Noise reduction for magnetic resonance images via adaptive multiscale products thresholding

Edge-preserving denoising is of great interest in medical image processing. This paper presents a wavelet-based multiscale products thresholding scheme for noise suppression of magnetic resonance images. A Canny edge detector-like dyadic wavelet transform is employed. This results in the significant features in images evolving with high magnitude across wavelet scales, while noise decays rapidly. To exploit the wavelet interscale dependencies we multiply the adjacent wavelet subbands to enhance edge structures while weakening noise. In the multiscale products, edges can be effectively distinguished from noise. Thereafter, an adaptive threshold is calculated and imposed on the products, instead of on the wavelet coefficients, to identify important features. Experiments show that the proposed scheme better suppresses noise and preserves edges than other wavelet-thresholding denoising methods.     

A Millimeter-Wave Quasi-Optical Circuit for Compact Triple-Band Receiving System

A novel receiver optical system designed for Korean VLBI Network (KVN) has been used for conducting simultaneous millimeter-wave very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) observations at frequencies of 22, 43, 86, and 129 GHz. This multi-frequency band receiver system has been effective in compensation of atmospheric phase fluctuation by unique phase referencing technique in mm-VLBI observations. However, because the original optics system incorporated individual cryogenic receivers in separate cryostats, a rather bulky optical bench of size about 2600 mm x 2300 mm x 60 mm was required. To circumvent difficulties in installation and beam alignment, an integrated quasi-optical circuit incorporating a more compact triple-band receiver in single cryostat is proposed in this paper. The recommended frequency bands of the improved triple-band receiver are K(18–26 GHz) band, Q(35–50 GHz) band, and W(85–115 GHz) band. A frequency-independent quasi-optical circuit for triple band is adopted to obtain constant aperture efficiency as a function of the observed frequencies. The simulation results show that total aperture efficiency of each recommended frequency band is maintained almost constant within 1%. We present the design details of the compact wideband quasi-optical circuit and the triple-band receiver optimized for simultaneous multi-frequency observations.     

Fully integrated 1.2-μA and 13-μA quiescent current LDOs with improved transient response

We introduce two extremely low quiescent current (I _Q ) low-dropout (LDO) voltage regulators. The Low I _Q -LDO (LI _Q -LDO) uses 13 μA of total quiescent current and is designed for a maximum load current of 50 mA. The Micro I _Q -LDO (MI _Q -LDO) uses only 1.2 μA of total quiescent current and is designed for a maximum load current of 5 mA. Detailed pole/zero analysis is performed to aid in the design of the LDOs. Two LHP zeros cancel the two non-dominant poles which extend the bandwidth and improve transient response. Both designs are fully integrated, stabilized with an on-chip capacitive load of 100 pF. In load transient, the total variation in output voltage for LI _Q -LDO and MI _Q -LDO is 1 V and 950 mV, respectively, and the total line transient variation is 668 and 599 mV, respectively. Both designs occupy an area of 0.26 mm² in a 0.5-μm CMOS process. Two process-independent figures of merit are proposed to compare LI _Q -LDO and MI _Q -LDO with other published work.     

Smaller diameters in hypercube-variant networks

A number of hypercube-variant networks attempt to improve the hypercube by adding extra connections and thus reducing the diameter of the constructed network. We briefly outline a model which describes these variant networks. Further, we show that by restricting this model, we can describe hypercube variants with exactly the same number of edges as the hypercube. We mention several such networks which all have diameter about n/2. We describe a new network within this class that has diameter about 2n/5, thus improving the best known previous bound by a constant factor. We show that within a limited construction paradigm our network is best possible. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Reminder on queueing theory for ATM networks

Queueing theory is a very useful means for performance prediction during the system design phase, for resource dimensioning and for planning of networks according to load andquality of service figures. In this paper, an overview is given about traffic models for ATM traffic sources, generic ATM traffic control models and performance evaluation methods.     

Conformance testing of protocols specified as communicating finitestate machines-a guided random walk based approach

We present a new approach for conformance testing of protocols specified as a collection of communicating finite state machines (FSMs). Our approach uses a guided random walk procedure. This procedure attempts to cover all transitions in the component FSMs. We also introduce the concept of observers that check some aspect of protocol behavior. We present the result of applying our method to two example protocols: full-duplex alternating bit protocol and the ATM-adaptation-layer-convergence protocol. Applying our procedure to the ATM adaptation layer, 99% of component FSMs edges can be covered in a test with 11692 input steps. Previous approaches cannot do conformance test generation for standard protocols (such as asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) adaptation layer) specified as a collection of communicating FSMs     

CO2 laser light scattering by bare soils for emissivitymeasurements: absolute calibration and correlation with backscatteringand composition

Measurements of the scattering cross section of a number of bare soils have been made with CO₂ laser illumination at 10.59 μm. The primary focus was on absolute calibration of the measurements. First, comparison of emissivity values resulting from the application of Kirchhoff's relation after angular integration of the bidirectional measurements, with emissivity values obtained from the analysis of the emitted radiation show excellent agreement to within less than 0.3%. Second, it was found that a simple formula holds for a relationship between the emissivity and co- and cross-polarized backscattering cross section at an angle of 30°. Third, a clear correlation was observed between emissivity and composition (in this case % Al+Fe oxides; % SiO₂) for a homogeneous series of samples from the same area in Niger. These results emphasize the importance of calibrated experimental data. The implications of the research give evidence of the advantage of obtaining emissivity from remote reflectivity measurements and possibly only backscattering measurements, and remotely estimating mineral composition