Dyadic-based factorizations for regular paraunitary filterbanks and M-band orthogonal wavelets with structural vanishing moments

Paraunitary filterbanks (PUFBs) can be designed and implemented using either degree-one or order-one dyadic-based factorization. This work discusses how regularity of a desired degree is structurally imposed on such factorizations for any number of channels M /spl ges/ 2, without necessarily constraining the phase responses. The regular linear-phase PUFBs become a special case under the proposed framework. We show that the regularity conditions are conveniently expressed in terms of recently reported M-channel lifting structures, which allow for fast, reversible, and possibly multiplierless implementations in addition to improved design efficiency, as suggested by numerical experience. M-band orthonormal wavelets with structural vanishing moments are obtained by iterating the resulting regular PUFBs on the lowpass channel. Design examples are presented and evaluated using a transform-based image coder, and they are found to outperform previously reported designs.     

Study of symmetric microstructures for CMOS multilayer residual stress

This study presents a fabrication-based approach to improve the curl-up effect in complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) multilayer large-area planar structures. Control of the residual stress of CMOS multilayer microstructures is necessary for development of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) sensors such as accelerometers and micromirrors. In this work, 3D symmetric geometry can be used to overcome effectively the residual stresses in CMOS multilayer microstructures. To demonstrate this concept, a symmetric multilayer flat-plane is fabricated and release-etched using an isotropic plasma etching process. The isotropic etch characteristics and lateral undercut can be controlled using a chamber pressure of 0.47 ± 0.2 Torr. A flat-plane structure with an area of 500 μm × 500 μm is fabricated using multilayer materials, including four metal and three silicon dioxide layers. Based on this approach, the measured results show the residual stress effect can be minimized in CMOS multilayer microstructures, and furthermore the curl-up effect of flat-plane is less than 2 μm across the 500 μm × 500 μm area.     

Cross-domain probabilistic inference in a clinical decision support system: examples for dermatology and rheumatology

Introduction

Maintaining a large diagnostic knowledge base (KB) is a demanding task for any person or organization. Future clinical decision support system (CDSS) may rely on multiple, smaller and more focused KBs developed and maintained at different locations that work together seamlessly. A cross-domain inference tool has great clinical import and utility.

Methods

We developed a modified multi-membership Bayes formulation to facilitate the cross-domain probabilistic inferencing among KBs with overlapping diseases. Two KBs developed for evaluation were non-infectious generalized blistering diseases (GBD) and autoimmune diseases (AID). After the KBs were finalized, they were evaluated separately for validity.

Result

Ten cases from medical journal case reports were used to evaluate this “cross-domain” inference across the two KBs. The resultant non-error rate (NER) was 90%, and the average of probabilities assigned to the correct diagnosis (AVP) was 64.8% for cross-domain consultations.

Conclusion

A novel formulation is now available to deal with problems occurring in a clinical diagnostic decision support system with multi-domain KBs. The utilization of this formulation will help in the development of more integrated KBs with greater focused knowledge domains.     

MPTP lesion causes neuroinflammation and deficits in object recognition in Wistar rats.

Animal models of Parkinson’s disease with dementia would greatly facilitate research into the underlying causes of this disorder. Here, we showed that bilateral infusion of 1-methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine (MPTP) into the substantia nigra pars compacta (SNc) of Wistar rats caused degeneration of nigrostriatal dopaminergic neurons, cell loss in the hippocampal CA1 area, as well as microglial activation and increase of interleukin-2 levels in several brain regions. In addition, increase of anxiety-like behavior and impairment of object recognition were observed in the MPTP-lesioned rats. These findings suggest that neuroinflammation may contribute to MPTP-induced neurodegeneration and behavioral deficits, which is suggested as an animal model of Parkinson’s disease dementia. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Theory and factorization for a class of structurally regular biorthogonal filter banks

Regularity is a fundamental and desirable property of wavelets and perfect reconstruction filter banks (PRFBs). Among others, it dictates the smoothness of the wavelet basis and the rate of decay of the wavelet coefficients. This paper considers how regularity of a desired degree can be structurally imposed onto biorthogonal filter banks (BOFBs) so that they can be designed with exact regularity and fast convergence via unconstrained optimization. The considered design space is a useful class of M-channel causal finite-impulse response (FIR) BOFBs (having anticausal FIR inverses) that are characterized by the dyadic-based structure W(z)=I-UV/sup /spl dagger//+z/sup -1/UV/sup /spl dagger// for which U and V are M/spl times//spl gamma/ parameter matrices satisfying V/sup /spl dagger//U=I/sub /spl gamma//, 1/spl les//spl gamma//spl les/M, for any M/spl ges/2. Structural conditions for regularity are derived, where the Householder transform is found convenient. As a special case, a class of regular linear-phase BOFBs is considered by further imposing linear phase (LP) on the dyadic-based structure. In this way, an alternative and simplified parameterization of the biorthogonal linear-phase filter banks (GLBTs) is obtained, and the general theory of structural regularity is shown to simplify significantly. Regular BOFBs are designed according to the proposed theory and are evaluated using a transform-based image codec. They are found to provide better objective performance and improved perceptual quality of the decompressed images. Specifically, the blocking artifacts are reduced, and texture details are better preserved. For fingerprint images, the proposed biorthogonal transform codec outperforms the FBI scheme by 1-1.6 dB in PSNR.     

An effective and efficient compression algorithm for ECG signals with irregular periods

This paper presents an effective and efficient preprocessing algorithm for two-dimensional (2-D) electrocardiogram (ECG) compression to better compress irregular ECG signals by exploiting their inter- and intra-beat correlations. To better reveal the correlation structure, we first convert the ECG signal into a proper 2-D representation, or image. This involves a few steps including QRS detection and alignment, period sorting, and length equalization. The resulting 2-D ECG representation is then ready to be compressed by an appropriate image compression algorithm. We choose the state-of-the-art JPEG2000 for its high efficiency and flexibility. In this way, the proposed algorithm is shown to outperform some existing arts in the literature by simultaneously achieving high compression ratio (CR), low percent root mean squared difference (PRD), low maximum error (MaxErr), and low standard derivation of errors (StdErr). In particular, because the proposed period sorting method rearranges the detected heartbeats into a smoother image that is easier to compress, this algorithm is insensitive to irregular ECG periods. Thus either the irregular ECG signals or the QRS false-detection cases can be better compressed. This is a significant improvement over existing 2-D ECG compression methods. Moreover, this algorithm is not tied exclusively to JPEG2000. It can also be combined with other 2-D preprocessing methods or appropriate codecs to enhance the compression performance in irregular ECG cases.     

Lapped unimodular transforms: lifting factorization and structural regularity

In this paper, the lifting factorization and structural regularity of the lapped unimodular transforms (LUTs) are studied. The proposed M-channel lifting factorization is complete, is minimal in the McMillan sense, and has diagonal entries of unity. In addition to allowing for integer-to-integer mapping and guaranteeing perfect reconstruction even under finite precision, the proposed lifting factorization structurally ensures unimodularity. For regular LUT design, structural conditions that impose (1,1)-, (1,2)- and (2,1)-regularity onto the filter banks (FBs) are presented. Consequently, the optimal filter coefficients can be obtained through unconstrained optimizations. A special lifting-based lattice structure is used for parameterizing nonsingular matrices, which not only helps impose regularity but also has rational-coefficient unimodular FBs as a by-product. The regular LUTs can be transformed to the lifting domain with the proposed factorization for faster and multiplierless implementations. The lifting factorization and the regularity conditions are derived for two different (Type-I and Type-II) factorizations of the first-order unimodular FBs. Design examples are presented to confirm the proposed theory.