Engineering Commons^™

Stream Processor Development Using Multi-Threshold Null Convention Logic Asynchronous Design Methodology, Wassim Khalil

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Decreasing transistor feature size has led to an increase in the number of transistors in integrated circuits (IC), allowing for the implementation of more complex logic. However, such logic also requires more complex clock tree synthesis (CTS) to avoid timing violations as the clock must reach many more gates over larger areas. Thus, timing analysis requires significantly more computing power and designer involvement than in the past. For these reasons, IC designers have been pushed to nix conventional synchronous (SYNC) architecture and explore novel methodologies such as asynchronous, self-timed architecture. This dissertation evaluates the nominal active energy, voltage-scaled active energy, …

Improving The Performance And Evaluation Of Computer-Assisted Semen Analysis, Ji-Won Choi

Dissertations

Semen analysis is performed routinely in fertility clinics to analyze the quality of semen and sperm cells of male patients. The analysis is typically performed by trained technicians or by Computer-Assisted Semen Analysis (CASA) systems. Manual semen analysis performed by technicians is subjective, time-consuming, and laborious, and yet most fertility clinics perform semen analysis in this manner. CASA systems, which are designed to perform the same tasks automatically, have a considerable market share, yet many studies still express concerns about their accuracy and consistency. In this dissertation, the focus is on detection, tracking, and classification of sperm cells in semen …

Compressive Sensing With Prior Information Applied To Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Cristiano Jacques Miosso

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation introduces the theory of compressive sensing with prior information about a signal's sparse representation. We show, mathematically and in numerical simulations, that prior information improves signal reconstruction, in terms of number of required measurements, computation time and signal-to-noise ratios. Following, we present a set of methods for enhanced magnetic resonance imaging and tomography that can be combined with prior information, for enhanced image quality.

In developing the theory of compressive sensing with prior information, we provide a mathematical proof of the required condition (in terms of number of linear measurements) for reconstruction using the ideal approach of l0-minimization, …

Evaluation Of An Image Processing Algorithm For Scene Change Detection, Daniel Flores

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Despite the efforts to reduce traffic accidents by government entities and automobile manufactures, the numbers of accidents are not considerably reduced. An evaluation of an algorithm based on the fly's eye is done on this research applying its principles to detect scene change on images for printed circuit boards providing initial steps to implement this algorithm on vehicular traffic to keep track of objects moving on the field for collision avoidance purposes. The effectiveness of the algorithm is addressed through a comparison of its performance with that found in experimental data.

Discovering The Merit Of The Wavelet Transform For Object Classification, Matthew D. Eyster

Theses and Dissertations

Vision is the primary sense by which most biological systems collect information about their environment. Computer vision is a branch of artificial intelligence concerned with endowing machines with the ability to understand images. Object recognition is a key part of machine vision with far reaching benefits ranging from target recognition, surveillance systems, to automation systems. Extraction of salient features from an image is one of the key steps in object recognition. Typically, geometric primitives are extracted from an image using local analysis. However, the wavelet transform provides a global approach with good locality. Additionally, the directional and multiresolution properties may …

Reconstruction Algorithm Characterization And Performance Monitoring In Limited-Angle Chromotography, Kevin C. Gustke

Theses and Dissertations

Hyperspectral data collection and analysis is an increasing priority with the growing need to obtain greater classification precision than offered by traditional spatial imagery. In this thesis, trends in hyperspectral chromotomographic reconstruction are explored where reconstruction is performed using a series of spatial-chromatic images. Chromotomography involves capturing a series of two-dimensional images where each image is created by placing a prism in front of the focal plane array; causing spectral dispersion corresponding to a series of prism angles over a single rotation. Before testing reconstruction, synthetic data is produced, approximating what would be produced from prism dispersion on the focal …

Autonomous Robotic Automation Systemwith Vision Feedback, Jeffery Rosino

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, a full design, development and application of an autonomous robotic automation system using vision feedback is performed. To realize this system, a cylindrical manipulator configuration is implemented, using a personal computer (PC) based PID controller from National Instruments. Full autonomous control will be achieved via a programmable human machine interface (HMI) developed on a PC using Borland C++ Builder. The vision feedback position control is accomplished using an ordinary "off-the-shelf" web camera. The manuscript is organized as follows; After Chapter 1, an introduction to automation history and its role in the manufacturing industry, Chapter 2 discusses and …

Stereo Matching Algorithm By Propagation Of Correspondences And Stereo Vision Instrumentation, Peerajak Witoonchart

Theses

A new image processing method is described for measuring the 3-D coordinates of a complex, biological surface. One of the problems in stereo vision is known as the accuracy-precision tradeoff problem. This thesis proposes a new method that promises to solve this problem. To do so, two issues are addressed. First, stereo vision instrumentation methods are described. This instrumentation includes a camera system as well as camera calibration, rectification, matching and triangulation. Second, the approach employs an array of cameras that allow accurate computation of the depth map of a surface by propagation of correspondences through pair-wise camera views.

The …

Detection And Robustness Of Digital Image Watermarking Signals : A Communication Theory Approach, George F. Elmasry

Dissertations

The detection and robustness of the watermark signal is studied from a communications point of view. The contributions of this dissertation are presented in two parts. The first part, which covers the detection aspect, introduces a new digital image watermarking approach that embeds meaningful information in a copyright protection watermark signal; demonstrates the need to approach the watermark signal as a power-constrained signal; studies the relationship between the watermark signal dimension and the image capacity to the signal; explains the similarities and differences between detecting the watermark signal and detecting a signal over a spread-spectrum communication channel; and analyzes the …

Evaluation Of A Maximum A-Posteriori Slope Estimator For A Hartmann Wavefront Sensor, Troy B. Van Caster

Theses and Dissertations

Current methods for estimating the wavefront slope at the aperture of a telescope using a Hartmann wavefront sensor are based upon a centroid shift estimator. The centroid shift estimator determines the displacement, or shift, of the centroid off the optical axis using a moment calculation of the intensity distributions recorded in each subaperture. This centroid shift is proportional to the average slope of the wavefront in each subaperture. A maximum a-posteriori (MAP) slope estimator takes advantage of a-priori knowledge of the wavefront slope statistics and total irradiance falling on the subaperture detector arrays when determining the shift estimate. In order …

Simplification Of The Generalized Adaptive Neural Filter And Comparative Studies With Other Nonlinear Filters, Henry Steven Hanek

Theses

Recently, a new class of adaptive filters called Generalized Adaptive Neural Filters (GANFs) has emerged. They share many characteristics in common with stack filters, include all stack filters as a subset. The GANFs allow a very efficient hardware implementation once they are trained. However, there are some problems associated with GANFs. Three of these arc slow training speeds and the difficulty in choosing a filter structure and neural operator.

This thesis begins with a tutorial on filtering and traces the GANF development up through its origin -- the stack filter. After the GANF is covered in reasonable depth, its use …

A Direct Method For Surface Structure Recovering Based On Uoff, Ping Lin

Theses

The unified optical flow field (UOFF) theory which can be used for estimating motion and recovering surface structure was recently established in [9, 10]. The direct method developed in [2, 3, 4, 6, 7] does not need to explicitly solve the optical flow field and to find feature correspondence. Based on the UOFF, a direct method in space domain is developed to reconstruct the curved surface structure characterized by an Nth degree polynomial equation from a pair of stereo images. The initial work on this new method was reported in [8, 11].

In this study, I basically work on simulation …

The Design And Testing Of A Personal Computer Controlled Scanning Acoustic Microscope For Orthopaedic Surgical Applications, Hubert Heinrich Berndt

Theses

This thesis describes scanning acoustic microscopy and ultrasonic image processing to characterize and evaluate materials of known properties, as well as novel materials. This work describes the assembly and testing of a PC based device for nondestructive evaluation of bone materials for usage in orthopaedics research. It includes the identification of some hardware problems and their solution, and it also describes different image processing techniques that have been developed and applied in this work. In a growing number of disciplines it has been discovered that an acoustic microscope can provide new information, especially about the elastic properties of specimens and …

A Mouse-Driven Interface For Androx Ics-400, Chin-Tien Chen

Theses

A mouse-driven interface is extremely useful for software performing image processing tasks. This thesis describes an implementation of a mouse-driven interface for the Androx ICS-400 image processing board. The Androx board is housed in a Sun 4/330 running a UNIX-based operating system. The main goal of this interface is to provide a consistent and friendly user interface for image processing tasks and integrating the Sun window libraries with the Androx libraries. Various image processing tasks, such as gray scale and binary morphological operations, histogram, thresholding, filtering, spot, logical operations, arithmetic operations, zooming, scrolling, rank and image acquisition are implemented in …

A Parallelogram Four-Frame Model In 3-D Motion And Structure Recovery Using Unified Optical Flow Field Approach, Zhichun Lin

Theses

In this paper a new concept of the unified optical flow field (UOFF) for 3 D motion analysis from a stereo image sequence is implemented which is an extension of the temporal optical flow formulations developed by Horn and Schunck. A four frame model is established and a spatial optical flow is also introduced.

In order to alleviate the problem of the strict requirement of two identical sensors in common stereo imagery a new imaging system is presented in this paper that needs only one camera, two plane mirrors and two switches to generate a phase shifted binocular sequence of …