A patient-mounted robotic platform for CT-scan guided procedures

In this paper, we present a novel robotic assistant dedicated to medical interventions under computed tomography scan guidance. This compact and lightweight patient-mounted robot is designed so as to fulfill the requirements of most interventional radiology procedures. It is built from an original 5 DOF parallel structure with a semispherical workspace, particularly well suited to CT-scan interventional procedures. The specifications, the design, and the choice of compatible technological solutions are detailed. A preclinical evaluation is presented, with the registration of the robot in the CT-scan.     

Comparing the streaming of FGS encoded video at different aggregation levels: frame,GoP, and scene

Fine granularity scalability (FGS), a new coding technique that has recently been added to the MPEG‐4 video coding standard, allows for the flexible scaling of each individual video frame at very fine granularity. This flexibility makes FGS video very well suited for rate‐distortion optimized streaming mechanisms, which minimize the distortion (i.e. maximize the quality) of the streamed video by transmitting the optimal number of bits for each individual frame. The per‐frame optimization of the transmission schedule, however, puts a significant computational burden on video servers and intermediate streaming gateways. In this paper we investigate the rate‐distortion optimized streaming at different video frame aggregation levels. We find that compared to the optimization for each individual video frame, optimization at the level of video scenes reduces the computational effort dramatically, while reducing the video quality only very slightly. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

用于先进的双嵌入和栓工艺的低缺陷钨CMP高性价比浆料(英文)

介绍了用于钨双嵌入和钨栓CMP工艺的新型CMP3200TM氧化铝浆料,测试证明,这种浆料在110nm技术节点的钨CMP工艺应用中取得了理想的效果。通过对氧化铝粒子制造工艺的有效控制,获得了可满足110nm技术节点双嵌入和栓层钨CMP工艺要求的低缺陷率,高性价比的氧化铝蛐硝酸铁浆料。从而在价格竞争激烈的半导体制造领域,特别是代工市场引起了业界越来越多的关注。     

High pass filter with above IC integrated SrTiO3 high K MIM capacitors

This paper describes realization and characterization of SrTiO₃ (STO) high K MIM capacitors above BiCMOS integrated circuit (IC). These capacitances are connected to IC and are used as coupling capacitors in order to realize a high pass filter. Surface capacitance achieved is 10 nF/mm² with capacitance value of 1.2 nF. The process for STO MIM fabrication does not exceed 400 °C, which is compatible with interconnections. Typical K and dielectric losses values obtained are, respectively 110% and 2%. Yield obtained reaches 83% for capacitors. A functional high pass filter using these STO capacitors was realized in this study. It exhibits a cut-off frequency at 6.5 kHz and a constant gain at higher frequencies of −1.3 dB.     

Epitaxial liftoff microcavities for 1.55-μm quantum-well spatiallight modulators

Microcavities operating at 1.55 μm have been realized according to the epitaxial liftoff (ELO) technique. The process is described and characterized. No significant variation of the optical properties of the grafted devices has been found. The technique is then applied to a spatial light modulator made by inserting a 3-μm multiple-quantum-well device in a short asymmetric Fabry-Perot microcavity. An enhancement by a factor 1000 of the performances of the switching component is obtained. The input diffraction efficiency reaches 2% in a degenerated four wave mixing configuration with a pulse energy of 1 μJ/cm² and without any applied electric field     

电源开关设计基础

电源开关的使用较为复杂,甚至让大多数电子产品设计人员都感到困惑,特别是对那些非电源管理专家而言.在各种各样的应用中,例如:便携式电子产品、消费类电子产品、工业或电信系统等,广大设计人员正越来越多地使用电源开关.这些电源开关的使用方式多种多样,包括控制、排序,电路保护、配电甚至是系统电源开启管理等.当然,每一种用法都需要有不同特性的电源开关解决方案.     

Measurement of fractional order model parameters of respiratory mechanical impedance in total liquid ventilation

This study presents a methodology for applying the forced-oscillation technique in total liquid ventilation. It mainly consists of applying sinusoidal volumetric excitation to the respiratory system, and determining the transfer function between the delivered flow rate and resulting airway pressure. The investigated frequency range was f ∈ [0.05, 4] Hz at a constant flow amplitude of 7.5 mL/s. The five parameters of a fractional order lung model, the existing "5-parameter constant-phase model," were identified based on measured impedance spectra. The identification method was validated in silico on computer-generated datasets and the overall process was validated in vitro on a simplified single-compartment mechanical lung model. In vivo data on ten newborn lambs suggested the appropriateness of a fractional-order compliance term to the mechanical impedance to describe the low-frequency behavior of the lung, but did not demonstrate the relevance of a fractional-order inertance term. Typical respiratory system frequency response is presented together with statistical data of the measured in vivo impedance model parameters. This information will be useful for both the design of a robust pressure controller for total liquid ventilators and the monitoring of the patient's respiratory parameters during total liquid ventilation treatment.     

Bi-exponential edge-preserving smoother

Edge-preserving smoothers need not be taxed by a severe computational cost. We present, in this paper, a lean algorithm that is inspired by the bi-exponential filter and preserves its structure-a pair of one-tap recursions. By a careful but simple local adaptation of the filter weights to the data, we are able to design an edge-preserving smoother that has a very low memory and computational footprint while requiring a trivial coding effort. We demonstrate that our filter (a bi-exponential edge-preserving smoother, or BEEPS) has formal links with the traditional bilateral filter. On a practical side, we observe that the BEEPS also produces images that are similar to those that would result from the bilateral filter, but at a much-reduced computational cost. The cost per pixel is constant and depends neither on the data nor on the filter parameters, not even on the degree of smoothing.     

Maximum Likelihood-Based Direction-of-Arrival Estimator for Discrete Sources

This paper addresses the problem of direction-of-arrival (DOA) parameter estimation in array processing when the signals are inherently discrete, which is the case mainly in the digital communication context. Based on the particular structure of the signal space in the data model, a maximum likelihood-based approach is introduced. The strategy consists in transforming the parameter estimation problem into a decision task. It is shown through numerical simulations that the proposed solution closely follows the performance limit given by the Cramér–Rao bound. Some important features of the technique are as follows: (i) it is capable of handling any number of sources, provided that the number of sensors is greater than or equal to two and the number of snapshots is sufficiently greater than the cardinality of the signal space; (ii) the estimation quality is not affected by the angle and phase separation; and (iii) it offers the possibility to deal with uncalibrated arrays.     

Floating Point CGRA based Ultra-Low Power DSP Accelerator

Journal of Signal Processing Systems - Coarse Grained Reconfigurable Arrays (CGRAs) are emerging as energy efficient accelerators providing a high grade of flexibility in both academia and...