[pt] O ensaio de impulso para perfuração de isoladores é um ensaio normalizado descrito na IEC 61211:2004 e é fundamental para verificar em laboratório a qualidade de isoladores de vidro ou porcelana utilizados no sistema elétrico de potência. A norma IEC 60060-2:2010 recomenda que a calibração dos Sistemas de Medição utilizados em ensaios para Perfuração de Isoladores (SMIP) deve ser realizada por comparação com um padrão. Contudo, embora o ensaio de perfuração seja normalizado, ainda não existem padrões para rastrear esse sistema de medição na maioria dos institutos de pesquisas em âmbito global. Quantificar a amplitude de um impulso de perfuração, com todas as garantias metrológicas, não é uma tarefa trivial, por se tratar de um sinal impulsivo com amplitude de centenas de kilovolts e durações da ordem de 200 ns. Além disso, divisores de tensão com alto desempenho dinâmico para essa aplicação especifica também não estão disponíveis comercialmente. Deste modo, o objetivo desta dissertação foi projetar e desenvolver um SMIP. O divisor de tensão, integrante do sistema de medição, foi construído a fim de garantir uma mínima indutância e um alto desempenho dinâmico. Também foi desenvolvido um filtro para a remoção de interferências eletromagnéticas baseado na transformada wavelet, integrado a um software que controla aquisição, condicionamento do sinal, determinação e análise dos parâmetros do impulso de perfuração. O desempenho do sistema de medição foi avaliado em baixa tensão e em alta tensão, bem como foi estimada sua incerteza de medição, sendo então capaz de atender às exigências normativas e metrológicas do Laboratório de Referência em medição do Cepel. / [en] Impulse testing for puncture insulator is a standardized test described in IEC 61211:2004 and is essential for laboratory testing of the quality of glass or porcelain insulators used in the electrical power system. IEC 60060-2:2010 recommends that calibration of Measurement Systems used in Impulse Puncture Test on insulators (IPMS) should be performed by comparison against a standard. However, although the impulse puncture testing is standardized, there are still no standards for traceability of this measurement system at most research institutes globally. Quantifying the amplitude of an impulse puncture test, with all metrological guarantees, is not a trivial task, since it is an impulsive signal with amplitude of hundreds of kilovolts and durations of the order of 200 ns. In addition, high dynamic performance voltage dividers for this specific application are not commercially available either. Thus, the objective of this dissertation was to design and develop an IPMS. The voltage divider, which is part of the measuring system, is designed to ensure minimum inductance and high dynamic performance. A filter for electromagnetic interference removal based on the wavelet transform was also developed, integrated with software that controls acquisition, signal conditioning, determination and analysis of the impulse puncture testing parameters. The performance of the measuring system was evaluated at low voltage and high voltage, as well as its measurement uncertainty was estimated, being able to meet the normative and metrological requirements of the Cepel s Measurement Reference Laboratory.

This thesis presents the novel use of Coherent Point Drift in improving the robustness of a number of computer vision applications. CPD approach includes two methods for registering two images - rigid and non-rigid point set approaches which are based on the transformation model used. The key characteristic of a rigid transformation is that the distance between points is preserved, which means it can be used in the presence of translation, rotation, and scaling. Non-rigid transformations - or affine transforms - provide the opportunity of registering under non-uniform scaling and skew. The idea is to move one point set coherently to align with the second point set. The CPD method finds both the non-rigid transformation and the correspondence distance between two point sets at the same time without having to use a-priori declaration of the transformation model used. The first part of this thesis is focused on speaker identification in video conferencing. A real-time, audio-coupled video based approach is presented, which focuses more on the video analysis side, rather than the audio analysis that is known to be prone to errors. CPD is effectively utilised for lip movement detection and a temporal face detection approach is used to minimise false positives if face detection algorithm fails to perform. The second part of the thesis is focused on multi-exposure and multi-focus image fusion with compensation for camera shake. Scale Invariant Feature Transforms (SIFT) are first used to detect keypoints in images being fused. Subsequently this point set is reduced to remove outliers, using RANSAC (RANdom Sample Consensus) and finally the point sets are registered using CPD with non-rigid transformations. The registered images are then fused with a Contourlet based image fusion algorithm that makes use of a novel alpha blending and filtering technique to minimise artefacts. The thesis evaluates the performance of the algorithm in comparison to a number of state-of-the-art approaches, including the key commercial products available in the market at present, showing significantly improved subjective quality in the fused images. The final part of the thesis presents a novel approach to Vehicle Make & Model Recognition in CCTV video footage. CPD is used to effectively remove skew of vehicles detected as CCTV cameras are not specifically configured for the VMMR task and may capture vehicles at different approaching angles. A LESH (Local Energy Shape Histogram) feature based approach is used for vehicle make and model recognition with the novelty that temporal processing is used to improve reliability. A number of further algorithms are used to maximise the reliability of the final outcome. Experimental results are provided to prove that the proposed system demonstrates an accuracy in excess of 95% when tested on real CCTV footage with no prior camera calibration.

This thesis focuses on image processing using wavelet transform. The usage of wavelet transform is analysed especially for image compression and image noise reduction purposes. The analysis describes in detail aspects and application of the following wavelet transform methods: CWT, DWT, DTWT, 2D DWT. The thesis further explains the meaning of the mother wavelet and studies certain specific kinds of wavelets, kinds of thresholding and its purposes and also touches on the JPEG2000 standard. Mathematica and Sage software packages were used to design algorithms for image compression and image noise reduction, utilising relevant wavelet transform findings. The concluding part of the thesis compares the two software packages and results obtained using different algorithms.

Com o avanço da tecnologia, as estratégias tradicionais para identificação de pessoas se tornaram mais suscetíveis a falhas, de forma a superar essas dificuldades algumas abordagens vêm sendo propostas na literatura. Dentre estas abordagens destaca-se a Biometria. O campo da Biometria abarca uma grande variedade de tecnologias usadas para identificar e verificar a identidade de uma pessoa por meio da mensuração e análise de aspectos físicos e/ou comportamentais do ser humano. Em função disso, a biometria tem um amplo campo de aplicações em sistemas que exigem uma identificação segura de seus usuários. Os sistemas biométricos mais populares são baseados em reconhecimento facial ou de impressões digitais. Entretanto, existem outros sistemas biométricos que utilizam a íris, varredura de retina, voz, geometria da mão e termogramas faciais. Nos últimos anos, o reconhecimento biométrico obteve avanços na sua confiabilidade e precisão, com algumas modalidades biométricas oferecendo bom desempenho global. No entanto, mesmo os sistemas biométricos mais avançados ainda enfrentam problemas. Recentemente, esforços têm sido realizados visando empregar diversas modalidades biométricas de forma a tornar o processo de identificação menos vulnerável a ataques. Biometria multimodal é uma abordagem relativamente nova para representação de conhecimento biométrico que visa consolidar múltiplas modalidades biométricas. A multimodalidade é baseada no conceito de que informações obtidas a partir de diferentes modalidades se complementam. Consequentemente, uma combinação adequada dessas informações pode ser mais útil que o uso de informações obtidas a partir de qualquer uma das modalidades individualmente. As principais questões envolvidas na construção de um sistema biométrico unimodal dizem respeito à definição das técnicas de extração de característica e do classificador. Já no caso de um sistema biométrico multimodal, além destas questões, é necessário definir o nível de fusão e a estratégia de fusão a ser adotada. O objetivo desta dissertação é investigar o emprego de ensemble para fusão das modalidades biométricas, considerando diferentes estratégias de fusão, lançando-se mão de técnicas avançadas de processamento de imagens (tais como transformada Wavelet, Contourlet e Curvelet) e Aprendizado de Máquina. Em especial, dar-se-á ênfase ao estudo de diferentes tipos de máquinas de aprendizado baseadas em métodos de Kernel e sua organização em arranjos de ensemble, tendo em vista a identificação biométrica baseada em face e íris. Os resultados obtidos mostraram que a abordagem proposta é capaz de projetar um sistema biométrico multimodal com taxa de reconhecimento superior as obtidas pelo sistema biométrico unimodal. / With the advancement of technology, traditional strategies for identifying people become more susceptible to failure, in order to overcome these difficulties some approaches have been proposed in the literature. Among these approaches highlights the Biometrics. The field of Biometrics encompasses a wide variety of technologies used to identify and verify the person\'s identity through the measurement and analysis of physiological and behavioural aspects of the human body. As a result, biometrics has a wide field of applications in systems that require precise identification of their users. The most popular biometric systems are based on face recognition and fingerprint matching. Furthermore, there are other biometric systems that utilize iris and retinal scan, speech, face, and hand geometry. In recent years, biometrics authentication has seen improvements in reliability and accuracy, with some of the modalities offering good performance. However, even the best biometric modality is facing problems. Recently, big efforts have been undertaken aiming to employ multiple biometric modalities in order to make the authentication process less vulnerable to attacks. Multimodal biometrics is a relatively new approach to biometrics representation that consolidate multiple biometric modalities. Multimodality is based on the concept that the information obtained from different modalities complement each other. Consequently, an appropriate combination of such information can be more useful than using information from single modalities alone. The main issues involved in building a unimodal biometric System concern the definition of the feature extraction technique and type of classifier. In the case of a multimodal biometric System, in addition to these issues, it is necessary to define the level of fusion and fusion strategy to be adopted. The aim of this dissertation is to investigate the use of committee machines to fuse multiple biometric modalities, considering different fusion strategies, taking into account advanced methods in machine learning. In particular, it will give emphasis to the analyses of different types of machine learning methods based on Kernel and its organization into arrangements committee machines, aiming biometric authentication based on face, fingerprint and iris. The results showed that the proposed approach is capable of designing a multimodal biometric System with recognition rate than those obtained by the unimodal biometrics Systems.

Este trabalho tem seu foco na monitoração dos processos de usinagem das máquinas ferramentas sem a utilização de sensores dedicados à medição direta das grandezas mecânicas envolvidas no processo de usinagem em si. Assim sendo, optou-se por um método de medição indireta utilizando um estimador de potência e torque baseado nas grandezas elétricas na entrada de energia do motor de indução da máquina ferramenta. O núcleo central do trabalho consiste na medição de processos de usinagem utilizando um dinamômetro de alta precisão próprio para máquina ferramenta para obter os valores médios e os modos de vibração do processo máquina ferramenta-usinagem e fazer a confrontação com os mesmos dados obtidos pelo estimador de torque. A pesquisa realizada utilizou ferramentas clássicas de processamento de sinais, como é o caso da FFT, assim como duas poderosas ferramentas atuais, a transformada de wavelet (WT) e a transformada de Hilbert-Huang (HHT). Em adição foi utilizado um processo de otimização para a determinação dos parâmetros do motor de indução on-line baseado em uma metaheurística denominada busca de harmonia (Harmony Search HS) / This work focuses on monitoring the machining processes in machine tools without the use of dedicated transducers to directly measure mechanicals quantities of the machining process. The approached method used the option of measuring the power and torque through a estimator based in the electrical quantities in the input of the induction motor used by machine tool. The core of the work consists in the measuring the mechanical processes of machining using a high precision dynamometer specified to machine tool to get the average values of mechanical quantities and the vibration modes of the set machine tool-machining process, the objective is to compare the same data group got from dynamometer and estimator. The research data was based on classical analysis tool such as Fourier transform (FFT) and on modern powerful tools such as wavelet transforms (WT) and Hilbert-Huang transform (HHT). To refine the measuring process of average values of torque and power using the induction motor a method to estimates the motor parameters was added based on an optimization method named harmony search (HS).

Cette thèse porte sur l’étude des stratégies d’amélioration de la qualité d’image dans les systèmes de communication sans fil et sur la conception de nouvelles métriques d’évaluation de la qualité. Tout d'abord, une nouvelle métrique de qualité d'image à référence réduite, basée sur un modèle statistique dans le domaine des ondelettes complexes, a été proposée. Les informations d’amplitude et de phase relatives des coefficients issues de la transformée en ondelettes complexes sont modélisées à l'aide de fonctions de densité de probabilité. Les paramètres associés à ces fonctions constituent la référence réduite qui sera transmise au récepteur. Ensuite, une approche basée sur les réseaux de neurones à régression généralisée est exploitée pour construire la relation de cartographie entre les caractéristiques de la référence réduite et le score objectif.Deuxièmement, avec la nouvelle métrique, une nouvelle stratégie de décodage est proposée pour la transmission d’image sur un canal de transmission sans fil réaliste. Ainsi, la qualité d’expérience (QoE) est améliorée tout en garantissant une bonne qualité de service (QoS). Pour cela, une nouvelle base d’images a été construite et des tests d’évaluation subjective de la qualité de ces images ont été effectués pour collecter les préférences visuelles des personnes lorsqu’elles sélectionnent les images avec différentes configurations de décodage. Un classificateur basé sur les algorithmes SVM et des k plus proches voisins sont utilisés pour la sélection automatique de la meilleure configuration de décodage.Enfin, une amélioration de la métrique a été proposée permettant de mieux prendre en compte les spécificités de la distorsion et la préférence des utilisateurs. Pour cela, nous avons combiné les caractéristiques globales et locales de l’image conduisant ainsi à une amélioration de la stratégie de décodage.Les résultats expérimentaux valident l'efficacité des métriques de qualité d'image et des stratégies de transmission d’images proposées. / This thesis focuses on the study of image quality strategies in wireless communication systems and the design of new quality evaluation metrics:Firstly, a new reduced-reference image quality metric, based on statistical model in complex wavelet domain, has been proposed. The magnitude and the relative phase information of the Dual-tree Complex Wavelet Transform coefficients are modelled by using probability density function and the parameters served as reduced-reference features which will be transmitted to the receiver. Then, a Generalized Regression Neural Network approach is exploited to construct the mapping relation between reduced-reference feature and the objective score.Secondly, with the new metric, a new decoding strategy is proposed for a realistic wireless transmission system, which can improve the quality of experience (QoE) while ensuring the quality of service (QoS). For this, a new database including large physiological vision tests has been constructed to collect the visual preference of people when they are selecting the images with different decoding configurations, and a classifier based on support vector machine or K-nearest neighboring is utilized to automatically select the decoding configuration.Finally, according to specific property of the distortion and people's preference, an improved metric has been proposed. It is the combination of global feature and local feature and has been demonstrated having a good performance in optimization of the decoding strategy.The experimental results validate the effectiveness of the proposed image quality metrics and the quality strategies.

O presente texto descreve a tese de doutorado intitulada Análise de Formas usando Wavelets em Grafos. O tema está relacionado à área de Visão Computacional, particularmente aos tópicos de Caracterização, Descrição e Classificação de Formas. Dentre os métodos da extensa literatura em Análise de Formas 2D, percebe-se uma presença menor daqueles baseados em grafos com topologia arbitrária e irregular. As contribuições desta tese procuram preencher esta lacuna. É proposta uma metodologia baseada no seguinte pipeline : (i) Amostragem da forma, (ii) Estruturação das amostras em grafos, (iii) Função-base definida nos vértices, (iv) Análise multiescala de grafos por meio da Transformada Wavelet Espectral em grafos, (v) Extração de Características da Transformada Wavelet e (vi) Discriminação. Para cada uma das etapas (i), (ii), (iii), (v) e (vi), são inúmeras as abordagens possíveis. Um dos desafios é encontrar uma combinação de abordagens, dentre as muitas alternativas, que resulte em um pipeline eficaz para nossos propósitos. Em particular, para a etapa (iii), dado um grafo que representa uma forma, o desafio é identificar uma característica associada às amostras que possa ser definida sobre os vértices do grafo. Esta característica deve capturar a influência subjacente da estrutura combinatória de toda a rede sobre cada vértice, em diversas escalas. A Transformada Wavelet Espectral sobre os Grafos revelará esta influência subjacente em cada vértice. São apresentados resultados obtidos de experimentos usando formas 2D de benchmarks conhecidos na literatura, bem como de experimentos de aplicações em astronomia para análise de formas de galáxias do Sloan Digital Sky Survey não-rotuladas e rotuladas pelo projeto Galaxy Zoo 2 , demonstrando o sucesso da técnica proposta, comparada a abordagens clássicas como Transformada de Fourier e Transformada Wavelet Contínua 2D. / This document describes the PhD thesis entitled Shape Analysis by using Wavelets on Graphs. The addressed theme is related to Computer Vision, particularly to the Characterization, Description and Classication topics. Amongst the methods presented in an extensive literature on Shape Analysis 2D, it is perceived a smaller presence of graph-based methods with arbitrary and irregular topologies. The contributions of this thesis aim at fullling this gap. A methodology based on the following pipeline is proposed: (i) Shape sampling, (ii) Samples structuring in graphs, (iii) Function dened on vertices, (iv) Multiscale analysis of graphs through the Spectral Wavelet Transform, (v) Features extraction from the Wavelet Transforms and (vi) Classication. For the stages (i), (ii), (iii), (v) and (vi), there are numerous possible approaches. One great challenge is to nd a proper combination of approaches from the several available alternatives, which may be able to yield an eective pipeline for our purposes. In particular, for the stage (iii), given a graph representing a shape, the challenge is to identify a feature, which may be dened over the graph vertices. This feature should capture the underlying inuence from the combinatorial structure of the entire network over each vertex, in multiple scales. The Spectral Graph Wavelet Transform will reveal such an underpining inuence over each vertex. Yielded results from experiments on 2D benchmarks shapes widely known in literature, as well as results from astronomy applications to the analysis of unlabeled galaxies shapes from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and labeled galaxies shapes by the Galaxy Zoo 2 Project are presented, demonstrating the achievements of the proposed technique, in comparison to classic approaches such as the 2D Fourier Transform and the 2D Continuous Wavelet Transform.

Com o avanço da tecnologia, as estratégias tradicionais para identificação de pessoas se tornaram mais suscetíveis a falhas, de forma a superar essas dificuldades algumas abordagens vêm sendo propostas na literatura. Dentre estas abordagens destaca-se a Biometria. O campo da Biometria abarca uma grande variedade de tecnologias usadas para identificar e verificar a identidade de uma pessoa por meio da mensuração e análise de aspectos físicos e/ou comportamentais do ser humano. Em função disso, a biometria tem um amplo campo de aplicações em sistemas que exigem uma identificação segura de seus usuários. Os sistemas biométricos mais populares são baseados em reconhecimento facial ou de impressões digitais. Entretanto, existem outros sistemas biométricos que utilizam a íris, varredura de retina, voz, geometria da mão e termogramas faciais. Nos últimos anos, o reconhecimento biométrico obteve avanços na sua confiabilidade e precisão, com algumas modalidades biométricas oferecendo bom desempenho global. No entanto, mesmo os sistemas biométricos mais avançados ainda enfrentam problemas. Recentemente, esforços têm sido realizados visando empregar diversas modalidades biométricas de forma a tornar o processo de identificação menos vulnerável a ataques. Biometria multimodal é uma abordagem relativamente nova para representação de conhecimento biométrico que visa consolidar múltiplas modalidades biométricas. A multimodalidade é baseada no conceito de que informações obtidas a partir de diferentes modalidades se complementam. Consequentemente, uma combinação adequada dessas informações pode ser mais útil que o uso de informações obtidas a partir de qualquer uma das modalidades individualmente. As principais questões envolvidas na construção de um sistema biométrico unimodal dizem respeito à definição das técnicas de extração de característica e do classificador. Já no caso de um sistema biométrico multimodal, além destas questões, é necessário definir o nível de fusão e a estratégia de fusão a ser adotada. O objetivo desta dissertação é investigar o emprego de ensemble para fusão das modalidades biométricas, considerando diferentes estratégias de fusão, lançando-se mão de técnicas avançadas de processamento de imagens (tais como transformada Wavelet, Contourlet e Curvelet) e Aprendizado de Máquina. Em especial, dar-se-á ênfase ao estudo de diferentes tipos de máquinas de aprendizado baseadas em métodos de Kernel e sua organização em arranjos de ensemble, tendo em vista a identificação biométrica baseada em face e íris. Os resultados obtidos mostraram que a abordagem proposta é capaz de projetar um sistema biométrico multimodal com taxa de reconhecimento superior as obtidas pelo sistema biométrico unimodal. / With the advancement of technology, traditional strategies for identifying people become more susceptible to failure, in order to overcome these difficulties some approaches have been proposed in the literature. Among these approaches highlights the Biometrics. The field of Biometrics encompasses a wide variety of technologies used to identify and verify the person\'s identity through the measurement and analysis of physiological and behavioural aspects of the human body. As a result, biometrics has a wide field of applications in systems that require precise identification of their users. The most popular biometric systems are based on face recognition and fingerprint matching. Furthermore, there are other biometric systems that utilize iris and retinal scan, speech, face, and hand geometry. In recent years, biometrics authentication has seen improvements in reliability and accuracy, with some of the modalities offering good performance. However, even the best biometric modality is facing problems. Recently, big efforts have been undertaken aiming to employ multiple biometric modalities in order to make the authentication process less vulnerable to attacks. Multimodal biometrics is a relatively new approach to biometrics representation that consolidate multiple biometric modalities. Multimodality is based on the concept that the information obtained from different modalities complement each other. Consequently, an appropriate combination of such information can be more useful than using information from single modalities alone. The main issues involved in building a unimodal biometric System concern the definition of the feature extraction technique and type of classifier. In the case of a multimodal biometric System, in addition to these issues, it is necessary to define the level of fusion and fusion strategy to be adopted. The aim of this dissertation is to investigate the use of committee machines to fuse multiple biometric modalities, considering different fusion strategies, taking into account advanced methods in machine learning. In particular, it will give emphasis to the analyses of different types of machine learning methods based on Kernel and its organization into arrangements committee machines, aiming biometric authentication based on face, fingerprint and iris. The results showed that the proposed approach is capable of designing a multimodal biometric System with recognition rate than those obtained by the unimodal biometrics Systems.

Este trabalho tem seu foco na monitoração dos processos de usinagem das máquinas ferramentas sem a utilização de sensores dedicados à medição direta das grandezas mecânicas envolvidas no processo de usinagem em si. Assim sendo, optou-se por um método de medição indireta utilizando um estimador de potência e torque baseado nas grandezas elétricas na entrada de energia do motor de indução da máquina ferramenta. O núcleo central do trabalho consiste na medição de processos de usinagem utilizando um dinamômetro de alta precisão próprio para máquina ferramenta para obter os valores médios e os modos de vibração do processo máquina ferramenta-usinagem e fazer a confrontação com os mesmos dados obtidos pelo estimador de torque. A pesquisa realizada utilizou ferramentas clássicas de processamento de sinais, como é o caso da FFT, assim como duas poderosas ferramentas atuais, a transformada de wavelet (WT) e a transformada de Hilbert-Huang (HHT). Em adição foi utilizado um processo de otimização para a determinação dos parâmetros do motor de indução on-line baseado em uma metaheurística denominada busca de harmonia (Harmony Search HS) / This work focuses on monitoring the machining processes in machine tools without the use of dedicated transducers to directly measure mechanicals quantities of the machining process. The approached method used the option of measuring the power and torque through a estimator based in the electrical quantities in the input of the induction motor used by machine tool. The core of the work consists in the measuring the mechanical processes of machining using a high precision dynamometer specified to machine tool to get the average values of mechanical quantities and the vibration modes of the set machine tool-machining process, the objective is to compare the same data group got from dynamometer and estimator. The research data was based on classical analysis tool such as Fourier transform (FFT) and on modern powerful tools such as wavelet transforms (WT) and Hilbert-Huang transform (HHT). To refine the measuring process of average values of torque and power using the induction motor a method to estimates the motor parameters was added based on an optimization method named harmony search (HS).

The field of medicine is regularly faced with the challenge of utilizing information that is complicated or difficult to characterize. Physicians often must use their best judgment in reaching decisions or recommendations for treatment in the clinical setting. The goal of this thesis is to use innovative statistical tools in tackling three specific challenges of this nature from current healthcare applications. The first aim focuses on developing a novel approach to meta-analysis when combining binary data from multiple studies of paired design, particularly in cases of high heterogeneity between studies. The challenge is in properly accounting for heterogeneity when dealing with a low or moderate number of studies, and with a rarely occurring outcome. The proposed approach uses a Rasch model for translating data from multiple paired studies into a unified structure that allows for properly handling variability associated with both pair effects and study effects. Analysis is then performed using a Bayesian hierarchical structure, which accounts for heterogeneity in a direct way within the variances of the separate generating distributions for each model parameter. This approach is applied to the debated topic within the dental community of the comparative effectiveness of materials used for pit-and-fissure sealants. The second and third aims of this research both have applications in early detection of breast cancer. The interpretation of a mammogram is often difficult since signs of early disease are often minuscule, and the appearance of even normal tissue can be highly variable and complex. Physicians often have to consider many important pieces of the whole picture when trying to assess next steps. The final two aims focus on improving the interpretation of findings in mammograms to aid in early cancer detection. When dealing with high frequency and irregular data, as is seen in most medical images, the behaviors of these complex structures are often difficult or impossible to quantify by standard modeling techniques. But a commonly occurring phenomenon in high-frequency data is that of regular scaling. The second aim in this thesis is to develop and evaluate a wavelet-based scaling estimator that reduces the information in a mammogram down to an informative and low-dimensional quantification of the innate scaling behavior, optimized for use in classifying the tissue as cancerous or non-cancerous. The specific demands for this estimator are that it be robust with respect to distributional assumptions on the data, and with respect to outlier levels in the frequency domain representation of the data. The final aim in this research focuses on enhancing the visualization of microcalcifications that are too small to capture well on screening mammograms. Using scale-mixing discrete wavelet transform methods, the existing detail information contained in a very small and course image will be used to impute scaled details at finer levels. These "informed" finer details will then be used to produce an image of much higher resolution than the original, improving the visualization of the object. The goal is to also produce a confidence area for the true location of the shape's borders, allowing for more accurate feature assessment. Through the more accurate assessment of these very small shapes, physicians may be more confident in deciding next steps.