An Adaptive and Predictive Respiratory Motion Model for Image-Guided Interventions: Theory and First Clinical Application

This paper describes a predictive and adaptive single parameter motion model for updating roadmaps to correct for respiratory motion in image-guided interventions. The model can adapt its motion estimates to respond to changes in breathing pattern, such as deep or fast breathing, which normally would result in a decrease in the accuracy of the motion estimates. The adaptation is made possible by interpolating between the motion estimates of multiple submodels, each of which describes the motion of the target organ during cycles of different amplitudes. We describe a predictive technique which can predict the amplitude of a breathing cycle before it has finished. The predicted amplitude is used to interpolate between the motion estimates of the submodels to tune the adaptive model to the current breathing pattern. The proposed technique is validated on affine motion models formed from cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) datasets acquired from seven volunteers and one patient. The amplitude prediction technique showed errors of 1.9–6.5 mm. The combined predictive and adaptive technique showed 3-D motion prediction errors of 1.0–2.8 mm, which represents an improvement in modelling performance of up to 40% over a standard nonadaptive single parameter motion model. We also applied the combined technique in a clinical setting to test the feasibility of using it for respiratory motion correction of roadmaps in image-guided cardiac catheterisations. In this clinical case we show that 2-D registration errors due to respiratory motion are reduced from 7.7 to 2.8 mm using the proposed technique.      

The Interconnection of MRI Scanner and MR-Compatible Robotic Device: Synergistic Graphical User Interface to Form a Mechatronic System

MRI scanner and magnetic resonance (MR)-compatible robotic devices are mechatronic systems. Without an interconnecting component, these two devices cannot be operated synergetically for medical interventions. In this paper, the design and properties of a graphical user interface (GUI) that accomplishes the task is presented. The GUI interconnects the two devices to obtain a larger mechatronic system by providing command and control of the robotic device based on the visual information obtained from the MRI scanner. Ideally, the GUI should also control imaging parameters of the MRI scanner. Its main goal is to facilitate image-guided interventions by acting as the synergistic component between the physician, the robotic device, the scanner, and the patient.     

Robot safety and reliability: A review

This article reviews selective literature on Robot Safety and Reliability. The litterature is obtained mainly from journals and conference proceedings of the leading world robotic associations and has been classified into three broad categories: Robot Reliability; Robot Safety and Maintenance; and General. The General category includes articles that touched on elements of both Robot Reliability and Robot Safety and Maintenance. Tables are developed in conjunction with this review and a comprehensive list of references is provided.     

一种简单的增强光纤Bragg光栅温度灵敏度的方法

提出了一种简单的铝管或铝板封装(AP)法来增强光纤Bragg光栅(FBG)的温度灵敏度，实验测得AP光纤光栅的Bragg反射波长(1550 nm附近)的温度灵敏度为0.038 nm／℃,是裸光纤光栅温度灵敏度的3倍之多，相应的线性温度范围在0～120 ℃之间。     

一种提高卫星通信信息传输速率的高效方案

提出了一种基于比特交织编码调制-迭代译码(BICM-ID)与跳频(FH)相结合的,在含有部分频带干扰的瑞利衰落信道下能够有效提高卫星通信信息传输速率的方案.给出及分析了该方案的仿真结果.     

Criticality: Concept to Enhance the Piezoelectric and Electrocaloric Properties of Ferroelectrics

Compositional engineering with a focus on structural phase transitions has been considered as the most important approach for enhancement of the functional properties of ferroelectric materials due to the critical fluctuation of physical properties. Of special interest are electric‐field‐induced phase transitions, which can terminate in a liquid–vapor‐type critical point with a strong enhancement of functional properties. Whereas the critical point in liquid–vapor space considers changes in temperature and pressure, the critical point in this study is placed in electric field–temperature diagrams. In single crystals, temperature and electric field of a critical point are sharply defined and therefore not appealing for practical applications. However, in ceramics, it is demonstrated that the orientational dependence of the critical point leads to a broadened temperature and electric field range. The presence of a diffuse critical point in ceramics provides a conceptually novel approach for the enhancement of functional properties, such as piezoelectric and electrocaloric (EC) responses, as validated here on the example of the 0.75Bi_1/2Na_1/2TiO₃‐0.25SrTiO₃ lead‐free relaxor ferroelectric ceramics. The realization of a broad criticality range will further facilitate the development of the piezoelectric and EC materials and provide an alternative concept to manipulate the functional properties by application of an electric field.     

Analysis Versus Production: Adolescent Cognitive and Attitudinal Responses to Antismoking Interventions

This study examined cognitive and attitudinal responses of adolescents to two inoculation-based media-literacy intervention approaches designed to reinforce adolescents' attitudes against smoking. Participants were junior high students (sixth, seventh, and eighth grade) from schools in the northeast. Two kinds of experimental workshops and a control group were used in a repeated measure nonequivalent group experimental design. The two intervention workshops developed included analysis (where participants discussed and analyzed cigarette and antismoking ads) and production (where participants discussed, analyzed, and then created their own antismoking ads). Results showed an overall support for the production workshop in eliciting more attention and positive workshop perceptions than the analysis workshop. The production workshop was also successful in reducing positive attitudes toward smoking over time. Implications and directions for future research are discussed including implications for theories of message processing.     

Partial Virtual Channel Sharing: A Generic Methodology to Enhance Resource Management and Fault Tolerance in Networks-on-Chip

We present a novel Partial Virtual channel Sharing (PVS) NoC architecture which reduces the impact of faults on performance and also tolerates faults within the routing logic. Without PVS, failure of a component impairs the fault-free connected components, which leads to considerable performance degradation. Improving resource utilization is key in enhancing or sustaining performance with minimal overhead when faults or overload occurs. In the proposed architecture, autonomic virtual-channel buffer sharing is implemented with a novel algorithm that determines the sharing of buffers among a set of ports. The runtime allocation of the buffers depends on incoming load and fault occurrence. In addition, we propose an efficient technique for maintaining the accessibility of a processing element (PE) to the network even if its router is faulty. Our techniques can be used in any NoC topology and for both, 2D and 3D NoCs. The synthesis results for an integrated video conference application demonstrate 22 % reduction in average packet latency compared to state-of-the-art virtual channel (VC) based NoC architecture. Extensive quantitative simulation has been carried out with synthetic benchmarks. Simulation results reveal that the PVS architecture improves the performance significantly in presence of faults, compared to other VC-based NoC architectures.     

Adaptive Sliding Mode Control of Robot Manipulator Based on Second Order Approximation Accuracy and Decomposed Fuzzy Compensator

A kind of adaptive sliding mode control scheme for tracking control of robot manipulator which has structured uncertainties and unstructured uncertainties is proposed in this paper. Multi-input Multi-output fuzzy logical system (FLS) is used as a compensator in the control law to compensate all the uncertainties. To reduce the number of the fuzzy rules and the burden of the computation, we design FLS based on second order approximation theorem which can approximate the uncertain function with less fuzzy rules at arbitrary precision than traditional FLS. Besides, to further reduce the number of the fuzzy rules and the amount of calculation, a new decomposed fuzzy logical system based on the decomposition of membership function is proposed. From the simulation results we can see that the control scheme and the fuzzy compensator proposed in this paper can perform fairly.     

利用CRC校验提高HFC网络通信可靠性

有线电视网络分布广、环境复杂,通信过程中难免受到干扰,目前在一些厂家内部协议中的数据校验纠错方法还比较传统,不能有效起到抗干扰的作用.为了提高通信的可靠性,值得关注和广泛应用的是一种简单而重要的通信差错控制技术--CRC.介绍了循环冗余校验CRC(Cyclic Redundancy Check)的差错控制原理和程序实现,并提出更具有实际应用价值的快速CRC算法的程序实现.     

一种提高卫星通信信息传输速率的高效方案

提出了一种基于比特交织编码调制迭代译码（BICM-ID）与跳频（FH）相结合的，在含有部分频带干扰的瑞利衰落信道下能够有效提高卫星通信信息传输速率的方案。给出及分析了该方案的仿真结果。     

利用CRC校验提高HFC网络通信可靠性

有线电视网络分布广、环境复杂 ,通信过程中难免受到干扰 ,目前在一些厂家内部协议中的数据校验纠错方法还比较传统 ,不能有效起到抗干扰的作用。为了提高通信的可靠性 ,值得关注和广泛应用的是一种简单而重要的通信差错控制技术———CRC。介绍了循环冗余校验CRC(CyclicRedundancyCheck)的差错控制原理和程序实现 ,并提出更具有实际应用价值的快速CRC算法的程序实现。     

A Bayesian Approach to Sensor Fusion in Autonomous Sensor and Robot Networks

This article describes some of the current challenges in autonomous sensor and robot networks, with special focus on issues concerning the fusion of information from several sensors to improve the accuracy in the cooperative localization of objects or to help the wide-sense networked sensors to self-localize. Although many other approaches exist, the focus is on Bayesian approaches to sensor fusion and state estimation.     

A Novel Random Backoff Algorithm to Enhance the Performance of IEEE 802.11 DCF

The Probability Distribution of Slot Selection (PDoSS) of IEEE 802.11 DCF is extremely uneven, which makes the packet collision probability very high. In this paper, we propose a novel RWBO+BEB backoff algorithm for 802.11 DCF to make the PDoSS even and thus decrease the packet collision probability. A Markov model is built for analyzing RWBO+BEB's PDoSS and saturation throughput. The model's correctness is validated by simulation. The performance of RWBO+BEB is also evaluated by simulation in terms of PDoSS, saturation throughput, packet collision probability and packet delay. The simulation results indicate that RWBO+BEB can decrease the packet collision probability to a large extent, utilize the channel more efficiently, and make the packet delay jitter much lower comparing to 802.11 DCF. Moreover, we analyze the relation of saturation throughput and packet collision probability to walking probability (p_d) and contention windows (w), respectively. The analysis indicates that RWBO+BEB has a remarkable feature: its saturation throughput keeps high, and packet collision probability keeps very low (which under 0.1) in a large range of p_d and w, this allows us to configure p_d and w more flexibly. Supported by the Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University (NCET 2005), the Research Project of Chongqing Municipal Education Commission of China (KJ050503), the Research Grants by the Science & Tech. Commission of Chongqing (8817) and the National Science Foundation of China (90304004). Li Yun was born in 1974. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in University of Electronic Science and Technology of China. His research interests are in MAC protocol improvement and QoS in wireless ad hoc networks. Long Ke-Ping was born in 1968. He received his Ph.D. from University of Electronic Science and Technology of China in 1999. He is a professor Ph.D. supervisor in special research Centre for Optical Internet and Wireless Information Networks (COIWIN) at ChongQing University of Posts and Telecommunications. He was an IEEE member. He has over 120 research publications and 4 patents application. His research interests include: Optical Burst switching, modeling of optical networking, IP QoS mechanisms (Diffserv and Intserv, MPLS), WDM/SDH/ATM networks survivability, TCP/IP enhancements in wireless networks, and Mobile IP. Zhao Wei-liang was born in 1962 and received his Ph.D. degree from University of Electronic Science and Technology of China in 2001. He is a professor and a post-doctoral fellow in Beijing University of Posts & Telecommunications of China. His current interest lies in wireless communications.     

A Novel Charge Transfer Channel to Simultaneously Enhance Photocatalytic Water Splitting Activity and Stability of CdS

It is highly desirable to develop durable photocatalysts for efficiently boosting water splitting, but it is challenging for CdS to realize the expected result without using any hole sacrificial agents. Herein, improved photocatalytic hydrogen evolution and enhanced stability are simultaneously realized in the absence of any sacrificial agents by introducing Zinc 5‐, 10‐, 15‐, 20‐meso‐tetra (4‐hydrazidephenyl) porphyrin (ZnTHPP) onto CdS nanosheets (CdS NSs). In this system (ZnTHPP/CdS NSs), a novel hole transfer channel is achieved by an internal chemical reaction using the functional group of acylhydrazine in ZnTHPP. Compared with CdS NSs, the ZnTHPP/CdS NSs exhibit excellent photostability (15 h) and efficient photocatalytic activity for pure water splitting (≈6.4 times). Furthermore, it is found that the rate constant for photogenerated holes is about 1.7 times higher than the pure CdS NSs under light irradiation. This suggests that the promising charge transfer channel can efficiently suppress charge recombination and photocorrosion of pure CdS NSs. The pattern via internal charge transfer channel not only can solve the stability of CdS based materials, but also design more semiconductors for efficient photocatalytic water splitting.     

提高可编程增益放大器准确度的一种简单方法

数字的可编程性已经成为复杂的混合信号系统里的一个非常必要的特征。可编程增益放大器已广泛应用于各种各祥的应用中,它主要用于优化整个系统的动态范围。由于它是用数字信号控制并且有很大的增益范围,所以需要用开关来选择使动态范围最大的那个增益。这篇论文讲述了一个简单的方法来提高增益的准确度。这个方法采用开关的并联合电阻的组合作为一个单元,它能使可编程增益放大器的增益和开关的可变电阻无关。设计了一个可编程增益放大器验证了这个方法的可行性。它用0．18um CMOS技术生产,增益范围是-28～35dB,步长是1dB。有6位数字信号控制,仿真结果表明了精度可达到0.05dB。