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In this paper, we present a method for segmenting lung lobe regions and segmental lobe regions from 3D CT datasets. In a CAD system for the chest, it is very important to understand structures of the chest by a computer. It is required to develop algorithms that automatically segment organ regions of the chest area from input 3-D chest CT datasets. This paper tries to divide lung regions into lung lobe regions and segmental lobe regions by the figure decomposition process and the Voronoi division process. In this method, we enhance sheet structures on CT images by using eigenvalues of a Hessian matrix. Also, the lung regions are segmented by simple thresholding and morphological filtering. Then, we subtract sheet structures from the lung regions. By applying the figure decomposition process, we obtain each lung lobe region. Segmental lobe regions are obtained by the Voronoi division process using bronchial branch information The proposed method was applied to thirteen cases of 3-D chest CT images. Experimental results showed that the proposed method can extract lung lobe regions and segmental lobe regions even for cases of incomplete fissure or over-extraction of interlobar pleura.

Large area optical detection systems are required for applications including cell imaging, spectroscopy, nuclear medicine, bio diagnostics, radiation detection and high energy physics. Each of these applications requires that a detector or detector arrays be closely coupled with light sources or optical couplers such as fibres or light couplers. In this paper, the scaling of novel Silicon Photomultiplier detectors to tile across a large area is presented. In particular, a novel method is discussed for compact packaging of SPM detectors into a tiled 2D detector array for large area imaging and 2D spatial detection. The SPM detector has performance characteristics comparable to vacuum photon multiplier tubes used in these applications today but offers several performance and system design advantages including spatial resolution, optical over exposure, small form factor, weight, magnetic insensitivity and low bias operation.

An application of watermarking for automatic music monitoring of radio broadcasts is discussed. By embedding information into the music as a watermark before broadcasting it, it is possible to keep track of what music has been on the air at what time, and for how long. However, to effectively implement this application, the handling of content transitions is important, because the detection reliability deteriorates at the content boundaries. In this paper, a method of detecting content boundaries using overlapping detection windows is described. The most probable pattern of content transition is selected under the condition that detection results from multiple windows are available. The derived rules are represented using a finite state model, which is useful for detection in real time. Experimental results on FM radio broadcasts are also presented.

A method of small-amplitude biovibrations detection is presented in the paper. The method uses a dependence of properties of speckle-structures formed by focused coherent light field diffraction from rough surfaces on the statistics and movement parameters of the surface. With the help of computer modeling the different components of skin surface vibration were analyzed and their influence on speckles dynamics was studied. Human vocal chord oscillations spectrum was monitored using the developed technique.

Spaceborne Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), with "all weather", day or night imaging capabilities, has been playing an important role in the domination of Earth observation. Spaceborne high-resolution wide-swath SAR (HRWS-SAR) can quickly obtain wide range of the earth’s surface information, which is of great significance to Earth mapping, geological exploration, vegetation and biomass estimates, marine monitoring, target search, disaster relief, etc. As a result, spaceborne HRWS-SAR has been gaining more and more attention. However, considering the restrictions on pulse repetition frequency (PRF) and power-aperture product, space-based SAR imaging cannot achieve high resolution and wide swath at the same time. Currently existing solutions mainly focus on the antenna system hardware devices, such as MIMO, DBF; other signal-processing-bias solutions, such as Mosaic imaging technology, have higher requirements of the antenna pointing or beam control. These methods adopt more antenna elements or complex beam control method, which greatly increased the demand for hardware performance, and the signal processing method become more complicated as well. In order to relieve the pressure on the system hardware devices, this paper presents a new orthogonal coded waveform method based on the theory of communication. By using this method, the LFM signal is coded by the orthogonal codes to make the inter-pulse waveform irrelevant, which ensures the azimuth sampling rate as well as a wide swath. Theoretically, this method can alleviate the contradiction between PRF and high resolution wide swath imaging.

This paper presents the development of a human brain multimedia database for surgical candidacy determination in temporal lobe epilepsy. The focus of the paper is on content-based image management, navigation and retrieval. Several medical image-processing methods including our newly developed segmentation method are utilized for information extraction/correlation and indexing. The input data includes T1-, T2-Weighted MRI and FLAIR MRI and ictal and interictal SPECT modalities with associated clinical data and EEG data analysis. The database can answer queries regarding issues such as the correlation between the attribute X of the entity Y and the outcome of a temporal lobe epilepsy surgery. The entity Y can be a brain anatomical structure such as the hippocampus. The attribute X can be either a functionality feature of the anatomical structure Y, calculated with SPECT modalities, such as signal average, or a volumetric/morphological feature of the entity Y such as volume or average curvature. The outcome of the surgery can be any surgery assessment such as memory quotient. A determination is made regarding surgical candidacy by analysis of both textual and image data. The current database system suggests a surgical determination for the cases with relatively small hippocampus and high signal intensity average on FLAIR images within the hippocampus. This indication pretty much fits with the surgeons’ expectations/observations. Moreover, as the database gets more populated with patient profiles and individual surgical outcomes, using data mining methods one may discover partially invisible correlations between the contents of different modalities of data and the outcome of the surgery.

The electrostatic comb finger drive has become an integral design for microsensor and microactuator applications. This paper reports on utilizing the levitation effect of comb fingers to design vertical-to-the-substrate actuation for interferometric applications. For typical polysilicon comb drives with 2 {micro}m gaps between the stationary and moving fingers, as well as between the microstructures and the substrate, the equilibrium position is nominally 1-2 {micro}m above the stationary comb fingers. This distance is ideal for many phase shifting interferometric applications. Theoretical calculations of the vertical actuation characteristics are compared with the experimental results, and a general design guideline is derived from these results. The suspension flexure stiffnesses, gravity forces, squeeze film damping, and comb finger thicknesses are parameters investigated which affect the displacement curve of the vertical microactuator. By designing a parallel plate capacitor between the suspended mass and the substrate, in situ position sensing can be used to control the vertical movement, providing a total feedback-controlled system. Fundamentals of various capacitive position sensing techniques are discussed. Experimental verification is carried out by a Zygo distance measurement interferometer.

Many studies on soil moisture retrieval at vegetated area from microwave radiometry data assume a simple model of vegetation, which is characterized by vegetation volume fraction, effective dielectric constant, plant moisture content, etc. In this study, a radiative transfer model is used to model the emissivity and transmissivity of forest canopy, which is more realistically characterized as a volumetric medium consisting of discrete scatters (leaves, stems, tree branches, and trunks). To facilitate the soil moisture inversion from radiometry data, the unknown variables need to be reduced. The possibility of fitting the modeled emissivity and transmissivity of vegetation canopy into simple equations, and the relationships of these parameters between different microwave radiometry frequencies were studied and the results are presented in this paper.

Novel techniques for generating robust and accurate meshes based on 3-D imaging data have recently been developed which make the prediction of macro-structural properties of composite structures based on micro-structural composition straightforward. The accuracy of reconstructions is a particular strong point of these new techniques with geometric accuracy only contingent on image quality. Algorithms developed and used are topology preserving, volume preserving and multi-part geometric models can be handled straightforwardly. In addition to modeling different constituent materials as separate mesh domains, material properties can be assigned based on signal strength in the parent image thereby providing a way of modeling continuous variations in properties for an inhomogeneous medium. These new techniques have been applied to the analysis of a ceramic matrix composite which was micro-CT scanned and the influence of imaging parameters on both predicted bulk properties and localized stresses has been explored. This paper utilizes the Computed Tomography (CT) as the NDE technique to characterize the initial matrix porosity's locations and sizes in a Ceramic Matrix Composites (CMC) test specimen. Further, the Finite Element (FE) method is applied to calculate the localized stress field around these pores based on the geometric modeling of the specimen's CT results, using image analysis, geometric modeling and meshing software, ScanIP/ScanFE [1]. The analyses will simulate experimental loading conditions where scanned specimens are then tensile tested to a 0.07 % total strain to identify the matrix cracking locations in relation to the original pores. Additional work is carried out combining the image processing and finite element to investigate the applicability of some novel meshing techniques. Finally, the calculated Finite Element [2-4] localized stress risers are compared with the observed matrix cracking locations. This work is expected to show that an FE model based on an accurate 3-D rendered model from a series of CT slices is an essential tool to quantify the effects of internal macroscopic defects of complex material systems such as CMCs.

In the present paper we investigated the spatio-temporal instabilities of stationary lasing in class-B broad-area lasers. The onset conditions of filamentary instability and its spatio-temporal characteristics were obtained analytically on the basis of Maxwell-Bloch equations without phase-amplitude coupling. The lasing stabilization capabilities through varying laser parameters were considered. We demonstrated that coherent external optical injection can effectively suppress the transverse filamentary instability. We considered the case of weak optical injection, so that the amplitude of injected field is small compared to the amplitude of intracavity laser field. The latter restriction is ascribed to active cavity where injected field doesn’t play a driving role in laser operation. We report that injected field can have the stabilizing impact even for such relatively weak injection. Moreover our findings show that both relaxation oscillations and spiking behaviour may be significantly suppressed up to complete elimination in broad-area laser submit to coherent optical injection. All the results were also found to stay principally valid for weak nonzero phase-amplitude coupling.

Semiconductor laser diodes may play an important role in synchronous optical networks as sources of optical modelocked pulse trains with robust timing stability. In this paper, it is demonstrated how injection modelocked semiconductor lasers can be used in all-optical clock recovery systems.Experimental measurement of clock recovery dynamics shows that these devices offer robust clock recovery with low injected data power (< 6uW), large repetition rate locking bandwidth (2.91O fractionalbandwidth), and small timing jitter (< 93 fi). Clocking from an injected data stream at l/5O the clockingrepetition rate is demonstrated. 2. INTRODUCTION Photonic networks are well suited for high speed data networks and high speed signal processingdue to the inherent large bandwidth of optical frequencies and the reduced effects of electromagneticinterference and dispersion. One of the most critical components of any high speed optical network is thetiming signal, or clock, which typically consists of a train of short optical pulses separated in time by theclock period of the data network. It is desirable to use all-optical methods to generate the clocking signalto avoid the speed limitations of electronic techniques.Modelocked external cavity semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) lasers are an attractive source

NASA's planned Kepler mission uses a space-born Schmidt telescope to search for Earth-size and smaller planets around distant stars using differential photometry. This paper reports the successful design, analysis and implementation of suspending a large actively cooled (-90C) focal plane array with associated electronics inside the warm (0C) Kepler photometer. Since a Schmidt Telescope requires the focal plane to be in the middle of the telescope, it must be suspended while obscuring only a small portion of the incoming light. The Kepler focal plane is comprised of 21 individual science CCD modules and 4 guidance sensor modules covering an area that is roughly 1200 square centimeters in a telescope with a 0.95m aperture. The Kepler system requires the detector data to be digitized near the focal plane, so a detector electronics box is also suspended behind the CCD array. A total of 65 kilograms is supported by the spider structure inside the telescope and must remain stable through environments and during on-orbit operations. Key to the performance of the system is a stiff, light-weight composite structure that supports the focal plane and electronics above the primary mirror. This spider structure is used to align the focal plane with respect to the primary mirror in the system, and is intentionally over-constrained after alignment. Techniques used to align the focal plane to the optical system are discussed and predicted alignment performance and stability are reported.

Carotenoids are linear polyenes that occur in nature and are known to have powerful antioxidant properties. They react efficiently with the excited states of many organic molecules. In the photosynthetic apparatus of plants they quench reactive excited states that may be formed and release the energy as heat. In photodynamic therapy they may be used to ameliorate the associated skin photosensitivity that is a consequence of many photosensitizers. This protection may be either through reaction with the sensitizer triplet state or through quenching of singlet oxygen. Carotenoids also form relatively stable radical species and react efficiently with the hydroxyl radical, superoxide and the solvated electron. In cells they are associated with the lipid core of the cell membrane and are effective against lipid peroxidation. The importance of the thermodynamic properties of these compounds and their organization within biological systems is pivotal to understanding carotenoid antioxidant activity. The present paper reviews some recent work on the energy level of (beta) -carotene, electron transfer involving the one electron reduced species and the resonance Raman spectra of some carotenoids in micellar solution.

The purpose of the Automatic Target Recognition (ATR) Center is to develop an environment conducive to producing theoretical and practical advances in the field of ATR. This will be accomplished by fostering intellectual growth of ATR practitioners at all levels. From an initial focus on students and performance modeling, the Center's efforts are extending to professionals in government, academia, and industry. The ATR Center will advance the state of the art in ATR through collaboration between these researchers. To monitor how well the Center is achieving its goals, several tangible products have been identified: graduate student research, publicly available data and associated challenge problems, a wiki to capture the body of knowledge associated with ATR, development of stronger relationships with the users of ATR technology, development of a curriculum for ATR system development, and maintenance of documents that describe the state-of-the-art in ATR. This presentation and accompanying paper develop the motivation for the ATR Center, provide detail on the Center's products, describe the Center's business model, and highlight several new data sets and challenge problems. The "persistent and layered sensing" context and other technical themes in which this research is couched are also presented. Finally, and most importantly, we will discuss how industry, academia, and government can participate in this alliance and invite comments on the plans for the third phase of the Center.

This paper will describe the design of two infrared optical pyrometers used to study dust explosions. One is a six-wavelength pyrometer that can measure both dust particle temperature and gas temperature by observing continuum and gas band emission in the 1 to 5 μm infrared region using PbSe detectors. The second pyrometer measures particle continuum emission in the 0.8 to 1.0 μm region of the near infrared using Si detectors. Temperature data are presented for both laboratory and full-scale mine explosions.

In-band pumping of Ho-doped solid-state lasers by a cladding-pumped Tm fiber laser is an attractive route to high output power and high pulse energy in the eyesafe two-micron spectral region. This approach combines the advantages of fiber lasers and crystal solid-state lasers with relative immunity from the effects of thermal loading, nonlinear loss processes (e.g. stimulated Brillouin scattering) and energy-transfer-upconversion. The use of a Tm-doped fiber laser as the pump source allows a great deal of flexibility, since the broad emission linewidth allows the wavelength to be tuned over a very wide range spanning the absorption lines of interest in Ho:YLF, Ho:YAG and many other Ho-doped crystals. In this paper, we report efficient operation of Ho:YAG and Ho:YLF lasers pumped by a tunable Tm-doped silica fiber laser. The lasing wavelength of the Tm-doped fibre laser could be tuned over 150nm from ~1860 to 2010nm with a relatively narrow linewidth (6.4W of TEMoo output was obtained from a Ho:YAG laser at 2.1µm at the maximum incident pump power of 9.6W, corresponding to an optical-to-optical efficiency of 67%, and the slope efficiency with respect to incident pump power was 80%. By comparison, for a similar resonator design, 4.8W of output at 2.07µm was generated from a Ho:YLF laser at an incident pump power of 9.4W, corresponding to an optical conversion efficiency of 51%. Using a simple ring resonator geometry and an acousto-optic modulator to enforce unidirectional operation, we have obtained 3.7W of single-longitudinal-mode output from a Ho:YAG laser. The prospects for further improvement in performance and higher output power will be discussed.

The current trend of depletion of natural resources due to an ever-increasing number of consumer goods manufactured has led to an increase in the quantity ofused and outdated products discarded. From an environmental point ofview, it is not only desirable to disassemble, reuse, remanufacture and/or recycle the discarded products, in many cases it can also be economically justified. This situation being the motive, in recent years there have been several studies reported on disassembly, remanufacturing and/or recycling environments. Since "environmentally conscious manufacturing" is a relatively new concept that brings new costs and profits into consideration, its analysis cannot be provided by readily available techniques. This paper presents a quantitative methodology to determine the allowable tolerance limits of planned/unplanned inventory in a remanufacturing supply chain environment based on the decision-maker's unique preferences. To this end, an integer goal-programming model that provides a unique solution for the allowable inventoiy level is presented. The objective of the supply-chain model is to determine the number of a variety of components to be kept in the inventoiy while economically fulfilling the demand of a multitude of components, and yet have an environmentally benign policy of minimizing waste generation. A numerical example is presented to illustrate the methodology.

To evaluate wheel defect, it is necessary to develop a new NDT on railway wheel. Unlikely a conventional NDT system, the NDT system of the present paper can detect a sub-surface crack. In the present paper, the new NDT method is applied to the detection of surface and sub-surface crack defects for railway wheels. To detect the defects for railway wheels, the sensor for new NDT is optimized and the tests are carried out with respect to sub-surface defects respectively. The result shows that the surface crack as well as sub-surface crack could be detected by using new NDT method.

As a method to record and reconstruct three-dimensional whole information of an object, holography has been used for various applications from the beginning of its invention. Recent holography technologies widen their applicability from present ongoing applications as display, data storage, and holographic lithography to near-future potential technologies as three-dimensional display, nano-particle-based optical storage, and surface plasmon lithography. In this paper, recent holographic technologies applied to various fields are discussed with respect to related simulation issues. Theoretical analysis and expectation through simulation study are inevitable for deeply understanding background principles, gaining insight, saving resources and maximizing efficiency. Simulation issues related to these holographic technologies are introduced and some our simulation studies are presented.

The sparse aperture system, which utilizes several sub-apertures in place of monolithic surface, has attracted more interests because it has the advantages of lower cost and lighter weight, and keeps the same aperture size to reach the demanded angular resolution. However the image quality degrades because of smaller effective aperture areas. When the diffraction-limited sparse aperture optical system is imaging ideally, since the optical transfer function is known in the diffraction-limited sparse aperture system, wiener filter is thought to be the best tool to restore the images. In the actual imaging process, an image must been disturbed by varieties of noises so that the ability of Wiener filtering image restoration degrades obviously, the restoration effect of the images with noises by using Wiener filtering is not to be efficient. This paper proposes an improved de-noising algorithm by analyzing traditional wavelet threshold de-noising method. For the images created by using the simulated sparse aperture optical system, first, we can remove the noises in the images using the improved wavelet threshold method and enhance the signal-to-noise ratio, and then obtain the more ideal image formation in the greatest degree, and finally perform restoration of the preprocessed images based on the improved Wiener filtering method. The simulated experiments are fulfilled with sparse aperture system Golay6 with different fill factors designed with the aid of the optical designing software system ZEMAX. The simulated results demonstrate that the algorithm proposed in this paper is superior to normal Wiener filtering or the improved Wavelet-Wiener filtering method.

This paper describes a non contact measurement technique for the transverse vibration of small cables and strings, using an analog position sensing detector. The sensor is used to monitor the cable vibrations of a small scale mock-up of a cable structure and to evaluate the performance of an active tendon control algorithm.© (1996) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.

Surface texture plays a vital role in modern engineering products. Currently surface metrology discipline is undergoing a paradigm shift from 2D profile to 3D areal and from stochastic to structured surface characterization. Areal surface texture measurements have greater fully functional significance parameters, better repeatability and more effectively visual express than profile measurements. The existing white light microscopy interference measurement can be used for the non-contact measurement of areal surface texture. However, the measurement field and lateral resolution of this method is restricted to the numerical aperture of objective. To address this issue, a type of vertical scanning white light interference stitching measurement system with large area and seamless has been built up in this paper. This system is based on the compound optical microscopy system and 3D precision displacement system with large travel, nanometer level and displacement measurement. The CCD calibration and angles calculation between CCD and level worktables are settled depending on the measurement system itself. A non-orthogonal worktable moving strategy is used for the seamless stitching measurement of this measurement method, which reduces the cost of stitching and enlarges the measurement field. Therefore the problem, which the lateral resolution and the measurement filed are restricted to the numerical aperture of objective, is solved. An automatic search and location method of fringe for white light interference measurement based on the normalized standard deviation of gray value of interference microscopy images is proposed to solve the problem of inefficiency for the search of interference fringe by hand.

A 3×3 high divergent 2D-grating with period of 3.842μm at wavelength of 850nm under normal incidence is designed and fabricated in this paper. This high divergent 2D-grating is designed by the vector theory. The Rigorous Coupled Wave Analysis (RCWA) in association with the simulated annealing (SA) is adopted to calculate and optimize this 2D-grating.The properties of this grating are also investigated by the RCWA. The diffraction angles are more than 10 degrees in the whole wavelength band, which are bigger than the traditional 2D-grating. In addition, the small period of grating increases the difficulties of fabrication. So we fabricate the 2D-gratings by direct laser writing (DLW) instead of traditional manufacturing method. Then the method of ICP etching is used to obtain the high divergent 2D-grating.

In this paper, we derive the Cramer-Rao Bound (CRB) for wideband source localization and DOA estimation. The resulting CRB formula can be decomposed into two terms: one that depends on the signal characteristic and one that depends on the array geometry. For a uniformly spaced circular array (UCA), a concise analytical form of the CRB can be given by using some algebraic approximation. We further define a DOA beamwidth based on the resulting CRB formula. The DOA beamwidth can be used to design the sampling angular spacing for the Maximum-likelihood (ML) algorithm. For a randomly distributed array, we use an elliptical model to determine the largest and smallest effective beamwidth. The effective beamwidth and the CRB analysis of source localization allow us to design an efficient algorithm for the ML estimator. Finally, our simulation results of the Approximated Maximum Likelihood (AML) algorithm are demonstrated to match well to the CRB analysis at high SNR.

A new experimental solution of a picosecond transient absorption spectrometer with a high power pulse YAG:Nd3+ laser has been developed and tested in studies of photophysical and spectral properties of molecular systems. The analyzing beam is the 'white' light of the picosecond continuum generated by the 1064 nm beam in isopropanol. The optical delay line of 20 cm travel range permits investigation of the processes occurring in the time scale to 1.3 ns with the time step of approximately 3 fs. The system was used to study the interaction of the excited xanthione molecules with alkanes and benzene occurring in the picosecond time scale. The paper describes also the design and performance of a double-beam pulse spectrometer use for measuring in the real time, changes in transient absorption evolution of emission and dynamics of the ground state depletion of molecular media. The technique of digital recording and data processing at the sampling rate of 2 gigasamples/s ensures a resolution of single nanoseconds in the time interval up to 10 microseconds. The spectrometer has been successfully tested in photophysical studies of the triplet states of xanthione in benzene and n- hexane solutions.© (1997) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.

In this paper we present a novel fast method for the non-rigid registration of a few X-ray projections with CT data. The method involves non-parametric non-rigid registration techniques for the difficult 2D-3D case, combined with knowledge of probable deformations modeled as active shape models (ASMs). ASMs allow us to cope with as few as two projections by regularizing the registration process. The model is learned from deformations observed during respiration in a 4D-CT. This method can be applied in motion compensated radiation therapy to eliminate the need for fiducial implantation. We designed a fast C++ implementation for our method in order to make it practicable. Our tests on real 4D-CT data achieved registration times of 2-4 minutes using a desktop PC.

In this paper, for an inhomogeneous material in which the thermal conductivity is varied as a function of depth, we propose an efficient method to inversely compute the depth distribution of optical-absorption coefficient by the surface temperature of the material. The results of inverse computation by a group of surface temperature data show that some more accurate optical- absorption coefficients can be obtained.

Low level light therapy (LLLT) has been widely reported to reduce pain and inflammation and enhance wound healing and tissue regeneration in various settings. LLLT has been noted to have both stimulatory and inhibitory biological effects and these effects have been termed Photobiomodulation (PBM). Several elegant studies have shown the key role of Cytochrome C oxidase and ROS in initiating this process. The downstream biological responses remain to be clearly elucidated. Our work has demonstrated activation of an endogenous latent growth factor complex, TGF-β1, as one of the major biological events in PBM. TGF-β1 has critical roles in various biological processes especially in inflammation, immune responses, wound healing and stem cell biology. This paper overviews some of the studies demonstrating the efficacy of PBM in promoting tissue regeneration.

For a full motion parallax 3D display, it is necessary to supply multiple views obtained from a series of different locations. However, it is impractical to deliver all of the required views because it will result in a huge size of bit streams. In the previous work, authors proposed a mixed resolution 3D video format composed of color and depth information pairs with heterogeneous resolutions, and also suggested a view synthesis algorithm for mixed resolution videos. This paper reports a more refined view interpolation method and improved results.

Historically, progress in lithography has been driven by steady advances in exposure tool and optical technology; shorter wavelength, higher numerical aperture (NA) and resolution enhancement techniques to drive the k1 factor as close as possible to the physical limit. Over the past decade, however, the pace of progress has been gated more by patterning – what we do after the resist image is printed – than by higher resolution imaging. The emphasis on patterning rather than just printing has created new pressures in many parts of the overall process, beginning with the design itself. The breakdown of lithographic error budgets into CD and OL tolerances has given way to total edge placement error (EPE) budgets where CD, OL and edge roughness, as well as film and etch variations, must all be controlled to meet the required tolerances. Contact hole and cut mask placement have likewise been tightened to single digit EPE budgets. Collaborative research between technology specialists in multiple areas, such as metrology, etch, process control and simulation, will all be required to deliver these patterning solutions for some years to come. This paper will describe some of these challenges in more detail, and suggest directions for future research to keep optical lithography relevant even below the 10 nm node.

This paper introduces an approach for synthesizing natural textures, with emphasis on quasi-periodic and structural textures. The process consists of two stages. In the first stage, the basic textural elements (texels) and the basic textural structure are determined. This is achieved by identifying two fundamental frequencies in the texture, for two different orientations. The basic structure is a non-regular mesh that defines the place holders for texels. We call such place holders e-texels (empty texels). In the second stage, a new textural structure is designed from the original one, and its e-texels are filled in by texels obtained from the original patch. Same texture texels are expected to possess a high degree of similarity, thus the new structure could be filled in at random. However, a transition probability approach is used in order to retain local textural characteristics. More specifically, assuming that texel A is the last texel placed in the new structure, the e-texel closest to A is found. The e-texel is replaced by texel B from the old structure if the relative position between A and the e-texel is similar to the relative position between A and B in the old structure. This technique is an extension of a general texture synthesis technique previously developed by the author. The proposed technique is suited for structural textures since blockage effects are eliminated by allowing irregular shape texels to be merged, contrary to the previous general technique where the blocks merged are squares. Results show that the proposed method is successful in synthesizing structural textures.

A new concept for roughness measurement is presented in this paper. The new concept is the mean surface that describes the summation of the shape, error and waviness of a profile surface measured by the interferometric microscope. The mean surface is fitted by the Zernike polynomials in a least squares sense. When the mean surface is subtracted from the profile data, the roughness can be calculated. The numerical simulations show that the accuracy is enough high.© (1996) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.

Now that the technology for Integrated sensor and MEMS devices has become sufficiently mature to allow mass production, it is expected that the prices of bare chips will drop dramatically. This means that the package prices will become a limiting factor in market penetration, unless low cost packaging solutions become available. This paper will discuss the developments in packaging technology. Both single-chip and multi-chip packaging solutions will be addressed. It first starts with a discussion on the different requirements that have to be met; both from a device point of view (open access paths to the environment, vacuum cavities, etc.) and from the application point of view (e.g. environmental hostility). Subsequently current technologies are judged on their applicability for MEMS and sensor packaging and a forecast is given for future trends. It is expected that the large majority of sensing devices will be applied in relative friendly environments for which plastic packages would suffice. Therefore, on the short term an important role is foreseen for recently developed plastic packaging techniques such as precision molding and precision dispensing. Just like in standard electronic packaging, complete wafer level packaging methods for sensing devices still have a long way to go before they can compete with the highly optimized and automated plastic packaging processes.

Color indirect effect (CIE) is referred to as the physiological and psychological effects of color resulting from color vision. In previous papers, we have studied CIE from the viewpoints of the integrated western and Chinese traditional medicine, put forward the color-autonomic- nervous-subsystem model (CAM), and provided its time-theory foundation. In this paper, we applied it to study light effects on melatonin regulation in humans, and suggested that it is CIE that mediates light effects on melatonin suppression.

This paper reports on a hybrid polymeric micro”uidic device with optical detection for droplet-based systems.The optical part of the device is integrated by a hybrid concept. The micro”uidic structures were fabricatedusing CO 2 laser on PMMA (poly methylmethacrylate) substrate. The micro”uidic network consists of twomicrochannels for forming droplets of an aqueous liquid in an immiscible carrier liquid. The optical componentconsists of two optical “bers for guiding laser light from the source, through the detection point, to a photodiode. The formed droplets pass the detection point and diract the incoming laser light. The detected signalat the photo diode can be used for evaluating droplet size, droplet shape, and droplet formation frequency.The device can detect very high formation frequencies, which are not detectable using a conventional CCDcamera/microscope setup.Keywords: Droplet micro”uidics, Polymeric micromachining, Lab on chip, Optical detection 1. INTRODUCTION Droplet-based micro”uidics has been emerging in the recent years because of its potential and apparent advan-tages. One of the key advantages of this concept is the small sample volume on the order of picoliters andnanoliters. A number of concepts such as thermocapillary

The capacity factor, as a useful tool, was used to characterize the dependence of every link on the capacity changes of a network coding based network. In this paper, we shall investigate the relationship between the network capacity and the set of capacity factors. We firstly introduce a new concept, the capacity kernel, which is a subnetwork deduced from the original network. It will be shown that the capacity kernel of a network maintains most important capacity-related properties of the original network. The capacity kernel can also deduce a projection operator, which to the best of our knowledge, is the first known projection operator acting on the space of all the communication networks. We further introduce and discuss the properties of the C-contra links based on the capacity kernel. As an application, a tighter upper bound on the capacity factor size is then obtained.

Tailored protective coatings have the potential for tremendous technical and affordability benefits to ground, air and space systems because of their ability to reduce surface contamination, minimize icing, reduce friction, and to reduce corrosion for a wide variety of applications and missions. The thermal and radiation environment of space systems also pose unique challenges to protective coatings because of the space environment’s large temperature variations, the plasma environment and solar UV and Xrays. Contamination may accumulate on sensors inhibiting accurate and timely data acquisition and their efficiency can be seriously affected by contamination buildup. For polymeric materials, not all properties are affected to the same degree by radiation but are often localized at a specific molecular bond. Both hydrophilic and hydrophobic coating approaches may be important to address specific design requirements. Hydrophilic materials are composed of polar molecules and have been used to defog glass and enable oil spots to be swept away with water. Hydrophobic molecules tend to be nonpolar and thus prefer other neutral molecules and nonpolar solvents. Hydrophobic molecules often cluster and are difficult to wet with liquids. This paper presents an overview of various types of contamination that adheres to critical air and space surfaces and potential coatings phenomenology that may be used to eliminate contamination.

A novel single-transistor configuration active pixel image sensor (APS) has been investigated in this paper. This device can realize the functions of the conventional 3T CMOS image sensor. In this paper, the basic performances including transient simulation, potential changes, and read endurance of the 1T image sensor will be discussed. Different from the conventional 3T CMOS image sensor, holes are used as signal charges in the proposed device. Comparison with the conventional 3T APS will be discussed as well.

In this paper the mean time to acquire a stationary target by n stationary imaging sensors is computed using probability theory by making use of the well established result that the detection time for a single imaging sensor is a random variable from an exponential probability density function. Each imaging sensor is characterized by a separate P∞ value which describes the probability an observer using that sensor will eventually acquire the target and a separate t value which describes the mean time to acquire the target using that sensor. There is no restriction on the wavelength band used by the imaging sensor. There are no empirical constants in the model presented here and the results are in agreement with and generalize previously published equations. The newly developed equations have been verified by numerical simulations and also yield the expected mean detection time for all limiting values of the input parameters. The code used in the numerical simulations is exhibited. For any given scenario, the separate τ observer-sensor-target parameters P∞ and t can be estimated using the NV-IPM model or measured in perception experiments. Thus the input parameters needed by the model are generally available. Comparing results presented here with results from war game simulations such as OneSAF may improve the quality of both products.

In seismic data processing, we often need to interpolate/extrapolate missing spatial locations in a domain of interest. The reconstruction problem can be posed as an inverse problem where from inadequate and incomplete data one attempts to recover the complete band-limited seismic wavefield. However, the problem is often ill posed due to factors such as inaccurate knowledge of bandwidth and noise. In this case, regularization can be used to help to obtain a unique and stable solution. In this paper, we formulate band-limited data reconstruction as a minimum norm least squares type problem where an adaptive DFT-weighted norm regularization term is used to constrain solutions. In particular, the regularization term is updated iteratively through using the modified periodogram of the estimated data. The technique allows for adaptive incorporation of prior knowledge of the data such as the spectrum support and the shape of the spectrum. The adaptive regularization can be accelerated using FFTs and an iterative solver like preconditioned conjugate gradient algorithm. Examples on synthetic and real seismic data illustrate improvement of the new method over damped least squares estimation.

Mongo-DB (from “humongous”) is an open-source document database and the leading NoSQL database. A NoSQL (Not Only SQL, next generation databases, being non-relational, deal, open-source and horizontally scalable) presenting a mechanism for storage and retrieval of documents. Previously, we stored and retrieved the data using the SQL queries. Here, we use the MonogoDB that means we are not utilizing the MySQL and SQL queries. Directly importing the documents into our Drives, retrieving the documents on that drive by not applying the SQL queries, using the IO BufferReader and Writer, BufferReader for importing our type of document files to my folder (Drive). For retrieving the document files, the usage is BufferWriter from the particular folder (or) Drive. In this sense, providing the security for those storing files for what purpose means if we store the documents in our local folder means all or views that file and modified that file. So preventing that file, we are furnishing the security. The original document files will be changed to another format like in this paper; Binary format is used. Our documents will be converting to the binary format after that direct storing in one of our folder, that time the storage space will provide the private key for accessing that file. Wherever any user tries to discover the Document files means that file data are in the binary format, the document's file owner simply views that original format using that personal key from receive the secret key from the cloud.

This paper details the design and development of an inchworm-type linear piezomotor that consists of three piezoelectric actuators, a monolithic flexure frame, and a guideway. The design is accomplished using the finite element methods to optimize the stiffness of elastic hinges and to calculate the stress-strain field of the flexure frame. The buckling of the bolted joints and interface stiffness of the quideway, and jerking of the linear piezomotor motion, are discussed. The linear piezomotor is capable of traveling speed of 1.6 mm/s over a travel range of 300 mm with a positioning resolution of 5 nm. It also provides a stiffness of 90 N/micrometers and an output force of 200 N.© (1994) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.

Red blotch disease is a viral disease that affects grapevines. Symptoms appear as irregular blotches on grape leaves with pink and red veins on the underside of the leaves. Red blotch disease causes a reduction in the accumulation of sugar in grapevines affecting the quality of grapes and resulting in delayed harvest. Detecting and monitoring this disease early is important for grapevine management. This work focuses on the use of hyperspectral imaging for detection and mapping red blotch disease in grape leaves. Grape leaves with known red blotch disease have been imaged with a portable hyperspectral imaging system both on and off the vine to investigate the spectral signature of red blotch disease as well as to identify the diseased areas on the leaves. Modified reflectance calculated at spectral bands corresponding to 566 nm (green) and 628 nm (red), and modified reflectance ratios computed at two sets of bands (566 nm / 628 nm, 680 nm / 738 nm) were selected as effective features to differentiate red blotch from healthy-looking and dry leaf. These two modified reflectance and two ratios of modified reflectance values were then used to train the support vector machine classifier in a supervised learning scheme. Once the SVM classifier was defined, two-class classification was achieved for grape leaf hyperspectral images. Identification of the red blotch disease on grape leaves as well as mapping different stages of the disease using hyperspectral imaging are presented in this paper.

Normally, reliable, reproducible, high-yield packaging technologies are essential for meeting the cost, performance, and service objectives for the harsh environment of space applications. This paper describes a new improved micro packaging method of hermetic seal mini-DIL (dual in line) laser diode module. The problem of using a softer solder resulted in failure mechanisms observed in the mini-DIL laser diode module based laser firing unit (LFU) for ordinance ignition of a missile system. These failures included: (1) failure in light output pulse power, (2) fiber pigtail damage inside the package snout which caused low LFU production yield. Our distinctive challenge for this project is the micro packaging of mini-DIL. For this package a new technique for the hermetic sealing using a micro-soldering process was developed. The process is able to confine the solder seal to a small region inside the snout near the fiber feed-through hole on the wall of the mini-DIL package. After completing the development, which included temperature and thermal cycling, X-rays analysis showed the new method had no fiber damage after the microsoldering seal. The new process resulted in 100% success in the packaging design and was granted a patent for the innovative development.

A Cooperative Reliable Multicast Protocol (CRMP) has been developed to improve real-time data transmission onthe Internet Multicast Backbone (MBone) by adding a retransmit server and some repair servers to the multicastsession in order to recover lost packets. This paper describes a design and implementation of CRMP with Localrecovery (L-CRMP), an extension to the original CRMP. In L-CRMP, each repair server can work as a local serverthat retransmits packets to other repair servers that do not receive them from the source. Our goal in L-CRMP is toreduce the network overhead caused by retransmission packets while keeping the effective loss rate at the receiversapproximately the same.Keywords: MBone, Reliable Multicast, Local recovery 1. INTRODUCTION Real-time multicast applications are transmitted over the Internet through MBone (Multicast Backbone), a logicalnetwork running on top of the IP layer.1'2 Many of them, such as vat (Visual Audio Tool) or nv (Network Video),are based on RTP (Real-time Protocol) that does not support reliability. These applications may often experiencepoor quality due to large packet loss.3'4 A protocol, Cooperative Reliable Multicast Protocol (CRMP), is proposedin reference5 to alleviate the problem. A unique feature of CRMP is that it can be used with the current MBoneapplications without changing the operation of the source or receivers. Receivers that participate in CRMP coexistwith those that do not, but enjoys a better quality.Most reliable multicast protocols are designed for data transmission which requires perfect reliability but isresilient to delay, e.g.,6'7 and references therein. CRMP is however designed for real-time applications and exploitsthe fact that they do not require perfect reliability and, due to their stream nature, do not need acknowledgementfor every packet. In a large heterogeneous network, the delay between the retransmit server and some of the repairservers may be excessive. This motivates our extension of the original CRMP to include local recovery. It exploitsthe fact that loss at different repair servers is not synchronized, and therefore, a retransmission request of a repairserver may be fulfilled by a nearby repair server that has received the packet. In this paper we present a designand implementation of CRMP with local recovery (L—CRMP), and evaluate its performance. In addition to local

There is a strong symbiotic relationship between a developing technology and its applications. New technologies can generate applications previously either unrealizable or impractical. Conversely, applications can demand the development of new technological capability. Examples of both types of development can be found in the evolution of HPM. The high power and energy output made possible by HPM have created a technology driven interest in directed energy weapons and short pulse radar. On the other hand, the requirements for heating of fusion plasmas have resulted in an application driven program to develop high average power microwave devices. In this paper we address these and other applications such as RF electron linacs, laser pumping, and beaming of power. Emerging applications, such as ionispheric modification and environmental cleanup, are also touched upon. The approach in this paper will be to review each application separately and then compare the requirements of the applications in terms of the power, frequency and other key requirements necessary for HPM to usefully address the application.

Using the Cryogenic High Accuracy Refraction Measuring System (CHARMS) at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, we have made the first cryogenic measurements of absolute refractive index for Ohara L-BBH2 glass to enable the design of a prism for the Coronagraphic High Angular Resolution Imaging Spectrograph (CHARIS) at the Subaru telescope. L-BBH2 is employed in CHARIS’s prism design for improving the spectrograph’s dispersion uniformity. Index measurements were made at temperatures from 110 to 305 K at wavelengths from 0.46 to 3.16 μm. We report absolute refractive index (n), dispersion (dn/dλ), and thermo-optic coefficient (dn/dT) for this material along with estimated single measurement uncertainties as a function of wavelength and temperature. We provide temperature-dependent Sellmeier coefficients based on our data to allow accurate interpolation of index to other wavelengths and temperatures within applicable ranges. This paper also speaks of the challenges in measuring index for a material which is not available in sufficient thickness to fabricate a typical prism for measurement in CHARMS, the tailoring of the index prism design that allowed these index measurements to be made, and the remarkable results obtained from that prism for this practical infrared material.

Recent advances in miniaturization of IR imaging technology have led to a burgeoning market for mini thermalimaging sensors. Seen in this context our development on smaller pixel pitch has opened the door to very compact products. When this competitive advantage is mixed with smaller coolers, thanks to HOT technology, we achieve valuable reductions in size, weight and power of the overall package. In the same time, we are moving towards a global offer based on digital interfaces that provides our customers lower power consumption and simplification on the IR system design process while freeing up more space. Additionally, we are also investigating new wafer level camera solution taking advantage of the progress in micro-optics. This paper discusses recent developments on hot and small pixel pitch technologies as well as efforts made on compact packaging solution developed by SOFRADIR in collaboration with CEA-LETI and ONERA.

Simple models are developed, describing the power extraction in chemical oxygen-iodine lasers (COILs) with stable and unstable resonators. For stable resonators the model is applied to the ejector high pressure COIL and the results are compared with the experimental data (see also a preceding paper by Rosenwaks et al.). The positive and negative branch unstable resonators with cylindrical mirrors that have been recently used in COILs are studied theoretically using a geometrical optics model. The optical extraction efficiency, spatial distributions of the intracavity radiation intensity in the flow direction and the intensity in the far field are calculated for both kinds of resonators as a function of both the resonator and COIL parameters. The optimal resonator magnifications corresponding to the maximum intensity in the far field are found.

This paper presents an unsupervised fuzzy neural network which can be used for clustering and classification of complex data sets. The Integrated Adaptive Fuzzy Clustering (IAFC) architecture uses a control structure similar to that found in the Adaptive Resonance Theory (ART-1) with a new learning rule and a new similarity measure. We compare IAFC with other fuzzy ART-type clustering algorithms. The critical parameters in the operation of the IAFC are discussed. The Anderson's iris data are used to show the performance of the algorithm in comparison with other clustering algorithms.© (1992) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.