On sample function properties of stochastic processes with stationary independent increments

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Creating regional crime statistics from administrative data

Abstract: The only publicly-available information on the geographical distribution of crime in New Zealand is offence statistics for police administrative units. We investigate whether existing data can be used to construct geographical crime statistics that correspond to regional councils, territorial authorities, and urban areas. Methods We build experimental output geographies from police stations, the smallest administrative unit for which there are long time series of offence statistics. We develop three rules for assigning police stations to the new geographies: one based on population, one based on land area, and one based on both. We assess the performance of these rules by calculating the proportion of national land area and population that is misclassified, and the number of target units that do not receive at least one police station. We also look at whether regional statistics on serious assaults are sensitive to the choice of allocation rule. Findings The new output geographies approximate the target geographies well. For instance, our preferred rule assigns 96 percent of the national population to the correct territorial authority. Moreover, a case study of serious assaults suggests that most regional crime statistics are not sensitive to the choice of rule. Conclusion The new output geographies perform sufficiently well that they could, if required, be used to produce regional crime statistics

Nonrigid reconstruction of 3D breast surfaces with a low-cost RGBD camera for surgical planning and aesthetic evaluation

Accounting for 26% of all new cancer cases worldwide, breast cancer remains the most common form of cancer in women. Although early breast cancer has a favourable long-term prognosis, roughly a third of patients suffer from a suboptimal aesthetic outcome despite breast conserving cancer treatment. Clinical-quality 3D modelling of the breast surface therefore assumes an increasingly important role in advancing treatment planning, prediction and evaluation of breast cosmesis. Yet, existing 3D torso scanners are expensive and either infrastructure-heavy or subject to motion artefacts. In this paper we employ a single consumer-grade RGBD camera with an ICP-based registration approach to jointly align all points from a sequence of depth images non-rigidly. Subtle body deformation due to postural sway and respiration is successfully mitigated leading to a higher geometric accuracy through regularised locally affine transformations. We present results from 6 clinical cases where our method compares well with the gold standard and outperforms a previous approach. We show that our method produces better reconstructions qualitatively by visual assessment and quantitatively by consistently obtaining lower landmark error scores and yielding more accurate breast volume estimates

A comparative study of breast surface reconstruction for aesthetic outcome assessment

Breast cancer is the most prevalent cancer type in women, and while its survival rate is generally high the aesthetic outcome is an increasingly important factor when evaluating different treatment alternatives. 3D scanning and reconstruction techniques offer a flexible tool for building detailed and accurate 3D breast models that can be used both pre-operatively for surgical planning and post-operatively for aesthetic evaluation. This paper aims at comparing the accuracy of low-cost 3D scanning technologies with the significantly more expensive state-of-the-art 3D commercial scanners in the context of breast 3D reconstruction. We present results from 28 synthetic and clinical RGBD sequences, including 12 unique patients and an anthropomorphic phantom demonstrating the applicability of low-cost RGBD sensors to real clinical cases. Body deformation and homogeneous skin texture pose challenges to the studied reconstruction systems. Although these should be addressed appropriately if higher model quality is warranted, we observe that low-cost sensors are able to obtain valuable reconstructions comparable to the state-of-the-art within an error margin of 3 mm.Comment: This paper has been accepted to MICCAI201

Making waves in education

Making Waves in Education is a book of a collaborative nature, being a collection of chapters written by undergraduates studying B.A. Hons in Education at the Universities of Plymouth and York. Thirteen chapters, each from a different student, cover topics from learning theories to sex education, home education and autism. The chapters are well-organised and written, and they cover key topics in an accessible and thoughtful way. The chapters are generally well - referenced and present critical and balanced arguments. Many use hard statistics in an effective way to back up their points and all include bibliographies as indeed one expects from a serious publication. The collection therefore addresses itself to a wide readership of anyone interested in education, and students and teachers/trainers in HE in particula