44900435
Two test data selection strategies towards testing of Boolean specifications
Test data selection for software represented as Boolean formulae has not received much attention until the last decade. Most of the approaches are expression driven because generation of test cases is based on the Boolean formulae being tested. The paper discusses test data generation using a fault based approach in the sense that generation of test cases is based on particular types of faults occurring in the Boolean expression. Two special types of faults are considered. Moreover, two strategies of test case selection that guarantee the detection of these two types of faults are proposed.
28566545
A new heuristic for test suite reduction
Abstract A testing objective has to be defined in testing a program. A test suite is then constructed to satisfy the testing objective. The constructed test suite contains redundancy when some of its proper subsets can still satisfy the same testing objective. Since the costs of executing test cases and maintaining a test suite for regression testing may be expensive, the problem of test suite reduction arises. This paper proposes a heuristic towards the optimization of a test suite.
14782445
On the effectiveness of test case allocation schemes in partition testing
In partition testing, the input domain is divided into two or more disjoint subdomains according to some criteria and then test data are selected from each subdomain. Hence we must design a partitioning scheme that governs how to divide the input domain, and a test case allocation scheme that controls how to allocate test cases to the subdomains. Given any partitioning scheme, the test case allocation scheme plays a crucial part in the effectiveness of testing. This paper develops guidelines for comparing different test case allocation schemes. This provides solutions to the class of problems where various test case allocation schemes under the same partitioning scheme are compared for the effectiveness of testing. We illustrate with examples several potential applications of our findings.
5643714
On Some Characterisation Problems of Subdomain Testing
Subdomain testing is a very general approach to the selection of test cases. It captures the characteristics of testing strategies that require the test suite to cover some predefined testing requirements. This paper attempts to characterise precisely the failure distributions for the best and worst case of any given subdomain testing strategy. Our analysis has revealed some crucial factors and principles that affect the effectiveness of subdomain testing strategies.
26835658
On the test allocations for the best lower bound performance of partition testing
A partition testing strategy divides the program's input domain into subdomains according to a partitioning scheme, and selects test cases from each subdomain according to a test allocation scheme. Previous studies have shown that partition testing strategies can be very effective or very ineffective in detecting faults, depending on both the partitioning scheme and the test allocation scheme. Given a partitioning scheme, the maximin criterion chooses a test allocation scheme that will maximally improve the lower bound performance of the partition testing strategy. In an earlier work, we have proved that the Basic Maximin Algorithm can generate such a test allocation scheme. In this paper, we derive further properties of the Basic Maximin Algorithm and present the Complete Maximin Algorithm that generates all possible test allocation schemes that satisfy the maximin criterion.
12141135
Construction of classification trees via the classification-hierarchy table
Abstract The classification-tree method developed by Grochtmann and coworkers is a black box testing technique to assist test engineers to construct test cases systematically from the functional specifications, via the construction of classification trees. This paper supplements their studies by proposing a methodology to construct classification trees systematically from given sets of classifications and their associated classes, via the notion of the classification-hierarchy table. The intuition of the classification-hierarchy table is to capture the hierarchical relationship for every pair of distinct classifications from which classification trees can be constructed.
2822926
Sorting with Fixed-length Reversals
Abstract A popular puzzle TOP-SPIN consists of a permutation of 20 numbered disks on an oval track, with a turnstile capable of reversing a string of 4 consecutive disks. The goal is to sort the disks into identity permutation using reversals. We consider the more general case of sorting n element permutations with a turnstile of size k. The problem of computing the reversal distances is of considerable importance in reconstructing the evolutionary history of the genome. The minimum reversal sequence sorting the one genome to another corresponds to the most likely evolutionary path between them. We give a complete solution for all n and k, of the number of equivalence classes of n-permutations under k-reversal, for both permutations and circular permutations. We also prove the upper and lower bounds on the reversal distances between two permutations.
1201195
Prediction of Protein Function Using Protein-Protein Interaction Data
Assigning functions to novel proteins is one of the most important problems in the post-genomic era. Several approaches have been applied to this problem, including analyzing gene expression patterns, phylogenetic profiles, protein fusions and protein-protein interactions. We develop a novel approach that applies the theory of Markov random fields to infer a protein's functions using protein-protein interaction data and the functional annotations of its interaction protein partners. For each function of interest and a protein, we predict the probability that the protein has that function using Bayesian approaches. Unlike in other available approaches for protein annotation where a protein has or does not have a function of interest, we give a probability for having the function. This probability indicates how confident we are about the prediction. We apply our method to predict cellular functions (43 categories including a category "others") for yeast proteins defined in the Yeast Proteome Database (YPD), using the protein-protein interaction data from the Munich Information Center for Protein Sequences (MIPS, http://mips.gsf.de). We show that our approach outperforms other available methods for function prediction based on protein interaction data.
16174340
A new encryption algorithm for image cryptosystems
Abstract There are two major differences of the characteristics of the text data and image data. One difference is that the size of image data is usually much larger than that of text data. The other is that plain data rarely permit loss when a compression technique is used, but image data do. In this paper, we design an efficient cryptosystem for images. Our method is based on vector quantization, which is one of the popular image compression techniques. Our method can achieve the following two goals. One goal is to design a high security image cryptosystem. The other goal is to reduce computational complexity of the encryption and decryption algorithms.
52802682
Inferring domain-domain interactions from protein-protein interactions
Protein-protein interactions are important events in cellular and biochemical processes within a cell. Several researchers have undertaken the task of analyzing protein-protein interactions covering all genes of an organism by using yeast two-hybrid assays. Protein-protein interactions involve physical interactions between protein domains. Therefore, understanding protein interactions at the domain level gives a global view of the protein interaction network, and possibly extends functions of proteins. In this study, we present a Maximum Likelihood approach to infer domain-domain interactions from the 5719 yeast protein-protein interactions obtained in the high throughput two-hybrid experiments by Uetz et al., 2000 and Ito et al., 2001. The accuracies of our predictions are measured at the protein level. Our study includes the following three results: (1) using the inferred domain-domain interactions, we predict interactions between proteins and achieve 39.0% specificity and 79.7% sensitivity; (2) our predicted protein-protein interactions have a significant overlap with the MIPS(http://mips.gfs.de) protein-protein interactions obtained by methods other than the two-hybrid systems; and (3) the mean correlation coefficient of the gene expression profiles for our predicted interacting pairs is significantly higher than that for random pairs as well as that of interacting pairs in Uetz's and Ito's experimental data. Our method has shown robustness in analyzing incomplete data sets and dealing with various experimental errors. We find several novel protein-protein interactions such as RPS0A interacting with APG17 and TAF40 interacting with SPT3, which are consistent with the functions of the proteins.
4650146
A New Coarse-to-Fine Framework for 3D Brain MR Image Registration
Registration, that is, the alignment of multiple images, has been one of the most challenging problems in the field of computer vision. It also serves as an important role in biomedical image analysis and its applications. Although various methods have been proposed for solving different kinds of registration problems in computer vision, the results are still far from ideal when it comes to real world biomedical image applications. For instance, in order to register 3D brain MR images, current state of the art registration methods use a multi-resolution coarse-to-fine algorithm, which typically involves starting with low resolution images and working progressively through to higher resolutions, with the aim to avoid the local maximum "traps". However, these methods do not always successfully avoid the local maximum. Consequently, various rather sophisticated optimization methods are developed to attack this problem. In this paper, we propose a novel viewpoint on the coarse-to-fine registration, in which coarse and fine images are distinguished by different scales of the objects instead of different resolutions of the images. Based on this new perspective, we develop a new image registration framework by combining the multi-resolution method with novel multi-scale algorithm, which could achieve higher accuracy and robustness on 3D brain MR images. We believe this work has great contribution to biomedical image analysis and related applications.