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The article aims to introduce a gold-standard Pashto dataset and a segmentation app. The Pashto dataset consists of 300 line images and corresponding Pashto text from three selected books. A line image is simply an image consisting of one text line from a scanned page. To our knowledge, this is one of the first open access datasets which directly maps line images to their corresponding text in the Pashto language. We also introduce the development of a segmentation app using textbox expanding algorithms, a different approach to OCR segmentation. The authors discuss the steps to build a Pashto dataset and develop our unique approach to segmentation. The article starts with the nature of the Pashto alphabet and its unique diacritics which require special considerations for segmentation. Needs for datasets and a few available Pashto datasets are reviewed. Criteria of selection of data sources are discussed and three books were selected by our language specialist from the Afghan Digital Repository. The authors review previous segmentation methods and introduce a new approach to segmentation for Pashto content. The segmentation app and results are discussed to show readers how to adjust variables for different books. Our unique segmentation approach uses an expanding textbox method which performs very well given the nature of the Pashto scripts. The app can also be used for Persian and other languages using the Arabic writing system. The dataset can be used for OCR training, OCR testing, and machine learning applications related to content in Pashto. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Medical image can provide valuable information for preclinical research, clinical diagnosis, and treatment. As the widespread use of digital medical imaging, many researchers are currently developing medical image processing algorithms and systems in order to accommodate a better result to clinical community, including accurate clinical parameters or processed images from the original images. In this paper, we propose a web-based platform to present and process medical images. By using Internet and novel database technologies, authorized users can easily access to medical images and facilitate their workflows of processing with server-side powerful computing performance without any installation. We implement a series of algorithms of image processing and visualization in the initial version of Rayplus. Integration of our system allows much flexibility and convenience for both research and clinical communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Radiomics has been shown to have considerable potential and value in quantifying the tumor phenotype and predicting the treatment response. In most scenarios, the commercial and open-source software programs are available for quantitative analysis in medical images to streamline radiomics research. However, at this stage, most of these programs are local applications and require users to have experience in programming and software engineering, which clinicians usually do not have. Therefore, in this article, a web-based tool was proposed to flexibly support radiomics research workflow tasks. Radiomics in RayPlus requires zero installation, is easy to maintain, and accessible anywhere via any PC or MAC with an Internet connection. The system provides functions including multimodality image import and viewing, ROI definition, feature extraction, and data sharing. As a web application, it appears an effective way to multi-institution and multi-department collaborative radiomics research and moreover, its transparency, flexibility, and portability can greatly accelerate the pace of clinical data analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A wrong (over or under) exposure leads to a bias in optical target pose determination. • Concentric circles targets allow detecting and compensating for any bias caused by exposure. • A rigorous sub-pixel edge detector is formulated based on a pixel-level image formation model. • A new algorithm uses geometric constraints of concentric circles to determine the exposure bias. • Experimental evaluation in a controlled environment confirms unbiased pose determination. Optical coded targets allow to determine the relative pose of a camera, on a metric scale, from one image only. Furthermore, they are easily and efficiently detected, opening to a wide range of applications in robotics and computer vision. In this work we describe the effect of pixel saturation and non-ideal lens Point Spread Function, causing the apparent position of the corners and the edges of the target to change as a function of the camera exposure time. This effect, which we call exposure bias, is frequent in over- or underexposed images and introduces a systematic error in the estimated camera pose. We propose an algorithm that is able to estimate and correct for the exposure bias exploiting specific geometric features of a common target design based on concentric circles. Through rigorous laboratory experiments carried out in a highly controlled environment, we demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is seven times more precise and three times more accurate in the target distance estimation than the algorithms available in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rotational symmetry is important for many applications in computer graphics, vision, and image processing. However, it remains difficult to design an effective algorithm for automatic symmetry recognition. In this paper, we present a rotational symmetry detection algorithm, which is easy to use and can determine both the center and the radius of the rotational symmetry supporting region without human interaction. Our algorithm is derived from frieze-expansions approach and improved through a radius-based expansion idea. Multiresolution pyramid is used to accelerate this detection process. We also discuss a solution to deal with rotational symmetry detection under slight affine transformation. Experimental results show that the method is effective for most nature images with rotational symmetry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent times, the use of computer aided diagnosis for detection of Glaucoma from fundus images has been prevalent. In the proposed work, a cloud based system is proposed for automatic and real-time screening of Glaucoma with the use of automatic image processing techniques. The proposed system offers scalability to the developers and easy accessibility to the consumers. The proposed system is device and location independent. The input digital image is analyzed and a comprehensive diagnostic report is generated consisting of detailed analysis of indicative medical parameters like optic-cup-to-disc ratio, optic neuro-retinal rim, ISNT rules making the report informative and clinically significant. With recent advances in the field of communication technologies, the internet facilities are available that make the proposed system an efficient and economical method for initial screening and offer preventive and diagnostic steps in early disease intervention and management. The proposed system can perform an initial screening test in an average time of 6 s on high resolution fundus images. The proposed system has been tested on a fundus database and an average sensitivity of 93.7% has been achieved for Glaucoma cases. In places where there is scarcity of trained ophthalmologists and lack of awareness of such diseases, the cloud based system can be used as an effective diagnostic assistive tool. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Superpixel is one of the most popular image over-segmentations with broad applications in the computer vision field to reduce their computations by replacing pixels as primitives. The main concerns of one superpixel generation algorithm are its accuracy and efficiency. One of the most important things in superpixel accuracy is to fit the image boundaries tightly with a few pixels as possible (namely minimal contour density, which is measured by the percent of superpixel contour pixels in the whole image). In this paper, we propose a new fast algorithm based on the clustering method to produce superpixels accurately with low contour density. First, we adopt the linear path from a pixel to one superpixel seed to define a regular term and propose a new distance measurement between them. In addition, we introduce the gradient and Local Binary Pattern (LBP) features and propose formulas of parameters in the proposed method adaptively. In this way, we can use the new distance measurement to group pixels as initial regions adaptively and produce the final superpixels by merging those small ones. Finally, we test the new algorithm on two public datasets and compare it with the state-of-the-art. Our method can generate superpixels with lower contour density while being competitive in accuracy and computational time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Voronoi diagrams on triangulated surfaces based on the geodesic metric play a key role in many applications of computer graphics. Previous methods of constructing such Voronoi diagrams generally depended on having an exact geodesic metric. However, exact geodesic computation is time-consuming and has high memory usage, limiting wider application of geodesic Voronoi diagrams (GVDs). In order to overcome this issue, instead of using exact methods, we reformulate a graph method based on Steiner point insertion, as an effective way to obtain geodesic distances. Further, since a bisector comprises hyperbolic and line segments, we utilize Apollonius diagrams to encode complicated structures, enabling Voronoi diagrams to encode a medial-axis surface for a dense set of boundary samples. Based on these strategies, we present an approximation algorithm for efficient Voronoi diagram construction on triangulated surfaces. We also suggest a measure for evaluating similarity of our results to the exact GVD. Although our GVD results are constructed using approximate geodesic distances, we can get GVD results similar to exact results by inserting Steiner points on triangle edges. Experimental results on many 3D models indicate the improved speed and memory requirements compared to previous leading methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The detection limit of constructed colloidal gold HCG strip is 3 ng/mL. • Three kind of image processing algorithms are optimized and analyzed. • Mobile App for HCG quantitative detection is developed. • The value measured by mobile App is highly consistent with the spiked sample. Colloidal gold immunochromatographic test strip has been widely used as a rapid, simple and low-cost correct detection technology. However, its detection is often qualitative or semi-quantitative, which limits its clinical application to some extent. Herein, a portable test strip quantitative detection device based on smartphone to detect human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG) is developed. In experiment, a colloidal gold HCG detection strip based on antigen antibody immune response is constructed, and the quantitative results of three different image processing methods on the same strip detection are compared, including the threshold processing algorithm based on location information, the RGB color component extraction algorithm and the grayscale projection value processing algorithm, the results show that the last algorithm can realize the best recognition of the region of interest of strip. The mobile phone application software (App) based on this design shows that the detection limit of constructed colloidal gold HCG strip is 3 ng/mL with a linear range of 6–300 ng/mL. The detection result of real urine sample is consistent with the spiked concentration (R2 = 0.988), indicating that the concentration of HCG can be accurately measured in urine with this method, presenting the potential for instant diagnosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We introduce a code generator that converts unoptimized C++ code operating on sparse data into vectorized and parallel CPU or GPU kernels. Our approach unrolls the computation into a massive expression graph, performs redundant expression elimination, grouping, and then generates an architecture-specific kernel to solve the same problem, assuming that the sparsity pattern is fixed, which is a common scenario in many applications in computer graphics and scientific computing. We show that our approach scales to large problems and can achieve speedups of two orders of magnitude on CPUs and three orders of magnitude on GPUs, compared to a set of manually optimized CPU baselines. To demonstrate the practical applicability of our approach, we employ it to optimize popular algorithms with applications to physical simulation and interactive mesh deformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adders are used to design the basic building blocks of very large scale integrated systems. Most of the computer arithmetic applications need highest degree of accuracy with good performance. In this paper a new efficient two step binary adder using carry substitution algorithm is proposed and it is implemented in digital FIR filter for filtering process. This adder architecture is very simple and efficient. Here two logic blocks namely half adder and carry substitution algorithm logic blocks are used. In the first step, the inputs are given to half adder logic block to generate the partial sum and carry bits. In the second step, carry substitution algorithm is used to compare the sum and carry bits generated by the adder logic to produce accurate final result. Here, the carry bits are not propagated from LSB to MSB. To study the effectiveness of the proposed two step binary adder, its performance is compared with the other existing parallel adders, parallel-prefix adders and approximate adders. These adders are coded in Verilog HDL and implemented in Xilinx FPGA. Simulation results show that FIR filter with the proposed adder is three times faster than FIR filter with parallel and parallel-prefix adders and two times faster than the FIR filter using approximate adders. Also the area of proposed method is 50% less and area delay product is 60% less compared to other designed FIR digital filters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent times, there has been a tremendous progress in image dehazing for computer vision applications, while the sky region processed by these algorithms tends to degrade by noise and color distortion. In this paper, an improved dark channel prior algorithm is proposed which detects the sky region first and divides the image into sky region and non-sky region and then estimates the transmission of two parts separately, followed by combining with refining step. The proposed algorithm also accurately corrects the transmission of the sky region to avoid noise and color distortion. Experimental results show a greater quality improvement in the output images than the existing strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the continuous development and application of monitoring technology, which involves increasingly more sensitive information, the global demand for video monitoring systems has surged. As a result, video monitoring technology has received widespread attention both at home and abroad. Traditional video monitoring systems experience security threats, with differing levels of severity, in terms of attack, storage, transmission, etc., which results in different degrees of damage to users' rights. Therefore, we propose a blockchain-SM-based video monitoring system called BSVMS. For the front-end device invasion risk, internal attack risk, and security storage problem of the monitoring system, we use commercial cryptography algorithms to complete the encryption processing of images through a visual change network in the imaging process, thereby ensuring the security of the video data from the source. To address the problem that the video monitoring application software and data are vulnerable to damage, we use blockchain technologies that are tamper-proof and traceable to build a trustworthy video monitoring system. In the system, no member can query the original monitoring data. To address the security issues in network transmission, we use a commercial cryptography algorithm for multilayer encryption to ensure the security of data during transmission, guarantee the confidentiality of the system, and realize domestic autonomous control. We then conduct tests and security analysis of the encryption and decryption efficiency of the SM4 algorithm used in the system, the blockchain performance, and the overall performance. The experimental results show that in this system environment, the SM4 algorithm encryption and decryption efficiency is better than other algorithms and that the blockchain used meets industry standards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Chinese remainder theorem (CRT), which appeared in ancient China, is widely used in many modern computer applications. This paper presents the CRT implementation by using the interval-index characteristic and minimum redundancy residue code. The proposed algorithm does not use large modulo addition operations and provides low computational complexity compared to conventional non-redundant RNS. The efficiency factors of using the minimally redundant RNS increase with the number k of non-redundant moduli, asymptotically approaching the threshold k/2. The new approach presented here will have a significant impact on many non-modular operations in RNS arithmetic, which currently use the CRT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) offers outstanding soft tissue contrast that may reduce uncertainties in target and organ-at-risk delineation and enable online adaptive image-guided treatment. Spatial distortions resulting from non-linearities in the gradient fields and non-uniformity in the main magnetic field must be accounted for across the imaging field-of-view to prevent systematic errors during treatment delivery. This work presents a modular phantom and software application to characterize geometric distortion (GD) within the large field-of-view MRI images required for radiation therapy simulation. The modular phantom is assembled from a series of rectangular foam blocks containing high-contrast fiducial markers in a known configuration. The modular phantom design facilitates transportation of the phantom between different MR scanners and MR-guided linear accelerators and allows the phantom to be adapted to fit different sized bores or coils. The phantom was evaluated using a 1.5 T MR-guided linear accelerator (MR-Linac) and 1.5 T and 3.0 T diagnostic scanners. Performance was assessed by varying acquisition parameters to induce image distortions in a known manner. Imaging was performed using T1 and T2 weighted pulse sequences with 2D and 3D distortion correction algorithms and the receiver bandwidth (BW) varied as 250–815 Hz pixel−1. Phantom set-up reproducibility was evaluated across independent set-ups. The software was validated by comparison with a non-modular phantom. Average geometric distortion was 0.94 ± 0.58 mm for the MR-Linac, 0.90 ± 0.53 mm for the 1.5 T scanner, and 1.15 ± 0.62 mm for the 3.0 T scanner, for a 400 mm diameter volume-of-interest. GD increased, as expected, with decreasing BW, and with the 2D versus 3D correction algorithm. Differences in GD attributed to phantom set-up were 0.13 mm or less. Differences in GD for the two software applications were less than 0.07 mm. A novel modular phantom was developed to evaluate distortions in MR images for radiation therapy applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Atmospheric conditions induced by suspended particles such as fog, smog, rain, haze etc., severely affect the scene appearance and computer vision applications. In general, existing defogging algorithms use various constraints for fog removal. The efficiency of these algorithms depends on the accurate estimation of the depth models and the perfection of these models solely relies on pre-calculated coefficients through the training data. However, the depth model developed on the basis of these pre-calculated coefficients for dehazing may provide better accuracy for some kind of images but not equally well for every type of images. Therefore, training data-independent based depth model is required for a perfect haze removal algorithm. In this paper, an effective haze removal algorithm is reported for removing fog or haze from a single image. The proposed algorithm utilizes the atmospheric scattering model in fog removal. Apart from this, linearity in the depth model is achieved by the ratio of difference and sum of the intensity and saturation values of the input image. Besides, the proposed method also take care the well-known problems of edge preservation, white region handling and colour fidelity. Experimental results show that the proposed model is more efficient in comparison to the existing haze removal algorithms in terms of qualitative and quantitative analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background subtraction is a prerequisite and often the very first step employed in several high-level and real-time computer vision applications. Several parametric and non-parametric change detection algorithms employing multiple feature spaces have been proposed to date but none has proven to be robust against all challenges that can possibly be posed in a complex real-time environment. Amongst the varied challenges posed, illumination variations, shadows, dynamic backgrounds, camouflaged and bootstrapping artifacts are some of the well-known problems. This paper presents a light-weight hybrid change detection algorithm that integrates a novel combination of RGB color space and conditional YCbCr-based XCS-LBP texture descriptors (YXCS-LBP) into a modified pixel-based background model. The conditional employment of light-weight YXCS-LBP texture features with the modified Visual background extractor (ViBe) aiming at reduction in false positives, produces outperforming results without incurring much memory and computational cost. The random and time-subsampled update strategy employed with the proposed classification procedure ensures the efficient suppression of shadows and bootstrapping artifacts along with the complete retention of long-term static objects in the foreground masks. Comprehensive performance analysis of the proposed technique on publicly available Change Detection dataset (2014 CDnet dataset) demonstrates the superiority of the proposed technique over different state-of-the-art-methods against varied challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several methods utilizing common spatial pattern (CSP) algorithm have been presented for improving the identification of imagery movement patterns for brain computer interface applications. The present study focuses on improving a CSP-based algorithm for detecting the motor imagery movement patterns. A discriminative filter bank of CSP method using a discriminative sensitive learning vector quantization (DFBCSP-DSLVQ) system is implemented. Four algorithms are then combined to form three methods for improving the efficiency of the DFBCSP-DSLVQ method, namely the kernel linear discriminant analysis (KLDA), the kernel principal component analysis (KPCA), the soft margin support vector machine (SSVM) classifier and the generalized radial bases functions (GRBF) kernel. The GRBF is used as a kernel for the KLDA, the KPCA feature selection algorithms and the SSVM classifier. In addition, three types of classifiers, namely K-nearest neighbor (K-NN), neural network (NN) and traditional support vector machine (SVM), are employed to evaluate the efficiency of the classifiers. Results show that the best algorithm is the combination of the DFBCSP-DSLVQ method using the SSVM classifier with GRBF kernel (SSVM-GRBF), in which the best average accuracy, attained are 92.70% and 83.21%, respectively. Results of the Repeated Measures ANOVA shows the statistically significant dominance of this method at p < 0.05. The presented algorithms are then compared with the base algorithm of this study i.e. the DFBCSP-DSLVQ with the SVM-RBF classifier. It is concluded that the algorithms, which are based on the SSVM-GRBF classifier and the KLDA with the SSVM-GRBF classifiers give sufficient accuracy and reliable results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Artificial intelligence (AI) is additionally serving to a brand new breed of corporations disrupt industries from restorative examination to horticulture. Computers can't nevertheless replace humans, however, they will work superbly taking care of the everyday tangle of our lives. The era is reconstructing big business and has been on the rise in recent years which has grounded with the success of deep learning (DL). Cyber-security, Auto and health industry are three industries innovating with AI and DL technologies and also Banking, retail, finance, robotics, manufacturing. The healthcare industry is one of the earliest adopters of AI and DL. DL accomplishing exceptional dimensions levels of accurateness to the point where DL algorithms can outperform humans at classifying videos & images. The major drivers that caused the breakthrough of deep neural networks are the provision of giant amounts of coaching information, powerful machine infrastructure, and advances in academia. DL is heavily employed in each academe to review intelligence and within the trade-in building intelligent systems to help humans in varied tasks. Thereby DL systems begin to crush not solely classical ways, but additionally, human benchmarks in numerous tasks like image classification, action detection, natural language processing, signal process, and linguistic communication process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Temporal filtering for speckle reduction of polarimetric SARimages is described. The method is based on a sequential complex Wishart-based change detection algorithm which is applied to polarized SAR imagery, including the dual-polarization intensity data archived on the Google Earth Engine (GEE). Software for convenient application and analysis is presented. Results compare favorably with, and improve upon, standard spatial and temporal filters for speckle reduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Face recognition is a popular and efficient form of biometric authentication used in many software applications. One drawback of this technique is that it is prone to face spoofing attacks, where an impostor can gain access to the system by presenting a photograph of a valid user to the sensor. Thus, face liveness detection is a necessary step before granting authentication to the user. In this paper, we have developed deep architectures for face liveness detection that use a combination of texture analysis and a convolutional neural network (CNN) to classify the captured image as real or fake. Our development greatly improved upon a recent approach that applies nonlinear diffusion based on an additive operator splitting scheme and a tridiagonal matrix block-solver algorithm to the image, which enhances the edges and surface texture in the real image. We then fed the diffused image to a deep CNN to identify the complex and deep features for classification. We obtained 100% accuracy on the NUAA Photograph Impostor dataset for face liveness detection using one of our enhanced architectures. Further, we gained insight into the enhancement of the face liveness detection architecture by evaluating three different deep architectures, which included deep CNN, residual network, and the inception network version 4. We evaluated the performance of each of these architectures on the NUAA dataset and present here the experimental results showing under what conditions an architecture would be better suited for face liveness detection. While the residual network gave us competitive results, the inception network version 4 produced the optimal accuracy of 100% in liveness detection (with nonlinear anisotropic diffused images with a smoothness parameter of 15). Our approach outperformed all current state-of-the-art methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]