Coded aperture Raman spectroscopy for quantitative measurements of ethanol in a tissue phantom

Coded aperture spectroscopy allows for sources of large étendue to be efficiently coupled into dispersive spectrometers by replacing the traditional input slit with a patterned mask. We describe a coded aperture spectrometer optimized for Raman spectroscopy of diffuse sources, (e.g., tissue). We provide design details of the Raman system, along with quantitative estimation results for ethanol at non-toxic levels in a lipid tissue phantom. With 60 mW of excitation power at 808 nm, leave-one-out and blind cross-validation of partial least squares (PLS) regression models achieve r(2) > 0.98. Leave-one-out cross-validation demonstrates prediction errors of <15% at the common legal limit for intoxication (17.4 mmol/L = 0.08% by vol) and the best blind cross-validation achieves <12% error at this concentration.     

SmartGridRPC: The new RPC model for high performance Grid computing

The paper presents the SmartGridRPC model, an extension of the GridRPC model, which aims to achieve higher performance. The traditional GridRPC provides a programming model and API for mapping individual tasks of an application in a distributed Grid environment, which is based on the client‐server model characterized by the star network topology. SmartGridRPC provides a programming model and API for mapping a group of tasks of an application in a distributed Grid environment, which is based on the fully connected network topology. The SmartGridRPC programming model and API and its performance advantages over the GridRPC model are outlined in this paper. In addition, experimental results using a real‐world application are also presented. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

PARADOX—a heterogeneous machine for the 3D vision algorithm

We present in the paper a heterogeneous machine, PARADOX, designed in Oxford for real time image processing. PARADOX consists of a Datacube pipelined image processor, a configurable network of 32 T800 transputers, a Sun-4 workstation and a special-purpose interface connecting the Datacube to the transputer network. Its programming style is a mixture of MIMD paradigm employing a processor farm and interrupts to control the image processing pipeline in the Datacube via a VME bus. A number of vision algorithms including the Canny edge detector have been implemented on this machine at video rate. In particular, a 3D vision algorithm, Droid, has been implemented to provide navigation data for an autonomous guided vehicle.