<p>This thesis is performed as a pre-study to find some marketing guidelines for Saturnus TRD, with concentration on the potential business case for a new product on the USA market. The USA market for TRD´s is currently not growing organically in matter of new power lines, though an increase of TRD delivery to USA can be predicted the coming years due to replacement of Transformers equipped with old TRD´s. For Sat-urnus to be more competitive on the USA market it is almost a necessity to improve their product portfolio to better match with the regional requirements, mainly in re-gards of product rating and maintenance aspects. Such product aspects have been evaluated in this study along with potential order increase for Saturnus TRD if such a new product is realized.</p><p>In this study I have mainly gained information by interacting with people within the Saturnus organization who have direct access to important customer preferences for Transformers as well as TRD´s i.e. Front End Sales persons and technical experts. To get valuable information of general character such as marketing principles, organiza-tional aspects and competitor insights a lot of colleagues within the Saturnus organi-zation have contributed with their knowledge, such knowledge combined with excel-lent marketing literature and industry documentation have all together built the infor-mation foundation of this report.</p><p>This study shows that there are good possibilities for potential increase of business in USA if Saturnus TRD develop a new product, better suited to existing market re-quirements. Such product is found to be designed as an on-tank type of TRD, operat-ing with vacuum technology at a current rating of 1000A. The cost for development of the suggested TRD would be in the range of 30% above the cost for developing the existing TRD. Estimated annual increase in order-intake with a new TRD is evaluated to be approximately 250 units. With estimated sales volumes, development cost will be covered after 1,5 years and the profit scenario is good due to the fact that the mar-gins will be better for the vacuum TRD compared to the existing technology.</p><p>In addition to improved product technology, the study points out significant im-provements to be made in matter of marketing strategies. Specifically customer seg-mentation is assumed to be a key factor for improved market orientation by focusing on customers organizational size and choice criteria.</p>

Registration is a key component for computer-navigated robot-assisted surgery. Invasive approaches such as fiducial-based and surface matching with mechanical probes are common but ultrasound may provide a non-invasive alternative. If an A-mode ultrasound transducer can be used to percutaneously select data points on the bones, a registration can be determined without needing any incision. This study investigates selecting an A-mode ultrasound transducer, calibrating it, analyzing the ultrasound signal, and using it to register a phantom sawbone tibia and femur as well as cadaveric specimens. This study is performed in conjunction with MAKO Surgical Corp.'s Tactile Guidance System™ (TGS™) at their headquarters and at The South Florida Spine Clinic for cadaveric experiments. The results for phantom and cadaveric ultrasound registrations compared to a mechanical probe approach demonstrate that A-mode ultrasound registration is a viable option for registration of the bones of the knee.

A new technique, called the polymerization algorithm, is described for the hierarchical segmentation of polymerized volume data sets (PVDS) using the Lblock data structure. The Lblock data structure is defined as a 3dimensional isorectangular block of enhanced vertex information. Segmentation of the PVDS is attained by intersecting and merging Lblock coverings of the enhanced volumetric data. The data structure allows for easy compression, storage, segmentation, and reconstruction of volumetric data obtained from scanning a mammalian brain at submicron resolution, using threedimensional light microscopy (knifeedge scanning microscopy (KESM), confocal microscopy (CFM), and multiphoton microscopy (MPM)). A hybrid technique using the polymerization algorithm and an existing vectorbased tracing algorithm is developed. Both the polymerized and the hybrid algorithm have been tested and their analyzed results are presented.

This thesis is performed as a pre-study to find some marketing guidelines for Saturnus TRD, with concentration on the potential business case for a new product on the USA market. The USA market for TRD´s is currently not growing organically in matter of new power lines, though an increase of TRD delivery to USA can be predicted the coming years due to replacement of Transformers equipped with old TRD´s. For Sat-urnus to be more competitive on the USA market it is almost a necessity to improve their product portfolio to better match with the regional requirements, mainly in re-gards of product rating and maintenance aspects. Such product aspects have been evaluated in this study along with potential order increase for Saturnus TRD if such a new product is realized. In this study I have mainly gained information by interacting with people within the Saturnus organization who have direct access to important customer preferences for Transformers as well as TRD´s i.e. Front End Sales persons and technical experts. To get valuable information of general character such as marketing principles, organiza-tional aspects and competitor insights a lot of colleagues within the Saturnus organi-zation have contributed with their knowledge, such knowledge combined with excel-lent marketing literature and industry documentation have all together built the infor-mation foundation of this report. This study shows that there are good possibilities for potential increase of business in USA if Saturnus TRD develop a new product, better suited to existing market re-quirements. Such product is found to be designed as an on-tank type of TRD, operat-ing with vacuum technology at a current rating of 1000A. The cost for development of the suggested TRD would be in the range of 30% above the cost for developing the existing TRD. Estimated annual increase in order-intake with a new TRD is evaluated to be approximately 250 units. With estimated sales volumes, development cost will be covered after 1,5 years and the profit scenario is good due to the fact that the mar-gins will be better for the vacuum TRD compared to the existing technology. In addition to improved product technology, the study points out significant im-provements to be made in matter of marketing strategies. Specifically customer seg-mentation is assumed to be a key factor for improved market orientation by focusing on customers organizational size and choice criteria.

Aim: This study is based upon the premise that creating value is the basis for all businesses (Grant, 2002; Day, 1990; Porter, 1996; Woodruff, 1997). The research problem and ultimate purpose of the study is to determine how customer perceived value can be improved at the Liberty Program, Naples Italy. The objective is thus to identify specific value and non-value contributing factors, identify commonalities within the target audience and thereby make suggestions for short, medium and long-term improvements. The long term goals of this study are to find and implement ways to boost program participation as well as satisfaction levels.   Method: The literature review examines the concepts of customer perceived value and satisfaction, communication, relationship marketing and segmentation, thus laying the grounds for a basic understanding of the subject matter. The empirical study is based on an extensive data collection process with data collected from over 200 customers in both qualitative and quantitative form, achieved by a survey and customer interviews. The goals and objectives of the study are accomplished by analyzing collected data and thereby identifying key customer characteristics and key drivers of value perception. A service improvement plan is thereby constructed consisting of suggestions for implementing a continuous improvement plan with short, medium and long term goals.   Result &amp; Conclusions: The literature review concludes that customer value perceptions are based upon a variety of factors and takes place both pre, during and post the transaction. Including the customer in the integrated value-creating process is found to be a critical element to success and in maintaining customer satisfaction and should thus be the basis for marketing communication. Empirical research establishes that product related issues have the highest impact on customer satisfaction at the Liberty Program, Naples Italy, arguably because they are the core and thus expected service. A number of short term (quick) fixes are suggested to quickly respond to customer comments and thus increase trust and establish a sense of co-creation of value with the customers. Having established the main demographics of the target audience, steps to develop more effective communications are also presented.   Suggestions for future research: Future research should focus on exploring new channels of communication to reach a young and increasingly technologically savvy target audience. Cross-examination of other Liberty Programs could also present some useful programming as well as marketing communications ideas.   Contribution of the thesis: Other military installations could benefit from this study as various locations share the same (constantly rotating) customer base.

Surfaces in 3D are often represented by polygonal meshes and point clouds obtained from 3D modeling tools or acquisition processes such as laser range scanning. While these formats are very flexible and allow the representation of a wide variety of shapes, they are rarely appropriate in their raw form for the range of applications that benefit from their use. Their decomposition into simpler constituting parts is referred to as shape segmentation, and its automation remains a challenging area within computer science. We will present and analyze different aspects of shape segmentation. We begin by looking at useful segmentation criteria and present a categorization of current methods according to which type of criteria they address, dividing them into affinity-based, model-fitting, and property-based approaches. We then present two algorithmic contributions in the form of a model-based and a property-based segmentation approaches. These share the goals of automatically finding redundancy in a shape and propose shape representations that leverage this redundancy to achieve descriptive compactness. The first is a method for segmenting a surface into piece-wise ellipsoidal parts, motivated by the fact that most organic objects and many manufactured objects have large curved areas. The second is an algorithm for robustly detecting global and local planar-reflective symmetry and a hierarchical segmentation approach based on this detection method. We note within these approaches the variation in segmentations resulting from different criteria and propose a way to generalize the segmentation problem to heterogenous criteria. We introduce a framework and relevant algorithms for multi-objective segmentation of 3D shapes which allow for the incorporation of domain-specific knowledge through multiple objectives, each of which refers to one or more segmentation labels. They can assert properties of an individual part or they can refer to part interrelations. We thus cast the segmentation problem as an optimization minimizing an aggregate objective function which combines all objectives as a weighted sum. We conclude with a summary and discussion of the contributions presented, lessons learned, and a look at the open questions remaining and potential avenues of continued research.

Variability between oncologists in defining the tumor during radiation therapy planning can be as high as 700% by volume. Robust, automated definition of tumor boundaries has the ability to significantly improve treatment accuracy and efficiency. However, the information provided in computed tomography (CT) is not sensitive enough to differences between tumor and healthy tissue and positron emission tomography (PET) is hampered by blurriness and low resolution. The textural characteristics of thoracic tissue was investigated and compared with those of tumors found within 21 patient PET and CT images in order to enhance the differences and the boundary between cancerous and healthy tissue. A pattern recognition approach was used from these samples to learn the textural characteristics of each and classify voxels as being either normal or abnormal. The approach was compared to a number of alternative methods and found to have the highest overlap with that of an oncologist's tumor definition.

Variability between oncologists in defining the tumor during radiation therapy planning can be as high as 700% by volume. Robust, automated definition of tumor boundaries has the ability to significantly improve treatment accuracy and efficiency. However, the information provided in computed tomography (CT) is not sensitive enough to differences between tumor and healthy tissue and positron emission tomography (PET) is hampered by blurriness and low resolution. The textural characteristics of thoracic tissue was investigated and compared with those of tumors found within 21 patient PET and CT images in order to enhance the differences and the boundary between cancerous and healthy tissue. A pattern recognition approach was used from these samples to learn the textural characteristics of each and classify voxels as being either normal or abnormal. The approach was compared to a number of alternative methods and found to have the highest overlap with that of an oncologist's tumor definition.

Surfaces in 3D are often represented by polygonal meshes and point clouds obtained from 3D modeling tools or acquisition processes such as laser range scanning. While these formats are very flexible and allow the representation of a wide variety of shapes, they are rarely appropriate in their raw form for the range of applications that benefit from their use. Their decomposition into simpler constituting parts is referred to as shape segmentation, and its automation remains a challenging area within computer science. We will present and analyze different aspects of shape segmentation. We begin by looking at useful segmentation criteria and present a categorization of current methods according to which type of criteria they address, dividing them into affinity-based, model-fitting, and property-based approaches. We then present two algorithmic contributions in the form of a model-based and a property-based segmentation approaches. These share the goals of automatically finding redundancy in a shape and propose shape representations that leverage this redundancy to achieve descriptive compactness. The first is a method for segmenting a surface into piece-wise ellipsoidal parts, motivated by the fact that most organic objects and many manufactured objects have large curved areas. The second is an algorithm for robustly detecting global and local planar-reflective symmetry and a hierarchical segmentation approach based on this detection method. We note within these approaches the variation in segmentations resulting from different criteria and propose a way to generalize the segmentation problem to heterogenous criteria. We introduce a framework and relevant algorithms for multi-objective segmentation of 3D shapes which allow for the incorporation of domain-specific knowledge through multiple objectives, each of which refers to one or more segmentation labels. They can assert properties of an individual part or they can refer to part interrelations. We thus cast the segmentation problem as an optimization minimizing an aggregate objective function which combines all objectives as a weighted sum. We conclude with a summary and discussion of the contributions presented, lessons learned, and a look at the open questions remaining and potential avenues of continued research.

Recently, for the new demands of nowadays multimedia system, such as video interaction, the MPEG-4 standard has been designed. In MPEG-4, because of those new demands of nowadays multimedia system the video stream can be divided into several video object planes ( VOPs ). Those VOPs can be separately encoded, stored, or transmitted. VOP is the basic interactive unit in MPEG-4 video stream, how to automatically or semi-automatically separate appropriate VOPs from an image sequence has become one of the most important issues for an MPEG-4 system, which is also the goal of this proposal. However, MPEG-4 does not provide concrete techniques for VOP extraction. Nonetheless, it is very difficult to extract VOPs, thus the preprocessing used to decompose sequences into VOPs becomes an important issue for an MPEG-4 system, which is also the goal of this thesis. In this thesis, we will develop techniques for segmenting images contained in an image sequence, which can separate two or more image segments ( or regions ) from MPEG-4 test image sequences, and those image segments can be coded as MPEG-4 VOPs. First, we utilize the feature of wavelet to improve the change detection, such that we can obtain a better result of the moving object edge by improved change detection. Second, we use an edge-based method for tracking boundary which is using the canny edge detection and the connected edge component labeling to label those edges. Third, we can combine those two information to obtain a more complete boundary by extracting moving object edges. Although we catch all the edges which is detected on the location of the true boundary, it usually occurs some gaps on which we catch. Because it sometimes will not have a clear boundary, we have to find some method to complete these gaps. Therefore, we propose a multi-level prediction scheme to complete the gaps between the disjoint edges of the boundary we caught by extending the edges on the predictive direction. Final, we use a simple connecting operation for the little gaps (distance=1 or 2). That will make the result more close and smooth. Experimental results for several test sequences show that this novel automatic video segmentation algorithm can give a more accurate object masks.