Short-format videos are becoming increasingly prominent in today's digital landscape. The widespread availability of smartphones with high-quality cameras, together with fast Internet connections, has not only made it easier for users to interact with the digestible short-format content, but also transformed the way we consume, experience, and interact with content. Video-sharing platforms like Snapchat, TikTok and Instagram capture the attention of millions of users daily with their short-format content, especially among people born around 1995 through 2010, commonly referred to as Generation Z. Born into this digital era, Generation Z has integrated short-format videos into their everyday lives. As this audience constitutes the majority of short-format video consumers, it becomes crucial to understand their user experiences related to the short-format video consumption. In addition, the user experience needs to be continuously reviewed to meet current consumer expectations and needs. This thesis aims to evaluate the user experience (UX) of short-format videos among Generation Z, by uncovering underlying motivations and purposes, video quality aspects of importance, as well as pain points experienced during consumption. To achieve comprehensiveness, the UX evaluation is systematically carried out using a developed UX Evaluation Framework, consisting of both qualitative and quantitative data gathering methods. Semi-structured interviews were first conducted, followed by quantitative video quality assessments of test videos, allowing for rich user insights. The UX evaluation reveals that a pleasant audio experience and video content are the most important aspects when it comes to short-format videos. However, the aspects stability and pleasant camera movements are among the most important in terms of video quality. In contrast, poor sound in videos was often found to ruin the whole user experience, regardless of the video quality. The study's findings provide recommendations aimed at improving the user experience of short-format content and suggests opportunities for future research.

In the current mobile telecommunication market, with slow growth in mobile subscriptions and increasing traffi demand, each mobile operator needs to manage their customer loyalty in order to maintain position in the market. To retain their customer's loyalty, the user quality of satisfaction needs to be preserved. Integrating a Quality of Experience (QoE) approach into a radio resource scheduling scheme can be a means to improve user quality of satisfaction to a service. However, the enhancement of existing resource allocation management to support a QoE-based resource scheduling scheme needs a careful consideration since it will impact the mobile operator's investment cost. A profitability assessment of QoE-based resource allocation is required as a basis for the mobile operator to forecast their potential benefit of QoE-based resource scheduling deployment. This thesis investigated the profitability of deploying QoE-based radio resource management (RRM) in terms of revenue loss compared to proportional fair (PF) scheduling, a widely used resource allocation scheme, in delivering a streaming video service. In QoE-based RRM, a buffering percentage experienced by a user was considered in the resource allocation decision process. The two scheduling schemes were simulated in different network configurations. User satisfaction was quantified in terms of mean opinion score. Given the degree of satisfaction for each user, a number of users who would be likely to churn was obtained. A cost-benefit assessment was then conducted by predicting revenue loss due to customer churn. The results from the simulation and cost analysis show that although QoE-based resource scheduling provides users with a higher degree of satisfaction for more base stations, the utilization of a QoE-based resource scheduler does not offer significant benefit to the network operator with regard to revenue loss and deployment cost when compared to a PF scheduler. This outcome indicates that if the business target is to reduce customer churn, then the operator should utilize a PF scheduler for their RRM scheme. / Den nuvarande mobiltelefonimarknaden kännetecknas av svag tillväxt av nya kunder men ett ökat nyttjande bland existerande kunder av företagens tjänster. Kundlojalitet har blivit en avgörande faktor för att uppnå en stark marknadsposition. Kundernas upplevda kvalitet utav mobiltjänsterna behöver upprätthållas på en hög nivå för att tillfredställa denna lojalitet. Att applicera en upplevad kvalitet (QoE) metod i en radio resurs kan vara ett medel till att förbättra kundernas upplevda kvalitet av mobiltj änsten. För att undersöka ifall en sådan tjänst är lönsam är det dock nödvändigt att en lönsamhetskalkyl genomförs, där investeringskostnad och systemets driftkostnad vägs mot eventuella intäkter. En lönsamhetsbedömning av QoE-baserad resursallokering krävs som grund för mobiloperatören att förutse deras potentiella fördelar med QoE-baserad resursschemaläggning. Denna uppsats undersöker lönsamheten av att implementera QoE i termer av förlorade intäkter, jämfört med proportionell rättvis (PF) schemaläggning, i att leverera en videoströmservice. I QoE-baserad RRM användes buffertprocentandel som användes av användarna i resursallokeringsprocessen.  De två olika systemen simulerades genom att använda olika antal basstationer i mobilnätverkskonfigurationen. Användarnöjdhet kvantifierades genom att låta användarna betygsätta tjänsten, detta värde användes därefter till att uppskatta hur många av kunderna som sannolikt ej skulle återanvända tjänsten. En lönsamhetskalkyl genomfördes genom att prediktera förlorade intäkter med avseende på kunderna som ej skulle återanvända tjänsten. Resultaten från simulerings- och lönsamhetsberäkningen visade att även om QoE erbjuder en högre kundnöjdhet av tjänsten och tillfredsställelse för er basstationer, så leder inte en QoE-implementering till signikanta fördelar för nätverket i termer av förlorade intäkter och investeringskostnader jämfört med ett PF schemaläggare. Detta indikerar att om ett företags mål är att höja kundlojaliteten, då skall företaget applicera en PF schemaläggare istället för QoE.

Wireless transmission is an everyday part of movie production and a tool many people use in their work. Work, on a movie production, is fast, intense, and varies in geographical location almost on a daily basis (sometimes several locations in a day). Despite this, the stream, the transmission, must hold so the crew can work. This thesis explores the different impacts materials have on the transmission (using the Boxx Atom System as a test object). The materials were everyday occurrences such as walls (wood and stone), doors (steel, wood), windows (glass), and humans (the crew). The tests were done in the office of Video Assist Sweden in Stockholm, testing both quality and calculating the link margin. The results gave room for improvement but were interesting and sometimes surprising. Glass is best for a smooth transmission. Wooden doors and human beings’ impact were basically the same and stone and steel had the largest impact. In this thesis, we attempt to explain the results and draw conclusions from them and our own experiences in the field. / Trådlös överföring är en vardaglig del av en filmproduktion och ett verktyg som många använder i sitt arbete. Arbetet med en filmproduktion är snabbt, intensivt och varierar mellan olika platser nästan dagligen (ibland flera platser på en dag). Trots detta måste video transmissionen fungera så att hela teamet kan arbeta effektivt. Detta examensarbete undersöker de olika effekterna material har på transmissionen (med hjälp av Boxx Atom System som testobjekt). Materialen var vardagliga händelser som väggar (trä och sten), dörrar (stål, trä), fönster (glas) och människor (besättningen). Testerna gjordes på Video Assist Swedens kontor i Stockholm, där man testade både kvalitet och beräknade länk-marginalen. Resultaten gav utrymme för förbättringar men var intressanta och ibland överraskande. Glas är bäst för en smidig överföring. Träs och människors påverkan var i princip densamma och sten och stål hade störst påverkan. I detta examensarbete försöker vi förklara resultaten och dra slutsatser från dem och våra egna erfarenheter inom området.

The use of audio and video communication has increased exponentially over the last decade and has gone from speech over GSM to HD resolution video conference between continents on mobile devices. As the use becomes more widespread the interest in delivering high quality media increases even on devices with limited resources. This includes both development and enhancement of the communication chain but also the topic of objective measurements of the perceived quality. The focus of this thesis work has been to perform enhancement within speech encoding and video decoding, to measure influence factors of audio and video performance, and to build methods to predict the perceived video quality. The audio enhancement part of this thesis addresses the well known problem in the GSM system with an interfering signal generated by the switching nature of TDMA cellular telephony. Two different solutions are given to suppress such interference internally in the mobile handset. The first method involves the use of subtractive noise cancellation employing correlators, the second uses a structure of IIR notch filters. Both solutions use control algorithms based on the state of the communication between the mobile handset and the base station. The video enhancement part presents two post-filters. These two filters are designed to improve visual quality of highly compressed video streams from standard, block-based video codecs by combating both blocking and ringing artifacts. The second post-filter also performs sharpening. The third part addresses the problem of measuring audio and video delay as well as skewness between these, also known as synchronization. This method is a black box technique which enables it to be applied on any audiovisual application, proprietary as well as open standards, and can be run on any platform and over any network connectivity. The last part addresses no-reference (NR) bitstream video quality prediction using features extracted from the coded video stream. Several methods have been used and evaluated: Multiple Linear Regression (MLR), Artificial Neural Network (ANN), and Least Square Support Vector Machines (LS-SVM), showing high correlation with both MOS and objective video assessment methods as PSNR and PEVQ. The impact from temporal, spatial and quantization variations on perceptual video quality has also been addressed, together with the trade off between these, and for this purpose a set of locally conducted subjective experiments were performed.

Les objectifs de ce travail de thèse ont été: d’une part de détecter automatique-ment les images gelées dans des vidéos télédiffusées; et d’autre part de mesurer sans référencela qualité des vidéos télédiffusées (IP et DVB-T). Ces travaux ont été effectués dans le cadred’un projet de recherche mené conjointement par le LaBRI et la société Audemat WorldCastSystems.Pour la détection d’images gelées, trois méthodes ont été proposées: MV (basée vecteurde mouvement), DC (basée sur les coefficients DC de la DCT) et SURF (basée sur les pointscaractéristiques SURF). Les deux premières méthodes ne nécessitent qu’un décodage partieldu flux vidéo.Le second objectif était de mesurer sans référence la qualité des vidéos télédiffusées (IP etDVB-T). Une métrique a été développée pour mesurer la qualité perçue lorsque le flux vidéoa été altéré par des pertes de transmission. Cette métrique "Weighted Macro-Block ErrorRate" (WMBER) est fondée sur la mesure de la saillance visuelle et la détection des macro-blocs endommagés. Le rôle de la saillance visuelle est de pondérer l’importance des erreursdétectées. Certaines améliorations ont été apportées à la construction des cartes de saillancespatio-temporelle. En particulier, la fusion des cartes de saillance spatiale et temporelle aété améliorée par rapport à l’état de l’art. Par ailleurs, plusieurs études ont montré que lasémantique d’une scène visuelle avait une influence sur le comportement du système visuelhumain. Il apparaît que ce sont surtout les visages humains qui attirent le regard. C’est laraison pour laquelle nous avons ajouté une dimension sémantique aux cartes de saillancespatio-temporelle. Cette dimension sémantique est essentiellement basée sur le détecteurde visage de Viola Jones. Pour prédire la qualité perçue par les utilisateurs, nous avonsutilisé une méthode par apprentissage supervisé. Cette méthode offre ainsi la possibilité deprédire la métrique subjective "Mean Opinion Score" (MOS) à partir de mesures objectivestelles que le WMBER, PSNR ou SSIM. Une expérience psycho-visuelle a été menée avec 50sujets pour évaluer ces travaux. Cette base de données vidéo Haute-Définition est en coursde transfert à l’action COST Qualinet. Ces travaux ont également été évalués sur une autrebase de données vidéo (en définition standard) provenant de l’IRCCyN / The goal of this Ph.D thesis is to design a no-reference video quality assessment method for lossy net-works. This Ph.D thesis is conducted in collaboration with the Audemat Worldcast Systemscompany.Our first no-reference video quality assessment indicator is the frozen frame detection.Frozen frame detection was a research topic which was well studied in the past decades.However, the challenge is to embed a frozen frame detection method in the GoldenEagleAudemat equipment. This equipment has low computation resources that not allow real-time HD video decoding. Two methods are proposed: one based on the compressed videostream motion vectors (MV-method) and another one based on the DC coefficients from thedct transform (DC-method). Both methods only require the partial decoding of the com-pressed video stream which allows for real-time analysis on the GoldenEagle equipment.The evaluation shows that results are better than the frame difference base-line method.Nevertheless, the MV and the DC methods are only suitable with for MPEG2 and H.264video streams. So a third method based on SURF points is proposed.As a second step on the way to a no-reference video quality assessment metric, we areinterested in the visual perception of transmission impairments. We propose a full-referencemetric based on saliency maps. This metric, Weighted Mean Squared Error (WMSE), is theMSE metric weighted by the saliency map. The saliency map role is to distinguish betweennoticeable and unnoticeable transmission impairments. Therefore this spatio-temporal saliencymaps is computed on the impaired frame. Thus the pixel difference in the MSE computationis emphasized or diminished with regard to the pixel saliency. According to the state of theart, several improvements are brought to the saliency map computation process. Especially,new spatio-temporal saliency map fusion strategies are designed.After our successful attempt to assess the video quality with saliency maps, we develop ano-reference quality metric. This metric, Weighted Macro-Block Error Rate (WMBER), relies on the saliency map and the macro-block error detection. The macro-block error detectionprovides the impaired macro-blocks location in the frame. However, the impaired macro-blocks are concealed with more or less success during the decoding process. So the saliencymap provides the user perceived impairment strength for each macro-block.Several psycho-visual studies have shown that semantics play an important role in visualscene perception. These studies conclude that faces and text are the most attractive. Toimprove the spatio-temporal saliency model a semantic dimension is added. This semanticsaliency is based on the Viola & Jones face detector.To predict the Mean Opinion Score (MOS) from objective metric values like WMBER,WMSE, PSNR or SSIM, we propose to use a supervised learning approach. This approach iscalled Similarity Weighted Average (SWA). Several improvements are brought to the originalSWA.For the metrics evaluation a psycho-visual experiment with 50 subjects has been carriedout. To measure the saliency map models accuracy, a psycho-visual experiment with aneye-tracker has also been carried out. These two experiments habe been conducted in col-laboration with the Ben Gurion University, Israel. WMBER and WMSE performances arecompared with reference metrics like SSIM and PSNR. The proposed metrics are also testedon a database provided by IRCCyN research laboratory.

Le développement simultané de terminaux mobiles multimédia (smartphones, tablettes) et de réseaux d’accès offrant des débits élevés conduit à une explosion du trafic liés aux contenus multimédia. Cette croissance nécessite un partage efficace des ressources radio entre fournisseurs de contenus (dans le cas de la diffusion) ou entre récepteurs (dans le cas de services de vidéo à la demande). Cette thèse propose des outils de partage équitable des ressources en termes de qualité des contenus multimédia reçu et de délai de transmission dans les deux contextes précédents. La variété des compromis débit-distorsion des contenus multimédia est exploitée à cet effet. Dans un premier temps, une solution centralisée de contrôle conjoint du débit de codage et de transmission de plusieurs programmes transmis sur un même canal est considérée. L’objectif est de fournir des flux de qualités similaires avec des variations limitées, tout en assurant des délais de transmission comparables. Ce problème est résolu en synthétisant une commande prédictive à l’aide d’outils d’optimisation sous contrainte. Dans un second temps, seule l’allocation de bande est centralisée, le contrôle des caractéristiques de compression de chaque flux est réalisé de manière distribuée. Le contrôleur centralisé ne renvoie que le niveau de remplissage des tampons associés à chaque flux aux fournisseurs de contenus distants. Une stratégie de régulation des débits de codage est alors mise en place par ces fournisseurs, de manière à réguler le niveau en bits ou en image des tampons. La stabilité de ce système de régulation couplé est étudiée en détails. Enfin, l’optimisation inter-couches d’une chaine de transmission de contenus multimédia scalable est considérée. Ce problème est formulé dans le contexte de la programmation dynamique. Lorsque des modèles de complexité raisonnable sont considérés et avec des caractéristiques du système bien connues, des solutions optimales peuvent être obtenues. Des techniques d’apprentissage sont mises en œuvre, lorsque le système n’est que partiellement connu, par exemple, lorsque l’état du canal de transmission parvient avec du retard à l’organe de commande. / Due to the emergence of new generation mobiles and media streaming services, data traffic on mobile networks is continuously exploding. Despite the emergence of standards such as LTE, resources still remain scarce and limited. Thus, efficiently sharing resources among broadcasters or between unicast receivers connected to the same base station is necessary. An efficient resources allocation, where a fair received video quality between users and an equal transmission delay are achieved, is targeted. To that end, the variety of the rate-distortion trade-off of multimedia content is exploited. First, a centralized joint encoding and transmission rate control of multiple programs sharing the same channel is considered. A satisfactory and a comparable video quality among the transmitted programs, with limited variations, as well as a comparable transmission delay are targeted. The problem is solved using constrained optimization tools. Second, only the bandwidth allocation control is centralized, the control of the encoding rate characteristics of each stream is carried in a distributed manner. By modeling the problem as a feedback control system, the centralized bandwidth allocation is required to feed back only the buffer level to its associated remote content provider. The equilibrium and stability issues are addressed for both bit and second buffer control. In the case of simple unicast connection, a cross-layer optimization of scalable video delivery over wireless channel is performed. The optimization problem is cast in the context of dynamic programming. When low complex model are considered and when the system characteristics are known, optimal solutions can be obtained. When the system is partially known, for example, when the state of the channel reaches the control process with delay, learning techniques are implemented.

Nesta dissertação é abordado o tema da avaliação de qualidade em sinais de vídeo, especificamente da avaliação objetiva completamente referenciada de sinais de vídeo em definição padrão. A forma mais confiável de se medir a diferença de qualidade entre duas cenas de vídeo é utilizando um painel formado por telespectadores, resultando em uma medida subjetiva da diferença de qualidade. Esta metodologia demanda um longo período de tempo e um elevado custo operacional, o que a torna pouco prática para utilização. Neste trabalho são apresentados os aspectos relevantes do sistema visual humano, das metodologias para avaliação de vídeo em aplicações de televisão digital em definição padrão e também da validação destas metodologias. O objetivo desta dissertação é testar métricas de baixo custo computacional como a que avalia a relação sinal-ruído de pico (PSNR: Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio), a que mede similaridade estrutural (SSIM: Structural SIMilarity) e a que mede diferenças em três componentes de cor definidas pela CIE (Commission Internationale de l\'Eclairage), representadas por L*, a* e b* em uma dada extensão espacial (S-CIELAB: Spatial-CIELAB). Uma metodologia de validação destas métricas é apresentada, tendo como base as cenas e resultados dos testes subjetivos efetuados pelo Grupo de Especialistas em Qualidade de Vídeo (VQEG: Video Quality Expert Group). A estas métricas é introduzida uma etapa de preparação das cenas, na qual são efetuadas equalização de brilho, suavização de detalhes e detecção de contornos. Controlando-se a intensidade destes filtros, um novo conjunto de medidas é obtido. Comparações de desempenho são realizadas entre estes novos conjuntos de medidas e o conjunto de medidas obtido pelo VQEG. Os resultados mostram que para aplicações em televisão digital de definição padrão, a avaliação utilizando componentes de cor pouco influencia na correlação com as medidas obtidas nos testes subjetivos. Por outro lado, foi verificado que a aplicação adequada de técnicas para suavização de imagens, combinadas com métricas de fácil implementação como a SSIM, elevam seu grau de correlação com medidas subjetivas. Também foi demonstrado que técnicas para extração de contornos, combinadas com a métrica PSNR, podem aumentar significativamente seu desempenho em termos de correlação com os testes efetuados pelo VQEG. À luz destes resultados, foi concluído que medidas objetivas de fácil implementação do ponto de vista computacional podem ser usadas para comparação da qualidade de sinais de vídeo SDTV, desde que devidamente combinadas com técnicas para adequação ao sistema visual humano como a suavização e extração de contornos. / This research is about the video signal quality comparison issue, focusing at full reference metrics using standard definition television. The most reliable way to predict the differences in terms of quality between two video scenes is using a panel of television viewers, under controlled psychometric experimental conditions, resulting in statistical meaningful Differences in Mean Opinion Score (DMOS). The Subjective assessment is both time consuming and costly, therefore with practical limitations. The ideal substitute are objective quality assessment algorithms, whose scores have been shown to correlate highly with the results of DMOS. The goal for this research is to optimize the performance of simple metrics combining it with digital image processing. First this work presents many relevant aspects of the human visual system, methodologies for video evaluation in digital television applications using standard definition (SDTV) and also a validation methodology of these methods. After that, the main goal is to test three very simple metrics in terms of computational cost: PSNR (Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio), SSIM (Structural SIMilarity) and S-CIELAB (Spatial-CIELAB). original metrics were modified in order to improve their correlations against subjective assessment data. Several experiments combining the advantages of digital image filters for softness and edge extraction have been accomplished within this work. The results show that such simple metrics combined with digital image processing for edge extraction, for example, do improve their correlations with subjective assessment.

Nesta dissertação é abordado o tema da avaliação de qualidade em sinais de vídeo, especificamente da avaliação objetiva completamente referenciada de sinais de vídeo em definição padrão. A forma mais confiável de se medir a diferença de qualidade entre duas cenas de vídeo é utilizando um painel formado por telespectadores, resultando em uma medida subjetiva da diferença de qualidade. Esta metodologia demanda um longo período de tempo e um elevado custo operacional, o que a torna pouco prática para utilização. Neste trabalho são apresentados os aspectos relevantes do sistema visual humano, das metodologias para avaliação de vídeo em aplicações de televisão digital em definição padrão e também da validação destas metodologias. O objetivo desta dissertação é testar métricas de baixo custo computacional como a que avalia a relação sinal-ruído de pico (PSNR: Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio), a que mede similaridade estrutural (SSIM: Structural SIMilarity) e a que mede diferenças em três componentes de cor definidas pela CIE (Commission Internationale de l\'Eclairage), representadas por L*, a* e b* em uma dada extensão espacial (S-CIELAB: Spatial-CIELAB). Uma metodologia de validação destas métricas é apresentada, tendo como base as cenas e resultados dos testes subjetivos efetuados pelo Grupo de Especialistas em Qualidade de Vídeo (VQEG: Video Quality Expert Group). A estas métricas é introduzida uma etapa de preparação das cenas, na qual são efetuadas equalização de brilho, suavização de detalhes e detecção de contornos. Controlando-se a intensidade destes filtros, um novo conjunto de medidas é obtido. Comparações de desempenho são realizadas entre estes novos conjuntos de medidas e o conjunto de medidas obtido pelo VQEG. Os resultados mostram que para aplicações em televisão digital de definição padrão, a avaliação utilizando componentes de cor pouco influencia na correlação com as medidas obtidas nos testes subjetivos. Por outro lado, foi verificado que a aplicação adequada de técnicas para suavização de imagens, combinadas com métricas de fácil implementação como a SSIM, elevam seu grau de correlação com medidas subjetivas. Também foi demonstrado que técnicas para extração de contornos, combinadas com a métrica PSNR, podem aumentar significativamente seu desempenho em termos de correlação com os testes efetuados pelo VQEG. À luz destes resultados, foi concluído que medidas objetivas de fácil implementação do ponto de vista computacional podem ser usadas para comparação da qualidade de sinais de vídeo SDTV, desde que devidamente combinadas com técnicas para adequação ao sistema visual humano como a suavização e extração de contornos. / This research is about the video signal quality comparison issue, focusing at full reference metrics using standard definition television. The most reliable way to predict the differences in terms of quality between two video scenes is using a panel of television viewers, under controlled psychometric experimental conditions, resulting in statistical meaningful Differences in Mean Opinion Score (DMOS). The Subjective assessment is both time consuming and costly, therefore with practical limitations. The ideal substitute are objective quality assessment algorithms, whose scores have been shown to correlate highly with the results of DMOS. The goal for this research is to optimize the performance of simple metrics combining it with digital image processing. First this work presents many relevant aspects of the human visual system, methodologies for video evaluation in digital television applications using standard definition (SDTV) and also a validation methodology of these methods. After that, the main goal is to test three very simple metrics in terms of computational cost: PSNR (Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio), SSIM (Structural SIMilarity) and S-CIELAB (Spatial-CIELAB). original metrics were modified in order to improve their correlations against subjective assessment data. Several experiments combining the advantages of digital image filters for softness and edge extraction have been accomplished within this work. The results show that such simple metrics combined with digital image processing for edge extraction, for example, do improve their correlations with subjective assessment.

L'objectif de cette thèse est le déploiement et l'évaluation d'une plate-forme de télé-échographie mobile, utilisée pour fournir un diagnostic et des soins à distance dans des milieux médicalement isolés. La plateforme intègre de nouveaux concepts qui permettent de l’utilisation de la télé-échographie robotisée sur les réseaux sans fil 3G, 4G et 5G pour satisfaire au transfert de qualité des vidéos ultrasonores pour un diagnostic médical robuste. Ce travail contribue au domaine des Sciences et Technologies de l'Information et de la Communication appliquées au secteur de la santé et en particulier à la robotique médicale téléopérée. Les principales contributions de la thèse sont : I. Un état de l’art des systèmes télé-robotiques appliqués au médical menée sur la base de publications écrites entre 2004 et 2016, II. L'évaluation objective et subjective (clinique) de la qualité vidéo a démontré que les normes H.264/AVC et HEVC peuvent atteindre une qualité vidéo sans perte de diagnostic à des débits (1024 et 2048 Kbps) bien en deçà des débits de données supportés par les réseaux 4G. Les normes de codage vidéo antérieures (Mpeg-4, Mpeg-2) ne peuvent pas être utilisées pour le diagnostic clinique à ces débits car elles présentent une perte d'information pour le diagnostic médical, III. Les experts médicaux ont apprécié la réactivité dynamique mécanique de la plate-forme en raison du faible délai présenté par les canaux LTE. La limitation la plus importante soulevée par l'expert médical, empêchant une évaluation globale clinique favorable au diagnostic, était le positionnement initial du robot sur le corps du patient et son déplacement vers l'obtention d’une échographie cardiaque, Les résultats fournissent une forte indication que la plate-forme télé-échographie robotisée peut être utilisée pour fournir un diagnostic fiable et à distance sur les réseaux sans fil émergents 4G et au-delà. / The objective of this Thesis was the deployment and evaluation of an end-to-end mobile tele-echography platform used to provide remote diagnosis and care within medically isolated settings. The platform integrates new concepts that enable robotized tele-echography over commercially available 4G and beyond mobile networks for rendering diagnostically robust medical ultrasound video. It contributes to the field of Information and Communication technologies applied in the healthcare sector. The main contributions of the Thesis are: I. A systematic review on the state of the art in medical telerobotic systems was conducted based on publications of the last decade, and more specifically between the years 2004 to 2016. II. Both objective and subjective (clinical) video quality assessment demonstrated that H.264/AVC and HEVC standards can achieve diagnostically-lossless video quality at bitrates (1024 and 2048 Kbps) well within the LTE supported data rates. Earlier video coding standards (Mpeg-4 & Mpeg-2) cannot be employed for clinical diagnosis at these rates as they present loss of clinical information.III. Medical experts highly appreciated the proposed platform’s mechanical dynamic responsiveness due to the low end-to-end delay (latency) facilitated by LTE-channels. The most important limitation raised by the medical expert and prevented higher overall rating and ultimately clinical QoE was the robot initial positioning on the patient’s body and navigation towards obtaining the cardiac ultrasound. IV. Results provides a strong indication that the proposed robotized tele-echography platform can be used to provide reliable, remote diagnosis over emerging 4G and beyond wireless networks.

Submitted by Johnny Rodrigues (johnnyrodrigues@ufcg.edu.br) on 2018-05-07T15:46:17Z No. of bitstreams: 1 LUIZ TEIXEIRA MACHADO NETO - DISSERTAÇÃO PPGCC 2015..pdf: 936539 bytes, checksum: 75e4ab7774a9d4c965e23ec09254fc86 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-05-07T15:46:17Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 LUIZ TEIXEIRA MACHADO NETO - DISSERTAÇÃO PPGCC 2015..pdf: 936539 bytes, checksum: 75e4ab7774a9d4c965e23ec09254fc86 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-03-01 / A utilização de serviços de streaming cresceu bastante nos últimos anos, por meio de sistemas como Youtube, Hulu, Netflix, Vimeo, etc. Utilizando o stream, os vídeos são transmitidos e exibidos em tempo real e em qualquer lugar do mundo por meio da internet. Muitosusuáriosdestessistemasosutilizamemsuaresidênciaondeébastante comumencontrarumaredesemfio(devidoàmobilidadequesepodealcançarpormeio deste tipo de rede). Apesar de mais mobilidade, uma rede sem fio está mais suscetível a interferências do que a rede cabeada e, por isso, um vídeo pode ter sua imagem degradada com mais facilidade. Neste trabalho, é avaliada a transmissão de vídeos via stream para descobrir se o vídeo realmente é degradado pela transmissão; se tipos de conteúdos diferentes afetam a qualidade do vídeo recebido; e se de acordo com o padrão de compressão utilizado, é possível observar melhorias na qualidade do vídeo recebido. Por meio de uma abordagem experimental com um design de experimentos fatorial completo, foram feitas transmissões de vídeos utilizando o H.264, o HEVC e o MPEG-4; padrões mais utilizados atualmente. Além de definir os padrões, foram definidas outras variáveis: porcentagem de ocupação do canal de transmissão (com o objetivo de avaliar a degradação dos vídeos de acordo com a competição que a rede está sofrendo); potência do sinal de transmissão (com o objetivo de avaliar o impacto da qualidade do sinal da rede no vídeo recebido); quantidade de movimento no vídeo (para avaliar se a quantidade de movimento que o vídeo exibe impacta na sua qualidade). Nos experimentos, foi utilizado um ambiente residencial que conta as interferências de outras redes, exatamente como pode acontecer em um ambiente real. Para definir as porcentagens de ocupação, foram realizados experimentos para medição da capacidade máxima de transmissão da rede de testes. Em se tratando da quantidade de movimento, foi necessário fazer uma classificação prévia dos vídeos de acordo com características espaciais e temporais de cada vídeo. Os vídeos foram separados em três categorias e dentro dessas categorias, três vídeos foram escolhidos aleatoriamente para participar dos experimentos. Os resultados mostram que o HEVC obteveamelhormédiaparaasmétricasdequalidadedevídeoescolhidas, sendoocodec que menos perde qualidade numa transmissão sem fio. Também foi possível observar que a quantidade de movimento foi o parâmetro que mais influenciou na qualidade do vídeos nos experimentos realizados. / The use of streaming services has grown significantly in recent years, through systems such as Youtube, Hulu, Netflix, Vimeo, etc. Using the stream, videos are transmitted and displayed in real time and from anywhere in the world via the Internet. Many users of these systems use the same in their homes where it is quite common to find a wireless network (due to the mobility we can achieve through this type of computer network). In spite of having more mobility, a wireless network is more susceptible to interference than the wired network so a video can have its picture degraded more easily just because it is transmitted over a wireless network. We evaluate the transmission of videos via stream to find out whether the video is actually degraded by transmission; if different types of content affect the quality of the received video; and if there are compression standarts (H.264 and MPEG-4 HEVC, the most currently used) which ensure a better received video quality. Through an experimental approach with a design of full factorial experiments, several transmissions of videos were made in the three chosen standarts. In addition to defining the standarts, other variables were defined as: transmission channel occupancy percentage (in order to evaluate the degradation of videos according to occupation); power transmission signal (in order to assess the impact of network signal quality in the video received); amount of motion in the video (to evaluate whether the amount of motion the video displays impacts on its quality). For the experiments we used a residential environment that has all the interference from other networks, just as it can happen in a real environment. To set the occupancy percentages, experiments were performed to measure the maximum transmission capacity of the test network. Concerning the quantity of movement, it was necessary to make a preliminary classification of videos according to spatial and temporal characteristics of each one. The videos were separated into three categories and within these categories, three videos were chosen at random to participate in the experiments. The results show that the HEVC achieved the highest average for quality metricsofthechosenvideos,andthecodecistheonethatloseslessqualityinawireless transmission. The amount of movement affects the quality of the received video, and the greater the amount of motion, the bigger the loss of image quality.