<p>Print Mottle is perhaps one of the most disturbing factors influencing overall Print Quality. Mottle has traditionally been evaluated by estimating the reflectance variation in the print. Although the amplitude of the reflectance variation is probably the most important aspect of print mottle, other aspects may also influence the perceptibility of mottle. Since the human visual system is optimised to fit the conditions prevailing in its surroundings, it is also important to consider aspects such as mean reflectance factor level, spatial frequency content, structure of the mottle, and colour variations.</p><p>In this thesis, a new evaluation model for the estimation of print mottle is proposed. The model is best explained as a six-step chain. First, a digital RGB image of the print is acquired with a scanner. The digital RGB image is then calibrated and transformed into the L*a*b* colour space. Next, the three colour components are transformed into the frequency domain by a Fourier transform and the power spectra are calculated. The power spectra are thereafter filtered with respect to the contrast sensitivity functions representing the human eye’s sensitivity to spatial variations in the three colour channels. To account for systematic variations in the sample, the spectra are filtered a second time with texture enhancement filters, which are based on local calculations of chi-square measures in the power spectra. The energy within the visually detectable area of the filtered power spectra is then integrated to obtain a single measure of the variation for each colour component. A single mottle estimate is obtained as the square root of the sum of the squared variation measures for the three components. To acknowledge the influence of mean lightness level on perceived print mottle in a way that agrees with the results presented in Paper I, the mottle estimate obtained is finally multiplied by the sixth root of the mean reflectance factor level.</p><p>The theoretical foundations of the model are consecutively developed through the first five papers of the thesis. The first paper considers the influence of the mean reflectance level on perceived print mottle. The second and third papers describe the contrast sensitivity filter and the texture enhancement filter applied. The fourth paper compares the new model with other models for print mottle evaluation. The fifth paper extends the grey-scale version of the model into colour. The sixth paper presents the unified model that takes all the mentioned factors into account.</p><p>To test the model, samples from both simulated sets of prints with various degrees of colour and/or systematic mottle and sets of real prints from various conventional presses were analysed a) visually, b) with traditional print mottle evaluation models, and c) with the new model. Results obtained using the different evaluation models were compared with visual assessments of the sets of prints. In each one of the evaluations the new model was found to be as good as or superior to the traditional print mottle evaluation models in its agreement with visual assessment. The new model is particularly promising in cases where the evaluated prints show colour and/or systematic disturbances</p>

<p>In this thesis, two real-time stereo methods have been implemented and evaluated. The first one is based on blockmatching and the second one is based on local phase. The goal was to be able to run the algorithms at real-time and examine which one is best. The blockmatching method performed better than the phase based method, both in speed and accuracy. SIMD operations (Single Instruction Multiple Data) have been used in the processor giving a speed boost by a factor of two.</p> / <p>I det här exjobbet har två stereometoder för realtidstillämpningar implementerats och utvärderats. Den ena bygger på blockmatchning och den andra på lokal fas. Målet var att kunna köra metoderna i realtid och undersöka vilken av dem som fungerar bäst. Blockmatchningsmetoden gav gott resultat medan den fasbaserade fungerade sämre, både vad gäller hastighet och precision. SIMD-operationer (Single Instruction Multiple Data) användes hos processorn vilket resulterade en i fördubbling av prestandan.</p>

<p>Nukleärmedicinska bilder som exempelvis SPECT (Single Photon Emission Tomogra-phy) är en bildgenererande teknik som ofta används i många applikationer vid mätning av fysiologiska egenskaper i den mänskliga kroppen. En vanlig sorts undersökning som använder sig av SPECT är myokardiell perfusion (blodflöde i hjärtvävnaden), som ofta används för att undersöka t.ex. en möjlig hjärtinfarkt. För att göra det möjligt för läkare att ställa en kvalitativ diagnos baserad på dessa bilder, måste bilderna först segmenteras och roteras av en biomedicinsk analytiker. Detta utförs på grund av att hjärtat hos olika patienter, eller hos patienter vid olika examinationstillfällen, inte är lokaliserat och roterat på samma sätt, vilket är ett väsentligt antagande av läkaren vid granskning</p><p>av bilderna. Eftersom olika biomedicinska analytiker med olika mängd erfarenhet och expertis roterar bilderna olika uppkommer variation av de slutgiltiga bilder, vilket ofta kan vara ett problem vid diagnostisering.</p><p>En annan sorts nukleärmedicinsk undersökning är vid kvantifiering av dopaminreceptorer i de basala ganglierna i hjärnan. Detta utförs ofta på patienter som visar symptom av Parkinsons sjukdom, eller liknande sjukdomar. För att kunna bestämma graden av sjukdomen används ofta ett utförande för att räkna ut olika kvoter mellan områden runt dopaminreceptorerna. Detta är ett tröttsamt arbete för personen som utför kvantifieringen och trots att de insamlade bilderna är tredimensionella, utförs kvantifieringen allt för ofta endast på en eller flera skivor av bildvolymen. I likhet med myokardiell perfusionsundersökningar är variation mellan kvantifiering utförd av olika personer en möjlig felkälla.</p><p>I den här rapporten presenteras en ny metod för att automatiskt segmentera hjärtats vänstra kammare i SPECT-bilder. Segmenteringen är baserad på en intensitetsinvariant lokal-fasbaserad lösning, vilket eliminerar svårigheterna med den i myokardiella perfusionsbilder ofta varierande intensiteten. Dessutom används metoden för att uppskatta vinkeln hos hjärtats vänstra kammare. Efter att metoden sedan smått justerats används den som ett förslag på ett nytt sätt att automatiskt kvantifiera dopaminreceptorer i de basala ganglierna, vid användning av den radioaktiva lösningen DaTSCAN.</p> / <p>Nuclear medical imaging such as SPECT (Single Photon Emission Tomography) is an imaging modality which is readily used in many applications for measuring physiological properties of the human body. One very common type of examination using SPECT is when measuring myocardial perfusion (blood flow in the heart tissue), which is often used to examine e.g. a possible myocardial infarction (heart attack). In order for doctors to give a qualitative diagnose based on these images, the images must first be segmented and rotated by a medical technologist. This is performed due to the fact that the heart of different patients, or for patients at different times of examination, is not situated and rotated equally, which is an essential assumption for the doctor when examining the images. Consequently, as different technologists with different amount of experience and expertise will rotate images differently, variability between operators arises and can often become a problem in the process of diagnosing.</p><p>Another type of nuclear medical examination is when quantifying dopamine transporters in the basal ganglia in the brain. This is commonly done for patients showing symptoms of Parkinson’s disease or similar diseases. In order to specify the severity of the disease, a scheme for calculating different fractions between parts of the dopamine transporter area is often used. This is tedious work for the person performing the quantification, and despite the acquired three dimensional images, quantification is too often performed on one or more slices of the image volume. In resemblance with myocardial perfusion examinations, variability between different operators can also here present a possible source of errors.</p><p>In this thesis, a novel method for automatically segmenting the left ventricle of the heart in SPECT-images is presented. The segmentation is based on an intensity-invariant local-phase based approach, thus removing the difficulty of the commonly varying intensity in myocardial perfusion images. Additionally, the method is used to estimate the angle of the left ventricle of the heart. Furthermore, the method is slightly adjusted, and a new approach on automatically quantifying dopamine transporters in the basal ganglia using the DaTSCAN radiotracer is proposed.</p>

<p>There has been a rapid progress of the graphics processor the last years, much because of the demands from computer games on speed and image quality. Because of the graphics processor’s special architecture it is much faster at solving parallel problems than the normal processor. Due to its increasing programmability it is possible to use it for other tasks than it was originally designed for.</p><p>Even though graphics processors have been programmable for some time, it has been quite difficult to learn how to use them. CUDA enables the programmer to use C-code, with a few extensions, to program NVIDIA’s graphics processor and completely skip the traditional programming models. This thesis investigates if the graphics processor can be used for calculations without knowledge of how the hardware mechanisms work. An image processing algorithm calculating the optical flow has been implemented. The result shows that it is rather easy to implement programs using CUDA, but some knowledge of how the graphics processor works is required to achieve high performance.</p>

Thesis (doctoral)--Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, 1997. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 121-128).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2001. / Bibliography: leaves 210-216.

Thesis (MPhil)--University of Stellenbosch, 2009. / Bibliography. Also available via the Internet.

Thesis (M.S.)--Missouri University of Science and Technology, 2010. / Vita. The entire thesis text is included in file. Title from title screen of thesis/dissertation PDF file (viewed Dec. 23, 2009). Includes bibliographical references (p. 82-83).

Thesis (M.S.)--Mississippi State University. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.

Geopolymer cements present a unique opportunity to make concrete binders almost entirely out of waste stream materials. Geopolymers made from fly ash, a waste product of coal power generation, as the aluminosilicate source and caustic activating solution were the focus of this study. However, the use of waste stream materials presents many challenges. One major stumbling block is that fly ash is inherently variable in composition and difficult to comprehensively characterize. The purpose of this work was to clarify the relationship between fly ash composition and reactivity in geopolymer cements. Ten fly ashes comprising a wide compositional spectrum were selected for the study and were characterized using quantitative x-ray diffraction and multispectral image analysis (MSIA) of x-ray maps coupled with point compositional analysis. The fly ashes were mixed into geopolymer mortars to determine their reactivity when activated as geopolymers. I hypothesized that the fly ashes that performed well under geopolymer formation conditions would have similarities in the glassy phases identified in them. The fly ashes that resulted in geopolymers with high compressive strengths did have several glassy phases in common. The phases were typically high in calcium, high in silicon, and somewhat low in aluminum. To determine whether the common phases were soluble and therefore likely to be dissolved, a dissolution method was used in which fly ash was mixed with concentrated caustic solution and continuously agitated; after 7 d and 28 d, the solid residues from the dissolution were studied using MSIA. The results showed that most of the glassy phases hypothesized to react were reactive, although the results were somewhat complex due to the heterogeneity of fly ash. The MSIA method proposed in previous work was further developed through this study, and a new way of selecting the training classes for phase composition assignment in the images was proposed. / text