In this research three innovative registration systems were designed with the configurations of the mutual information and optimization technique: (1) mutual information combined with the downhill simplex method of optimization. (2) the derivative of mutual information combined with Quasi-Newton method. (3) mutual information combined with hybrid genetic algorithm (large-space random search) to avoid local maximum during the optimization. These automatic registration systems were evaluated with a variety of images, dimensions and voxel resolutions. Experiments demonstrate that registration system combined with mutual information and hybrid genetic algorithm can provide robust and accurate alignments to obtain a composite activation map for functional MRI analysis.

Needle-based interventions are pervasive in Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS), and are often used in a number of diagnostic and therapeutic procedures, including biopsy and brachytherapy seed placement. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) which can provide high quality, real time and high soft tissue contrast imaging, is an ideal guidance tool for image-guided therapy (IGT). Therefore, a MRI-guided needle-based surgical robot proves to have great potential in the application of percutaneous interventions. Presented here is the design of reconfigurable fiducial-integrated modular needle driver for MRI-guided percutaneous interventions. Further, an MRI-compatible hardware control system has been developed and enhanced to drive piezoelectric ultrasonic motors for a previously developed base robot designed to support the modular needle driver. A further contribution is the development of a fiber optic sensing system to detect robot position and joint limits. A transformer printed circuit board (PCB) and an interface board with integrated fiber optic limit sensing have been developed and tested to integrate the robot with the piezoelectric actuator control system designed by AIM Lab for closed loop control of ultrasonic Shinsei motors. A series of experiments were performed to evaluate the feasibility and accuracy of the modular needle driver. Bench top tests were conducted to validate the transformer board, fiber optic limit sensing and interface board in a lab environment. Finally, the whole robot control system was tested inside the MRI room to evaluate its MRI compatibility and stability.

We provide an analysis of the main sources of data used to estimate fertility schedules in developing countries, giving special attention to Brazil. In addition to the brief history of various data sources, we present several indirect demographic methods, commonly used to estimate fertility and assess the quality of data. From the methods used, the Synthetic Relational Gompertz model gives the most robust estimates of fertility, independent of the data source considered. We conclude that different demographic data sources and methods generate differing estimates of fertility and that the country should invest in quality of birth statistics.

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The thesis deals with the matter of state regulation of pharmacy industry. As a part of public health where on one side stands the lobby of private pharmacy corporatians and on the other hand the public interest of state, the pharmacy needs a regulation -- the question is how much. Purpose of the thesis is to look on whether the contemporary rate of regulation is really necessary and whether it would be possible to find areas requiring stricter regulation or rather the lower regulation and whether there exists an atmosphere opened to dialogues and finding compromises. The theoretical part contains a description of whole branch and a detailed analyse of registration process and state's price regulation. Analytical part identifies and introduces problematical issues and finds an answers to given questions. As an assessment of the answers, the thesis leads out to such common issues which can reach a compromises and through them gradualy decline the number of disputative areas.

Recent advances in 4D data acquisition systems in the field of Computer Vision have opened up many exciting new possibilities for the interpretation of complex moving surfaces. However, a fundamental problem is that this has also led to a huge increase in the volume of data to be handled. Attempting to make sense of this wealth of information is then a core issue to be addressed if such data can be applied to more complex tasks. Similar problems have been historically encountered in the analysis of 3D static surfaces, leading to the extraction of higher-level features based on analysis of the differential geometry. Our central hypothesis is that there exists a compact set of similarly useful descriptors for the analysis of dynamic 4D surfaces. The primary advantages in considering localised changes are that they provide a naturally useful set of invariant characteristics. We seek a constrained set of terms - a vocabulary - for describing all types of deformation. By using this, we show how to describe what the surface is doing more effectively; and thereby enable better characterisation, and consequently more effective visualisation and comparison. This thesis investigates this claim. We adopt a bottom-up approach of the problem, in which we acquire raw data from a newly constructed commercial 4D data capture system developed by our industrial partners. A crucial first step resolves the temporal non-linear registration between instances of the captured surface. We employ a combined optical/range flow to guide a conformation over a sequence. By extending the use of aligned colour information alongside the depth data we improve this estimation in the case of local surface motion ambiguities. By employing a KLT/thin-plate-spline method we also seek to preserve global deformation for regions with no estimate. We then extend aspects of differential geometry theory for existing static surface analysis to the temporal domain. Our initial formulation considers the possible intrinsic transitions from the set of shapes defined by the variations in the magnitudes of the principal curvatures. This gives rise to a total of 15 basic types of deformation. The change in the combined magnitudes also gives an indication of the extent of change. We then extend this to surface characteristics associated with expanding, rotating and shearing; to derive a full set of differential features. Our experimental results include qualitative assessment of deformations for short episodic registered sequences of both synthetic and real data. The higher-level distinctions extracted are furthermore a useful first step for parsimonious feature extraction, which we then proceed to demonstrate can be used as a basis for further analysis. We ultimately evaluate this approach by considering shape transition features occurring within the human face, and the applicability for identification and expression analysis tasks.

Chim, Ho Ming. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 58-62). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Acknowledgements --- p.i / Abstract --- p.ii / Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1 --- Objectives --- p.1 / Chapter 1.2 --- Motivations --- p.1 / Chapter 1.3 --- Problem Statement --- p.2 / Chapter 1.4 --- Camera Self-Localization Approaches --- p.3 / Chapter 1.4.1 --- Based on Calibration Patterns --- p.3 / Chapter 1.4.2 --- Based on Self-calibration --- p.3 / Chapter 1.4.3 --- Based on Shape and Motion --- p.4 / Chapter 1.4.4 --- The Proposed Approach - Based on Junctions --- p.5 / Chapter 1.5 --- Thesis Organization --- p.6 / Chapter 2 --- Previous Work --- p.7 / Chapter 2.1 --- Camera Self-Localization --- p.7 / Chapter 2.1.1 --- Parallel Plane Features --- p.7 / Chapter 2.1.2 --- Parallelepiped Features --- p.8 / Chapter 2.1.3 --- Single View Geometric Features --- p.8 / Chapter 2.1.4 --- Shape and Motion --- p.8 / Chapter 2.1.5 --- Other Estimation Methods --- p.9 / Chapter 2.2 --- Feature Correspondences Establishment --- p.9 / Chapter 2.2.1 --- Feature-based Object Recognition --- p.9 / Chapter 2.2.2 --- Model-based Object Recognition --- p.10 / Chapter 3 --- Preliminaries --- p.11 / Chapter 3.1 --- Perspective Camera Model --- p.11 / Chapter 3.2 --- Camera Pose from Point Correspondences --- p.15 / Chapter 3.3 --- Camera Pose from Direction Correspondences --- p.16 / Chapter 4 --- A Junction-based Approach --- p.18 / Chapter 4.1 --- Use of Junction Correspondences for Determining Camera Pose --- p.18 / Chapter 4.1.1 --- Constraints from Point Information --- p.19 / Chapter 4.1.2 --- Constraint from Direction Information --- p.21 / Chapter 4.1.3 --- Junction Triplet Correspondences --- p.22 / Chapter 4.2 --- Extraction of Junctions and Junction Triplets from Image --- p.24 / Chapter 4.2.1 --- Handling Image Data --- p.24 / Chapter 4.2.2 --- Bridging Lines --- p.25 / Chapter 4.2.3 --- """L""-junctions" --- p.26 / Chapter 4.2.4 --- """Y"" and ""Adjunctions" --- p.27 / Chapter 4.2.5 --- Junction Triplets --- p.28 / Chapter 4.3 --- Establishment of the First Junction Triplet Correspondence --- p.30 / Chapter 4.3.1 --- Ordered Junction Triplets from Model --- p.30 / Chapter 4.3.2 --- A Junction Hashing Scheme --- p.31 / Chapter 4.4 --- Establishment of Points Correspondence --- p.33 / Chapter 4.4.1 --- Viewing Sphere Tessellation --- p.33 / Chapter 4.4.2 --- Model Views Synthesizing --- p.35 / Chapter 4.4.3 --- Affine Coordinates Computation --- p.35 / Chapter 4.4.4 --- Hash Table Filling --- p.38 / Chapter 4.4.5 --- Hash Table Voting --- p.38 / Chapter 4.4.6 --- Hypothesis and Confirmation --- p.39 / Chapter 4.4.7 --- An Example of Geometric Hashing --- p.40 / Chapter 5 --- Experimental Results --- p.43 / Chapter 5.1 --- Results from Synthetic Image Data --- p.43 / Chapter 5.2 --- Results from Real Image Data --- p.45 / Chapter 5.2.1 --- Results on Laboratory Scenes --- p.46 / Chapter 5.2.2 --- Results on Outdoor Scenes --- p.48 / Chapter 6 --- Conclusion --- p.51 / Chapter 6.1 --- Contributions --- p.51 / Chapter 6.2 --- Advantages --- p.52 / Chapter 6.3 --- Summary and Future Work --- p.52 / Chapter A --- Least-Squares Method --- p.54 / Chapter B --- RQ Decomposition --- p.56 / Bibliography --- p.58

Background: Stroke is the fifth leading cause of death in Tennessee. The Tennessee Stroke Registry (TSR) Act requires East Tennessee State University’s College of Public Health to maintain a stroke database of participating hospitals and produce an annual report. Currently, twelve hospitals submit data to the TSR. Objectives: The TSR seeks to provide stroke information to Tennessee residents, policy makers, and health-care professionals. This presentation will highlight the key findings of the 2015 TSR report and will serve as an update to the 2014 report presented at the 2015 Tennessee Public Health Association conference. Methods: Data for the TSR was collected via Quintiles, American Heart Association’s online database. Microsoft Excel and ArcMap 10.3.x were used to conduct a descriptive analysis of stroke across Tennessee, observing characteristics of both stroke overall and of individual subtypes. Results: Seventy-nine percent of strokes in Tennessee in 2015 were ischemic. Some subtypes showed significantly different proportions of males versus females. For instance, females made up 63% of subarachnoid hemorrhage patients. The average age of stroke patients in Tennessee was 67.1 years, but varied for subtypes, ranging from 58.2 to 69 years. The majority of stroke patients (75.1%) had a recorded history of hypertension. Counties with high stroke mortality rates tended to cluster in areas of few certified stroke centers. Conclusion: Stroke subtypes exhibited different characteristics than stroke overall and geographic disparities were highlighted through the descriptive mapping. Identifying and understanding these differences and disparities can help in addressing ways to improve stroke care in Tennessee.

Evaluating non-rigid image registration performance is a difficult problem since there is rarely a “gold standard” (i.e., ground truth) correspondence between two images. The Non-rigid Image Registration Evaluation Project (NIREP) was started to develop a standardized set of common databases, evaluation statistics and a software tool for performance evaluation of non-rigid image registration algorithms. The goal of the work in this thesis is to build up common image databases for rigorous testing of non-rigid image registration algorithms, and compare their performance by a diverse set of evaluation statistics on our multiple well documented image databases. The well documented databases as well as new evaluation statistics have been and will be released to public research community. The performance of five non-rigid registration algorithms (Affine, AIR, Demons, SLE and SICLE) was evaluated using 22 images from two NIREP evaluation databases. Six evaluation statistics (Relative Overlap, Intensity Variance, Normalized ROI overlap, alignment of calcarine sulci, Inverse Consistency Error and Transitivity Error) were used to evaluate and compare registration performance. This thesis provides a complete and accurate reporting of evaluation tests so that others are able to get access to these results and make a comparison of registration algorithms they concerned in their specific use. Moreover, this work followed the recommendations of the Standards for Reporting of Diagnostic Accuracy (STARD) initiative to disclose all relevant information for each non-rigid registration validation test.

Lung function depends on the expansion and contraction of lung tissue during the respiratory cycle. The measurement of regional pulmonary function is of great interest and importance since many lung diseases can cause changes in biomechanical or material properties. It is also significant to study the radiation-induced changes in pulmonary function following radiation therapy. In this thesis, we propose a technique that uses four-dimensional (3D+time) CT imaging (4DCT), 3D non-rigid image registration to estimate regional lung function. Lung images reconstructed at different inflation levels are analyzed for dynamic lung function development during a breath cycle. We demonstrate local pulmonary function can be reproducibly measured using 4DCT in human subjects prior to RT. The image registration accuracy is validated using semi-automatic anatomic landmark picking system. The major contributions of this thesis include: 1) demonstrating the robustness and reproducibility of regional pulmonary function measurement using 4DCT in both sheep and human subjects, 2) developing approaches to improve the measurement reproducibility by dynamic lung volume matching and Jacobian normalization, 3) development and comparison four cubic metrics for reproducibility analysis, 4) research on time-varying lung ventilation in different breathing phases in both sheep and human subjects. Our contributions in this thesis are useful for diagnosis and assessment of lung diseases, useful for qualifying radiation induced changes in pulmonary function in irradiated and non-irradiated lung tissue.