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The work in this thesis aims at studying the problems related to the robustness of a face recognition system where specific attention is given to the issues of handling the image variation complexity and inherent limited Unique Characteristic Information (UCI) within the scope of unfamiliar identity recognition environment. These issues will be the main themes in developing a mutual understanding of extraction and classification tasking strategies and are carried out as a two interdependent but related blocks of research work. Naturally, the complexity of the image variation problem is built up from factors including the viewing geometry, illumination, occlusion and other kind of intrinsic and extrinsic image variation. Ideally, the recognition performance will be increased whenever the variation is reduced and/or the UCI is increased. However, the variation reduction on 2D facial images may result in loss of important clues or UCI data for a particular face alternatively increasing the UCI may also increase the image variation. To reduce the lost of information, while reducing or compensating the variation complexity, a hybrid technique is proposed in this thesis. The technique is derived from three conventional approaches for the variation compensation and feature extraction tasks. In this first research block, transformation, modelling and compensation approaches are combined to deal with the variation complexity. The ultimate aim of this combination is to represent (transformation) the UCI without losing the important features by modelling and discard (compensation) and reduce the level of the variation complexity of a given face image. Experimental results have shown that discarding a certain obvious variation will enhance the desired information rather than sceptical in losing the interested UCI. The modelling and compensation stages will benefit both variation reduction and UCI enhancement. Colour, gray level and edge image information are used to manipulate the UCI which involve the analysis on the skin colour, facial texture and features measurement respectively. The Derivative Linear Binary transformation (DLBT) technique is proposed for the features measurement consistency. Prior knowledge of input image with symmetrical properties, the informative region and consistency of some features will be fully utilized in preserving the UCI feature information. As a result, the similarity and dissimilarity representation for identity parameters or classes are obtained from the selected UCI representation which involves the derivative features size and distance measurement, facial texture and skin colour. These are mainly used to accommodate the strategy of unfamiliar identity classification in the second block of the research work. Since all faces share similar structure, classification technique should be able to increase the similarities within the class while increase the dissimilarity between the classes. Furthermore, a smaller class will result on less burden on the identification or recognition processes. The proposed method or collateral classification strategy of identity representation introduced in this thesis is by manipulating the availability of the collateral UCI for classifying the identity parameters of regional appearance, gender and age classes. In this regard, the registration of collateral UCI s have been made in such a way to collect more identity information. As a result, the performance of unfamiliar identity recognition positively is upgraded with respect to the special UCI for the class recognition and possibly with the small size of the class. The experiment was done using data from our developed database and open database comprising three different regional appearances, two different age groups and two different genders and is incorporated with pose and illumination image variations.

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Abstract Divine Substitution: Humanity as the Manifestation of Deity in the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East, by Stephen L. Herring, is an investigation of ancient conceptualizations of divine presence. Specifically, this thesis investigates the possibility that the ancient Mesopotamian conceptualization of cultic and royal statues, thought to actually manifest the presence of gods and kings, can likewise be found in ancient Israel. Despite the overly pessimistic view of the later biblical authors, material objects were almost certainly believed to extend and manifest the presence of God in pre- exilic Israel. Likewise, the later polemics against such cultic concepts demonstrate Israel's familiarity with this type of conceptualization. These polemics engaged in the rhetoric of mutilation and destruction of cultic representations, the erasure and re- inscription of divine names, and the rhetorical deconstruction of the specific Mesopotamian rituals thought to transform the dead statue into a living god. Though the biblical reflection of these concepts is more often found in the negative commentary regarding "foreign" cultic practices, S. Herring demonstrates that these opinions were not universally held. At least three biblical texts (Gen 1:26f.; Ex 34:29-34; and Ezek 36-37) portray the conceptualization that material images could manifest the divine presence in positive terms. Yet, these positive attestations were limited to a certain type of material image - humans.

In certain neuro-degenerative diseases likemultiple sclerosis (MS), the rate of brain atrophy can be measured by monitoring the brain parenchymal fraction (BPF) in such patients. The BPF is defined as the ratio of brain parenchymal volume (BPV, defined as the total volume of gray matter tissue, white matter tissue and other unidentified tissue) and intracranial volume (ICV, the total volume of the skull). It can be represented by the formula in equation 1: <img src="http://www.diva-portal.org/cgi-bin/mimetex.cgi?%5Csmall%20BPF%20=%20%5Cfrac%20%7BPBV%7D%7BICV%7D%20%5C;%20%5C;%20%5C;%20%5C;%20(1)" /> A complication with this measure is that the BPF is affected by the presence of edema in the brain, which leads to swelling and hence may obscure the true rate of brain atrophy. This leads to uncertainty when establishing “normal values” of BPF when analyzing different magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans of the same patient. Another problem is that different MRI scans of the same patient cannot be compared directly, due to the fact that the head of the patient will be in a different position for every scan. The SyMRI software used in this master thesis has the functionality to perform brain tissue characterization and measurement of brain volume, given a number of MR images of a patient. Using tissue properties such as longitudinal relaxation time (T1), transverse relaxation time (T2) and proton density (PD), each voxel in a volume can be classified to belong to a certain tissue type. From these measurements, the intracranial volume, brain volume, white matter, gray matter and cerebrospinal fluid volumes can easily be estimated. In this master thesis, the BPF of several patients were analyzed based on quantitative MRI (qMRI) images, in order to identify the change of BPF due to the presence of edema over time. Volumes obtained from the same patients at different time points were aligned (registered), such that the BPF can be easily compared between years. A correlation analysis between the BPF and R1, R2 and PD was performed (R1 is the longitudinal relaxation rate defined as 1/T1 relaxation time and R2 Is transverse relaxation rate defined as 1/T2 relaxation time) to investigate if any of these variables can explain the change in BPF. The results show that due to image registration, and removing some of the slices from the top and bottom of the head, the BPF of the patients was corrected to a certain extent. The change in the mean BPF of each patient over four years was less than 1% post registration and slice removal. However, the decrease in standard deviation was between 6.9% to 52% after registration and removing of slices. The BPF of the follow-up years also came closer to the initial BPF value measured in the first year. The statistical analysis of the BPF and R1, R2 and PD, showed a very low correlation (0.1) between BPF and PD, and intermediate correlations between BPF and R1, R2 (0.385 and -0.51, respectively). Future work will focus on understanding how these results relate to edema.

QC 351 A7 no. 50 / The results of the first complete tests of the Optical Sciences Center digital image processing facility are reported. The instrumentation for digitizing film transparencies is operating well enough to provide suitable in- puts to the computer program IMPR(C, which processes (restores) the degraded image. Some manual correction of the digital data is required (mainly for missing digits) before IMPROC can be used. Although IMPROC will be expanded and modified during future research efforts, the debugging of its present form is essentially completed. First attempts at restoration of a defocused image show contrast enhancement and edge sharpening. Current techniques for displaying the processed images, however, are slow and have a limited gray scale. The best technique to date, which uses the computer's plotter to produce nine distinguishable gray levels, requires 1 hour to produce a 100 x100 matrix of points. A CRT film display device, driven by a digital computer, is being developed to solve this problem. Current and future research efforts are described.

QC 351 A7 no. 81 / A number of laboratory tests have been carried out at the image tube laboratory of the Optical Sciences Center on 11 selected image intensifiers in order to compare and evaluate their performance. The electrostatically focused tubes tested are as follows: ITT F-4708 (1 stage), two samples of a Varo 8605 (1 stage), Varo 8605DC (1 stage), ITT F -4724 (3 stages), RCA 8606 (3 stages), and Varo 8606 (3 stages). The magnetically focused tubes are EEV P829D (5 dynodes), ITT F-4089 (1 stage), RCA C33011 (2 stages), and RCA C70021AEP2 (3 stages). The tests included measurements of limiting resolution (of the intensifiers directly and of photographs obtained with the intensifiers), square -wave response, geometrical distortion, shear characteristics in fiber-optic faceplates, photographic speed gain, uniformity of response, light- induced background, dark emission, and detective quantum efficiency (DQE) of intensifier -photographic emulsion combinations. The most significant result of the tests is that a comparison among tubes with a similar number of stages (or gain) showed that the magnetically focused intensifiers were generally superior to the electrostatically focused intensifiers in resolving power, geometrical distortion, and uniformity of response. However, the electrostatically focused tubes exhibited only about one fifth the light- induced background of the magnetic tubes. Also, a mean relationship was found between the limiting resolution of the intensifier output image and the limiting resolution that is recorded on a photograph of the intensifier. Other particularly notable results include (1) the causes and characteristics of several different types of response nonuniformities, (2) the identification of sources of light -induced background, (3) the photographic speed gain required of an intensifier to obtain the highest peak DQE possible and also that required to make the system behave as a "single- photon event" detector, (4) the identification of some especially undesirable characteristics of a potassium chloride transmission secondary emission (TSE) dynode intensifier (EEV P829D), and (5) the performance of three relay lenses for intensifiers.