Automated annotation of landmark images using community contributed datasets and web resources

A novel solution to the challenge of automatic image annotation is described. Given an image with GPS data of its location of capture, our system returns a semantically-rich annotation comprising tags which both identify the landmark in the image, and provide an interesting fact about it, e.g. "A view of the Eiffel Tower, which was built in 1889 for an international exhibition in Paris". This exploits visual and textual web mining in combination with content-based image analysis and natural language processing. In the first stage, an input image is matched to a set of community contributed images (with keyword tags) on the basis of its GPS information and image classification techniques. The depicted landmark is inferred from the keyword tags for the matched set. The system then takes advantage of the information written about landmarks available on the web at large to extract a fact about the landmark in the image. We report component evaluation results from an implementation of our solution on a mobile device. Image localisation and matching oers 93.6% classication accuracy; the selection of appropriate tags for use in annotation performs well (F1M of 0.59), and it subsequently automatically identies a correct toponym for use in captioning and fact extraction in 69.0% of the tested cases; finally the fact extraction returns an interesting caption in 78% of cases

Ultrasonic locating devices for central venous cannulation: meta-analysis

OBJECTIVES: To assess the evidence for the clinical effectiveness of ultrasound guided central venous cannulation. DATA SOURCES: 15 electronic bibliographic databases, covering biomedical, science, social science, health economics, and grey literature. DESIGN: Systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials. POPULATIONS: Patients scheduled for central venous access. INTERVENTION REVIEWED: Guidance using real time two dimensional ultrasonography or Doppler needles and probes compared with the anatomical landmark method of cannulation. DATA EXTRACTION: Risk of failed catheter placement (primary outcome), risk of complications from placement, risk of failure on first attempt at placement, number of attempts to successful catheterisation, and time (seconds) to successful catheterisation. DATA SYNTHESIS: 18 trials (1646 participants) were identified. Compared with the landmark method, real time two dimensional ultrasound guidance for cannulating the internal jugular vein in adults was associated with a significantly lower failure rate both overall (relative risk 0.14, 95% confidence interval 0.06 to 0.33) and on the first attempt (0.59, 0.39 to 0.88). Limited evidence favoured two dimensional ultrasound guidance for subclavian vein and femoral vein procedures in adults (0.14, 0.04 to 0.57 and 0.29, 0.07 to 1.21, respectively). Three studies in infants confirmed a higher success rate with two dimensional ultrasonography for internal jugular procedures (0.15, 0.03 to 0.64). Doppler guided cannulation of the internal jugular vein in adults was more successful than the landmark method (0.39, 0.17 to 0.92), but the landmark method was more successful for subclavian vein procedures (1.48, 1.03 to 2.14). No significant difference was found between these techniques for cannulation of the internal jugular vein in infants. An indirect comparison of relative risks suggested that two dimensional ultrasonography would be more successful than Doppler guidance for subclavian vein procedures in adults (0.09, 0.02 to 0.38). CONCLUSIONS: Evidence supports the use of two dimensional ultrasonography for central venous cannulation

Preliminary Survey of the Terrestrial Isopods (Isopoda), Millipedes (Diplopoda), Harvestmen (Opiliones), and Spiders (Araneae) of Toft Point Natural Area, Door County, Wisconsin

Toft Point Natural Area is a National Natural Landmark owned and managed by the University of Wisconsin – Green Bay and located on the Lake Michigan shore of Wisconsin’s Door Peninsula. With twelve biotic communities on 700 acres, Toft Point contains considerable biological diversity. We conducted a preliminary survey of the arachnids (spiders and harvestmen, excluding mites and pseudoscorpions), millipedes (diplopods), and terrestrial isopods (Isopoda: Oniscoidea). Sampling occurred on three dates in 2001 using leaf litter collection with Berlese extraction and a timed collection by hand that incorporated a variety of techniques. Specimens from a 1992 survey and assorted collecting events were also used to compile a species list. The list includes five isopods, four millipedes, six harvestmen, and 113 spiders, including 16 new state records (two millipedes and 14 spiders) and 90 new Door County records. Litter collection and sampling in wetland habitats were both especially productive

Characterization of image sets: the Galois Lattice approach

This paper presents a new method for supervised image classification. One or several landmarks are attached to each class, with the intention of characterizing it and discriminating it from the other classes. The different features, deduced from image primitives, and their relationships with the sets of images are structured and organized into a hierarchy thanks to an original method relying on a mathematical formalism called Galois (or Concept) Lattices. Such lattices allow us to select features as landmarks of specific classes. This paper details the feature selection process and illustrates this through a robotic example in a structured environment. The class of any image is the room from which the image is shot by the robot camera. In the discussion, we compare this approach with decision trees and we give some issues for future research