Search results for "Aide"
showing 10 items of 1461 documents
Towards a design process for modeling MAS organizations
2012
The design of MAS organizations is a complex activity where a proper methodological approach may offer a significant advantage in enabling the conception of the best solution. Moreover, the aid provided by a supporting tool significantly contributes to make the approach technically sound and it is a fundamental ingredient of a feasible strategy to the development of large MASs. In this paper, we introduce a portion of methodological approach devoted to design MAS organizations and a preliminary version of a specific case tool, named MoT (Moise+ Tool), for supporting activities from design production to automatic code generation. MoT provides four kinds of diagrams based on a definite graphi…
Intraoral Cameras as a Computer-Aided Diagnosis Tool for Root Canal Orifices
2011
The aim of this study was to evaluate the diagnostic advantage of a new software tool in combination with an intraoral camera for automatic detection of root canal orifices in life videos via the access cavity of extracted human molars. The performance of a predoctoral dental student analyzing the images of the camera (without automatic detection) was compared with that of an experienced observer. Sensitivity and confidence intervals were provided and compared with histological slices of 200 teeth used for evaluation. The software's sensitivity for detection of root canal orifices was 0.957 (95 percent confidence interval: 0.936 to 0.972). The sensitivity for the observer was 0.906 (95 perc…
Systems thinking and its contribution to understanding future designer thinking
2017
Design is changing in a radical way. The object of design is transforming from tangible objects into services and furthermore, into systems. Increasingly, new insights arise from the interfaces between diverse disciplines – such as art, science and technology – which through various discourses and paradigms have been specialized and driven apart. This discussion paper pinpoints the so-called systems thinkers, hybrid-people, whose methods and habits of work are constituted by the reconciliation of different disciplines. The article aims to bring more understanding to the kind of thinking that is needed in the complex and dynamic environment in which we create and use design today. This discu…
Artificial mosaics
2005
Art often provides valuable insight that can be applied to technological innovations, especially in the fields of image processing and computer graphics. In this paper we present a method to transform a raster input image into a good-quality mosaic: an “artificial mosaic.” The creation of mosaics of artistic quality is challenging because the tiles that compose a mosaic, typically small polygons, must be packed tightly and yet must follow and emphasize orientations chosen by the artist. The proposed method can reproduce the colors of the original image and emphasize relevant boundaries by placing tiles along edge directions. No user intervention is needed to detect the boundaries: they are …
Stochastic Tension-Stiffening Approach for the Solution of Serviceability Problems in Reinforced Concrete: Constitutive Modeling
2015
A number of studies have indicated that the tension-stiffening law is an important input parameter in a numerical analysis of serviceability (deformations and cracking) problems of reinforced concrete (RC) structures. The stochastic nature of concrete cracking, which results in a large scatter of experimental results, renders the constitutive modeling a very difficult task. Even data obtained from short-term tests are to some degree uncertain due to time-dependent processes occurring in concrete, such as shrinkage and creep relaxation. This article provides statistical analysis tools that can be readily applied to engineering practice. Stochastic principles are applied to modeling of tensio…
Automated detection of lung nodules in low-dose computed tomography
2007
A computer-aided detection (CAD) system for the identification of pulmonary nodules in low-dose multi-detector computed-tomography (CT) images has been developed in the framework of the MAGIC-5 Italian project. One of the main goals of this project is to build a distributed database of lung CT scans in order to enable automated image analysis through a data and cpu GRID infrastructure. The basic modules of our lung-CAD system, consisting in a 3D dot-enhancement filter for nodule detection and a neural classifier for false-positive finding reduction, are described. The system was designed and tested for both internal and sub-pleural nodules. The database used in this study consists of 17 low…
Breast Ultra-Sound image segmentation: an optimization approach based on super-pixels and high-level descriptors
2015
International audience; Breast cancer is the second most common cancer and the leading cause of cancer death among women. Medical imaging has become an indispensable tool for its diagnosis and follow up. During the last decade, the medical community has promoted to incorporate Ultra-Sound (US) screening as part of the standard routine. The main reason for using US imaging is its capability to differentiate benign from malignant masses, when compared to other imaging techniques. The increasing usage of US imaging encourages the development of Computer Aided Diagnosis (CAD) systems applied to Breast Ultra-Sound (BUS) images. However accurate delineations of the lesions and structures of the b…
Mixed-aspect fractal surfaces
2013
In order to provide accurate tools to model original surfaces in a Computer Aided Geometric Design context, we develop a formalism based on iterated function systems. This model enables us to represent both smooth and fractal free-form curves and surfaces. But, because of the self-similarity property underlying the iterated function systems, curves and surfaces can only have homogeneous roughness. The aim of our work was to elaborate a method to build parametric shapes (curves, surfaces, ...) with a non-uniform local aspect: every point is assigned a ''geometric texture'' that evolves continuously from a smooth to a rough aspect. The principle is to blend shapes with uniform aspects to defi…
Morse Description and Geometric Encoding of Digital Elevation Maps
2004
Two complementary geometric structures for the topographic representation of an image are developed in this work. The first one computes a description of the Morse-topological structure of the image, while the second one computes a simplified version of its drainage structure. The topographic significance of the Morse and drainage structures of digital elevation maps (DEMs) suggests that they can been used as the basis of an efficient encoding scheme. As an application, we combine this geometric representation with an interpolation algorithm and lossless data compression schemes to develop a compression scheme for DEMs. This algorithm achieves high compression while controlling the maximum …
A Metamodeling Approach to Evolution
2001
With the increasing complexity of systems being modeled, analysis & design move towards more and more abstract methodologies. Most of them rely on metamodeling tools that employ multi-view models and the four-layer metamodeling architecture. Our idea is to use the metamodeling approach to classify and to constraint the possible evolutions of an information system with the effect to improve both detection of evolution conflicts and disciplined reuse. Within the domain of UML metamodeling, a refinement of the metamodel-level classification is proposed that includes bases for defining a metric of the evolution (in terms of distance between metamodels).