knight tour algorithm

This research introduces a novel and robust watermarking scheme for medical Brain MRI DICOM images, addressing the challenge of maintaining high imperceptibility and robustness simultaneously. The scheme ensures privacy control, content authentication, and protection against the detachment of vital Electronic Patient Record information. To enhance imperceptibility, a Dynamic Visibility Threshold parameter leveraging the Human Visual System is introduced. Embeddable Zones and Non-Embeddable Zones are defined to enhance robustness, and an enhanced Knight Tour algorithm based on Slantlet Transform shuffles the embedding sequence for added security. The scheme achieves remarkable results with a Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) evaluation surpassing contemporary techniques. Extensive experimentation demonstrates resilience to various attacks, with low Bit Error Rate (BER) and high Normalized Cross-Correlation (NCC) values. The proposed technique outperforms existing methods, emphasizing its superior performance and effectiveness in medical image watermarking

Review on local binary patterns variants as texture descriptors for copy-move forgery detection

Past decades had seen the concerned by researchers in authenticating the originality of an image as the result of advancement in computer technology. Many methods have been developed to detect image forgeries such as copy-move, splicing, resampling and et cetera. The most common type of image forgery is copy-move where the copied region is pasted on the same image. The existence of high similarity in colour and textures of both copied and pasted images caused the detection of the tampered region to be very difficult. Additionally, the existence of post-processing methods makes it more challenging. In this paper, Local Binary Pattern (LBP) variants as texture descriptors for copy-move forgery detection have been reviewed. These methods are discussed in terms of introduction and methodology in copy-move forgery detection. These methods are also compared in the discussion section. Finally, their strengths and weaknesses are summarised, and some future research directions were pointed out

Association between footwear use and neglected tropical diseases: a systematic review and meta-analysis

BACKGROUND The control of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) has primarily focused on preventive chemotherapy and case management. Less attention has been placed on the role of ensuring access to adequate water, sanitation, and hygiene and personal preventive measures in reducing exposure to infection. Our aim was to assess whether footwear use was associated with a lower risk of selected NTDs. METHODOLOGY We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to assess the association between footwear use and infection or disease for those NTDs for which the route of transmission or occurrence may be through the feet. We included Buruli ulcer, cutaneous larva migrans (CLM), leptospirosis, mycetoma, myiasis, podoconiosis, snakebite, tungiasis, and soil-transmitted helminth (STH) infections, particularly hookworm infection and strongyloidiasis. We searched Medline, Embase, Cochrane, Web of Science, CINAHL Plus, and Popline databases, contacted experts, and hand-searched reference lists for eligible studies. The search was conducted in English without language, publication status, or date restrictions up to January 2014. Studies were eligible for inclusion if they reported a measure of the association between footwear use and the risk of each NTD. Publication bias was assessed using funnel plots. Descriptive study characteristics and methodological quality of the included studies were summarized. For each study outcome, both outcome and exposure data were abstracted and crude and adjusted effect estimates presented. Individual and summary odds ratio (OR) estimates and corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated as a measure of intervention effect, using random effects meta-analyses. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS Among the 427 studies screened, 53 met our inclusion criteria. Footwear use was significantly associated with a lower odds of infection of Buruli ulcer (OR=0.15; 95% CI: 0.08-0.29), CLM (OR=0.24; 95% CI: 0.06-0.96), tungiasis (OR=0.42; 95% CI: 0.26-0.70), hookworm infection (OR=0.48; 95% CI: 0.37-0.61), any STH infection (OR=0.57; 95% CI: 0.39-0.84), strongyloidiasis (OR=0.56; 95% CI: 0.38-0.83), and leptospirosis (OR=0.59; 95% CI: 0.37-0.94). No significant association between footwear use and podoconiosis (OR=0.63; 95% CI: 0.38-1.05) was found and no data were available for mycetoma, myiasis, and snakebite. The main limitations were evidence of heterogeneity and poor study quality inherent to the observational studies included. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE Our results show that footwear use was associated with a lower odds of several different NTDs. Access to footwear should be prioritized alongside existing NTD interventions to ensure a lasting reduction of multiple NTDs and to accelerate their control and elimination. PROTOCOL REGISTRATION PROSPERO International prospective register of systematic reviews CRD42012003338

The implication of identifying JAK2V617F in myeloproliferative neoplasms and myelodysplastic syndromes with bone marrow fibrosis

The myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPN) and myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) occasionally demonstrate overlapping morphological features including hypercellularity, mild/nonspecific dysplastic changes and variable bone marrow fibrosis. Thus, when the associated bone marrow fibrosis results in a suboptimal specimen for morphological evaluation, the descriptive diagnosis “fibrotic marrow with features indeterminate for MDS versus MPN” is often applied. The JAK2V617F mutation was recently shown to be frequently identified in MPN, but it is rarely present in other myeloid disorders. However, the diagnostic utility of JAK2V617F screening in hypercellular bone marrow specimens with fibrosis has not been previously investigated. Using a real-time polymerase chain reaction melting-curve assay capable of detecting JAK2V617F in archived fixed materials, we retrospectively studied JAK2V617F in 45 cases with fibrotic hypercellular bone marrow at initial presentation, including 19 cases initially described as “with features indeterminate for MDS versus MPN”. These 19 cases were reclassified into more specific categories of MDS (n = 14) or MPN (n = 5) based on the availability of subsequent clinical data and/or bone marrow examinations. The JAK2V617F allele was identified in 17 out of 18 BCR/ABL gene-negative MPN cases with marrow fibrosis, whereas only wild-type alleles were identified in the remaining non-MPN cases. Importantly, JAK2V617F alleles were seen in all five cases of “with features indeterminate for MDS versus MPN” at initial presentation that were later determined to be MPN, but they were absent in the 14 cases later determined to be MDS. Our results suggest that JAK2V617F allele evaluation can be a useful ancillary test for discriminating MDS from MPN in specimens with bone marrow fibrosis