Morphological Pyramids in Multiresolution MIP Rendering of Large Volume Data: Survey and New Results

We survey and extend nonlinear signal decompositions based on morphological pyramids, and their application to multiresolution maximum intensity projection (MIP) volume rendering with progressive refinement and perfect reconstruction. The structure of the resulting multiresolution rendering algorithm is very similar to wavelet splatting. Several existing classes of pyramids are discussed, and their limitations indicated. To enhance the approximation quality of visualizations from reduced data (higher levels of the pyramid), two approaches are explored. First, a new class of morphological pyramids, involving connectivity enhancing operators, is considered. In the pyramidal analysis phase, a conditional dilation operator is used, with a given number n of iterations. The corresponding pyramids for n = 0 and n = 1 are known as the adjunction pyramid and Sun-Maragos pyramid, respectively. We show that the approximation quality when rendering from higher levels of the pyramid does increase as a function of the number of iterations n of the conditional dilation operator, but the improvement for n > 1 is limited. The second new approach, called streaming MIP-splatting, again starts from the adjunction pyramid. The new element is that detail coefficients of all levels are considered simultaneously and are resorted with respect to decreasing magnitude of a suitable error measure. All resorted coefficients are projected successively, until a desired accuracy of the resulting MIP image is obtained. We show that this method outperforms the previous methods based on morphological pyramids, both with respect to image quality with a fixed amount of detail data, and in terms of flexibility of controlling approximation error or computation time.Jos B.T.M. Roerdink received his M.Sc. (1979) in theoretical physics from the University of Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Following his Ph.D. (1983) from the University of Utrecht and a two-year position (1983–1985) as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, San Diego, both in the area of stochastic processes, he joined the Centre for Mathematics and Computer Science in Amsterdam. There he worked from 1986–1992 on image processing and tomographic reconstruction. He was appointed associate professor (1992) and full professor (2003), respectively, at the Institute for Mathematics and Computing Science of the University of Groningen, where he currently holds a chair in Scientific Visualization and Computer Graphics. His current research interests include morphological image processing, biomedical visualization, neuroimaging and bioinformatics.     

Concurrent software verification with states, events, and deadlocks

We present a framework for model checking concurrent software systems which incorporates both states and events. Contrary to other state/event approaches, our work also integrates two powerful verification techniques, counterexample-guided abstraction refinement and compositional reasoning. Our specification language is a state/event extension of linear temporal logic, and allows us to express many properties of software in a concise and intuitive manner. We show how standard automata-theoretic LTL model checking algorithms can be ported to our framework at no extra cost, enabling us to directly benefit from the large body of research on efficient LTL verification. We also present an algorithm to detect deadlocks in concurrent message-passing programs. Deadlock- freedom is not only an important and desirable property in its own right, but is also a prerequisite for the soundness of our model checking algorithm. Even though deadlock is inherently non-compositional and is not preserved by classical abstractions, our iterative algorithm employs both (non-standard) abstractions and compositional reasoning to alleviate the state-space explosion problem. The resulting framework differs in key respects from other instances of the counterexample-guided abstraction refinement paradigm found in the literature. We have implemented this work in the magic verification tool for concurrent C programs and performed tests on a broad set of benchmarks. Our experiments show that this new approach not only eases the writing of specifications, but also yields important gains both in space and in time during verification. In certain cases, we even encountered specifications that could not be verified using traditional pure event-based or state-based approaches, but became tractable within our state/event framework. We also recorded substantial reductions in time and memory consumption when performing deadlock-freedom checks with our new abstractions. Finally, we report two bugs (including a deadlock) in the source code of Micro-C/OS versions 2.0 and 2.7, which we discovered during our experiments. This research was sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under grants no. CCR-9803774 and CCR-0121547, the Office of Naval Research (ONR) and the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) under contract no. N00014-01-1-0796, the Army Research Office (ARO) under contract no. DAAD19-01-1-0485, and was conducted as part of the Predictable Assembly from Certifiable Components (PACC) project at the Software Engineering Institute (SEI). This article combines and builds upon the papers (CCO⁺04) and (CCOS04). Received December 2004 Revised July 2005 Accepted July 2005 by Eerke A. Boiten, John Derrick, Graeme Smith and Ian Hayes     

Minority Games, Local Interactions, and Endogenous Networks

We study a local version of the Minority Game, where agents are placed on the nodes of a directed graph. Agents care about being in the minority of the group of agents they are currently linked to and employ myopic best-reply rules to choose their next-period state. We show that, in this benchmark case, the smaller the size of local networks, the larger long-run population-average payoffs. We then explore the collective behavior of the system when agents can: (i) assign weights to each link they hold and modify them over time in response to payoff signals; (ii) delete badly performing links (i.e., opponents) and replace them with randomly chosen ones. Simulations suggest that, when agents are allowed to weigh links but cannot delete/replace them, the system self-organizes into networked clusters that attain very high payoff values. These clustered configurations are not stable and can easily be disrupted, generating huge subsequent payoff drops. If, however, agents can (and are sufficiently willing to) discard badly performing connections, the system quickly converges to stable states where all agents get the highest payoff, independently of the size of the networks initially in place.JEL Classification:s C72, C73.     

Behavioral Refinement of Graph Transformation-Based Models

Model-driven software engineering requires the refinement of abstract models into more concrete, platform-specific ones. To create and verify such refinements, behavioral models capturing recon- figuration or communication scenarios are presented as instances of a dynamic meta-model, i.e., a typed graph transformation system specifying the concepts and basic operations scenarios may be composed of. Possible refinement relations between models can now be described based on the corresponding meta-models.In contrast to previous approaches, refinement relations on graph transformation systems are not defined as fixed syntactic mappings between abstract transformation rules and, e.g., concrete rule expressions, but allow for a more loose, semantically defined relation between the transformation systems, resulting in a more flexible notion of refinement.     

邻域自适应选取的局部投影非线性降噪方法

局部投影降噪算法已广泛应用于非线性时间序列的分析中，但受邻域选取的影响较大。提出了一种按照自适应方式选取邻域大小的局部投影降噪算法。首先用时间延迟方法将一维时间序列重构到高维相空间。然后逐步增大每个待分析相点的领域大小，根据领域最大主方向变化过程中首次出现平稳阶段时，自适应地确定该相点的最优领域，最后再用局部几何投影的方法去除噪声成分。对洛伦兹信号和杜芬信号分别添加不同噪声水平的高斯白噪声，对领域自适应选取的局部投影算法与标准局部投影算法的降噪效果进行了比较。实验结果表明，自适应邻域选取方法，提高了局部投影算法的降噪能力和对领域参数的鲁棒性。     

基于个体差异的遗传选择算子设计

本文针对遗传算法采用基于局部竞争机制的选择算子不易跳出局部最优的问题，设计了一种基于个体差异的局部竞争选择算子，局部竞争作用的区域由种群内个体间的差异决定，有利于保持种群的多样性，增强了算法从局部最优中跳出的能力．仿真结果表明，遗传算法采用基于个体差异的选择算子，在全局极大值附近存在剧烈震荡的情况下，有效地保证了算法优化成功率和效率．     

WinDriver在开发基于PLX9056芯片的PCI设备驱动程序中的应用

随着图像处理技术的发展,对图像数据的传输速率要求越来越高,PCI总线就是一种具有高速传输速率的高性能的局部总线。在设计自行开发的基于PCI总线的数据传输设备时,需要开发相应的设备驱动程序。通过对目前使用较广泛的驱动开发工具DDK、DriverStudio和WinDriver的比较,WinDriver具有适用性广、性能优良及稳定等优点。介绍了WinDriver的主要特点、结构和开发步骤。结合实践中开发的数据接收PCI插卡介绍了利用WinDriver开发PCI设备驱动程序的方法。     

一种求解旅行商问题的禁忌搜索算法

提出了一种求解旅行商问题的禁忌搜索算法，并对几个实例进行了计算机模拟．实验结果表明，在求解中小规模的旅行商问题上，该算法具有良好的性能．     

陕西民办高等教育现象剖析

在考察陕西民办高等教育发展历程的基础上，丈章指出，陕西民办高等教育现象的出现是陕西特有的经济状况、政策环境以及文化资源等因素合力作用的结果，离开其中的任何一个因素，都难以诠释陕西民办高等教育现象形成的内在机理及其原因。     

基于PCI总线的多功能虚拟仪器

利用LabVIEW虚拟仪器设计平台与基于PCI总线的高速数据采集卡构建了一个虚拟仪器系统。较为详细地介绍了如何利用美国NI公司的LabVIEW图形化编程语言,对虚拟仪器进行研发,分别从硬件、软件两个方面对仪器的构成、设计与实现进行了详细的叙述。经研究表明,本仪器可以完成信号产生、数据采集、时域波形显示、数据存储、波形存储、波形回放、波形打印、参数测量、信号处理、频谱分析、频域波形显示等功能。