Three-dimensional (3D) volume data has become increasingly common with the emergence and wide availability of modern 3D image acquisition techniques. The demand for computerized analysis and visualization techniques is constantly growing to utilize the abundant information embedded in these data. This thesis consists of three parts. The first part presents methods of analyzing  3D volume data by using second derivatives. Harmonic functions are used to combine the non-orthogonal second derivative operators into an orthogonal basis. Three basic features, magnitude, shape, and orientation, are extracted from the second derivative responses after diagonalizing the Hessian matrix. Two applications on magnetic resonance angiography (MRA) data are presented. One of them utilizes a scale-space and the second order variation to enhance the vascular  system by discriminating for string structures. The other one employs the local shape information to detect cases of stenosis. The second part of the thesis discusses some modifications of the fast marching method in 2D and 3D space. By shifting the input and output grids relative to each other, we show that the sampled cost functions are used in a more consistent way. We present new algorithms for anisotropic fast marching which incorporate orientation information during the marching process. Three applications illustrate the usage of the fast marching methods. The first one extracts a guide wire as a minimum-cost path on a salience distance map of a line detection result of a flouroscopy image. The second application extracts the vascular tree from a whole bodyMRA volume. In the third application, a 3D guide wire is reconstructed from a pair of biplane images using the minimum-cost path formulation. The third part of the thesis proposes a new frame-coherent volume rendering algorithm. It is an extension of the algorithm by Gudmundsson and Rand´en (1990). The new algorithm is capable of efficiently generating rotation sequences around an arbitrary axis. Essentially, it enables the ray-casting procedure to quickly approach the hull of the object using the so called shadow-lines recorded from the previous frame.

This thesis presents some concepts and methods for low level computer vision and learning, with object recognition as the primary application. An efficient method for detection of local rotational symmetries in images is presented. Rotational symmetries include circle patterns, star patterns, and certain high curvature patterns. The method for detection of these patterns is based on local moments computed on a local orientation description in double angle representation, which makes the detection invariant to the sign of the local direction vectors. Some methods are also suggested to increase the selectivity of the detection method. The symmetries can serve as feature descriptors and interest points for use in hierarchical matching structures for object recognition and related problems. A view-based method for 3D object recognition and estimation of object pose from a single image is also presented. The method is based on simple feature vector matching and clustering. Local orientation regions computed at interest points are used as features for matching. The regions are computed such that they are invariant to translation, rotation, and locally invariant to scale. Each match casts a vote on a certain object pose, rotation, scale, and position, and a joint estimate is found by a clustering procedure. The method is demonstrated on a number of real images and the region features are compared with the SIFT descriptor, which is another standard region feature for the same application. Finally, a new associative network is presented which applies the channel representation for both input and output data. This representation is sparse and monopolar, and is a simple yet powerful representation of scalars and vectors. It is especially suited for representation of several values simultaneously, a property that is inherited by the network and something which is useful in many computer vision problems. The chosen representation enables us to use a simple linear model for non-linear mappings. The linear model parameters are found by solving a least squares problem with a non-negative constraint, which gives a sparse regularized solution.

This thesis addresses computer gameplay activities in terms of the physical handling of a game, players’ meaning-making activities, and how these two processes are closely interrelated. It is examined in greater detail which role the body plays in gameplay, but also how gameplay is shaped by sociocultural factors outside the game, including different kind of tools and players’ participation in community practices. An important step towards an understanding of these key factors and their interaction is the consideration of gameplay as situated activity where players who actively engage with games are situated in both the physical world and the virtual in-game world. To analyse exactly how players interact with both worlds, two case studies on two different games have been carried out, and three different levels of situatedness are identified and discussed in detail in this thesis, on the basis of existing theories within situated cognition research.

The focus of this licentiate thesis is air transportation and especially the logistics at an airport. The concept of airport logistics is investigated based on the following definition: Airport logistics is the planning and control of all resources and information that create a value for the customers utilizing the airport. As a part of the investigation, indicators for airport performance are considered. One of the most complex airport processes is the turn-around process. The turn-around is the collective name for all those activities that affect an aircraft while it is on the ground. In the turn-around process almost all of the actors operating at the airport are involved and the process is connected to other activities which take place on airside, in the terminal as well as in the control tower. This makes the turn-around process an excellent focal point for studying airport logistics. A detailed conceptual model of the turn-around process is developed and a simplified version of this is implemented in a computerized simulation program. The aim of the simulation is to enable the assessment of various logistical operations involved in turn-around, and their impact on airport performance. The flow of support vehicles serving the aircraft with fuel, food, water etc during the turn-around is received particular attention. The output from the model can be used as indicators for the airport performance. One of the most interesting support flows to study is the flow of de-icing trucks. De-icing is performed to remove ice and snow from the aircraft body and to prevent the build up of new ice. There is a limited time span prior the take off, within which de-icing has to be performed. This makes the time of service critical. An optimization approach is developed to plan a schedule for the de-icing trucks. Scheduling the flow of de-icing trucks can be seen as a heterogeneous vehicle routing problem with time windows. The objective of the optimization is total airport performance and a heuristic method is used to solve the problem. The optimized schedule for the de-icing trucks is used as input in the simulation model. The schedule optimized for the entire airport is compared to a schedule based on a simpler scheduling rule as well as a schedule optimized for the de-icing company. By running the model with the different routings, it is found that the schedule optimized for the entire airport gives the best results according to the indicators specified for measuring airport performance.

The road topography in highways affects the powertrain control of a heavy truck substantially since the engine power is low in relation to the vehicle weight. In large road gradients constant speed is not possible to keep, which would have been beneficial otherwise, and in some uphills shifting gears becomes inevitable. If information about the road ahead, i.e. look ahead information, is available, then the powertrain can be controlled in a more fuel efficient way. Trial runs are performed, where the velocity trajectory that minimizes energy consumption, is calculated and communicated in real time as set points to the conventional cruise control. This look ahead control gives significant fuel consumption reductions compared to a standard cruise control, while keeping to the same mean speed. The results are the inspiration to further studies in how powertrain control can benefit from look ahead information. An engine with a non-linear fuel map is studied to understand its impact on fuel optimal speed. It is shown that for a significant fuel map non-linearity, quantified by a threshold value, constant speed in small road gradients is no longer optimal. Further, an automated manual transmission (AMT) optimal gear control is studied. It is shown that the reduced propulsion of a typical AMT gear-shifting process must be considered when choosing when to shift gears. Thus, additional reductions of fuel consumption are obtained with a look ahead control based on knowledge of engine and transmission characteristics.

This thesis considers unmanned airborne surveillance systems equipped with electroopticalvision sensors. The aim is to increase the level of autonomy and improve thesystem performance by the use of planning methods for aerial exploration and targettracking. The general problem is very complex due to the “curse-of-dimensionality” andsuboptimal approaches are necessary in order to handle advanced surveillance missions.A general planning framework is proposed and the planner contains a high-level schedulerand a number of planning modes. Each mode consists of planning modules thatsolve smaller sub-tasks and in this thesis a number of these modules are developed. Inparticular, two major approaches are treated; information based planning, and Bayesiantarget search. In addition, the on-road target tracking problem is treated in detail and analgorithm based on the Particle filter is presented. In information based planning, different information measures are used to solve theoptimal trajectory planning problem for bearings-only estimation. Thus, the problem ishow to maneuver an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to achieve the best possible estimateof a target location while observing it with a vision sensor. Approaches based on the Informationfilter and the differential entropy are proposed. The Information filter approachis also used to develop an exploration framework where the UAV flight trajectory and thesensor pointing direction are considered concurrently. In Bayesian target search, the aim is to find a target as quickly as possible givensome prior knowledge of where it might be. Methods based on both gradient search andcombinatorial optimization routines are proposed for the search problem where a UAV isequipped with a controllable vision sensor with limited field-of-view.

This thesis describes how sustainable development definitions can be transposed to the software architecture environment for the industrial software system domain. In a case study, sustainable development concerns from three companies are investigated for their influence on the dimensions of sustainable development: economical, environmental, and social sustainability. Classifying the case study’s concerns, in the thesis’s Software Engineering taxonomy, shows that the software development concerns are in majority and the software architecture concerns surprisingly few. The economical sustainability concerns dominate followed by social sustainability concerns, including both concerns successfully met and concerns to be met. Sustainable industrial software system development is in the thesis defined as: “Sustainable industrial software system development meets current stakeholders’ needs without compromising the software development organization’s ability to meet the needs of future stakeholders”. Understanding current and future stakeholders concerns is necessary for the formulation of sustainability goals and metrics. Clarifying the interrelationships among stakeholders’ concerns’ impact on business goals and software qualities, in the thesis’s Influencing Factors method, proves to help stakeholders understand their future needs. Trust is found to be critical for sustainable development. For the establishing of trust between system and system users, the usability quality is vital. To implement usability support in the architecture in the early design phase, reusable architectural responsibilities are created. The reusable architectural responsibilities are integrated into an experience factory and used by the product line system architects, resulting in a return of investment of 25:2. / Pasas- Analyzing the enterprise-, system-, and software architecture impact of stakeholders’ concerns for profitable industrial software systems

The wireless market has experienced a remarkable development and growth since the introduction of the first mobile phone systems, with a steady increase in the number of subscribers, new application areas, and higher data rates. As mobile phones and wireless connectivity have become consumer mass markets, a prime goal of the IC manufacturers is to provide low-cost solutions. The power amplifier (PA) is a key building block in all RF transmitters. To lower the costs and allow full integration of a complete radio System-on-Chip (SoC), it is desirable to integrate the entire transceiver and the PA in a single CMOS chip. While digital circuits benefit from the technology scaling, it is becoming significantly harder to meet the stringent requirements on linearity, output power, and power efficiency of PAs at lower supply voltages. This has recently triggered extensive studies to investigate the impact of different circuit techniques, design methodologies, and design trade-offs on functionality of PAs in nanometer CMOS technologies. This thesis addresses the potential of integrating linear and highly efficient PAs and PA architectures in nanometer CMOS technologies at GHz frequencies. In total four PAs have been designed, two linear PAs and two switched PAs. Two PAs have been designed in a 65nm CMOS technology, targeting the 802.11n WLAN standard operating in the 2.4-2.5GHz frequency band with stringent requirements on linearity. The first linear PA is a two-stage amplifier with LC-based input and interstage matching networks, and the second linear PA is a two-stage PA with transformer-based input and interstage matching networks. Both designs were evaluated for a 72.2Mbit/s, 64-QAM 802.11n OFDM signal with a PAPR of 9.1dB. Both PAs fulfilled the toughest EVM requirement of the standard at average output power levels of 9.4dBm and 11.6dBm, respectively. Matching techniques in both PAs are discussed as well. Two Class-E PAs have been designed in 130nm CMOS and operated at low ‘digital’ supply voltages. The first PA is intended for DECT, while the second is intended for Bluetooth. At 1.5V supply voltage and 1.85GHz, the DECT PA delivered +26.4dBm of output power with a drain efficiency (DE) and poweradded efficiency (PAE) of 41% and 30%, respectively. The Bluetooth PA had an output power of +22.7dBm at 1.0V with a DE and PAE of 48% and 36%, respectively, at 2.45GHz. The Class-E amplifier stage is also suitable for employment in different linearization techniques like Polar Modulation and Outphasing, where a highly efficient Class-E PA is crucial for a successful implementation.

A central problem for the healthcare sector today is how to manage change and improvements. In recent decades the county councils in Sweden have started various improvement initiatives and programs in order to improve their healthcare services. The improvement program of the Kalmar county council, which constitutes the empirical context for this thesis, is one of those initiatives. The purpose of this thesis is to contribute to a broader understanding of large-scale improvement program in a healthcare setting. This is done by analyzing practitioner’s improvement ideas, describing participants in the improvement projects, revising and testing a survey to measure the development of improvement ideas and describing the improvement program from a theoretical perspective. The theoretical change model used looks at change from two opposing directions in six dimensions; Goals, Leadership, Focus, Process, Reward system and Use of consultants. The aims of the county council improvement program are to become a learning organization, disseminate improvement methodologies and implement continuous quality improvements in the organization. All healthcare administrations and departments in the county council were invited to apply for funds to accomplish improvement projects. Another initiative invited staff teams to work with improvement ideas in a program with support from facilitators, using the breakthrough methodology. Now almost all ongoing developments, improvements, patient safety projects, manager and leader development initiatives are put together under the county council improvement program umbrella. In the appended papers both qualitative and quantitative research approach were used. The first study (paper I) analyzed which types of improvement projects practitioners are engaged in using qualitative content analysis. Five main categories were identified: Organizational Process; Evidence and Quality; Competence Development; Process Technology; and Proactive Patient Work. Most common was a focus on organizational changes and process, while least frequent was proactive patient work. Besides these areas of focus, almost all aimed to increase patient safety and increase effectiveness and availability. Paper II described the participants in two of the initiatives, the categorized improvement projects in paper I and the team members in the methodology guided improvement programs. Strong professions like physicians and nurses were well represented, but other staff groups were not as active. Managers were responsible for a majority of the projects. The gender perspective reflected the overall mix of employees in the county council. Paper III described a revision and test of a Minnesota Innovation Survey (MIS) that will be used to follow and measure how quality improvement ideas develop and improve over time. Descriptive statistics were presented. The respondents were satisfied with their work and what they had accomplished. The most common comment was about time, not having enough time to work with the improvement idea and the difficulty of finding time because of regular tasks. This was the first test of the revised survey and the high use of the answer alternative “Do not know” showed that the survey did not fit the context very well in its present version. Trying to connect the county council improvement program and the initiatives studied in papers I and II with the change model gave rise to some considerations. The county council improvement program has an effort to combine organizational changes and a culture that encourages continuous improvements. Top-down and bottom-up management approaches are used, through setting out strategies from above and at the same time encouraging practitioners to improve their day-to-day work. Whether this will be a successful way to implement and achieve a continuous improvement culture in the whole organization is one of the main issues remaining to find out in further studies.

In today’s competitive environment, in which competition increases and the pace of technological change accelerates, the need for deploying product development investments more efficiently and effectively is stronger than ever. The ability to create streams of new successful products to the market is vital for every product delivering company’s survival. Performance measurements are important in order to evaluate the current state of operation of the product development and decide on actions to improve its’ performance. However, in contrast to the concept of productivity in the production process there are no commonly adopted methods for measuring performance within product development. The methodology used in this research is explorative multiple case studies at five companies developing complex products. Complex products in this research involve mechanics, electronics, and software. Moreover, complex products are often long living and most development work is evolutionary in character. An extensive interview study among senior managers and decision makers has been conducted to get a broad and systematic understanding of what performance is and what to measure. The main results developed from this research are two conceptual tools. The first one, the Performance Measurement Evaluation Matrix (PMEX) can be used to evaluate the performance measurement system used at a company. The PMEX makes it possible for managers to get a more holistic view and discuss what the performance measurement system is measuring, and what it is not measuring, in order to decide on what to measure. The second tool, the Product Development Organizational Performance Model (PDOPM) can be used to conceptually analyze performance in the product development process from a holistic system perspective. This is achieved by making efficiency, effectiveness, and uncertainty explicit and by showing how they relate at a strategic, project, and product implementation level. The PMEX and the PDOPM can be used by managers in order to increase the understanding of what performance is and to be able to decide on actions in order to improve the performance of the product development process.