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Abstract Purpose Paper-based artifacts hold significant cultural and social values. However, paper is intrinsically fragile to microorganisms, such as mold, due to its cellulose composition, which can serve as a microorganisms’ nutrient source. Mold not only can damage papers’ structural integrity and pose significant challenges to conservation works but also may subject individuals attending the contaminated artifacts to health risks. Current approaches for strain identification usually require extensive training, prolonged time for analysis, expensive operation costs, and higher risks of secondary damage due to sampling. Thus, in current conservation practices with mold-contaminated artifacts, little pre-screening or strain identification was performed before mold removal, and the cleaning techniques are usually broad-spectrum rather than strain-specific. With deep learning showing promising applications across various domains, this study investigated the feasibility of using a convolutional neural network (CNN) for fast in-situ recognition and classification of mold on paper. Methods Molds were first non-invasively sampled from ancient Xuan Paper-based Chinese books from the Qing and Ming dynasties. Strains were identified using molecular biology methods and the four most prevalent strains were inoculated on Xuan paper to create mockups for image collection. Microscopic images of the molds as well as their stains situated on paper were collected using a compound microscope and commercial microscope lens for cell phone cameras, which were then used for training CNN models with a transfer learning scheme to perform the classification of mold. To enable involvement and contribution from the research community, a web interface that actuates the process while providing interactive features for users to learn about the information of the classified strain was constructed. Moreover, a feedback functionality in the web interface was embedded for catching potential classification errors, adding additional training images, or introducing new strains, all to refine the generalizability and robustness of the model. Results & Conclusion In the study, we have constructed a suite of high-confidence classification CNN models for the diagnostic process for mold contamination in conservation. At the same time, a web interface was constructed that allows recurrently refining the model with human feedback through engaging the research community. Overall, the proposed framework opens new avenues for effective and timely identification of mold, thus enabling proactive and targeted mold remediation strategies in conservation.

Abstract Background In low-middle income countries, healthcare providers primarily use paper health records for capturing data. Paper health records are utilized predominately due to the prohibitive cost of acquisition and maintenance of automated data capture devices and electronic medical records. Data recorded on paper health records is not easily accessible in a digital format to healthcare providers. The lack of real time accessible digital data limits healthcare providers, researchers, and quality improvement champions to leverage data to improve patient outcomes. In this project, we demonstrate the novel use of computer vision software to digitize handwritten intraoperative data elements from smartphone photographs of paper anesthesia charts from the University Teaching Hospital of Kigali. We specifically report our approach to digitize checkbox data, symbol-denoted systolic and diastolic blood pressure, and physiological data. Methods We implemented approaches for removing perspective distortions from smartphone photographs, removing shadows, and improving image readability through morphological operations. YOLOv8 models were used to deconstruct the anesthesia paper chart into specific data sections. Handwritten blood pressure symbols and physiological data were identified, and values were assigned using deep neural networks. Our work builds upon the contributions of previous research by improving upon their methods, updating the deep learning models to newer architectures, as well as consolidating them into a single piece of software. Results The model for extracting the sections of the anesthesia paper chart achieved an average box precision of 0.99, an average box recall of 0.99, and an mAP0.5-95 of 0.97. Our software digitizes checkbox data with greater than 99% accuracy and digitizes blood pressure data with a mean average error of 1.0 and 1.36 mmHg for systolic and diastolic blood pressure respectively. Overall accuracy for physiological data which includes oxygen saturation, inspired oxygen concentration and end tidal carbon dioxide concentration was 85.2%. Conclusions We demonstrate that under normal photography conditions we can digitize checkbox, blood pressure and physiological data to within human accuracy when provided legible handwriting. Our contributions provide improved access to digital data to healthcare practitioners in low-middle income countries.

One of the most popular and well-established forms of payment in use today is paper money. Handling paper money might be challenging for those with vision impairments. Assistive technology has been reinventing itself throughout time to better serve the elderly and disabled people. To detect paper currency and extract other useful information from them, image processing techniques and other advanced technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence, Deep Learning, etc., can be used. In this paper, we present a meticulously curated and comprehensive dataset named ‘NSTU-BDTAKA’ tailored for the simultaneous detection and recognition of a specific object of cultural significance - the Bangladeshi paper currency (in Bengali it is called ‘Taka’). This research aims to facilitate the development and evaluation of models for both taka detection and recognition tasks, offering a rich resource for researchers and practitioners alike. The dataset is divided into two distinct components: (i) taka detection, and (ii) taka recognition. The taka detection subset comprises 3,111 high-resolution images, each meticulously annotated with rectangular bounding boxes that encompass instances of the taka. These annotations serve as ground truth for training and validating object detection models, and we adopt the state-of-the-art YOLOv5 architecture for this purpose. In the taka recognition subset, the dataset has been extended to include a vast collection of 28,875 images, each showcasing various instances of the taka captured in diverse contexts and environments. The recognition dataset is designed to address the nuanced task of taka recognition providing researchers with a comprehensive set of images to train, validate, and test recognition models. This subset encompasses challenges such as variations in lighting, scale, orientation, and occlusion, further enhancing the robustness of developed recognition algorithms. The dataset NSTU-BDTAKA not only serves as a benchmark for taka detection and recognition but also fosters advancements in object detection and recognition methods that can be extrapolated to other cultural artifacts and objects. We envision that the dataset will catalyze research efforts in the field of computer vision, enabling the development of more accurate, robust, and efficient models for both detection and recognition tasks.

Abstract Due to migration, terror‐threats and the viral pandemic, various EU member states have re‐established internal border control or even closed their borders. European Association for Biometrics (EAB), a non‐profit organisation, solicited the views of its members on ways which biometric technologies and services may be used to help with re‐establishing open borders within the Schengen area while at the same time mitigating any adverse effects. From the responses received, this position paper was composed to identify ideas to re‐establish free travel between the member states in the Schengen area. The paper covers the contending needs for security, open borders and fundamental rights as well as legal constraints that any technological solution must consider. A range of specific technologies for direct biometric recognition alongside complementary measures are outlined. The interrelated issues of ethical and societal considerations are also highlighted. Provided a holistic approach is adopted, it may be possible to reach a more optimal trade‐off with regards to open borders while maintaining a high‐level of security and protection of fundamental rights. European Association for Biometrics and its members can play an important role in fostering a shared understanding of security and mobility challenges and their solutions.

Quality assessment in industrial applications is often carried out through visual inspection, usually performed or supported by human domain experts. However, the manual visual inspection of processes and products is error-prone and expensive. It is therefore not surprising that the automation of visual inspection in manufacturing and maintenance is heavily researched and discussed. The use of artificial intelligence as an approach to visual inspection in industrial applications has been considered for decades. Recent successes, driven by advances in deep learning, present a possible paradigm shift and have the potential to facilitate automated visual inspection, even under complex environmental conditions. For this reason, we explore the question of to what extent deep learning is already being used in the field of automated visual inspection and which potential improvements to the state of the art could be realized utilizing concepts from academic research. By conducting an extensive review of the openly accessible literature, we provide an overview of proposed and in-use deep-learning models presented in recent years. Our survey consists of 196 open-access publications, of which 31.7% are manufacturing use cases and 68.3% are maintenance use cases. Furthermore, the survey also shows that the majority of the models currently in use are based on convolutional neural networks, the current de facto standard for image classification, object recognition, or object segmentation tasks. Nevertheless, we see the emergence of vision transformer models that seem to outperform convolutional neural networks but require more resources, which also opens up new research opportunities for the future. Another finding is that in 97% of the publications, the authors use supervised learning techniques to train their models. However, with the median dataset size consisting of 2500 samples, deep-learning models cannot be trained from scratch, so it would be beneficial to use other training paradigms, such as self-supervised learning. In addition, we identified a gap of approximately three years between approaches from deep-learning-based computer vision being published and their introduction in industrial visual inspection applications. Based on our findings, we additionally discuss potential future developments in the area of automated visual inspection.

The research groups in computer vision, graphics, and machine learning have dedicated a substantial amount of attention to the areas of 3D object reconstruction, augmentation, and registration. Deep learning is the predominant method used in artificial intelligence for addressing computer vision challenges. However, deep learning on three-dimensional data presents distinct obstacles and is now in its nascent phase. There have been significant advancements in deep learning specifically for three-dimensional data, offering a range of ways to address these issues. This study offers a comprehensive examination of the latest advancements in deep learning methodologies. We examine many benchmark models for the tasks of 3D object registration, augmentation, and reconstruction. We thoroughly analyse their architectures, advantages, and constraints. In summary, this report provides a comprehensive overview of recent advancements in three-dimensional deep learning and highlights unresolved research areas that will need to be addressed in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the paper cups were used as the research objects, and the machine vision detection technology was combined with different image processing techniques to investigate a non-contact optical automatic detection system to identify the defects of the manufactured paper cups. The combined ring light was used as the light source, an infrared (IR) LED matrix panel was used to provide the IR light to constantly highlight the outer edges of the detected objects, and a multi-grid pixel array was used as the image sensor. The image processing techniques, including the Gaussian filter, Sobel operator, Binarization process, and connected component, were used to enhance the inspection and recognition of the defects existing in the produced paper cups. There were three different detection processes for paper cups, which were divided into internal, external, and bottom image acquisition processes. The present study demonstrated that all the detection processes could clearly detect the surface defect features of the manufactured paper cups, such as dirt, burrs, holes, and uneven thickness. Our study also revealed that the average time for the investigated Automatic Optical Detection to detect the defects on the paper cups was only 0.3 s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Various techniques were combined to optimize an optical inspection system designed to automatically inspect defects in manufactured paper bowls. A self-assembled system was utilized to capture images of defects on the bowls. The system employed an image sensor with a multi-pixel array that combined a complementary metal-oxide semiconductor and a photo detector. A combined ring light served as the light source, while an infrared (IR) LED matrix panel was used to provide constant IR light to highlight the outer edges of the objects being inspected. The techniques employed in this study to enhance defect inspections on produced paper bowls included Gaussian filtering, Sobel operators, binarization, and connected components. Captured images were processed using these technologies. Once the non-contact inspection system's machine vision method was completed, defects on the produced paper bowls were inspected using the system developed in this study. Three inspection methods were used in this study: internal inspection, external inspection, and bottom inspection. All three methods were able to inspect surface features of produced paper bowls, including dirt, burrs, holes, and uneven thickness. The results of our study showed that the average time required for machine vision inspections of each paper bowl was significantly less than the time required for manual inspection. Therefore, the investigated machine vision system is an efficient method for inspecting defects in fabricated paper bowls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to migration, terror‐threats and the viral pandemic, various EU member states have re‐established internal border control or even closed their borders. European Association for Biometrics (EAB), a non‐profit organisation, solicited the views of its members on ways which biometric technologies and services may be used to help with re‐establishing open borders within the Schengen area while at the same time mitigating any adverse effects. From the responses received, this position paper was composed to identify ideas to re‐establish free travel between the member states in the Schengen area. The paper covers the contending needs for security, open borders and fundamental rights as well as legal constraints that any technological solution must consider. A range of specific technologies for direct biometric recognition alongside complementary measures are outlined. The interrelated issues of ethical and societal considerations are also highlighted. Provided a holistic approach is adopted, it may be possible to reach a more optimal trade‐off with regards to open borders while maintaining a high‐level of security and protection of fundamental rights. European Association for Biometrics and its members can play an important role in fostering a shared understanding of security and mobility challenges and their solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This document is a special issue of the Journal of Intelligent Information Systems, focusing on the selected papers from the International Symposium on Methodologies for Intelligent Systems (ISMIS 2022). The symposium, held in Cosenza, Italy, showcased research on various topics related to artificial intelligence, including decision support, knowledge representation, machine learning, computer vision, and more. The special issue includes eleven papers that have undergone rigorous peer-reviewing and cover a wide range of research topics, such as deep learning, anomaly detection, malware detection, sentiment classification, and healthcare professionals' burnout. The authors express their gratitude to the contributors and reviewers for their valuable contributions. [Extracted from the article]

Document classification is an important area in Natural Language Processing (NLP). Because a huge amount of scientific papers have been published at an accelerating rate, it is beneficial to carry out intelligent paper classifications, especially fine-grained classification for researchers. However, a public scientific paper dataset for fine-grained classification is still lacking, so the existing document classification methods have not been put to the test. To fill this vacancy, we designed and collected the PaperNet-Dataset that consists of multi-modal data (texts and figures). PaperNet 1.0 version contains hierarchical categories of papers in the fields of computer vision (CV) and NLP, 2 coarse-grained and 20 fine-grained (7 in CV and 13 in NLP). We ran current mainstream models on the PaperNet-Dataset, along with a multi-modal method that we propose. Interestingly, none of these methods reaches an accuracy of 80% in fine-grained classification, showing plenty of room for improvement. We hope that PaperNet-Dataset will inspire more work in this challenging area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors present a comprehensive overview of image processing and analysis work done to support research into the model flowering plant Arabidopsis thaliana. Beside the plant's importance in biological research, using image analysis to obtain experimental measurements of it is an interesting vision problem in its own right, involving the segmentation and analysis of sequences of images of objects whose shape varies between individual specimens and also changes over time. While useful measurements can be obtained by segmenting a whole plant from the background, they suggest that the increased range and precision of measurements made available by leaf‐level segmentation makes this a problem well worth solving. A variety of approaches have been tried by biologists as well as computer vision researchers. This is an interdisciplinary area and the computer vision community has an important contribution to make. They suggest that there is a need for publicly available datasets with ground truth annotations to enable the evaluation of new approaches and to support the building of training data for modern data‐driven computer vision approaches, which are those most likely to result in the kind of fully automated systems that will be of use to biologists.

Detecting plagiarism in academic papers is crucial for maintaining academic integrity, preserving the originality of published work, and safeguarding intellectual property. While existing applications excel at text plagiarism detection, they fall short when it comes to image plagiarism. This paper introduces a novel algorithm, named "VIBRANT-WALK," designed to detect image plagiarism in academic manuscripts. The challenge of identifying plagiarized images is formidable, requiring a unique approach. Traditional Computer Vision algorithms, proficient in image similarity tasks, face limitations in determining whether an image has been previously used in an article. To address this, the proposed algorithm leverages a repository of all published article pages, focusing on absolute identicality rather than image similarity. The algorithm comprises two stages. In the first stage, a "Vibrancy Matrix" is created through image preprocessing, aiding in contour determination. The second stage involves pixel-by-pixel comparison with images from published manuscripts. To enhance efficiency, the algorithm initiates comparisons from the pixel with the highest score in the Vibrancy Matrix, followed by pixel comparisons through random walks, significantly reducing complexity. To conduct the study, a custom dataset was compiled from 69 research articles, capturing snapshots of each page and figure. Overall, we present 485 unique test cases where we can test the accuracy and efficiency of the algorithm. The lack of publicly available datasets necessitated this approach. The proposed algorithm outperformed the existing models and algorithms in this field by achieving an overall accuracy of 94.8% on the collated dataset, identifying 460 instances of plagiarism out of the 485 test cases. The algorithm also demonstrated a 100% accuracy rate in avoiding false positives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This article explores the application of image processing techniques in recyclable waste paper sorting. In recycling, waste papers are segregated into various grades as they are subjected to different recycling processes. Highly sorted paper streams facilitate high quality end products and save processing chemicals and energy. From 1932 to 2009, different mechanical and optical paper sorting methods have been developed to fill the paper sorting demand. Still, in many countries including Malaysia, waste papers are sorted into different grades using a manual sorting system. Because of inadequate throughput and some major drawbacks of mechanical paper sorting systems, the popularity of optical paper sorting systems has increased. Automated paper sorting systems offer significant advantages over human inspection in terms of worker fatigue, throughput, speed, and accuracy. This research attempts to develop a smart vision sensing system that is able to separate the different grades of paper using first-order features. To construct a template database, a statistical approach with intra-class and inter-class variation techniques are applied to the feature selection process. Finally, the K-nearest neighbor (KNN) algorithm is applied for paper object grade identification. The remarkable achievement obtained with the method is the accurate identification and dynamic sorting of all grades of papers using simple image processing techniques. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

We develop a vision system for batch inspection by oven white paper model color by manufacturing a machine vision system for the oven manufacturing automation process. In the vision system, white paper object detection (spring), color clustering, and histogram extraction are performed. In addition, for the automated process of home appliances, we intend to develop an automatic mold combination detection algorithm that inspects the label position and direction (angle/coordinate) using deep learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]