通过ATM网络进行远程教学

ATM技术开创了基于远程教学的课程设计新纪元。高速数据连接使得对集中式多媒体业务的访问成为可能,会议电视的应用使用户能够参加现场直播的研讨会、讲座和解说。 远程教学课程设计所面临的主要问题是,要适当地补偿教学双方分离而造成的交互性损失。对教育学的研究表明,积累知识的过程在相当程度上有赖于学员间的相互交流。ATM技术能为学员间建立起多种现场交互型连接。     

Wind tunnel simulation of air pollution dispersion in a street canyon

Physical simulation was used to study pollution dispersion in a street canyon. The street canyon model was designed to study the effect of measuring flow and concentration fields. A method of C02-laser photoacoustic spectrometry was applied for detection of trace concentration of gas pollution. The advantage of this method is its high sensitivity and broad dynamic range, permitting monitoring of concentrations from trace to saturation values. Application of this method enabled us to propose a simple model based on line permeation pollutant source, developed on the principle of concentration standards, to ensure high precision and homogeneity of the concentration flow. Spatial measurement of the concentration distribution inside the street canyon was performed on the model with reference velocity of 1.5 m/s.     

On the method-independent lower bound (MILB) to the variance of attenuation estimation in random reflection

Based on the Cramer-Rao inequality, the MILB is calculated for the problem of estimating the frequency slope of the attenuation coefficient of tissue from random reflections of ultrasonic waves. Under typical signal conditions, this bound for a 1-cm x 1-cm region was found to be about 0.08 db/(MHz-cm), rather close to the clinical requirement of 0.1 dB/(MHz-cm). Comparison to existing methods (including an autoregressive deconvolution method) shows room for further improvement.     

Color quantitation through image processing in dermatology

Classical color models and their applications to computer vision are reviewed. The performances of color quantitation from digitized images are compared with those derived from a chromameter. The color quantitation obtained from either digitized color slides or directly digitized images is proved to be more efficient than the conventional visual assessment of observers. A methodology is proposed for determining the specific color indices which are needed in dermatology. An application of this methodology is developed for designing a blanching quantitation index in order to replace the visual assessment during McKenzie tests.     

3-D segmentation of MR images of the head for 3-D display

Algorithms for 3-D segmentation and reconstruction of anatomical surfaces from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data are presented. The 3-D extension of the Marr-Hildreth operator is described, and it is shown that its zero crossings are related to anatomical surfaces. For an improved surface definition, morphological filters-dilation and erosion-are applied. From these contours, 3-D reconstructions of skin, bone, brain, and the ventricular system can be generated. Results obtained with different segmentation parameters and surface rendering methods are presented. The fidelity of the generated images comes close to anatomical reality. It is noted that both the convolution and the morphological filtering are computationally expensive, and thus take a long time on a general-purpose computer. Another problem is assigning labels to the constituents of the head; in the current implementation, this is done interactively.