Överviktsepidemin är ett utbrett folkhälsoproblem som är svårt att få bukt på, PREnet är en av många aktörer som arbetar för det. Frågan som inledningsvis ställdes var om själviakttagelseformulär är en effektiv metod för att kunna förändra beteenden som är relaterade till övervikt och med hjälp av detta minska i vikt. Syftet var att utvärdera själviakttagelseformulär som en metod i PREnets viktminskningsprogram. Deltagarna (n=38) var representerade från fyra PREnet-anläggningar. De ombads att registrera lämpliga och olämpliga vanor relaterade till övervikt, upp till sex månader.  Under eller efter avslutad viktkurs fick deltagarna besvara en enkät med 25 frågor. Deltagarna delades därefter in i två grupper. De som använt formuläret dagligen (n=26) och de som använt det mer sporadiskt eller inte alls (n=12). Fem hypoteser testades och signifikanta skillnader kontrollerades med hjälp av statistiska metoder. Resultatet visade att dagliganvändarna blev mer medvetna om sina mat-, dryck-, och motionsvanor (p<= 0.05). De hade även förbättrat och förändrat sina vanor i större utsträckning samt minskat mer i midjemått (p<= 0.05) men inte i vikt. Det fanns en tendens att deltagarna hade ökat lämpliga vanor, men inget tydde på att de minskat sina olämpliga vanor. Det fanns inga skillnader mellan de som deltagit under en längre respektive kortare tid. Slutsatsen var att själviakttagelseformulär är en fungerande metod om det används kontinuerligt.

Injuries are considered to be a major public health issue. More than 4600 people die each year and 10 % of all hospitalization in Sweden is related to injuries. The cost in a societal perspective is estimated to 59 billion a year. Injuries are possible to prevent. However it needs knowledge that the injury has occurred and the surrounding circumstances. This study used data from an accident and injury registration in outpatient health care, in the Swedish municipality of Gotland. The purpose of this study was to describe the injury patterns regarding place and cause of injury focused on age and gender differences. Data from the registration were categorized and statistically processed in SPSS after content analysis of narrative text.  Statistical measures used where frequencies, incidences and significances. The results show that there are more men than women who are injured in the ages 0-63 years. The largest number of injuries was found in the age group 0-19 years. Fall was the leading cause of injuries. Home was the most common place where injuries occurred. Existing statistics on a national level may have limited use in local injury prevention program. There could be specific determinants of injuries locally that have to be addressed. Local injury registration and analyzes that include demographic and socioeconomic factors could increase the potential for effective injury prevention. / Skador är ett stort folkhälsoproblem, drygt 4 600 personer dör varje år och 10 % av all sjukhusvård i Sverige är orsakade av skador. Samhällskostnaderna uppskattas till 59 miljarder kronor på år. En förutsättning för att kunna förebygga skador är att få vetskap om dem. Det krävs även kunskap kring hur olyckan har gått till. Denna studies data inhämtades från en olycks- och skaderegistrering, inom den öppna hälso- och sjukvården, på Gotland. Syftet med studien var att beskriva kontaktorsak, skadeplats och skadeorsak med fokus på ålders- och könsskillnader. Data från registreringsblanketter kategoriserades och behandlades statistiskt i SPSS efter att fritextbeskrivningar tolkats innehållsanalytiskt.  Statistiska mått som användes vid bearbetning av materialet var frekvenser, incidenser och signifikanser. Resultatet visar att det är flera män än kvinnor som skadar sig i åldrarna 0-63 år. Störst antal skadade återfanns i åldersgruppen 0-19. Fall var den främsta orsaken till skador. De flesta olyckor skedde i bostaden. Existerande statistik på riksnivå kan ha begränsad användning lokalt eftersom det kan finnas specifika bestämningsfaktorer för skador som påverkar skademönster. Lokala skaderegistreringar och analyser som innefattar demografiska och socioekonomiska faktorer kan öka möjligheterna till ett effektivt skadepreventivt arbete.

In this thesis, a method to the solution of autonomous navigation problem of a robot working in an outdoor application is sought. The robot will operate in unknown terrain where there is no a priori map present, and the robot must localize itself while simultaneously mapping the environment. This is known as Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) problem in the literature. The SLAM problem is attempted to be solved by using the correlation between range data acquired at different poses of the robot. A robot operating outdoors will traverse unstructured terrain, therefore for localization, pitch, yaw and roll angles must also be taken into account along with the (x,y,z) coordinates of the robot. The Iterative Closest Points (ICP) algorithm is used to find this transformation between different poses of the robot and find its location. In order to collect the range data, a system composing of a laser range finder and an angular positioning system is used. During localization and mapping, odometry data is fused with range data.

General video stabilization techniques which are digital, mechanical and optical are discussed. Under the concept of video stabilization, various digital motion estimation and motion correction algorithms are implemented. For motion estimation, in addition to digital approach, a mechanical approach is implemented also. Then all implemented motion estimation and motion correction algorithms are compared with respect to their computational times and accuracies over various videos. For small amount of jitter, digital motion estimation performs well in real time. But for big amount of motion, digital motion estimation takes very long time so for these cases mechanical motion estimation is preferred due to its speed in estimation although digital motion estimation performs better. Thus, when mechanical motion estimation is used first and then this estimate is used as the initial estimate for digital motion estimation, the same accuracy as digital estimation is obtained in approximately the same time as mechanical estimation. For motion correction Kalman and Fuzzy filtering perform better than lowpass and moving average filtering.

Medical image analysis is one of the most critical studies in field of medicine, since results gained by the analysis guide radiologists for diagnosis, treatment planning, and verification of administered treatment. Therefore, accuracy in analysis of medical images is at least as important as accuracy in data acquisition processes. Medical images require sequential application of several image post-processing techniques in order to be used for quantification and analysis of intended features. Main objective of this thesis study is to build up an application framework, which enables analysis and quantification of several features in medical images with minimized input-dependency over results. Intended application targets to present a software environment, which enables sequential application of medical image processing routines and provides support for radiologists in diagnosis, treatment planning and treatment verification phases of neurodegenerative diseases and brain tumors / thus, reducing the divergence in results of operations applied on medical images. In scope of this thesis study, a comprehensive literature review is performed, and a new medical image processing and analysis framework - including modules responsible for automation of separate processes and for several types of measurements such as real tumor volume and real lesion area - is implemented. Performance of the fully-automated segmentation module is evaluated with standards introduced by Neuro Imaging Laboratory, UCLA / and the fully-automated registration module with Normalized Cross-Correlation metric. Results have shown a success rate above 90 percent for both of the modules. Additionally, a number of experiments have been designed and performed using the implemented application. It is expected for an accurate, flexible, and robust software application to be accomplished on the basis of this thesis study, and to be used in field of medicine as a contributor by even non-engineer professionals.

Novelty and distinctive character are the conditions of protection for a registered design in Turkey. This study investigates the ways in which novelty and distinctive character are interpreted and assessed by the parties actively involved in the assessment process &ndash / judges, court experts, the Turkish Patent Institute experts, attorneys and design agents. The face-to-face interviews conducted with 51 participants from the parties involved indicate that the assessment of distinctive character presents more challenges than the assessment of novelty. Not being exactly the same with a previous design is the main consideration in the assessment of novelty. The assessment of distinctive character is primarily identified with the comparison of designs&rsquo / overall impressions whereas designer&rsquo / s degree of freedom remains as the least mentioned consideration. The study suggests that being subject to protection of designs not fulfilling the conditions of protection coupled with the uncertainties in the assessment of novelty and distinctive character, which may have a negative impact on the public trust in the design registration system. The study concludes with a set of suggestions for developing an assessment guide for the design registration system in Turkey.

In this thesis, we present an algorithm for vision based detection of moving objects observed by IR sensors on a moving platform. In addition we analyze the performance of different approaches in each step of the algorithm. The proposed algorithm is composed of preprocessing, feature detection, feature matching, homography estimation and difference image analysis steps. First, a global motion estimation based on planar homography model is performed in order to compensate the motion of the sensor and moving platform where the sensors are located. Then, moving objects are identified on difference images of consecutive video frames with global motion suppression. Performance of the proposed algorithm is shown on different IR image sequences.

As the situation of politics and economy becomes more and more unstable in Taiwan, people have higher criticism and expectation to government efficiency. However, both of Taipei Household Registration Office and Department of Health Kaohsiung City Government have successfully implemented many innovations in organization and started the initial change in less than 3 years. Thus, this research tries to analyze why and how innovations could be diffused efficiently in these two government organizations and started the change. This research collects abundant data and information through studying documents and many deep interviews at first. Then, these data or information are made a static analysis by Everett M. Rogers¡¦ theory of Diffusion of Innovations and Innovation Process in Organizations, and a dynamic analysis by Casual Loop Diagrams of Systmes Thinking. All analyses include the comparison of these two cases. There are 15 findings as followed: 1. Creating can bring better performance than problem-solving. 2. Characteristics of innovations and inertia of organization will affect the speed of innovations diffusion and the acceptability of innovations. 3. Both of innovations and organization will be modified to fit each other. 4. The leader is the most influent point for diffusion of innovations in bureaucracy. 5. The leader sets an example with his/her own conduct and starts change from small things can be helpful to diffusion of innovations. 6. The leader persistence of innovations is helpful to diffusion of innovations. 7. How the leader diffuses innovations is a process of dynamic coordination. 8. The leader is a designer of loops. 9. Different cases have similar key successful loops and key successful factors because they have the same structure of bureaucracy. 10. Structure can help and block leaders to diffuse and implement innovations in bureaucracy. 11. The innovation process in organization should be observed in a larger structure or system. 12. Reports of Media can motivate employees effectively and facilitate the phenomenon of ¡§lock-in¡¨. 13. Examination and evolution have much efficiency in changing employees¡¦ behaviors in bureaucracy. However, what can change employees¡¦ attitude often are others¡¦ appreciation, work results or leader¡¦s moral integrity. 14. Reports of Media, education training and visits can break the closed system of bureaucracy. This is helpful for diffusion of innovations in organization. 15. No matter the focal point of innovations is on easy and small things whose results are obvious, or on fundamental, long-term and more difficult things such as system and value change, ¡Ketc, all can result in profound changes in organizations. Moreover, this research also finds whether ¡§democratization¡¨, ¡§media¡¨, and ¡§bureaucracy¡¨ will bring good or bad contribution, these three things aren¡¦t the point and the most important thing is how we use them. We should take the responsibility by ourselves.

The field of computer vision focuses on the goal of developing techniques to exploit and extract information from underlying data that may represent images or other multidimensional data. In particular, two well-studied problems in computer vision are the fundamental tasks of 2D image segmentation and 3D pose estimation from a 2D scene. In this thesis, we first introduce two novel methodologies that attempt to independently solve 2D image segmentation and 3D pose estimation separately. Then, by leveraging the advantages of certain techniques from each problem, we couple both tasks in a variational and non-rigid manner through a single energy functional. Thus, the three theoretical components and contributions of this thesis are as follows: Firstly, a new distribution metric for 2D image segmentation is introduced. This is employed within the geometric active contour (GAC) framework. Secondly, a novel particle filtering approach is proposed for the problem of estimating the pose of two point sets that differ by a rigid body transformation. Thirdly, the two techniques of image segmentation and pose estimation are coupled in a single energy functional for a class of 3D rigid objects. After laying the groundwork and presenting these contributions, we then turn to their applicability to real world problems such as visual tracking. In particular, we present an example where we develop a novel tracking scheme for 3-D Laser RADAR imagery. However, we should mention that the proposed contributions are solutions for general imaging problems and therefore can be applied to medical imaging problems such as extracting the prostate from MRI imagery

Title from PDF of title page. / Document formatted into pages; contains 64 pages. / Thesis (M.S.C.S.)--University of South Florida, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. / Text (Electronic thesis) in PDF format. / ABSTRACT: Predicting breast tissue deformation is of great significance in several medical applications such as surgery, biopsy and imaging. In breast surgery, surgeons are often concerned with a specific portion of the breast, e.g., tumor, which must be located accurately beforehand. Also clinically it is important for combining the information provided by images from several modalities or at different times, for the planning and guidance of interventions. Multi-modality imaging of the breast obtained by mammography, MRI and PET is thought to be best achieved through some form of data fusion technique. However, images taken by these various techniques are often obtained under entirely different tissue configurations, compression, orientation or body position. In these cases some form of spatial transformation of image data from one geometry to another is required such that the tissues are represented in an equivalent configuration. / ABSTRACT: We constructed the 3D biomechanical models for this purpose using Finite Element Methods (FEM). The models were based on phantom and patient MRIs and could be used to model the interrelation between different types of tissue by applying displacements of forces and to register multimodality medical images. / System requirements: World Wide Web browser and PDF reader. / Mode of access: World Wide Web.