Face detection and recognition of natural human emotion using Markov random fields

This paper presents an integrated system for emotion detection. In this research effort, we have taken into account the fact that emotions are most widely represented with eye and mouth expressions. The proposed system uses color images and it is consisted of three modules. The first module implements skin detection, using Markov random fields models for image segmentation and skin detection. A set of several colored images with human faces have been considered as the training set. A second module is responsible for eye and mouth detection and extraction. The specific module uses the HLV color space of the specified eye and mouth region. The third module detects the emotions pictured in the eyes and mouth, using edge detection and measuring the gradient of eyes’ and mouth’s region figure. The paper provides results from the system application, along with proposals for further research.     

Overview of Advanced Computer Vision Systems for Skin Lesions Characterization

During the last years, computer-vision-based diagnosis systems have been used in several hospitals and dermatology clinics, aiming mostly at the early detection of skin cancer, and more specifically, the recognition of malignant melanoma tumour. In this paper, we review the state of the art in such systems by first presenting the installation, the visual features used for skin lesion classification, and the methods for defining them. Then, we describe how to extract these features through digital image processing methods, i.e., segmentation, border detection, and color and texture processing, and we present the most prominent techniques for skin lesion classification. The paper reports the statistics and the results of the most important implementations that exist in the literature, while it compares the performance of several classifiers on the specific skin lesion diagnostic problem and discusses the corresponding findings.     

Radial basis function neural networks classification for the recognition of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis in microscopic images

This study investigates the potential of applying the radial basis function (RBF) neural network architecture for the classification of biological microscopic images displaying lung tissue sections with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. For the development of the RBF classifiers, the fuzzy means clustering algorithm is utilized. This method is based on a fuzzy partition of the input space and requires only a short amount of time to select both the structure and the parameters of the RBF classifier. The new technique was applied in lung sections acquired using a microscope and captured by a digital camera, at a magnification of 4 x. Age- and sex-matched, 6- to 8-week-old mice (five for each time point and five as control) were used for the induction of pulmonary fibrosis (cf. bleomycin). Bleomycin administration initially induces lung inflammation that is followed by a progressive destruction of the normal lung architecture. The captured images correspond to 7, 15, and 23 days after bleomycin or saline injection and bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) has been performed to the mice sample. The images were analyzed and color features were extracted. A support vector machines (SVMs)-based classifier was also employed for the same problem. The resulting scores derived by visual assessment of the images by expert pathologists were compared with the RBF and SVM classification outcome. Overall, the RBF neural network had a slightly better performance than that of the SVM classifier, but both performed very well, matching to a great percentage the scoring of the experts. There are some erroneous predictions of the algorithm for the regions characterized as "ill" regions (i.e., some bronchia were wrongly classified as fibrotic areas); however, in general, the algorithm worked pretty fine in distinguishing pathologic from normal in most cases and for heterogeneous fibrotic foci, achieving high values in terms of specificity and sensitivity.     

Improving the performance of convolutional neural network for skin image classification using the response of image analysis filters

Neural Computing and Applications - In this work, we focus in the analysis of dermoscopy images using convolutional neural networks (CNNs). More specifically, we investigate the value of augmenting...     

GOrevenge: a novel generic reverse engineering method for the identification of critical molecular players, through the use of ontologies

The ever-increasing use of ontologies in modern biological analysis and interpretation facilitates the understanding of the cellular procedures, their hierarchical organization, and their potential interactions at a system's level. Currently, the gene ontology serves as a paradigm, where through the annotation of whole genomes of certain organisms, genes subsets selected, either from high-throughput experiments or with an established pivotal role regarding the probed disease, can act as a starting point for the exploration of their underlying functional interconnections. This may also aid the elucidation of hidden regulatory mechanisms among genes. Reverse engineering the functional relevance of genes to specific cellular pathways and vice versa, through the exploitation of the inner structure of the ontological vocabularies, may help impart insight regarding the identification and prioritization of the critical role of specific genes. The proposed graph-theoretical method is showcased in a pancreatic cancer and a T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia gene set, incorporating edge and Resnik semantic similarity metrics, and systematically evaluated regarding its performance.     

An adaptive LTE listen-before-talk scheme towards a fair coexistence with Wi-Fi in unlicensed spectrum

The technological growth combined with the exponential increase of wireless traffic are pushing the wireless community to investigate solutions to maximally exploit the available spectrum. Among the proposed solutions, the operation of Long Term Evolution (LTE) in the unlicensed spectrum (LTE-U) has attracted significant attention. Recently, the 3rd Generation Partnership Project announced specifications that allow LTE to transmit in the unlicensed spectrum using a Listen Before Talk (LBT) procedure, respecting this way the regulator requirements worldwide. However, the proposed standards may cause coexistence issues between LTE and legacy Wi-Fi networks. In this article, it is discussed that a fair coexistence mechanism is needed to guarantee equal channel access opportunities for the co-located networks in a technology-agnostic way, taking into account potential traffic requirements. In order to enable harmonious coexistence and fair spectrum sharing among LTE-U and Wi-Fi, an adaptive LTE-U LBT scheme is presented. This scheme uses a variable LTE transmission opportunity (TXOP) followed by a variable muting period. This way, co-located Wi-Fi networks can exploit the muting period to gain access to the wireless medium. The scheme is studied and evaluated in different compelling scenarios using a simulation platform. The results show that by configuring the LTE-U with the appropriate TXOP and muting period values, the proposed scheme can significantly improve the coexistence among LTE-U and Wi-Fi in a fair manner. Finally, a preliminary algorithm is proposed on how the optimal configuration parameters can be selected towards harmonious and fair coexistence.     

The IEEE 802.11g standard for high data rate WLANs

Continuous WLAN public acceptance comes with increasing demand for provision of higher data rates. Building on this context, the IEEE published the IEEE 802.11g standard for providing data rates of up to 54 Mb/s at the 2.4 GHz band. This article presents the new features of IEEE 802.11g and, using an open source C++-based simulation tool, evaluates both the performance and effectiveness of these features compared to the older IEEE 802.11 standard versions.