FUZZY KERNEL REGRESSION FOR REGISTRATION AND OTHER IMAGE WARPING APPLICATIONS

In this dissertation a new approach for non-rigid medical im- age registration is presented. It relies onto a probabilistic framework based on the novel concept of Fuzzy Kernel Regression. The theoric framework, after a formal introduction is applied to develop several complete registration systems, two of them are interactive and one is fully automatic. They all use the composition of local deforma- tions to achieve the final alignment. Automatic one is based onto the maximization of mutual information to produce local affine aligments which are merged into the global transformation. Mutual Information maximization procedure uses gradient descent method. Due to the huge amount of data associated to medical images, a multi-resolution topology is embodied, reducing processing time. The distance based interpolation scheme injected facilitates the similairity measure op- timization by attenuating the presence of local maxima in the func- tional. System blocks are implemented on GPGPUs allowing efficient parallel computation of large 3d datasets using SIMT execution. Due to the flexibility of Mutual Information, it can be applied to multi- modality image scans (MRI, CT, PET, etc.). Both quantitative and qualitative experiments show promising results and great potential for future extension. Finally the framework flexibility is shown by means of its succesful application to the image retargeting issue, methods and results are presented

Implementation of an online information system for the “Flora Critica d’Italia”

Since the early 2000s, within the Italian Botanical Society was discussed the opportunity to realize collaboratively a modern Flora articulated in monographs on the model of others under construction or recently completed in several European countries (1). This initiative had a milestone in 2007 with the institution of the “Fondazione per la Flora Italiana”, with the aim of supporting the activities of study, conservation and cultural and scientific enhancement of the flora of Italy and of sensitizing the national community about the many functions that it implements, in the context of natural and semi-natural ecosystems. The “Foundation for the Italian flora” is responsible for the publication of the "Flora critica d’Italia". During the course of the project, it became apparent the diminishing impact of the hard copy in favour of an online information system more flexible and upgradeable and thus more suited to the current needs of the research but also in all fields of everyday life. Last 25th February the first 3 contributions, concerning the families of Isoetaceae, Heliotropiaceae and Hydrophyllaceae (2, 3, 4) have been published online (http://www.floraditalia.it/index.php? page=flora_critica). These early contributions were prepared in the traditional way with a text editor. In order to create the online information system, under the indications of the Editorial Committee, the Board of Directors decided to rely on the experience gained by the staff of Palermo in the field of biological databases (5, 6) and to support by itself the development of a specific software. It is currently under construction and implementation a relational database that serves as a base for the entire project. It include information related to nomenclature, taxonomy, description, keys, distribution, images, karyology, uses, vernacular names, etc. Data and tables are standardized according to TDWG (Taxonomic Database Working Group) standards (http://www.tdwg.org) and comply with the The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) data architecture. The system is composed by two main parts: a database and a web application. The database currently contains 16 relations (although more will be built within the end of the project) and relies onto MySQL Database Management System. The web application is built using PHP scripting language and the CakePHP framework for the server-side part, running on a Linux server. The client-side part leverages onto Javascript and Jquery library. It follows the MVC1 (Model View Controller) design paradigm. It deals with the database manipulation in terms of data management and data presentation along with user management. The whole system addresses several main security issues such as passwords hashing, accesses logging and code injection protections. Data inputting is online by a web browser. The authors will input data in user friendly forms or to import tables. Outputs produced include online ones coming from queries and pdf production to be done periodically to fix what done or to prepare chapters of the volumes to be eventually printed and included in a hard copy volume

Toward an Integrated System for Surveillance and Behaviour Analysis of Groups and People

Security and INTelligence SYStem is an Italian research project which aims to create an integrated system for the analysis of multi-modal data sources (text, images, video, audio), to assist operators in homeland security applications. Within this project the Scientific Research Unit of the University of Palermo is responsible of the image and video analysis activity. The SRU of Palermo developed a web service based architecture that provides image and video analysis capabilities to the integrated analysis system. The developed architecture uses both state of the art techniques, adapted to cope with the particular problem at hand, and new algorithms to provide the following services: image cropping, image forgery detection, face and people detection, weapon detection and classification, and terrorist logo recognition. In the last phase of the project we plan to include in our system new services, mainly oriented to the video analysis, to study and understand the behaviour of individuals, either alone or in a group

A Java-based Wrapper for Wireless Communications

The increasing number of new applications for mobile devices in pervasive environments, do not cope with changes in the wireless communications. Developers of such applications have to deal with problems arising from the available wireless connections in the given environment. A middleware is a solution that allows to overcome some of these problems. It provides to the applications a set of functions that facilitate their development. In this paper we present a Java-based communication wrapper, called SmartTraffic, which allows programmers to seamlessly use TCP or UDP protocols over Bluetooth or any IP-based wireless network. Developers can use SmartTraffic within their Java applications, thus focusing on the application goals, and leaving out details about how it should interact with the available wireless connection

Influenza vaccination coverage among medical residents: An Italian multicenter survey

Although influenza vaccination is recognized to be safe and effective, recent studies have confirmed that immunization coverage among health care workers remain generally low, especially among medical residents (MRs). Aim of the present multicenter study was to investigate attitudes and determinants associated with acceptance of influenza vaccination among Italian MRs. A survey was performed in 2012 on MRs attending post-graduate schools of 18 Italian Universities. Each participant was interviewed via an anonymous, self-administered, web-based questionnaire including questions on attitudes regarding influenza vaccination. A total of 2506 MRs were recruited in the survey and 299 (11.9%) of these stated they had accepted influenza vaccination in 2011-2012 season. Vaccinated MRs were older (P = 0.006), working in clinical settings (P = 0.048), and vaccinated in the 2 previous seasons (P < 0.001 in both seasons). Moreover, MRs who had recommended influenza vaccination to their patients were significantly more compliant with influenza vaccination uptake in 2011-2012 season (P < 0.001). "To avoid spreading influenza among patients" was recognized as the main reason for accepting vaccination by less than 15% of vaccinated MRs. Italian MRs seem to have a very low compliance with influenza vaccination and they seem to accept influenza vaccination as a habit that is unrelated to professional and ethical responsibility. Otherwise, residents who refuse vaccination in the previous seasons usually maintain their behaviors. Promoting correct attitudes and good practice in order to improve the influenza immunization rates of MRs could represent a decisive goal for increasing immunization coverage among health care workers of the future. © 2014 Landes Bioscience

Un’esperienza di e-Learning condotta c/o l’I.T.C.S. “Libero Grassi” di Palermo

Viene presentata una esperienza di e-lerning condotta presso l’I.T.C.S. “Libero Grassi” di Palermo. Dodici tra alunni e alunne di alcune classi dell’Istituto hanno effettuato, a livello sperimentale, uno Sportello Formativo di Matematica on-line utilizzando come applicazione informatica di erogazione Windows Live Messenger, senza costi aggiuntivi per l’Istituto Scolastico se si esclude il costo di una tavoletta grafica necessaria per scrivere rapidamente espressioni, equazioni e tracciare grafici. L’esperienza è stata valutata qualitativamente attraverso un serie di domande somministrate agli alunni e ai genitori degli alunni partecipanti alla sperimentazione. I feedback ricevuti incoraggiano l’utilizzo di questa modalità formativa come valida alternativa a quella tradizionale in presenza

Real-time content-aware image resizing using reduced linear model

In this paper an effective and efficient method for contentaware image resizing is proposed. It is based on the solution of a linear system where each pixel displacement (compression or expansion) is determined in dependence of the visual relevance of the pixel itself. The linear nature of the model allows real-time application of the method even for large images. This fully automatic approach can be also improved by interactively providing cues such as geometric constraints and/or manual relevant object labeling. The results have proven that the presented method achieves results comparable or superior to existent strategies, while improving efficiency

Monte-Carlo Image Retargeting

In this paper an efficient method for image retargeting is proposed. It relies on a monte-carlo model that makes use of image saliency. Each random sample is extracted from deformation probability mass function defined properly, and shrinks or enlarges the image by a fixed size. The shape of the function, determining which regions of the image are affected by the deformations, depends on the image saliency. High informative regions are less likely to be chosen, while low saliency regions are more probable. Such a model does not require any optimization, since its solution is obtained by extracting repeatedly random samples, and allows real-time application even for large images. Computation time can be additionally improved using a parallel implementation. The approach is fully automatic, though it can be improved by providing interactively cues such as geometric constraints and/or automatic or manual labeling of relevant objects. The results prove that the presented method achieves results comparable or superior to reference methods, while improving efficiency

Browser independent content based image resizing for liquid web layouts

A typical problem for webdesigners is to realize pages that can be potentially accessed from a number of display devices with different screen sizes and resolutions. Liquid layouts can help for this purpose. However, they can not typically be applied to images, which need to be rescaled or deformed. In both cases usability could be deteriorated. Content-aware image resizing techniques can help for this goal by rescaling the images to the desired width while preserving important image structures. This paper presents a content-aware resizing technique which can be seamlessly integrated into web pages without any effort from the user. The results from the system application prove its effectiveness and ease of use on several platforms and devices tested

Automatic aesthetic photo composition

A proper aesthetic composition of photographic content does result in an actual emotional response from the watcher. In this work we propose a fully automatic computational approach to photo composi- tion. This method takes into account well-known and widely adopted aesthetic guidelines relative to picture content as a mean for guiding an optimization framework. The resulting composition is produced as the optimal combination of cropping and retargeting. The effectiveness of the results achieved by the method are tested and evaluated with several of experiments