<p>Karcinom dojke predstavlja najče&scaron;ću malignu neoplazmu među ženskom populacijom, a po&scaron;tedna terapija dojke, preferirani je model lečenja bolesnica u ranom stadijumu bolesti. Smatra se da je optimalna hirur&scaron;ka resekciona margina 2 mm. Opisano je mnogo metoda koje služe za intraoperativnu proveru suficijentnosti resekcione hirur&scaron;ke margine i sve one imaju svoje prednosti i mane. Ciljevi ove studije bili su da se utvrdi, da li postoji statistički značajna razlika u određivanju &scaron;irine negativne resekcione hirur&scaron;ke margine izražene u milimetrima pri operacijama karcinoma dojke upotrebom palpatorne metode i intraoperativne mobilne radiografije, poređenjem nalaza merenja hiruga sa većim i manjim iskustvom u hirurgiji karcinoma dojke kao i nalaza radiologa u odnosu na patohistolo&scaron;ku ex tempore analizu. Istraživanje je sprovedeno kao retrospektivno&ndash;prospektivna studija na Klinici za operativnu onkologiju, Instituta za onkologiju Vojvodine i obuhvatilo je 150 bolesnica kod kojih je preoperativno dijagnostikovan karcinom dojke. Kriterijum za uključenje u studiju bilo je izvođenje po&scaron;tedne operacije dojke sa ili bez disekcije ipsilaterale aksile, dok su iz studije isključene bolesnice kod kojih nije bilo moguće izvesti po&scaron;tednu operaciju dojke, one sa radiolo&scaron;ki potvrđenom diseminovanom bole&scaron;ću, kao i bolesnice koje su ranije operisane zbog karcinoma iste dojke. Kod svih 150 ekstirpiranih karcinoma dojke urađena je procena &scaron;irine resekcione hirur&scaron;ke margine intraoperativno palpatornom metodom, zatim na aparatu za mobilnu digitalnu radiografiju, te radiogram analiziran od strane iskusnog i manje iskusnog hiruga u hirurgiji karcinoma dojke, kao i radiologa te upoređen sa nalazom ex tempore patohistolo&scaron;ke analize. Definitivna &scaron;irina resekcione hirur&scaron;ke margine potvrđena je na parafinskim patohistolo&scaron;kim preparatima. Srednja vrednost praćenja bolesnica, postoperativno, iznosila je 100,97 nedelja. Najveći broj bolesnica pripadao je starijoj životnoj dobi (56,67%). Preoperativna lokalizacija klinički nepalpabilnih tumora u dojci urađena je kod 52 (34,67%) bolesnice. Najče&scaron;će se tumor prezentovao kao solitarni fokus sa okolnim ognji&scaron;tima in situ karcinoma (72, 48%), dok je najče&scaron;ći histolo&scaron;ki subtip bio duktalni invazivni karcinom dojke (112 (74,67%)). Najveći broj operacija dojke okarakterisan je kao kvadrantektomija (85 (56,67)), dok je najučestalija operacija aksile bilo određivanje limfnog čvora stražara (119 (79,33%). Analizom rada aparata za mobilnu digitalnu radiografiju do&scaron;li smo do saznanja da nema statistički značajne razlike u oceni kvaliteta radiograma i &scaron;irine resekcione hirur&scaron;ke margine merene na aparatu za mobilnu digitalnu radiografiju između iskusnog hirurga i radiologa. Statistički značajna razlika nije uočena ni pri merenju &scaron;irine resekcione hirur&scaron;ke margine izražene u milimetrima na aparatu za mobilnu digitalnu radiografiju od strane iskusnog hirurga i radiologa u odnosu na ex tempore patohistolo&scaron;ku analizu, dok je ista uočena nakon definitivne patohistolo&scaron;ke analize. &Scaron;ansa doresekcije tkiva dojke nakon merenja na aparatu za mobilnu digitalnu radiografiju je 1,4 puta veća nego nakon patohistolo&scaron;ke ex tempore analize. Lokalni recidiv javio se kod jedne pacijentkinje tokom perioda praćenja. Ne postoji statistički značajna razlika u određivanju &scaron;irine resekcione hirur&scaron;ke margine izražene u milimetrima upotrebom aparata za mobilnu digitalnu radiografiju od strane iskusnog hirurga i radiologa u odnosu na patohistolo&scaron;ku ex tempore analizu, dok ista postoji nakon analize radiograma od strane manje iskusnog hirurga. Palpatorna metoda se ne može smatrati sigurnom metodom u određivanju &scaron;irine hirur&scaron;ke resekcione margine. Ne postoji statistički značajna razlika u broju doresekcije tkiva dojke između hirurga sa različitim hirur&scaron;kim iskustvom.</p> / <p>Breast cancer is the most common malignant neoplasm in the female population, and conservative breast therapy is the preferred treatment model for patients in early stages of the disease. The optimal surgical resection margin, from healthy breast tissue around the primary tumor is 2 mm. Many methods have been described that serve to check the resection margin during breast conservative surgery and all of them have their advantages and disadvantages. The aim of this study was to determine whether there was a statistically significant difference in the determination of the width of the negative resection margin expressed in millimeters in breast cancer surgery using palpatory method and intraoperative mobile specimen radiography, comparing the findings of measuring of surgeons with greater and lesser experience in breast cancer surgery as well as the findings of the radiologist in relation to histopathological ex tempore and definitive histopathological analysis. The study was conducted as a retrospective - prospective study at the Clinic for Operative Oncology, Oncology Institute of Vojvodina and included 150 patients who were preoperatively diagnosed with breast cancer. The criterion for inclusion in the study was the opportunity to perform breast conservative surgery with or without complete axillary lymph node dissection. Patients that were treated with breast amputation, those with radiological confirmed disseminated disease, as well as patients previously operated from cancer were excluded from the study. For all 150 extirpated breast cancers, an estimate of the width of the resection surgical margin was performed intraoperatively with a palpatory method, followed by measuring on device for mobile specimen digital radiography, and a radiogram was analyzed by an experienced and less experienced surgeon in breast cancer surgery, as well as by a radiologist and compared with an ex tempore histopathological analysis. The definitive width of the resection surgical margin was confirmed on histopathological preparations. The mean follow-up, postoperatively, was 100.97 weeks. The majority of patients belonged to the elderly age (56.67%). Preoperative localization of clinically impalpable breast tumors was performed in 52 (34.67%) patients. Most often the tumor was presented as a solitary focus with surrounding foci of in situ cancer (72, 48%), while the most common histological subtype was invasive ductal breast cancer (112 (74.67%)). The majority of breast operations were characterized like quadrantectomy (85 (56.67)), while the most frequent axillary surgery was the determination of the sentinel lymph node (119 (79.33%). No significant difference was observed in the evaluation of radiography quality and the width of the resection surgical margin measured on the mobile digital radiography device between the experienced surgeon and the radiologist. No statistically significant difference was observed in the measurement of the width of the resection surgical margin expressed in millimeters on the mobile digital radiography device by the experienced surgeon and radiologist versus ex tempore histopathological analysis, while the statistical difference was observed after definite histopathological analysis. The chance of breast tissue reexcision after measurement on a mobile digital radiography device is 1.4 times higher than after histopathological ex tempore analysis. Local relapse occurred in one patient during the follow-up period. There is no statistically significant difference in the determination of the width of the resection surgical margin expressed in millimeters using a mobile digital radiography device by an experienced surgeon in breast cancer surgery and radiologist with respect to histopathological ex tempore analysis. However, the statistical difference exists after radiogram analysis by a less experienced surgeon. The palpatory method cannot be considered as a safe method in determining the width of a surgical resection margin. There is no statistically significant difference in the number of breast tissue additional resections between surgeons with different surgical experience.</p>

Biometric systems allow identification of human persons based on physiological or behavioral characteristics, such as voice, handprint, iris or facial characteristics. The use of face and iris recognition as a way to authenticate user’s identities has been a topic of research for years. Present iris recognition systems require that subjects stand close (<2m) to the imaging camera and look for a period of about three seconds until the data are captured. This cooperative behavior is required in order to capture quality images for accurate recognition. This will eventually restrict the amount of practical applications where iris recognition can be applied, especially in an uncontrolled environment where subjects are not expected to cooperate such as criminals and terrorists, for example. For this reason, this thesis develops a collection of methods to deal with low quality face and iris images and that can be applied for face and iris recognition in a non-cooperative environment. This thesis makes the following main contributions: I. For eye and face tracking in low quality images, a new robust method is developed. The proposed system consists of three parts: face localization, eye detection and eye tracking. This is accomplished using traditional image-based passive techniques such as shape information of the eye and active based methods which exploit the spectral properties of the pupil under IR illumination. The developed method is also tested on underexposed images where the subject shows large head movements. II. For iris recognition, a new technique is developed for accurate iris segmentation in low quality images where a major portion of the iris is occluded. Most existing methods perform generally quite well but tend to overestimate the occluded regions, and thus lose iris information that could be used for identification. This information loss is potentially important in the covert surveillance applications we consider in this thesis. Once the iris region is properly segmented using the developed method, the biometric feature information is calculated for the iris region using the relative entropy technique. Iris biometric feature information is calculated using two different feature decomposition algorithms based on Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Independent Component Analysis (ICA). III. For face recognition, a new approach is developed to measure biometric feature information and the changes in biometric sample quality resulting from image degradations. A definition of biometric feature information is introduced and an algorithm to measure it proposed, based on a set of population and individual biometric features, as measured by a biometric algorithm under test. Examples of its application were shown for two different face recognition algorithms based on PCA (Eigenface) and Fisher Linear Discriminant (FLD) feature decompositions.

雖然由老化引發的腦白質病變是老年人認知障礙的一個重要誘因，其機理缺並不為人所知。最新的小樣本研究表明擴散核磁造影在很大程度上是對腦白質病變最為敏感的的成像檢測手段。加深對擴散核磁造影所給出的各種指數的理解和認知對於檢測腦白質病變的病理發展以及研發試驗療法的替代標記有重要的意義。 / 為了獲得更具有臨床價值的擴散核磁造影指數，我們首先需要重構腦白質纖維束並沿著重構出的腦白質纖維束採集數值。然而，傳統的腦白質纖維束重構技術對於腦白質病變十分敏感。此外，不同病人所重構出的腦白質纖維束間缺乏映射關係也使我們無法有效進行大樣本統計分析。 / 在這個課題裡，我們提出了一個可以解決以上問題的一個全新框架。我們將專家標註過功能區的全腦白質纖維束模板配準到各個個體的腦部。此方案可自動生成個體化的全腦白質纖維束以及纖維束的功能區標註。自由形變模型被用於在全局層面對配準進行約束。所重構纖維束的曲率被用於在局部對配準進行約束。為了減輕腦白質病變對配準的影響，我們運用了一種 魯棒的主成分分析手段來檢測被病灶所干擾的纖維束。為了指導這些被干擾纖維束的配準，我們提出了一種全新的沿纖維束的區域特徵作為替代。此外，我們也探究了通過在纖維束上建立坐標系來除去離群纖維已經提供更高相關性的辦法。 / 我們所提出的框架被運用於一個腦小血管病變的臨床研究。在64個研究對象中約半數是腦白質病變患者。試驗結果證實此算法成功地將全腦白質纖維束模板配準到了所有研究對象上。沿著特定纖維束改採集的指數與認知測試分數的相關性顯著地超越了傳統指數所給出的結果。我們同時也發現沿著不同功能區腦白質纖維改採集的指數與相應的認知測試分數統計相關。 / Although age-related white matter lesion(WML)is an important substrate for cognitive impairment in the elderly, the mechanisms whereby WML induces cognitive impairment are uncertain. Recent findings based on small studies suggested that diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) measures might be the most sensitive imaging predictors in patients with WML. Understanding the imaging predictors for such disease will be useful in monitoring disease progression and in devising surrogate marker for treatment trials. / In order to obtain DTI measurements with diagnostic significance, it is first necessary to reconstruct the white-matter fiber pathways inside the brain along which certain DTI-derived values are calculated. Nevertheless, the traditional approach of white-matter tract reconstruction, or tractography, is severely hindered by the abundant existence of lesions inside the brains of WML patients. The lack of correspondence between fiber bundles across patients also makes obtaining group statistics of individual fiber bundles dicult. / In this study, we propose a novel framework that can mitigate the aforementioned issues of traditional tractography approaches. An expert-labeled whole brain tractography template is registered onto individual patients. Fiber trajectories and anatomically meaningful fiber bundles are automatically obtained by this registration. The free-form deformations are used to regularize the transformations at the whole brain level and across fiber bundles. Fiber curvatures are penalized as the intra-fiber regularization to encourage the smoothness of transformed fibers. White matter (WM) lesion is one of the major factors affecting tractography and registration of subjects with neuro Logical disorders. The Robust Principal Component Analysis(RPCA) is used to automatically detect fiber tract segments that are affected by WM lesion and a novel along-fiber regional prior is learned from healthy subjects to facilitate the registration of these fiber tract segments. We also propose to establish bundle-wise coordinate system by utilizing low-rank constraints upon the DTI measurements. The eort elevates the summary for an anatomical bundle from a scalar statistic to a vector containing changes along the representative fiber pathway. It provides means to exclude the outlier fibers while retaining partially-complete fibers. / The proposed scheme is applied to a clinical study of cerebral small vessel diseases(SVD).Experimental results show successful registration of the whole brain tractography template onto all 64 subjects, including both healthy con¬trol subjects and SVD patients. The DTI measures measured along specific registered anatomical fiber bundles exhibit significant boost in correlation with cognitive functions as compared with traditional measures. It also shows that different anatomical WM structures correlate with multiple types of cognitive functions in different ways. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / He, Xiaotian. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2012. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 46-53). / Abstracts also in Chinese. / List of Figures --- p.ix / List of Tables --- p.xii / Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1 --- Motivation --- p.1 / Chapter 1.2 --- Our Work and Contributions --- p.2 / Chapter 1.3 --- Related Work --- p.4 / Chapter 1.4 --- Thesis Organization --- p.5 / Chapter 2 --- Background --- p.6 / Chapter 2.1 --- Background of Neuroanatomy --- p.6 / Chapter 2.2 --- Background on Diffusion Tensor Magnetic Resonance Imaging (DTMRI) --- p.11 / Chapter 3 --- Free Form Fibers --- p.18 / Chapter 3.1 --- DTI Acquisition --- p.20 / Chapter 3.2 --- Fiber Model --- p.20 / Chapter 3.3 --- Fiber-to-DTI Registration --- p.21 / Chapter 3.3.1 --- Free-Form Fibers (FFFs) --- p.21 / Chapter 3.3.2 --- Tensor-Driven Fiber-to-DTI Registration --- p.23 / Chapter 3.3.3 --- Reliability Assessment by Robust Principal Component Analysis --- p.24 / Chapter 3.3.4 --- Contextual Feature --- p.26 / Chapter 3.3.5 --- Learning the Fiber Context Prior --- p.29 / Chapter 3.3.6 --- Registration Refinement Using the Fiber Context Prior --- p.29 / Chapter 4 --- Results --- p.31 / Chapter 5 --- Future Work --- p.39 / Chapter 5.1 --- Refinement on Large Bundles --- p.39 / Chapter 5.2 --- Outlier Fiber Removal in Fiber Template --- p.40 / Chapter 6 --- Conclusion --- p.44 / Bibliography --- p.46

Submitted by Kamila Costa (kamilavasconceloscosta@gmail.com) on 2015-06-11T20:01:02Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação-Daily D de O Rodrigues.pdf: 2391223 bytes, checksum: 06b57d0d17da9e4844b2d8482ac25cb0 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Divisão de Documentação/BC Biblioteca Central (ddbc@ufam.edu.br) on 2015-06-15T18:06:50Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação-Daily D de O Rodrigues.pdf: 2391223 bytes, checksum: 06b57d0d17da9e4844b2d8482ac25cb0 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Divisão de Documentação/BC Biblioteca Central (ddbc@ufam.edu.br) on 2015-06-15T18:08:28Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação-Daily D de O Rodrigues.pdf: 2391223 bytes, checksum: 06b57d0d17da9e4844b2d8482ac25cb0 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-06-15T18:08:28Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação-Daily D de O Rodrigues.pdf: 2391223 bytes, checksum: 06b57d0d17da9e4844b2d8482ac25cb0 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-02-27 / FAPEAM - Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Amazonas / The enhancement of underwater images in applications in the area of Amazonian rivers has been increasingly required and needs further study especially where the rivers have high turbidity and low light. There is increasingly demand for automatic enhancement methods to carry out monitoring of fauna and flora intensive rivers, as well as for the maintenance of pipelines and underwater cables. The enhancement methods specified, developed and validated for using in the rivers of the Amazonia are faced with the problem of imaging quality. The research related to underwater am environments of the Amazon has to dead with high turbidity of the water, caused mainly due to particles in suspension and interaction of light with the environment. The underwater images extraction with satisfiable visibility of the environments of Amazonian rivers has become extremely indispensable and relevant, given that there are natural treasures still unexplored into the depths of these rivers, as well as there is need to maintain the underwater part of the transportation system gas LPG (Liquefied Petroleum Gas) Coari-Manaus. Given this promising scenario, this study aims to improve these images by applying techniques of enhancement using nonlinear filters, which promote the minimization of the light interaction characteristics with the environment, loss of contrast and color in images extracted from turbid underwater environments. The method was experimentally validated with images acquired from simulations of underwater scenes and images acquired in outdoor underwater environments. The proposed method is compared to two other techniques of highlighting or enhancement of images. As in this study, these techniques also require a single image as input. The results return images with enhanced visual quality, considering a large set of experiments with simulation data and real outdoors scenes. / O realce de imagens subaquáticas em aplicações na região dos rios amazônicos é cada vez mais requisitado e carece de um estudo mais aprofundado especialmente nos casos em que os rios apresentam alto índice de turbidez e baixa luminosidade. Estes rios têm demandado cada vez mais métodos de realce automáticos que realizem o monitoramento de sua fauna e flora, bem como manutenção de dutos e cabos subaquáticos. Os métodos de realce especificados, desenvolvidos e validados para uso nos rios da região, se deparam com o problema da qualidade de captação de imagens. As pesquisas relacionadas aos ambientes subaquáticos da Amazônia são prejudicadas pelo alto nível de turbidez de suas águas, causadas principalmente devido às partículas em suspensão e à interação da luz com o meio. A extração de imagens subaquáticas de visibilidade adequada aos ambientes dos rios amazônicos em geral, tem se demonstrado imprescindível e relevante, haja vista que, existem tesouros naturais ainda inexplorados nas profundezas desses rios. Por outro lado, verifica-se a necessidade de manutenção da parte subaquática do sistema de transporte de gás GLP (Gás Liquefeito de Petróleo) Coari-Manaus. Diante deste cenário promissor, este trabalho objetiva a melhoria dessas imagens através da aplicação de técnicas de realce com uso de filtros não lineares, que promovam a minimização das características da interação da luz com o meio, perda de contraste e cores em imagens extraídas de ambientes subaquáticos turvos. O método proposto é comparado a duas outras técnicas de realce ou melhoria de imagens que, como neste trabalho, também requerem uma única imagem como entrada. Os resultados obtidos retornam imagens com melhor qualidade visual, considerando-se um grande conjunto de experimentos realizados com dados de simulação e cenas reais obtidas em ambientes externos.

<p>The usage of automatic fingerprint identification systems as a means of identification and/or verification have increased substantially during the last couple of years. It is well known that small deviations may occur within a fingerprint over time, a problem referred to as template ageing. This problem, and other reasons for deviations between two images of the same fingerprint, complicates the identification/verification process, since distinct features may appear somewhat different in the two images that are matched. Commonly used to try and minimise this type of problem are different kinds of fingerprint image enhancement algorithms. This thesis tests different methods within the scale-space framework and evaluate their performance as fingerprint image enhancement methods. </p><p>The methods tested within this thesis ranges from linear scale-space filtering, where no prior information about the images is known, to scalar and tensor driven diffusion where analysis of the images precedes and controls the diffusion process. </p><p>The linear scale-space approach is shown to improve correlation values, which was anticipated since the image structure is flattened at coarser scales. There is however no increase in the number of accurate matches, since inaccurate features also tends to get higher correlation value at large scales. </p><p>The nonlinear isotropic scale-space (scalar dependent diffusion), or the edge- preservation, approach is proven to be an ill fit method for fingerprint image enhancement. This is due to the fact that the analysis of edges may be unreliable, since edge structure is often distorted in fingerprints affected by the template ageing problem. </p><p>The nonlinear anisotropic scale-space (tensor dependent diffusion), or coherence-enhancing, method does not give any overall improvements of the number of accurate matches. It is however shown that for a certain type of template ageing problem, where the deviating structure does not significantly affect the ridge orientation, the nonlinear anisotropic diffusion is able to accurately match correlation pairs that resulted in a false match before they were enhanced.</p>

Diss. (sammanfattning) Linköping : Linköpings universitet, 2010. / Härtill 6 uppsatser.

Thesis--University of Oklahoma. / Bibliography: leaves 91-98.

Η αυτόματη ταυτοποίηση εικόνων δακτυλικών αποτυπωμάτων αποτελεί ένα δύσκολο και πολυδιάστατο πρόβλημα, το οποίο έχει απασχολήσει πλήθος ερευνητών και για το οποίο έχει αναπτυχθεί μεγάλος αριθμός τεχνικών. Η δυσκολία του προβλήματος έγκειται στο γεγονός ότι οι εικόνες των αποτυπωμάτων είναι σε μεγάλο ποσοστό αλλοιωμένες ή ακόμα σε κάποιες περιπτώσεις δεν είναι διαθέσιμη η πλήρης εικόνα του αποτυπώματος, αλλά μόνο ένα μέρος αυτής. Στη συγκεκριμένη διατριβή, προτείνονται δύο μέθοδοι αυτόματης ταυτοποίησης δακτυλικών αποτυπωμάτων: α) η μέθοδος ταυτοποίησης δακτυλικών αποτυπωμάτων με χρήση τεχνικών ευθυγράμμισης και β) μέθοδος ταυτοποίησης δακτυλικών αποτυπωμάτων από το συνδυασμό του Δικτύου Αυτό-Οργανούμενων Δικτύων του Kohonen και του ορισμού των σημείων μικρολεπτομερειών των αποτυπωμάτων ως νευρώνων του δικτύου. Επιπλέον, ιδιαίτερη βαρύτητα δόθηκε στην προεπεξεργασία των εικόνων των δακτυλικών αποτυπωμάτων βάσει της ανάπτυξης και εφαρμογής κατάλληλων τεχνικών επεξεργασίας εικόνων προκειμένου να προκύψει βελτίωση της ποιότητας της εικόνας του δακτυλικού αποτυπώματος και να εξαχθούν οι μικρολεπτομέρειες που χρησιμοποιούνται για την ταύτιση των δακτυλικών αποτυπωμάτων. Στο πλαίσιο της παρούσας διατριβής, χρησιμοποιήθηκαν δεδομένα δακτυλικών αποτυπωμάτων από τις βάσεις VeriFingerSample_DB της Neurotechnology και η DB3 του διαγωνισμού δακτυλικών αποτυπωμάτων FVC2004. Για την ποσοτική αποτίμηση της απόδοσης των προτεινόμενων μεθόδων χρησιμοποιήθηκε το κριτήριο της Αναλογίας Ίσου Σφάλματος (EqualErrorRate – EER). Σύμφωνα με το κριτήριο αυτό, η μέθοδος ταυτοποίησης δακτυλικών αποτυπωμάτων βάσει του Δικτύου Αυτό-Οργανούμενων Δικτύων παρείχε καλύτερα αποτελέσματα σε σύγκριση με οποιαδήποτε μέθοδο ευθυγράμμισης που εφαρμόστηκε. / Automatic Fingerprint Identification is a difficult and multidimensional problem. For this reason, the number of papers and techniques regarding this issue is numerous. The hardness of the problem lies with the fact that there is a large percentage of corrupted and partial fingerprint images. Throughout this Thesis, two methods were proposed for the Automatic Fingerprint Identification: a) the Automatic Fingerprint Identification based on registration techniques and b) the Automatic Fingerprint Identification based on the theory of Self Organizing Maps of Kohonen, setting the minutiae of the fingerprint images as input neurons of the Map. Furthermore, an important step prior to the application of the proposed automatic fingerprint identification methods is the pre-processing of these images by the development and implementation of a series of image processing techniques in order to enhance the image quality and to extract the minutiae which are then used for the fingerprint identification. In this Thesis, a substantial number of fingerprint images were used from the database VeriFingerSample_DB kai from the database DB3 of the competition FVC2004. The quantitative evaluation of both proposed automatic fingerprint identification methods were based on the Equal Error Rate (EER) criterion. According to this, the Automatic Fingerprint Identification based on the Self Organizing Maps outperformed against any other method based on registration techniques.

The usage of automatic fingerprint identification systems as a means of identification and/or verification have increased substantially during the last couple of years. It is well known that small deviations may occur within a fingerprint over time, a problem referred to as template ageing. This problem, and other reasons for deviations between two images of the same fingerprint, complicates the identification/verification process, since distinct features may appear somewhat different in the two images that are matched. Commonly used to try and minimise this type of problem are different kinds of fingerprint image enhancement algorithms. This thesis tests different methods within the scale-space framework and evaluate their performance as fingerprint image enhancement methods. The methods tested within this thesis ranges from linear scale-space filtering, where no prior information about the images is known, to scalar and tensor driven diffusion where analysis of the images precedes and controls the diffusion process. The linear scale-space approach is shown to improve correlation values, which was anticipated since the image structure is flattened at coarser scales. There is however no increase in the number of accurate matches, since inaccurate features also tends to get higher correlation value at large scales. The nonlinear isotropic scale-space (scalar dependent diffusion), or the edge- preservation, approach is proven to be an ill fit method for fingerprint image enhancement. This is due to the fact that the analysis of edges may be unreliable, since edge structure is often distorted in fingerprints affected by the template ageing problem. The nonlinear anisotropic scale-space (tensor dependent diffusion), or coherence-enhancing, method does not give any overall improvements of the number of accurate matches. It is however shown that for a certain type of template ageing problem, where the deviating structure does not significantly affect the ridge orientation, the nonlinear anisotropic diffusion is able to accurately match correlation pairs that resulted in a false match before they were enhanced.

Les répertoires iconographiques rupestres du Sahara central ont pâti du contexte historique et humain de leur découverte, puis de leur gestion tant scientifique que patrimoniale. Leur profusion et les difficultés du terrain saharien ont été et sont toujours des facteurs pénalisants, mais la méconnaissance dont souffrent encore ces productions des cultures préhistoriques, plus d’un siècle et demi après leur révélation, incombe clairement aux acteurs passés et présents de leur étude. Même si nous admirons ces images pour leurs qualités esthétiques, ce sont des vestiges archéologiques à part entière, devant être étudiés comme tels. De nos jours, les outils numériques et informatiques permettent, d’une part, d’améliorer quantitativement et qualitativement leur documentation grâce aux logiciels d’amélioration d’image utilisés pour l’enregistrement et le relevé ; d’autre part, d’interroger plus objectivement ces œuvres par le biais d’autres outils et de méthodes performantes d’analyse des données, au travers desquels leur différenciation stylistique peut être mise en évidence. L’application des démarches développées dans cette recherche à quelques parois ornées du site de Séfar, lieu emblématique de la Tasīli-n-Ăjjer (Algérie), montre que l’usage de ces outils, sous-tendu par des bases théoriques et méthodologiques rigoureuses, permet de proposer une nouvelle approche de ces images rupestres, plus conforme à leur nature de données scientifiques. / The rock images of the central Sahara have suffered from the historical and human context of their discovery and then from both their scientific management and their heritage management. Their abundance and the difficulties of the Saharan field have been and are still negative factors, but the lack of knowledge from which these productions of prehistoric cultures are still suffering more than a century and a half after their discovery, clearly falls to those studying them in the past and present. Even if we admire these images for their aesthetic qualities, these form an integral part of the archaeological remains and should be studied as such. Nowadays, the digital and computerised tools enable us, firstly, to quantitatively and qualitatively improve their documentation thanks to image enhancement software used for the recording and the tracing; secondly, to more objectively investigate these artefacts by using other effective data-analysis tools and methods thanks to which their stylistic differences can be highlighted. The application of the processes developed in this research to several adorned walls at the Sefar site, an emblematic area of the Tasīli-n-Ăjjer (Algeria), shows that the use of these tools, supported by rigorous theoretical and methodological basis, allows us to offer a new approach to these rock images, more appropriate to their characteristic of being scientific data.