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Recent years have witnessed notable advancements in medical image segmentation through deep convolutional neural networks. However, a notable limitation lies in the local operation of convolution, which hinders the ability to fully exploit global semantic information. To overcome the challenges prevalent in medical image segmentation, the feature ensemble network with multi‐scale atrous transformer is proposed. At the core of the approach lies the multi‐scale contextual integration module, which is based on the multi‐scale atrous transformer and facilitates contextual integration of multi‐level features. To extract discriminative fine‐grained features of the target region, a hybrid attention mechanism that synergistically combines spatial and channel attention, thereby sharpening the model's focus on crucial target information within high‐level features, is incorporated. Additionally, the channel‐aware feature reconstruction module is introduced as an innovative component engineered to tackle feature similarity issues across different categories. This module performs feature reconstruction based on channel perception, effectively widening the feature gap between categories and enhancing the segmentation capability. It is worth mentioning that our approach surpasses the state‐of‐the‐art method using three benchmark datasets in medical image segmentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Automatic segmentation of renal tumours during renal cell carcinoma surgery can help doctors accurately locate the tumour region, protect the tissues and organs around the kidneys, enhance surgical efficiency, and reduce the possibility of leakage and misdiagnosis. However, since general polyp endoscopic image segmentation models have many problems when facing the task of renal tumour segmentation, there needs to be more research on the segmentation of endoscopic images of renal tumours. This paper proposes a multi‐scale dynamic segmentation kernel network for endoscopic image segmentation of kidney tumours. First, a spatial receptive field module is proposed to augment the feature information and improve the performance of the whole network. Second, an enhanced cross‐attention module is offered to attenuate the effect of a high‐similarity segmentation background. Finally, a multi‐scale dynamic segmentation kernel module is introduced to gradually refine the segmentation results from small to large sizes to obtain more accurate tumour boundaries. Extensive experiments on the established kidney tumour endoscopic dataset and publicly available endoscopic datasets show that this method exhibits enhanced performance and generalization capabilities compared to existing techniques. On this renal tumour dataset, MDSK‐Net achieved excellent results of 94.1% and 90.1% on mDice and mIoU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analysis of the psoas muscle in morphological and functional imaging has proved to be an accurate approach to assess sarcopenia, i.e. a systemic loss of skeletal muscle mass and function that may be correlated to multifactorial etiological aspects. The inclusion of sarcopenia assessment into a radiological workflow would need the implementation of computational pipelines for image processing that guarantee segmentation reliability and a significant degree of automation. The present study utilizes three-dimensional numerical schemes for psoas segmentation in low-dose X-ray computed tomography images. Specifically, here we focused on the level set methodology and compared the performances of two standard approaches, a classical evolution model and a three-dimension geodesic model, with the performances of an original first-order modification of this latter one. The results of this analysis show that these gradient-based schemes guarantee reliability with respect to manual segmentation and that the first-order scheme requires a computational burden that is significantly smaller than the one needed by the second-order approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Medical image segmentation through the use of deep learning is becoming a trend targeting to automate disease detection and provide effective treatment. Traditionally huge manual efforts are associated with medical image processing by medical staff. The wide use of neural networks driven by the progressive advancement in computing power and the availability of training data provides instrumental means to automate medical image processing. A polyp refers to an abnormal growth that can occur in various parts of the body. While the majority of polyps are noncancerous or benign, there are instances where certain types can develop into cancer. Detecting and segmenting polyps is highly valuable for identifying early signs and potentially enabling more effective treatment of colon cancer. In this paper, we introduce a novel method for segmenting polyp images. The proposed method utilizes convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and employs an enhanced attention mechanism. To cater to a more granular attention view, this paper enhances the Convolutional Block Attention Module by introducing the multi‐focal channel attention (MFCA) concept, which we call MFCA. In the proposed MFCA channel attention, focal attention spots allow us to consider scattered areas of interest more effectively. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed method, multiple experiments are conducted on five well‐known benchmark datasets for polyp image segmentation: Kvasir, CVC‐Clinic DB, CVC‐Colon DB, CVC‐T, and ETIS‐Larib. Various testing scenarios are examined, including the impact of two focal attention spots and four focal attention spots. The experimental results demonstrated that the proposed method achieved superior performance compared to previous state‐of‐the‐art techniques on two of the benchmark datasets, and ranked second on a third dataset. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Skin diseases and lesions can be ambiguous to recognize due to the similarity of lesions and enhanced imaging features. In this study, we compared three cutting-edge deep learning frameworks for dermoscopic segmentation: U-Net, SegAN, and MultiResUNet. We used a dermoscopic dataset including detailed lesion annotations with segmentation masks to help train and evaluate models on the precise localization of melanomas. SegAN is a special type of Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) that introduces a new architecture by adding generator and discriminator steps. U-Net has become a common strategy in segmentation to encode and decode image features for limited data. MultiResUNet is a U-Net-based architecture that overcomes the insufficient data problem in medical imaging by extracting contextual details. We trained the three frameworks on colored images after preprocessing. We added incremental Gaussian noise to measure the robustness of segmentation performance. We evaluated the frameworks using the following parameters: accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, Dice and Jaccard coefficients. Our accuracy results show that SegAN (92%) and MultiResUNet (92%) both outperform U-Net (86%), which is a well-known segmentation framework for skin lesion analysis. MultiResUNet sensitivity (96%) outperforms the methods in the challenge leaderboard. These results suggest that SegAN and MultiResUNet are more resistant techniques against noise in dermoscopic segmentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cracks are a common problem in concrete surfaces. With the continuous optimization of machine vision-based inspection systems, effective crack detection and recognition is the core of the entire system. In this study, support vector machine (SVM) was used to distinguish cracks from other regions. To complete the recognition system of the SVM, a framework consisting of an image processing and recognition model was proposed. An algorithm combining the Prewitt operator with the Otsu threshold was proposed for image segmentation. The binary image processed by the new algorithm combined with mathematical morphology can result in a more complete crack zone and fewer interference regions. After the initial parameter extraction, most of the impurity areas were screened by preliminary discrimination, removing 99% of the impurities. This processing step ensured the balance and effectiveness of the samples. To establish an automatic identification model based on SVM with a radial basis function, compactness, occupancy rate, and length–width ratio were selected as input parameters after comparing these three features with all six features of the crack. The recognition accuracy of this system reaches 97.14%, demonstrating that the proposed method is effective and satisfies practical requirements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Foundation models (FMs) have rapidly evolved and have achieved significant accomplishments in computer vision tasks. Specifically, the prompt mechanism conveniently allows users to integrate image prior information into the model, making it possible to apply models without any training. Therefore, we proposed a workflow based on foundation models and zero training to solve the tasks of photoacoustic (PA) image processing. We employed the Segment Anything Model (SAM) by setting simple prompts and integrating the model’s outputs with prior knowledge of the imaged objects to accomplish various tasks, including: (1) removing the skin signal in three-dimensional PA image rendering; (2) dual speed-of-sound reconstruction, and (3) segmentation of finger blood vessels. Through these demonstrations, we have concluded that FMs can be directly applied in PA imaging without the requirement for network design and training. This potentially allows for a hands-on, convenient approach to achieving efficient and accurate segmentation of PA images. This paper serves as a comprehensive tutorial, facilitating the mastery of the technique through the provision of code and sample datasets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Lung image segmentation plays an important role in computer-aid pulmonary disease diagnosis and treatment. Methods: This paper explores the lung CT image segmentation method by generative adversarial networks. We employ a variety of generative adversarial networks and used their capability of image translation to perform image segmentation. The generative adversarial network is employed to translate the original lung image into the segmented image. Results: The generative adversarial networks-based segmentation method is tested on real lung image data set. Experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms the state-of-the-art method. Discussion: The generative adversarial networks-based method is effective for lung image segmentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research investigates the Circle of Willis, a critical vascular structure vital for cerebral blood supply. A modified novel dual‐pathway multi‐scale hierarchical upsampling network (HUNet) is presented, tailored explicitly for accurate segmentation of Circle of Willis anatomical components from medical imaging data. Evaluating both the multi‐label magnetic resonance angiography region of interest and the multi‐label magnetic resonance angiography whole brain‐case datasets, HUNet consistently outperforms the convolutional U‐net model, demonstrating superior capabilities and achieving higher accuracy across various classes. Additionally, the HUNet model achieves an exceptional dice similarity coefficient of 98.61 and 97.95, along with intersection over union scores of 73.32 and 85.76 in both the multi‐label magnetic resonance angiography region of interest and the multi‐label magnetic resonance angiography whole brain‐case datasets, respectively. These metrics highlight HUNet's exceptional performance in achieving precise and accurate segmentation of anatomical structures within the Circle of Willis, underscoring its robustness in medical image segmentation tasks. Visual representations substantiate HUNet's efficacy in delineating Circle of Willis structures, offering comprehensive insights into its superior performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image change detection suffers from poor quality of the difference image and low detection accuracy. Hence, this paper proposes a SAR image change detection method based on a fused difference image and an optimized random forest scheme, termed LRN‐SSARF. Specifically, a fusion operator difference image LRN is proposed, which is generated using a weighted fusion of log‐ratio (LR), ratio (R), and normalized ratio (NoR). This difference image generation method reduces noise's influence. Then, the Otsu algorithm is applied to segment the difference image and select the training samples. The training samples are input into the random forest (RF) model optimised by the sparrow search algorithm (SSA) for training and classification. Finally, the region link is uesd to refine the detection results and generate the final result. The change detection results of six real SAR image scenes highlight that the proposed algorithm has a high detection accuracy, and affords appealing integrity and detailed information about the change regions. Specially, the detection accuracy advantage of the Bangladesh dataset is larger, with the accuracy and Kappa coefficient reaching 98.04% and 92.00%, much higher than the competitor methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fires not only cause devastating consequences for human life and property, but also lead to soil erosion in forests. Therefore, it is necessary to design a novel algorithm that can quickly monitor smoke from fires. Most existing smoke segmentation methods do not consider the segmentation accuracy of algorithms under limited computational resources. To address this research gap, this paper proposes a lightweight smoke segmentation algorithm based on DeepLabV3+ that achieves fast inference speed and high accuracy for different sizes smoke. To reduce the number of parameters, the feature extraction network of the DeeplabV3+ algorithm is replaced by MobileNetV2, which enhances the extraction ability of the algorithm in segment smoke images. Then, the Convolutional Block Attention Module (CBAM) is added to the encoder part to enhance the perception of the algorithm for small smoke and effectively alleviates smoke mis‐segmentation. Furthermore, a newly designed loss function is used in the network. The experimental results show that the proposed method has improved by 1.27% in Smoke IoU and 1.21% in mPA compared with other methods. The weight size has been reduced to 10.76% of the original DeepLabV3+, and the inference time is only 33.71ms. Therefore, it is a more suitable early fire detection algorithm for resource‐constrained environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Doctors typically use non‐contrast‐enhanced computed tomography (NCECT) in the treatment of kidney cancer to map kidney and tumour structural information to functional imaging single‐photon emission computed tomography, which is then used to assess patient kidney function and predict postoperative recovery. However, the assessment of kidney function and formulation of surgical plans is constrained by the low contrast of tumours in NCECT, which hinders the acquisition of accurate tumour boundaries. Therefore, this study designed a radiomics feature‐enhanced level‐set evolution (RFLSE) to precisely segment small‐sample low‐contrast kidney tumours. Integration of high‐dimensional radiomics features into the level‐set energy function enhances the edge detection capability of low‐contrast kidney tumours. The use of sensitive radiomics features to control the regional term parameters achieves adaptive adjustment of the curve evolution amplitude, improving the level‐set segmentation process. The experimental data used low‐contrast, limited‐sample tumours provided by hospitals, as well as the public datasets BUSI18 and KiTS19. Comparative results with advanced energy functionals and deep learning models demonstrate the precision and robustness of RFLSE segmentation. Additionally, the application value of RFLSE in assisting doctors with accurately marking tumours and generating high‐quality pseudo‐labels for deep learning datasets is demonstrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Optic disc (OD) and optic cup (OC) segmentation is an important task in ophthalmic medicine and is crucial for aiding glaucoma screening. With the development of smart healthcare and the increase of large datasets, there is an increasing number of research efforts targeting OD and OC segmentation, making it particularly important to provide a systematic review of the latest advances in the field. This paper presents a systematic review of commonly used datasets, evaluation metrics, and related research results in the field of OD and OC segmentation. The advantages and disadvantages of segmentation techniques based on traditional and deep learning methods are comparatively analysed. In addition, this study emphasizes the importance of OD and OC segmentation efforts in smart healthcare. Despite the technological advances, the lack of generalization capability is still a major obstacle limiting its clinical application. To address this issue, this study explores unsupervised domain adaptation methods to enhance the generalization performance of segmentation techniques and provide new strategies for clinical diagnosis. Finally, this paper discusses the challenges and future research directions faced by OD and OC segmentation when applied in the medical field to help readers comprehensively grasp the research dynamics in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Edge detection is an essential image processing act that is crucial for many computer vision applications such as object detection, image segmentation, face recognition, text recognition, medical imaging, and autonomous vehicles. Deep learning is the most advanced and widely used tool of them all. In this paper, we present a novel deep learning model and use image datasets to test it. Our model uses a fractional calculus tool, which could enhance gradient approaches' performances. Specifically, we approximate the fractional-order derivative-order neural network (GLFNet) using a Grünwald–Letnikov fractional definition. First, the original dataset is subjected to a Grünwald–Letnikov fractional order. After that, the CNN model is updated with the new dataset, concluding the standard CNN procedure. The training rate, the improvement in the F-measure for identifying the effective edge while maintaining the CNN model's memory consumption, and the values of the loss errors between the prediction and training processes were all tested using the MNIST dataset. Our experiments show that GLFNet considerably enhances edge detection. GLFNet outperformed CNN with an average loss error ratio of 15.40, suggesting fewer loss mistakes. The F1-measure ratio of 0.81 indicates that GLFNet can compete with CNN in terms of precision and recall. The training time for GLFNet was lowered by an average ratio of 1.14 when compared to CNN, while inference time was faster with a ratio of 1.14, indicating increased efficiency. These findings demonstrate the efficacy of introducing Grünwald–Letnikov fractional convolution into deep learning models, resulting in more precise and reliable edge detection while preserving comparable memory utilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Image segmentation is one of the most important aspects of medical image processing. PET and PET/CT scanning are well-known imaging tools in medical image processing, which are used for figuring out the inner anatomy of the internal organs in a noninvasive manner. In this study, an unsupervised artificial neural network Hierarchical Self-Organizing Feature Map (HSOFM) is presented to isolate and extract abnormal regions in PET and PET/CT images. This method was implemented on three, images in which the tumor size decreases with time after receiving treatment, and then many mathematical models were tested to elect the proper one that more adequate to simulate the change behavior in order to predict the change in the tumor size in the coming time. The results indicate that this method was adequate to extract tumor areas with percentage the percent relative difference between the results of the proposed method and the radiologist work ranged from 0.00% to 33.766% for PET images and ranged from 5.809% to 34.459% for PET/CT scan images. The behavior of the abnormality size change with time was correctly simulated using exponential and linear mathematical models and the predicated tumor size values in the coming times were calculated the tumor size with over time for PET and PET/CT images. The resultant values of the coefficient of Determination (R2) for the exponential model were 0.93, while for the linear model equation was 0.89. This is evidence of the success of the regression model in predicting future results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The production management of lactating sows is a crucial aspect of pig farm operations, as their health directly impacts the farm's production efficiency. The feeding behavior of lactating sows can reflect their health and welfare status, and monitoring this behavior is essential for precise feeding and management. To address the issues of time-consuming and labor-intensive manual inspection of lactating sows' feeding behavior and the reliance on breeders' experience, we propose a method based on the improved YOLO (You Only Look Once) v5s algorithm and image segmentation for detecting the feeding behavior of lactating sows. Based on the YOLOv5s algorithm, the SE (Squeeze-and-Excitation) attention module was added to enhance the algorithm's performance and reduce the probability of incorrect detection. Additionally, the loss function was replaced by WIoU (Weighted Intersection over Union) to accelerate the model's convergence speed and improve detection accuracy. The improved YOLOv5s-C3SE-WIoU model is designed to recognize pre-feeding postures and feed trough conditions by detecting images of lactating sows. Compared to the original YOLOv5s, the improved model achieves an 8.9% increase in mAP@0.5 and a 4.7% increase in mAP@0.5 to 0.95. This improvement satisfies the requirements for excellent detection performance, making it suitable for deployment in large-scale pig farms. From the model detection results, the trough remnant image within the detection rectangle was extracted. This image was further processed using image processing techniques to achieve trough remnant image segmentation and infer the remnant amount. Based on the detection model and residue inference method, video data of lactating sows' feeding behavior were processed to derive the relationship between feeding behavior, standing time, and residue amount. Using a standing duration of 2 s and a leftover-feed proportion threshold of 2% achieves the highest accuracy, enabling the identification of abnormal feeding behavior. We analyzed the pre-feeding postures and residual feed amounts of abnormal and normal groups of lactating sows. Our findings indicated that standing time was significantly lower and residual feed amount was higher in the abnormal groups compared to the normal groups. By combining standing time and residual feed amount information, accurate detection of the feeding status of lactating sows can be realized. This approach facilitates the accurate detection of abnormal feeding behaviors of lactating sows in large-scale pig farm environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The accurate distribution of joints on the tunnel face is crucial for assessing the stability and safety of surrounding rock during tunnel construction. This paper introduces the Mask R-CNN image segmentation algorithm, a state-of-the-art deep learning model, to achieve efficient and accurate identification and extraction of joints on tunnel face images. First, digital images of tunnel faces were captured and stitched, resulting in 286 complete images suitable for analysis. Then, the joints on the tunnel face were extracted using traditional image processing algorithms, the commonly used U-net image segmentation model, and the Mask R-CNN image segmentation model introduced in this paper to address the lack of recognition accuracy. Finally, the extraction results obtained by the three methods were compared. The comparison results show that the joint extraction method based on the Mask R-CNN image segmentation deep learning model introduced in this paper achieved the best joint extraction effect with a Dice similarity coefficient of 87.48%, outperforming traditional methods and the U-net model, which scored 60.59% and 75.36%, respectively, realizing accurate and efficient acquisition of tunnel face rock joints. These findings suggest that the Mask R-CNN model can be effectively implemented in real-time monitoring systems for tunnel construction projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Automatic segmentation of renal tumours during renal cell carcinoma surgery can help doctors accurately locate the tumour region, protect the tissues and organs around the kidneys, enhance surgical efficiency, and reduce the possibility of leakage and misdiagnosis. However, since general polyp endoscopic image segmentation models have many problems when facing the task of renal tumour segmentation, there needs to be more research on the segmentation of endoscopic images of renal tumours. This paper proposes a multi‐scale dynamic segmentation kernel network for endoscopic image segmentation of kidney tumours. First, a spatial receptive field module is proposed to augment the feature information and improve the performance of the whole network. Second, an enhanced cross‐attention module is offered to attenuate the effect of a high‐similarity segmentation background. Finally, a multi‐scale dynamic segmentation kernel module is introduced to gradually refine the segmentation results from small to large sizes to obtain more accurate tumour boundaries. Extensive experiments on the established kidney tumour endoscopic dataset and publicly available endoscopic datasets show that this method exhibits enhanced performance and generalization capabilities compared to existing techniques. On this renal tumour dataset, MDSK‐Net achieved excellent results of 94.1% and 90.1% on mDice and mIoU.

Abstract Fires not only cause devastating consequences for human life and property, but also lead to soil erosion in forests. Therefore, it is necessary to design a novel algorithm that can quickly monitor smoke from fires. Most existing smoke segmentation methods do not consider the segmentation accuracy of algorithms under limited computational resources. To address this research gap, this paper proposes a lightweight smoke segmentation algorithm based on DeepLabV3+ that achieves fast inference speed and high accuracy for different sizes smoke. To reduce the number of parameters, the feature extraction network of the DeeplabV3+ algorithm is replaced by MobileNetV2, which enhances the extraction ability of the algorithm in segment smoke images. Then, the Convolutional Block Attention Module (CBAM) is added to the encoder part to enhance the perception of the algorithm for small smoke and effectively alleviates smoke mis‐segmentation. Furthermore, a newly designed loss function is used in the network. The experimental results show that the proposed method has improved by 1.27% in Smoke IoU and 1.21% in mPA compared with other methods. The weight size has been reduced to 10.76% of the original DeepLabV3+, and the inference time is only 33.71ms. Therefore, it is a more suitable early fire detection algorithm for resource‐constrained environments.

Abstract Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image change detection suffers from poor quality of the difference image and low detection accuracy. Hence, this paper proposes a SAR image change detection method based on a fused difference image and an optimized random forest scheme, termed LRN‐SSARF. Specifically, a fusion operator difference image LRN is proposed, which is generated using a weighted fusion of log‐ratio (LR), ratio (R), and normalized ratio (NoR). This difference image generation method reduces noise's influence. Then, the Otsu algorithm is applied to segment the difference image and select the training samples. The training samples are input into the random forest (RF) model optimised by the sparrow search algorithm (SSA) for training and classification. Finally, the region link is uesd to refine the detection results and generate the final result. The change detection results of six real SAR image scenes highlight that the proposed algorithm has a high detection accuracy, and affords appealing integrity and detailed information about the change regions. Specially, the detection accuracy advantage of the Bangladesh dataset is larger, with the accuracy and Kappa coefficient reaching 98.04% and 92.00%, much higher than the competitor methods.

Abstract Segmentation is crucial in diagnosing retinal diseases by accurately identifiying retinal vessels. This paper addresses the complexity of segmenting retinal vessels, highlighting the need for precise analysis of blood vessel structures. Despite the progress made by convolutional neural networsks (CNNs) in image segmentation, their limitations in capturing the global structure of retinal vsessels and maintaining segmentation continuity present challenges. To tackle these issues, our proposed network integrates graph convolutional networks (GCNs) and attention mechansims. This allows the model to consider pixel relationships and learn vessel graphical structures, significantly improving segmentation accuracy. Additionally, the attentional feature fusion module, including pixel‐wise and channel‐wise attention mechansims within the U‐Net architecture, refines the model's focus on relevant features. This paper emphasizes the importance of continuty preservation, ensuring an accurate representation of pixel‐level information and structural details during sefmentation. Therefore, our method performs as an effective solution to overcome challenges in retinal vessel segmentation. The proposed method outperformed the state‐of‐the‐art approaches on DRIVE (Digital Retinal Images for Vessel Extraction) and STARE (Structed Analysis of the Retina) datasets with accuracies of 0.12% and 0.14%, respecttively. Importantly, our proposed approach excelled in delineating slender and diminutive blood vessels, crucial for diagnosing vascular‐related diseases. Implementation is accessible on https://github.com/CVLab‐SHUT/VGA‐Net.

Abstract In order to balance accuracy and real‐time performance in semantic segmentation, this paper proposes a real‐time semantic segmentation algorithm model based on attention mechanism and multi‐branch feature fusion using Fast convolutional neural network model (Fast‐SCNN). In this method, the spatial detail feature enhancement branch is introduced to enhance spatial detail features firstly. Then, through rational design of fusion module, the feature information of each branch is optimized to achieve better fusion of deep and shallow features. At the end of the feature fusion module, an adaptive feature enhancement focus module is introduced to capture the interdependence between remote pixels. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm achieves 71.55% segmentation accuracy on Cityscapes dataset, the reasoning speed FPS is 97.6 frames/s, and the number of parameters is 1.39 M, which verifies the effectiveness of the network model constructed by the algorithm. Code is available at https://github.com/ccchhheeennn/model.

With the development of society and changes in the human living environment, people are increasingly attaching importance to their own health. Regarding medical imaging examinations of certain parts of the body, the process of medical image segmentation has become extremely important. This paper presents a novel hybrid algorithm: SAOBL-IA, a fusion of the Simulated Annealing(SA), Opposition-based Learning(OBL)and Island Algorithm(IA). The Island Algorithm itself suffers from slow convergence speed and the tendency to get stuck in local optimum. To address these limitations, we introduce opposition-based learning to enhance the search range and avoid local optimum. Furthermore, we leverage the simulated annealing approach to accelerate the convergence of SAOBL-IA. Comparing the experimental results, it can be seen that SAOBL-IA has better comprehensive performance. Subsequently, the SAOBL-IA algorithm is utilized in conjunction with an optimized two-dimensional OTSU fusion segmentation technique for the purpose of medical image processing. This study proposes an application of image segmentation based on the SAOBL-IA. The segmentation of pixels around the background and target regions using the two-dimensional OTSU method faces challenges in terms of accuracy. To address this issue, an adaptive thresholding technique known as Adaptive Forking is employed for optimization. By determining the slope of the fork based on the misclassified pixel ratio, enhanced segmentation accuracy can be achieved. This improved approach is then integrated with the SAOBL-IA algorithm and applied to the segmentation of lung medical images. The experimental findings show that the amalgamation of SAOBL-IA with the adaptive two-dimensional OTSU segmentation approach, as proposed in this study, manifests superior segmentation speed and enhanced precision in the context of medical image segmentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The characterization of beached and marine microplastic debris is critical to understanding how plastic litter accumulates across the world's oceans and identifying hotspots that should be targeted for early cleanup efforts. Currently, the most common monitoring method to quantify microplastics at sea requires physical sampling using surface trawling and sifting for beached microplastics, which are then followed by manual counting and laboratory analysis. The need for manual counting is time-consuming, operatordependent, and incurs high costs, thereby preventing scalable deployment of consistent marine plastic monitoring worldwide. Here, we describe a workflow combining a simple experimental setup with advanced image processing techniques to conduct both quantitative and qualitative assessments of microplastic (0.05 cm < particle size <0.5 cm). The image processing relies on deep learning models designed for image segmentation and classification. The results demonstrated comparable or superior performance in comparison to manual identification for microplastic particles with a 96% accuracy. Thus, the use of the model offers an efficient, more robust, standardized, highly replicable, and less labor-intensive alternative to particle counting. In addition to the relative simplicity of the network architecture used that made it easy to train, the model presents promising prospects for better-standardized reporting of plastic particles surveyed in the environment. We also made the models and datasets open-source and created a user-friendly web interface for directly annotating new images. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents research on the application of image processing techniques and convolutional neural networks (CNN) for the detection and measurement of seed sizes, specifically focusing on coffee and white bean seeds. The primary objective of the study is to evaluate the potential of using CNNs to develop tools that automate seed recognition and measurement in images. A database was created, containing photographs of coffee and white bean seeds with precise annotations of their location and type. Image processing techniques and You Only Look Once v8 (YOLO) models were employed to analyze the seeds' position, size, and type. A detailed comparison of the effectiveness and performance of the applied methods was conducted. The experiments demonstrated that the best-trained CNN model achieved a segmentation accuracy of 90.1% IoU, with an average seed size error of 0.58 mm. The conclusions indicate a significant potential for using image processing techniques and CNN models in automating seed analysis processes, which could lead to increased efficiency and accuracy in these processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rapid development of modern science and technology, navigation technology provides great convenience for people's life, but the problem of inaccurate localization in complex environments has always been a challenge that navigation technology needs to be solved urgently. To address this challenge, this paper proposes an augmented reality navigation method that combines image segmentation and multi-sensor fusion tracking registration. The method optimizes the image processing process through the GA-OTSU-Canny algorithm and combines high-precision multi-sensor information in order to achieve accurate tracking of positioning and guidance in complex environments. Experimental results show that the GA-OTSU-Canny algorithm has a faster image edge segmentation rate, and the fastest start speed is only 1.8 s, and the fastest intersection selection time is 1.2 s. The navigation system combining the image segmentation and sensor tracking and registration techniques has a highly efficient performance in real-world navigation, and its building recognition rates are all above 99%. The augmented reality navigation system not only improves the navigation accuracy in high-rise and urban canyon environments, but also significantly outperforms traditional navigation solutions in terms of navigation startup time and target building recognition accuracy. In summary, this research not only provides a new framework for the theoretical integration of image processing and multi-sensor data, but also brings innovative technical solutions for the development and application of practical navigation systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In clinical conditions limited by equipment, attaining lightweight skin lesion segmentation is pivotal as it facilitates the integration of the model into diverse medical devices, thereby enhancing operational efficiency. However, the lightweight design of the model may face accuracy degradation, especially when dealing with complex images such as skin lesion images with irregular regions, blurred boundaries, and oversized boundaries. To address these challenges, we propose an efficient lightweight attention network (ELANet) for the skin lesion segmentation task. In ELANet, two different attention mechanisms of the bilateral residual module (BRM) can achieve complementary information, which enhances the sensitivity to features in spatial and channel dimensions, respectively, and then multiple BRMs are stacked for efficient feature extraction of the input information. In addition, the network acquires global information and improves segmentation accuracy by putting feature maps of different scales through multi-scale attention fusion (MAF) operations. Finally, we evaluate the performance of ELANet on three publicly available datasets, ISIC2016, ISIC2017, and ISIC2018, and the experimental results show that our algorithm can achieve 89.87%, 81.85%, and 82.87% of the mIoU on the three datasets with a parametric of 0.459 M, which is an excellent balance between accuracy and lightness and is superior to many existing segmentation methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In remote sensing image processing, the segmentation of clouds and their shadows is a fundamental and vital task. For cloud images, traditional deep learning methods often have weak generalization capabilities and are prone to interference from ground objects and noise, which not only results in poor boundary segmentation but also causes false and missed detections of small targets. To address these issues, we proposed a multi-branch attention fusion network (MAFNet). In the encoder section, the dual branches of ResNet50 and the Swin transformer extract features together. A multi-branch attention fusion module (MAFM) uses positional encoding to add position information. Additionally, multi-branch aggregation attention (MAA) in the MAFM fully fuses the same level of deep features extracted by ResNet50 and the Swin transformer, which enhances the boundary segmentation ability and small target detection capability. To address the challenge of detecting small cloud and shadow targets, an information deep aggregation module (IDAM) was introduced to perform multi-scale deep feature aggregation, which supplements high semantic information, improving small target detection. For the problem of rough segmentation boundaries, a recovery guided module (RGM) was designed in the decoder section, which enables the model to effectively allocate attention to complex boundary information, enhancing the network's focus on boundary information. Experimental results on the Cloud and Cloud Shadow dataset, HRC-WHU dataset, and SPARCS dataset indicate that MAFNet surpasses existing advanced semantic segmentation techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lesion segmentation is a fundamental task in medical image processing, often facing the challenge of subtle lesions. It is important to detect these lesions, even though they can be difficult to identify. Convolutional neural networks, an effective method in medical image processing, often ignore the relationship between lesions, leading to topological errors during training. To tackle topological errors, move is made from pixel‐level to hypergraph representations. Hypergraphs can model lesions as vertices connected by hyperedges, capturing the topology between lesions. This paper introduces a novel dynamic hypergraph learning strategy called DHLS. DHLS allows for the dynamic construction of hypergraphs contingent upon input vertex variations. A hypergraph global‐aware segmentation network, termed HGSNet, is further proposed. HGSNet can capture the key high‐order structure information, which is able to enhance global topology expression. Additionally, a composite loss function is introduced. The function emphasizes the global aspect and the boundary of segmentation regions. The experimental setup compared HGSNet with other advanced models on medical image datasets from various organs. The results demonstrate that HGSNet outperforms other models and achieves state‐of‐the‐art performance on three public datasets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Superpixel segmentation is a popular preprocessing tool in the field of image processing. Nevertheless, conventional planar superpixel generation algorithms are inadequately suited for segmenting symmetrical spherical images due to the distinctive geometric differences. In this paper, we present a novel superpixel algorithm termed context identity and contour intensity (CICI) that is specifically tailored for spherical scene segmentation. By defining a neighborhood range and regional context identity, we propose a symmetrical spherical seed-sampling method to optimize both the quantity and distribution of seeds, achieving evenly distributed seeds across the panoramic surface. Additionally, we integrate the contour prior to superpixel correlation measurements, which could significantly enhance boundary adherence across different scales. By implementing the two-fold optimizations on the non-iterative clustering framework, we achieve synergistic CICI to generate higher-quality superpixels. Extensive experiments on the public dataset confirm that our work outperforms the baselines and achieves comparable results with state-of-the-art superpixel algorithms in terms of several quantitative metrics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Autonomous navigation is the leading technology in current era, in this intelligent traffic light, sign detection, ADAS and obstacle detections were playing major role. Image segmentation is the process of dividing an image into different regions, or semantic classes. This is a challenging problem in autonomous vehicle technology because it requires the vehicle to be able to understand its surroundings to safely navigate. The major challenges in this platform are the accuracy and efficiency of model performance. The proposed method in the abstract uses a convolutional neural network (CNN) to perform image segmentation. CNNs are a type of deep learning model that is well-suited for image processing tasks. The CNN in this paper was trained on a local city dataset, and it was able to achieve a mean intersection over union (IoU) of 73%. IoU is a measure of how well the segmentation results match the ground truth labels. A score of 100% indicates that the segmentation is perfect, while a score of 0% indicates that the segmentation is completely wrong. This means that the method can segment images at a very fast rate, which is important for autonomous vehicles that need to make real-time decisions. Overall, the proposed method is a promising approach for image segmentation in autonomous vehicles. It can achieve high accuracy and speed, and it is easy to implement using Python. The proposed method attains an accuracy of 98.34 %, a Sensitivity of 97.26 % and a sensitivity of 96.37 % had been attained. The method could be used to improve the safety and efficiency of autonomous vehicles by enabling them to better understand their surroundings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many advanced super-resolution reconstruction methods have been proposed recently, but they often require high computational and memory resources, making them incompatible with low-power devices in reality. To address this problem, we propose a simple yet efficient super-resolution reconstruction method using waveform representation and multi-layer perceptron (MLP) for image processing. Firstly, we partition the original image and its down-sampled version into multiple patches and introduce WaveBlock to process these patches. WaveBlock represents patches as waveform functions with amplitude and phase and extracts representative feature representations by dynamically adjusting phase terms between tokens and fixed weights. Next, we fuse the extracted features through a feature fusion block and finally reconstruct the image using sub-pixel convolution. Extensive experimental results demonstrate that SRWave-MLP performs excellently in both quantitative evaluation metrics and visual quality while having significantly fewer parameters than state-of-the-art efficient super-resolution methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Image segmentation is a crucial process in the field of image processing. Multilevel threshold segmentation is an effective image segmentation method, where an image is segmented into different regions based on multilevel thresholds for information analysis. However, the complexity of multilevel thresholding increases dramatically as the number of thresholds increases. To address this challenge, this article proposes a novel hybrid algorithm, termed differential evolution-golden jackal optimizer (DEGJO), for multilevel thresholding image segmentation using the minimum cross-entropy (MCE) as a fitness function. The DE algorithm is combined with the GJO algorithm for iterative updating of position, which enhances the search capacity of the GJO algorithm. The performance of the DEGJO algorithm is assessed on the CEC2021 benchmark function and compared with state-of-the-art optimization algorithms. Additionally, the efficacy of the proposed algorithm is evaluated by performing multilevel segmentation experiments on benchmark images. The experimental results demonstrate that the DEGJO algorithm achieves superior performance in terms of fitness values compared to other metaheuristic algorithms. Moreover, it also yields good results in quantitative performance metrics such as peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), structural similarity index (SSIM), and feature similarity index (FSIM) measurements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rapid advancement of modern hardware technology, breakthroughs have been made in many areas of artificial intelligence research, leading to the direction of machine replacement or assistance in various fields. However, most artificial intelligence or deep learning techniques require large amounts of training data and are typically applicable to a single task objective. Acquiring such large training datasets can be particularly challenging, especially in domains like medical imaging. In the field of image processing, few-shot image segmentation is an area of active research. Recent studies have employed deep learning and meta-learning approaches to enable models to segment objects in images with only a small amount of training data, allowing them to quickly adapt to new task objectives. This paper proposes a network architecture for meta-learning few-shot image segmentation, utilizing a meta-learning classification weight transfer network to generate masks for few-shot image segmentation. The architecture leverages pre-trained classification weight transfers to generate informative prior masks and employs pre-trained feature extraction architecture for feature extraction of query and support images. Furthermore, it utilizes a Feature Enrichment Module to adaptively propagate information from finer features to coarser features in a top-down manner for query image feature extraction. Finally, a classification module is employed for query image segmentation prediction. Experimental results demonstrate that compared to the baseline using the mean Intersection over Union (mIOU) as the evaluation metric, the accuracy increases by 1.7% in the one-shot experiment and by 2.6% in the five-shot experiment. Thus, compared to the baseline, the proposed architecture with meta-learning classification weight transfer network for mask generation exhibits superior performance in few-shot image segmentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Image segmentation and identification are crucial to modern medical image processing techniques. This research provides a novel and effective method for identifying and segmenting liver tumors from public CT images. Our approach leverages the hybrid ResUNet model, a combination of both the ResNet and UNet models developed by the Monai and PyTorch frameworks. The ResNet deep dense network architecture is implemented on public CT scans using the MSD Task03 Liver dataset. The novelty of our method lies in several key aspects. First, we introduce innovative enhancements to the ResUNet architecture, optimizing its performance, especially for liver tumor segmentation tasks. Additionally, by harassing the capabilities of Monai, we streamline the implementation process, eliminating the need for manual script writing and enabling faster, more efficient model development and optimization. The process of preparing images for analysis by a deep neural network involves several steps: data augmentation, a Hounsfield windowing unit, and image normalization. ResUNet network performance is measured by using the DC metric Dice coefficient. This approach, which utilizes residual connections, has proven to be more reliable than other existing techniques. This approach achieved DC values of 0.98% for detecting liver tumors and 0.87% for segmentation. Both qualitative and quantitative evaluations show promising results regarding model precision and accuracy. The implications of this research are that it could be used to increase the precision and accuracy of liver tumor detection and liver segmentation, reflecting the potential of the proposed method. This could help in the early diagnosis and treatment of liver cancer, which can ultimately improve patient prognosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conventional image processing and machine learning based on handcrafted features struggle to meet the real time and high-accuracy requirements for industrial defect detection in complex, sensitive, and dynamic environments. To address this issue, this paper proposes AENet, a novel real-time defect detection network based on an encoder-decoder model, which achieves high detection accuracy and efficiency while demonstrating excellent convergence and generalization. Firstly, a spatial channel attention module in the encoding network is designed to exploit both spatial attention and channel attention using a multi-head 3D self-attention mechanism. This improves parallelism and detection efficiency. Secondly, the decoding network of AENet incorporates the cross-level attention fusion module, which fuses input features from different layers. Combined with multi-level upsampling design, the decoder enhances the representation of defect details. Furthermore, we insert a simplified aggregator into the encoder-decoder network to extract feature information at different scales with low computational cost. This aggregation process aids in training and inference on industrial defect datasets by incorporating contextual information. Extensive experimental results demonstrate that AENet outperforms other segmentation models in accomplishing defect recognition and segmentation in challenging optical environments. It exhibits a faster convergence than other networks and a balance between accuracy and speed. It achieves a recognition accuracy of over 96% for almost all types of defects in the actual industrial environment on the NVIDIA Tesla V100 GPU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Segmenting small infrared targets presents a significant challenge for traditional image processing architectures due to the inherent lack of texture, minimal shape information, and their sparse pixel representation within images. The conventional UNet architecture, while proficient in general segmentation tasks, inadequately addresses the nuances of small infrared target segmentation due to its reliance on downsampling operations, such as pooling, which often results in the loss of critical target information. This paper introduces the Channel Spatial Attention Nested UNet (CSAN-UNet), an innovative architecture designed specifically to enhance the detection and segmentation of small infrared targets. Central to CSAN-UNet's design is the Cascaded Channel and Spatial Convolutional Attention Module (CSCAM), a novel component that adaptively enhances multi-level features and mitigates the loss of target information attributable to downsampling processes. Additionally, the Channel-priority and Spatial Attention Cascade Module (CPSAM) represents another pivotal advancement within CSAN-UNet, prioritizing channel-level adjustments alongside spatial attention mechanisms to efficiently extract deep semantic information pertinent to small infrared targets. Empirical validation conducted on two public datasets confirms that CSAN-UNet surpasses existing state-of-the-art algorithms in segmentation performance, while simultaneously reducing computational overhead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Segmentation is crucial in diagnosing retinal diseases by accurately identifiying retinal vessels. This paper addresses the complexity of segmenting retinal vessels, highlighting the need for precise analysis of blood vessel structures. Despite the progress made by convolutional neural networsks (CNNs) in image segmentation, their limitations in capturing the global structure of retinal vsessels and maintaining segmentation continuity present challenges. To tackle these issues, our proposed network integrates graph convolutional networks (GCNs) and attention mechansims. This allows the model to consider pixel relationships and learn vessel graphical structures, significantly improving segmentation accuracy. Additionally, the attentional feature fusion module, including pixel‐wise and channel‐wise attention mechansims within the U‐Net architecture, refines the model's focus on relevant features. This paper emphasizes the importance of continuty preservation, ensuring an accurate representation of pixel‐level information and structural details during sefmentation. Therefore, our method performs as an effective solution to overcome challenges in retinal vessel segmentation. The proposed method outperformed the state‐of‐the‐art approaches on DRIVE (Digital Retinal Images for Vessel Extraction) and STARE (Structed Analysis of the Retina) datasets with accuracies of 0.12% and 0.14%, respecttively. Importantly, our proposed approach excelled in delineating slender and diminutive blood vessels, crucial for diagnosing vascular‐related diseases. Implementation is accessible on https://github.com/CVLab‐SHUT/VGA‐Net. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Slug flow processes draw much attention in chemical and pharmaceutical manufacturing thanks to their ability to eliminate downtime costs and batch‐to‐batch variation. Using in‐line video can monitor the current process status and improve the stability of the slug flow. However, there are no effective image processing methods aiming at such videos from chemical experiments due to limited training sample size and the variety of experimental settings. The paper proposes a training‐free method to automatically detect and measure the slugs from in‐line videos. Multiple image features are fused to identify the slug shapes under various lighting conditions, a six‐point model is fitted to achieve better volume estimation, and a consistency score is estimated to quantify the detection uncertainty. The proposed algorithm achieves similar results to manual labeling for various types of slug flow processes, improving the accuracy of slug column estimation by a large margin compared to the existing automatic methods. Finally, using it to monitor the slug flow process's stability and the change of the slug volume in an injection point are demonstrated. The method not only shows that handcrafted image features have the capability for detection and segmentation from chemical experiment images but also paves the road for a training‐based algorithm for the task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study is focused on a novel methodology that removes the artifacts after automated segmentation of micrographs using some efficient image processing techniques from three dual-phase (DP) steel microstructures with varying martensite morphologies (islands, blocky and banded, and fine and fibrous martensite). Microstructures of DP steel consisting of martensite and ferrite phases were binarized by the Otsu thresholding algorithm, where the threshold value is automatically selected from the gray-level histogram. Subsequently, the artifact is removed by different modes, such as horizontally, vertically, and diagonal traverse manners, separately and in the combinations of all possible traverse manners, through AND operation. Optical micrographs were chosen for image analysis since the low-cost optical microscope is easily portable and effortlessly usable over a large area. The results have been validated with AxioVision commercial metallographic image analyzing software. The proposed scheme has successfully produced artifact-free binarized images of DP steel microstructures. Artifact-free microstructures provide the best quantification result, like the volume percent of the phases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Subarachnoid haemorrhage (SAH), mostly caused by the rupture of intracranial aneurysm, is a common disease with a high fatality rate. SAH lesions are generally diffusely distributed, showing a variety of scales with irregular edges. The complex characteristics of lesions make SAH segmentation a challenging task. To cope with these difficulties, a u‐shaped deformable transformer (UDT) is proposed for SAH segmentation. Specifically, first, a multi‐scale deformable attention (MSDA) module is exploited to model the diffuseness and scale‐variant characteristics of SAH lesions, where the MSDA module can fuse features in different scales and adjust the attention field of each element dynamically to generate discriminative multi‐scale features. Second, the cross deformable attention‐based skip connection (CDASC) module is designed to model the irregular edge characteristic of SAH lesions, where the CDASC module can utilise the spatial details from encoder features to refine the spatial information of decoder features. Third, the MSDA and CDASC modules are embedded into the backbone Res‐UNet to construct the proposed UDT. Extensive experiments are conducted on the self‐built SAH‐CT dataset and two public medical datasets (GlaS and MoNuSeg). Experimental results show that the presented UDT achieves the state‐of‐the‐art performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research aims at presenting a video-based system to detect fire in real time taking advantage of already existing surveillance systems for fire detection either inside or outside the building with different illumination and short or long distance surveillance scenes. Detection of fires with surveillance cameras is characterized by early detection and rapid performance. Information about the progress of the fire can be obtained through live video. Also vision-based system is capable of providing forensic evidence. The basic idea of the research is fire detection based on video as proposed Fourier descriptors were used to describe reddish moving objects. The proposed system idea is to detect reddish moving bodies in every frame and correlate the detections with the same reddish bodiest over time. Multi-threshold segmentation is used to divide the image. This method can be integrated with pretreatment and post-processing. The threshold is one of the most common ways to divide the image. The next stage after the segmentation is to obtain the reddish body features. The feature is created by obtaining the contour of the reddish body and estimating its normalized Fourier descriptors. If the reddish body contour's Fourier descriptors vary from frame to frame, one can predict fire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of robust tools for segmenting cellular and sub-cellular neuronal structures lags behind the massive production of high-resolution 3D images of neurons in brain tissue. The challenges are principally related to high neuronal density and low signal-to-noise characteristics in thick samples, as well as the heterogeneity of data acquired with different imaging methods. To address this issue, we design a framework which includes sample preparation for high resolution imaging and image analysis. Specifically, we set up a method for labeling thick samples and develop SENPAI, a scalable algorithm for segmenting neurons at cellular and sub-cellular scales in conventional and super-resolution STimulated Emission Depletion (STED) microscopy images of brain tissues. Further, we propose a validation paradigm for testing segmentation performance when a manual ground-truth may not exhaustively describe neuronal arborization. We show that SENPAI provides accurate multi-scale segmentation, from entire neurons down to spines, outperforming state-of-the-art tools. The framework will empower image processing of complex neuronal circuitries. Tools to segment cellular and sub-cellular neuronal structures can be hindered by high neuronal density and low signal-to-noise in thick samples. Here, the authors present SENPAI, a framework for imaging and segmenting neurons from conventional and super-resolution microscopy of clarified brain tissues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to balance accuracy and real‐time performance in semantic segmentation, this paper proposes a real‐time semantic segmentation algorithm model based on attention mechanism and multi‐branch feature fusion using Fast convolutional neural network model (Fast‐SCNN). In this method, the spatial detail feature enhancement branch is introduced to enhance spatial detail features firstly. Then, through rational design of fusion module, the feature information of each branch is optimized to achieve better fusion of deep and shallow features. At the end of the feature fusion module, an adaptive feature enhancement focus module is introduced to capture the interdependence between remote pixels. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm achieves 71.55% segmentation accuracy on Cityscapes dataset, the reasoning speed FPS is 97.6 frames/s, and the number of parameters is 1.39 M, which verifies the effectiveness of the network model constructed by the algorithm. Code is available at https://github.com/ccchhheeennn/model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Methods of modeling silicon carbide particles of asymmetric shape as well as the methods of image analysis of the surface layer of the aluminum alloy reinforced with silicon carbide particles were developed. A 3D modeling of the distribution of silicon carbide particles of different sizes and filling percentages in the surface layer of the aluminum alloy was carried out. The distribution of silicon carbide areas in different cross-section planes and with different volumetric filling of the strengthened layer was established. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The performance of the tire has a very important impact on the safe driving of the car, and in the actual use of the tire, due to complex road conditions or use conditions, it will inevitably cause immeasurable wear, scratches and other damage. In order to effectively detect the damage existing in the key parts of the tire, a tire surface damage detection method based on image processing was proposed. In this method, the image of tire side is captured by camera first. Then, the collected images are preprocessed by optimizing the multi-scale bilateral filtering algorithm to enhance the detailed information of the damaged area, and the optimization effect is obvious. Thirdly, the image segmentation based on clustering algorithm is carried out. Finally, the Harris corner detection method is used to capture the "salt and pepper" corner of the target region, and the segmsegmed binary image is screened and matched based on histogram correlation, and the target region is finally obtained. The experimental results show that the similarity detection is accurate, and the damage area can meet the requirements of accurate identification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The improvement of drilling rig systems to ensure a reduction in unproductive time spent on lowering and lifting operations for replacing drilling tools and restoring the performance of drilling equipment units is an important task. At the same time, considerable attention is paid to the reliable and efficient operation of the braking systems of drilling rig winches. In the process of operation, the polymer pads periodically come into contact with the outer cylindrical surface of the metal pulley during braking, work in extreme conditions and wear out intensively, so they need periodic replacement. Tests were carried out on a modernized stand and in industrial conditions for the brakes of drilling winches. A methodology for evaluating the degradation of the brake pad friction surface during its operation is proposed. The assessment of the degradation degree is carried out based on the image of the brake pad surface using image processing techniques. Geometric transformations of the input image were performed to avoid perspective distortions caused by the concave shape of the brake pads and the spatial angle at which the image is acquired to avoid glares. The crack detection step was implemented based on the scale-space theory, followed by contour detection and skeletonization. The ratios of the area and perimeter of segmented and skeletonized cracks to the total area were chosen as integral characteristics of the degradation degree. With the help of scanning electron microscopy, the character of the destruction of the friction surface and the degradation of the polymer material was investigated. Experimental studies were performed, and the application of the proposed method is illustrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pesticide spray is a widely used chemical control method to minimize biological disasters in the agriculture industry. It is important to evaluate the efficacy and the quality of a pesticide sprayer, however, it cannot be conveniently achieved due to the lack of accessibility to the sprayed droplets and the intensity of the associated work. This paper proposes a novel method, based on an image processing-based approach, to assess the spray quality. The proposed method uses a combination of algorithms and criteria functions; such as, the maximum between-cluster variance algorithm, area threshold criteria, roundness factor, mathematical morphology operations, and the optimized watershed algorithm, to segment and assess the dark blue adhesive droplet images on a water-sensitive paper, placed in the crop field. In this work, three kinds of evaluation experiments are considered: (i) the manual analysis via droplet counting and processing, (ii) the automatic analysis by the commercially available droplet analyzer by Shenzhen DJI Co. Ltd., and (iii) the novel image processing based method introduced in this paper. The experimental results show a better consistency between the introduced novel method and the manual method. The former, however, provides a convenient and rapid way to assess the spray quality. It comes with an assessment algorithm along with an embedded device that provides a hardware view of the spray quality.

ABSTRACT Time-lapse microscopy offers a powerful approach for analyzing cellular activity. In particular, this technique is valuable for assessing the behavior of bacterial populations, which can exhibit growth and intercellular interactions in a monolayer. Such time-lapse imaging typically generates large quantities of data, limiting the options for manual investigation. Several image-processing software packages have been developed to facilitate analysis. It can thus be a challenge to identify the software package best suited to a particular research goal. Here, we compare four software packages that support the analysis of 2D time-lapse images of cellular populations: CellProfiler, SuperSegger-Omnipose, DeLTA, and FAST. We compare their performance against benchmarked results on time-lapse observations of Escherichia coli populations. Performance varies across the packages, with each of the four outperforming the others in at least one aspect of the analysis. Not surprisingly, the packages that have been in development for longer showed the strongest performance. We found that deep learning-based approaches to object segmentation outperformed traditional approaches, but the opposite was true for frame-to-frame object tracking. We offer these comparisons, together with insight into usability, computational efficiency, and feature availability, as a guide to researchers seeking image-processing solutions.IMPORTANCETime-lapse microscopy provides a detailed window into the world of bacterial behavior. However, the vast amount of data produced by these techniques is difficult to analyze manually. We have analyzed four software tools designed to process such data and compared their performance, using populations of commonly studied bacterial species as our test subjects. Our findings offer a roadmap to scientists, helping them choose the right tool for their research. This comparison bridges a gap between microbiology and computational analysis, streamlining research efforts.