Image, video and 3D data registration: medical, satellite and video processing applications with quality metrics

Data registration refers to a series of techniques for matching or bringing similar objects or datasets together into alignment. These techniques enjoy widespread use in a diverse variety of applications, such as video coding, tracking, object and face detection and recognition, surveillance and satellite imaging, medical image analysis and structure from motion. Registration methods are as numerous as their manifold uses, from pixel level and block or feature based methods to Fourier domain methods. This book is focused on providing algorithms and image and video techniques for registration and quality performance metrics. The authors provide various assessment metrics for measuring registration quality alongside analyses of registration techniques, introducing and explaining both familiar and state–of–the–art registration methodologies used in a variety of targeted applications.

Properties of tantalum oxynitride thin films produced by magnetron sputtering: the influence of processing parameters

The main purpose of this work is to present and to interpret the change of structure and physical properties of tantalum oxynitride (TaNxOy) thin films, produced by dc reactive magnetron sputtering, by varying the processing parameters. A set of TaNxOy films was prepared by varying the reactive gases flow rate, using a N2/O2 gas mixture with a concentration ratio of 17:3. The different films, obtained by this process, exhibited significant differences. The obtained composition and the interpretation of X-ray diffraction results, shows that, depending on the partial pressure of the reactive gases, the films are: essentially dark grey metallic, when the atomic ratio (N + O)/Ta < 0.1, evidencing a tetragonal β-Ta structure; grey-brownish, when 0.1 < (N + O)/Ta < 1, exhibiting a face-centred cubic (fcc) TaN-like structure; and transparent oxide-type, when (N + O)/Ta > 1, evidencing the existence of Ta2O5, but with an amorphous structure. These transparent films exhibit refractive indexes, in the visible region, always higher than 2.0. The wear resistance of the films is relatively good. The best behaviour was obtained for the films with (N + O)/Ta ≈ 0.5 and (N + O)/Ta ≈ 1.3.

Psychocentricity and participant profiles: implications for lexical processing among multilinguals

Lexical processing among bilinguals is often affected by complex patterns of individual experience. In this paper we discuss the psychocentric perspective on language representation and processing, which highlights the centrality of individual experience in psycholinguistic experimentation. We discuss applications to the investigation of lexical processing among multilinguals and explore the advantages of using high-density experiments with multilinguals. High density experiments are designed to co-index measures of lexical perception and production, as well as participant profiles. We discuss the challenges associated with the characterization of participant profiles and present a new data visualization technique, that we term Facial Profiles. This technique is based on Chernoff faces developed over 40 years ago. The Facial Profile technique seeks to overcome some of the challenges associated with the use of Chernoff faces, while maintaining the core insight that recoding multivariate data as facial features can engage the human face recognition system and thus enhance our ability to detect and interpret patterns within multivariate datasets. We demonstrate that Facial Profiles can code participant characteristics in lexical processing studies by recoding variables such as reading ability, speaking ability, and listening ability into iconically-related relative sizes of eye, mouth, and ear, respectively. The balance of ability in bilinguals can be captured by creating composite facial profiles or Janus Facial Profiles. We demonstrate the use of Facial Profiles and Janus Facial Profiles in the characterization of participant effects in the study of lexical perception and production.

The role of sleep and dreaming in the processing of episodic memory

La présente thèse examine les liens entre le sommeil, la mémoire épisodique et les rêves. Dans une première étude, nous utilisons les technologies de la réalité virtuelle (RV) en liaison avec un paradigme de privation de sommeil paradoxal et de collecte de rêve en vue d'examiner l'hypothèse que le sommeil paradoxal et le rêve sont impliqués dans la consolidation de la mémoire épisodique. Le sommeil paradoxal a été associé au rappel des aspects spatiaux des éléments émotionnels de la tâche RV. De la même façon, l'incorporation de la tâche RV dans les rêves a été associée au rappel des aspects spatiaux de la tâche. De plus, le rappel des aspects factuels et perceptuels de la mémoire épisodique, formé lors de la tâche VR, a été associé au sommeil aux ondes lentes. Une deuxième étude examine l'hypothèse selon laquelle une fonction possible du rêve pourrait être de créer de nouvelles associations entre les éléments de divers souvenirs épisodiques. Un participant a été réveillé 43 fois lors de l'endormissement pour fournir des rapports détaillés de rêves. Les résultats suggèrent qu'un seul rêve peut comporter, dans un même contexte spatiotemporel, divers éléments appartenant aux multiples souvenirs épisodiques. Une troisième étude aborde la question de la cognition lors du sommeil paradoxal, notamment comment les aspects bizarres des rêves, qui sont formés grâce aux nouvelles combinaisons d'éléments de la mémoire épisodique, sont perçus par le rêveur. Les résultats démontrent une dissociation dans les capacités cognitives en sommeil paradoxal caractérisée par un déficit sélectif dans l'appréciation des éléments bizarres des rêves. Les résultats des quatre études suggèrent que le sommeil aux ondes lentes et le sommeil paradoxal sont différemment impliqués dans le traitement de la mémoire épisodique. Le sommeil aux ondes lentes pourrait être implique dans la consolidation de la mémoire épisodique, et le sommeil paradoxal, par l'entremise du rêve, pourrais avoir le rôle d'introduire de la flexibilité dans ce système mnémonique.

A Vector Signal Processing Approach to Color

Surface (Lambertain) color is a useful visual cue for analyzing material composition of scenes. This thesis adopts a signal processing approach to color vision. It represents color images as fields of 3D vectors, from which we extract region and boundary information. The first problem we face is one of secondary imaging effects that makes image color different from surface color. We demonstrate a simple but effective polarization based technique that corrects for these effects. We then propose a systematic approach of scalarizing color, that allows us to augment classical image processing tools and concepts for multi-dimensional color signals.

A atitude dos alunos face à inclusão dos seus pares com deficiência

RESUMO: A escola actual encontra-se perante o desafio de responder com afectividade às necessidades educativas especiais de uma população cada vez mais heterogénea, onde se adopte um modelo de atendimento adequado a cada um. Neste contexto, consideramos os alunos, os professores e os encarregados de educação elementos chave de todo o processo, sobre os quais recaem responsabilidades acrescidas na concretização da filosofia inclusiva. O presente estudo tem como objectivo averiguar a atitude dos alunos face à inclusão dos seus pares com deficiência, determinando o modo como estes percepcionam as atitudes dos professores e dos pais face à inclusão de alunos com NEE de carácter permanente, vantagens e desvantagens da inclusão de alunos com NEE de carácter permanente e a cooperação entre alunos com e sem deficiência, tendo em conta a tipologia da deficiência (motora e mental). No caso do nosso estudo, contámos com a participação de 520 alunos (N= 270 género feminino e N=250 do género masculino), uma amostra distribuída pelo 2ºciclo, 3º ciclo e secundário dos distritos de Setúbal e Lisboa. A recolha de dados concretizou-se pela aplicação do AID – EF, questionário da autoria de Ramos Leitão, 2011.Esta metodologia de recolha e tratamento de informação permitiu-nos concluir que, na opinião dos alunos ditos normais a atitude dos professores face à inclusão de alunos com NEE de carácter permanente (dimensão d1), não varia em função da tipologia da deficiência (deficiência motora e mental). Da mesma forma, não foram encontradas diferenças significativas entre os dois grupos (deficiência motora e mental), na opinião dos alunos ditos normais, no que respeita às vantagens da inclusão dos alunos com NEE de carácter permanente (dimensão d2). Na opinião dos alunos ditos normais os resultados demonstraram que a cooperação entre alunos com e sem deficiência (dimensão d3), varia em função da tipologia da deficiência (deficiência motora e mental), apontando esses resultados para uma maior cooperação entre os alunos ditos normais e os seus pares com deficiência mental. Não foram igualmente encontradas diferenças significativas no que respeita às desvantagens da inclusão dos alunos com NEE de carácter permanente (dimensão 4), quando temos em consideração a tipologia da deficiência (deficiência motora e mental). Da mesma forma, na opinião dos alunos normais ditos normais a atitude dos pais face à inclusão de alunos com NEE de carácter permanente (dimensão d5) não variam em função da tipologia da deficiência (deficiência motora e mental).ABSTRACT: Currently the school is faced with the challenge of responding affectionately to the special educational needs of an increasingly heterogeneous population, where a standard model is adopted for each individual. In this context, we consider the students, teachers and guardians, key elements in the whole process, over which fall increased responsibilities in the implementation of the inclusive philosophy. The present study aims to determine the attitude of students towards the inclusion of peers with disabilities, determining how they perceive the attitudes of teachers and parents towards the inclusion of pupils with permanent special education needs, advantages and disadvantages of including students with permanent special education needs and the cooperation between students with and without disabilities, taking into account the type of disability (mental and motor). In the case of our study, we had the participation of 520 students (N = 270 N = female and 250 male), a sample distributed to the 2nd cycle, 3rd cycle and Secondary schools in the districts of Setúbal and Lisbon. The data collected was enabled by the application of the IDA - EF, questionnaire by Ramos Leitão, 2011. This methodology of collecting and processing information allowed us to conclude that, in the opinion of the so-called normal students the teachers´ attitude towards the inclusion of pupils with permanent special education needs (dimension d1) does not vary according to the type of disability (motor and mental). Likewise, no significant differences were found between the two groups (mental and motor), in the opinion of the so-called normal students, with regard to the benefits of the inclusion of pupils with permanent special education needs (dimension d2). In the opinion of the so-called normal students, the results demonstrated that the cooperation between students with and without disabilities (dimension d3), vary depending on the type of disability (mental and motor), these results pointing to a greater cooperation between the so-called normal students and their peers with mental disabilities. There were also no significant differences with respect to the disadvantages of inclusion of pupils with permanent special education needs (dimension d4), when we take into account the type of disability (mental and motor). Similarly, in the opinion of the so-called normal students, the parents´ attitude towards the inclusion of pupils with permanent special education needs (dimension d5) does not vary according to the type of disability (mental and motor).

Conversational success in Williams syndrome: communication in the face of cognitive and linguistic limitations

Williams syndrome (WS) is characterized by apparent relative strengths in language, facial processing and social cognition but by profound impairment in spatial cognition, planning and problem solving. Following recent research which suggests that individuals with WS may be less linguistically able than was once thought, in this paper we begin to investigate why and how they may give the impression of linguistic proficiency despite poor standardized test results. This case study of Brendan, a 12-year-old boy with WS, who presents with a considerable lack of linguistic ability, suggests that impressions of linguistic competence may to some extent be the result of conversational strategies which enable him to compensate for various cognitive and linguistic deficits with a considerable degree of success. These conversational strengths are not predicted by his standardized language test results, and provide compelling support for the use of approaches such as Conversation Analysis in the assessment of individuals with communication impairments.

Weightless neural nets for face recognition: a comparison

This paper considers the application of weightless neural networks (WNNs) to the problem of face recognition and compares the results with those provided using a more complicated multiple neural network approach. WNNs have significant advantages over the more common forms of neural networks, in particular in term of speed of operation and learning. A major difficulty when applying neural networks to face recognition problems is the high degree of variability in expression, pose and facial details: the generalisation properties of a WNN can be crucial. In the light of this problem a software simulator of a WNN has been built and the results of some initial tests are presented and compared with other techniques

High-level face adaptation without awareness

When a visual stimulus is suppressed from awareness, processing of the suppressed image is necessarily reduced. Although adaptation to simple image properties such as orientation still occurs, adaptation to high-level properties such as face identity is eliminated. Here we show that emotional facial expression continues to be processed even under complete suppression, as indexed by substantial facial expression aftereffects.

Face Detection and Facial Feature Localization for multi-pose faces and complex backgroundimages

The objective of this thesis work, is to propose an algorithm to detect the faces in a digital image with complex background. A lot of work has already been done in the area of face detection, but drawback of some face detection algorithms is the lack of ability to detect faces with closed eyes and open mouth. Thus facial features form an important basis for detection. The current thesis work focuses on detection of faces based on facial objects. The procedure is composed of three different phases: segmentation phase, filtering phase and localization phase. In segmentation phase, the algorithm utilizes color segmentation to isolate human skin color based on its chrominance properties. In filtering phase, Minkowski addition based object removal (Morphological operations) has been used to remove the non-skin regions. In the last phase, Image Processing and Computer Vision methods have been used to find the existence of facial components in the skin regions.This method is effective on detecting a face region with closed eyes, open mouth and a half profile face. The experiment’s results demonstrated that the detection accuracy is around 85.4% and the detection speed is faster when compared to neural network method and other techniques.

Human face verification based on multidimensional Polynomial Powers of Sigmoid (PPS)

In this paper, we described how a multidimensional wavelet neural networks based on Polynomial Powers of Sigmoid (PPS) can be constructed, trained and applied in image processing tasks. In this sense, a novel and uniform framework for face verification is presented. The framework is based on a family of PPS wavelets,generated from linear combination of the sigmoid functions, and can be considered appearance based in that features are extracted from the face image. The feature vectors are then subjected to subspace projection of PPS-wavelet. The design of PPS-wavelet neural networks is also discussed, which is seldom reported in the literature. The Stirling Universitys face database were used to generate the results. Our method has achieved 92 % of correct detection and 5 % of false detection rate on the database.

Avaliação de parâmetros métricos oculares pela fotografia digital da face: uso do diâmetro da íris como unidade de referência

Purpose: To evaluate reproducibility and precision of ocular measurements by digital photograph analysis, in addition to the transformation of the measures according to the individual iris diameter as an oculometric reference. Methods: Twenty-four eyes have been digitally photographed in a standardized way at two distances. Two researchers have analyzed these printed images using a caliper and these digital forms by ImageJ 1.37 (TM). Several external ocular parameters were estimated (mm and as iris diameter) and methods of measurement compared regarding their precision, agreement and correlation. Results: Caliper and digital analysis of oculometric measures provided significant agreement and correlation, nevertheless the precision of digital measures was higher. The estimates of numeric transformation from oculometric measures according to individual iris diameter resulted in great correlation to caliper measures and high agreement when compared to different distances of taking the photographs. Conclusions: Facial digital photographs allowed oculometric precise and reproducible estimates, endorsing clinical research usefulness. Using iris diameter as individual oculometric reference disclosed high reproducibility when facial photographs were taken at different distances.

Infrared face recogniton by optimum-path forest

This paper presents a novel, fast and accurate appearance-based method for infrared face recognition. By introducing the Optimum-Path Forest classifier, our objective is to get good recognition rates and effectively reduce the computational effort. The feature extraction procedure is carried out by PCA, and the results are compared to two other well known supervised learning classifiers; Artificial Neural Networks and Support Vector Machines. The achieved performance asserts the promise of the proposed framework. ©2009 IEEE.

Retention and processing methods of nasal prosthesis

Patients with congenital malformations, traumatic or pathological mutilation and maxillofacial developmental disorders can be restored aesthetically and emotionally by the production and use of facial prostheses. The aim of this study was to review the literature about the retention and processing methods of facial prostheses, and discuss their characteristics. A literature review on Medline (PubMed) database was performed by using the keywords maxillofacial prosthesis, silicone, resin, pigment, cosmetic, prosthetic nose, based on articles published from 1956 to 2010. Several methods of retention, from adhesives to the placement of implants, and different processing methods such as laser, CAD/CAM and rapid prototyping technologies have been reported. There are advantages and disadvantages of each procedure, and none can be classified as better compared to others.

Trabalho e trabalhadores da pesca industrial no Pará face à metamorfose do capital

O mundo do trabalho passa por grandes transformações, as quais englobam novas tecnologias e formas de organização dos fatores produtivos no processo de produção de mercadorias. Novos modelos de organização do trabalho têm surgido e se mesclado com as práticas fordistas, o que tem influenciado diretamente sobre a utilização da mão-de-obra no processo produtivo. Neste contexto, este estudo procurou analisar de que maneira as práticas do processo de reestruturação produtiva estão acontecendo em um setor de atividade: o da pesca industrial, levando em consideração as particularidades do desenvolvimento dessa atividade extrativa, da forma de estruturação das empresas que compõem este setor para se manter no mercado e/ou ganhar novos mercados e, a maneira de inserção dos trabalhadores nas atividades de captura e processamento da produção pescada. A análise foi realizada entre as empresas que constituem o parque industrial pesqueiro do Distrito de Icoraci, que concentra a maior parcela da pesca industrial no Estado do Pará, estudando de que forma as estratégias adotadas pelas indústrias processadoras e microempresas de captura, diante das mudanças no mercado consumidor e da diminuição dos principais recursos explorados, têm repercutido sobre os trabalhadores ocupados nas atividades de captura e processamento.