12493055
A methodology for evaluation of boundary detection algorithms on medical images
Image segmentation is the partition of an image into a set of nonoverlapping regions whose union is the entire image. The image is decomposed into meaningful parts which are uniform with respect to certain characteristics, such as gray level or texture. In this paper, we propose a methodology for evaluating medical image segmentation algorithms wherein the only information available is boundaries outlined by multiple expert observers. In this case, the results of the segmentation algorithm can be evaluated against the multiple observers' outlines. We have derived statistics to enable us to find whether the computer-generated boundaries agree with the observers' hand-outlined boundaries as much as the different observers agree with each other. We illustrate the use of this methodology by evaluating image segmentation algorithms on two different applications in ultrasound imaging. In the first application, we attempt to find the epicardial and endocardial boundaries from cardiac ultrasound images, and in the second application, our goal is to find the fetal skull and abdomen boundaries from prenatal ultrasound images.
8647579
MediaStation 5000: integrating video and audio
MediaStation 5000 is a highly integrated desktop multimedia system implemented on a single PC plug-in board. It performs multistandard compression, high-speed image processing, and fast 2D and 3D graphics functions. The Texas instruments Multimedia Video Processor (MVP), a single-chip multiprocessing device with a highly parallel internal architecture, provides the system's processing power and programmability.<<ETX>>
9437835
Computing Requirements of Modern Medical Diagnostic Ultrasound Machines
Abstract Ultrasound is one of the leading medical imaging modalities because it is safe, noninvasive, portable, easy to use, relatively inexpensive and displays images in real-time. Due to its real-time nature, an ultrasound machine must be able to process its incoming data quickly. High computational and throughput requirements in modern ultrasound machines have restricted their internal design to algorithm-specific hardware with limited programmability. Adding new ultrasound imaging applications or improving a machine's internal algorithms can require costly hardware redesigns and replacements of boards or of the entire machine. In an effort to address these problems, we have reviewed each of the essential functions in modern ultrasound machines and analyzed their computational requirements in programmable systems. These functions include dynamic downconversion, tissue signal processing, color flow processing, scan conversion, and tissue/flow decision. Our estimate of the total computing requirement to current ultrasound machines is 54.71 billion operations per second (BOPS) when transcendental functions are implemented in software and 31.26 BOPS when transcendental functions are implemented in lookup tables taking 160.26 Mbytes of memory. To investigate the feasibility of programmable generalized ultrasound systems, we have designed a flexible and parallel programmable ultrasound processing subsystem, called the Programmable Ultrasound Image Processor (PUIP). As the need for programmable ultrasound machines increases in the future due to various advantages (e.g., lower system cost, faster clinical use and lower research/development expenses), it will be crucial to develop not only a high-performance, scalable, reconfigurable parallel computer architecture meeting the computing requirement, but also efficient ultrasound algorithms that can be optimally mapped into the parallel architecture.
40331728
Efficient 2-D Convolution Algorithm with the Single-Data Multiple Kernel Approach
Abstract A fast implementation of convolution operation is described. The implementation takes advantage of various properties of commonly used kernels. First, the kernel elements are analyzed and rearranged, grouping the kernel elements of the same absolute value together and arranging trivial multiplication cases separately. Then the sequence of computing convolution sums is modified so that all the kernel elements could be multiplied by the same data element at each step. This new algorithm significantly reduces the number of multiplication operations for most widely used kernels. Our experiment shows that the performance improvement of two to seven over the direct implementation is achievable for most kernels. The required overhead (extra memory and preprocessing) is proportional to the kernel size and is negligible.
17681470
New Usage of Sammon's Mapping for Genetic Visualization
It is a hard problem to understand the fitness landscape of a problem as well as the evolution of genetic algorithms. For the purpose, we adopt Sammon's mapping for the investigation. We demonstrate its usefulness by applying it to the graph partitioning problem which is a well-known NP-hard problem. Also, through the investigation of schema traces, we explain the genetic process and the reordering effect in the genetic algorithm.
61949387
Quantizer design and distributed encoding algorithm for source localization in sensor networks
In this paper, we propose a quantizer design algorithm that is optimized for source localization in sensor networks. For this application, the goal is to minimize the amount of information that the sensor nodes have to exchange in order to achieve a certain source localization accuracy. We show that this goal can be achieved more efficiently when "application-specific" quantizers are used. Our proposed quantizer design algorithm uses a cost function that takes into account the distance between the actual source position and the position estimated based on quantized data. We also propose a distributed encoding algorithm that is applied after quantization and achieves rate savings by merging quantization bins without any degradation of localization performance. The merging technique in the encoding algorithm exploits the fact that certain combinations of quantization bins at each node cannot occur because the corresponding spatial regions have an empty intersection. We apply these algorithms to a system where an acoustic sensor model is employed for localization. For this case, we introduce the equally distance-divided quantizer (EDQ), designed so that quantizer partitions correspond to a uniform partitioning in terms of distance. Our simulations show the improved performance of our quantizer over traditional quantizer designs. In addition, they show rate savings (32.8%, 5 nodes, 4 bits per node) when our novel bin-merging algorithms are used. Our results also show that an optimized bit allocation leads to significant improvements in localization performance with respect to a bit allocation that uses the same number of bits for each node.
7461874
Face and Facial Expression Recognition with an Embedded System for Human-Robot Interaction
In this paper, we present an embedded system in which face recognition and facial expression recognition for Human-Robot Interaction are implemented. To detect face with a fast and reliable way, AdaBoost algorithm is used. Then, Principal Component Analysis is applied for recognizing the face. Gabor wavelets are combined with Enhanced Fisher Model for facial expression recognition. Performance of the facial expression recognition reaches to 93%. The embedded system runs on 150MHz and the processing speed is 0.6 frames / second. Experimental result demonstrates that face detection, recognition and facial expression can be implemented with an embedded system for the Human-Robot Interaction.
7564297
Problem-Independent Schema Synthesis for Genetic Algorithms
As a preprocessing for genetic algorithms, static reordering helps genetic algorithms effectively create and preserve high-quality schemata, and consequently improves the performance of genetic algorithms. In this paper, we propose a static reordering method independent of problem-specific knowledge. One of the novel features of our reordering method is that it is applicable to any problem with no information about the problem. The proposed method constructs a weighted complete graph from the gene distances calculated from solutions with relatively high fitnesses, transforms them into a gene-interaction graph, and finds a gene rearrangement. Extensive experimental results showed significant improvement for a number of applications.
14130132
Signal space detection for recording channels with jitter noise
A delay-constrained sequence detector is considered for recording channels whose major impediments include intersymbol interference (ISI) and magnetic transition jitter noise. The jitter noise is data-dependent, and a given noise sample is correlated with neighboring noise samples. A sequence detector with a finite decision delay can be formulated in a finite dimensional vector space. For a correlated noise channel, the decision boundary is generally quadratic. We present a technique for obtaining a minimal set of hyperplanes approximating a quadratic decision boundary with a negligible performance loss. In this process, a distance measure, which is consistent with the notion of the effective SNR, is defined and used as a design parameter to trade the complexity and performance. As an achievable performance bound, we derive the effective SNR for the maximum-likelihood sequence detector (MLSD) for these channels. The performance of the partial response maximum likelihood (PRML) detector commonly adopted for current data storage channels as well as the Viterbi algorithm (VA) based on the traditional Euclidean metric, which serves as the MLSD for additive white Gaussian noise, are also analyzed and compared with that of the proposed signal space detector.