Sharif Digital Repository

Synthesis and characterization of a new series of low molecular weight (MW = 500–3000) OH-terminated linear aliphatic unsaturated polyesters based on cis-2-butene-1,4-diol and oxalic to sebacic acid were investigated. Direct polycondensation and transesterification methods were used for the syntheses. The latter was recognized to be the preferable method due to its lower reaction temperature and time, lower diol/diacid ratio, absence of decarboxylation, and formation of a product with low polydispersity (Mw/Mn = 1.3–2.7). Elemental analysis, GPC, FTIR, 1H-NMR, DSC, and WAXD were used for the investigations. A segmented polyurethane based on poly (cis-2-butylene adipate) glycol was also... 

Using 3-D scanned data to analyze and extract pore network plays a vital role in investigation of porous media's characteristics. In this paper, a new simple method is developed to detect pores and throats for analyzing the connectivity and permeability of the network. This automated method utilizes some of the common and well-known image processing functions which are widely accessible by researchers and this has led to an easy algorithm implementation. In this method, after polishing and quality control of images, using city-block distance function and watershed segmentation algorithm, pores and throats are detected and 3-D network is produced. This method can also be applied on 2-D images... 

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) appropriate image processing in conjunction with noise reduction is crucial in proper image segmentation. The authors present a new algorithm, logarithmic adaptive soft morphological (LASM) filter, utilising collectivity and flexibility of order-statistic soft morphological filters. This method not only reduces the speckle noise of the single-look SAR imagery considerably, but it significantly enhances the segmentation results. To verify the performance, a simulated SAR image is first created by applying an imagery method to an original noiseless image. The resulting image has characteristics identical to a real SAR image. The LASM method, as well as several... 

In this paper, a polygonal finite element method is presented for large deformation frictionless dynamic contact-impact problems with non-conformal meshes. The geometry and interfaces of the problem are modeled independent of the background mesh based on the level set method to produce polygonal elements at the intersection of the interface with the regular FE mesh. Various polygonal shape functions are employed to investigate the capability of polygonal-FEM technique in modeling frictionless contact-impact problems. The contact constraints are imposed between polygonal elements produced along the contact surface through the node-to-surface contact algorithm. Several contact-impact problems... 

We study a new class of visibility problems based on the notion of α-visibility. Given an angle α and a collection of line segments S in the plane, a segment t is said to be α-visible from a point p, if there exists an empty triangle with one vertex at p and the side opposite to p on t such that the angle at p is α. In this model of visibility, we study the classical variants of point visibility, weak and complete segment visibility, and the construction of the visibility graph. We also investigate the natural query versions of these problems, when α is either fixed or specified at query time  

We present an attempt to improve the performance of multi-class image segmentation systems based on a multilevel description of segments. The multi-class image segmentation system used in this paper marks the segments in an image, describes the segments via multilevel feature vectors and passes the vectors to a multi-class object classifier. The focus of this paper is on the segment description section. We first propose a robust, scale-invariant texture feature set, named directional differences (DDs). This feature is designed by investigating the flaws of conventional texture features. The advantages of DDs are justified both analytically and experimentally. We have conducted several... 

We propose to use a compressed sensing recovery method called IMATCS for improving the resolution in microwave imaging applications. The electromagnetic inverse scattering problem is solved using the Distorted Born Iterative Method combined with the IMATCS algorithm. This method manages to recover small targets in cases where traditional DBIM approaches fail. Furthermore, by applying an L2-based approach to regularize the sparse recovery algorithm, we improve the algorithm's robustness and demonstrate its ability to image complex breast structures. Although our simulation scenarios do not fully represent experimental or clinical data, our results suggest that the proposed algorithm may be... 

Image segmentation is one of the fundamental problems in image processing and computer vision, since it is the first step in many image analysis systems. This paper presents a new perspective to image segmentation, namely, segmenting input images by applying efficient community detection algorithms common in social and complex networks. First, a common segmentation algorithm is used to fragment the image into small initial regions. A weighted network is then constructed. Each initial region is mapped to a vertex, and all these vertices are connected to each other. The similarity between two regions is calculated from colour information. This similarity is then used to assign weights to the... 

Crash data availability is a significant requirement for identifying hazardous roads. However, for roads with poor data sets or no crash record, a method is needed to find and rank road segments independent of the crash records. In this paper, an auditing based methodology is proposed to determine the hazardous locations. A Rural road is investigated by decomposing it first into six elements, and then into safety factors corresponding to each element. The elements are: straight segments, horizontal and vertical curves, bridges, tunnels, merges and intersections, and side road land use. The relative contribution of the elements to the safety of a road segment is determined using the... 

Segmentation of a scene to the part made is a challenging work. In this paper a graphical model is used for this task. The methods based on geometrical derivatives such as curvature and normal often haven't good result in segmentation of geometrically-complex architecture and lead to over-segmentation and even failure. Proposed method for segmentation contains two steps. At first region growing based on curvature, normal and color is used for growing region. This segmented cloud is used for unary potential in graphical model. Fully connected graph for Conditional Random Field with Gaussian kernel for pair wise potentials is used for correcting this segmentation. Gaussian kernels are based on... 

There has been an increasing demand for interactive video transmission over the Internet for applications such as video conferencing, video calls, and telepresence applications. These applications are increasingly moving towards providing High Definition (HD) video quality to users. A key challenge in these applications is to preserve the quality of video when it is transported over best-effort networks that do not guarantee lossless transport of video packets. In such conditions, it is important to protect the transmitted video by using intelligent and adaptive protection schemes. Applications such as HD video conferencing require live interaction among participants, which limits the... 

Digital watermarking is an efficacious technique to protect the copyright and ownership of digital information. Traditional image watermarking algorithms embed a logo in the image that reduces its visual quality. A new approach in watermarking called zero watermarking doesn’t need to embed a logo in the image. In this algorithm we find a feature from the main image and combine it with a logo to obtain a key. This key is securely kept by a trusted authority. In this paper we show that we can increase the robustness of digital zero watermarking by a new counter detection method in comparison to Canny Edge detection and morphological dilatation that is mostly used by related works. Experimental... 

This study proposes a spiking neuro-fuzzy clustering system based on a novel spike encoding scheme and a compatible learning algorithm. In this system, we utilize an analog to binary encoding scheme that properly maps the concept of "distance" in multi-dimensional analog spaces to the concept of "dissimilarity " of binary bits in the equivalent binary spaces. When this scheme is combined with a novel binary to spike encoding scheme and a proper learning algorithm is applied, a powerful clustering algorithm is produced. This algorithm creates flexible fuzzy clusters in its analog input space and modifies their shapes to different convex shapes during the learning process. This system has... 

A new method for speeding up the approximate maximum posterior marginal (MPM) inference in meanfield approximation of a fully connected graph is introduced. Weight of graph edges is measured by mixture of Gaussian kernels. This fully connected graph is used for segmentation of image data. The bottleneck of the inference in meanfield approximation is where the similar bilateral filtering is needed for updating the marginal in the message passing step. To speed up the inference, the adaptive manifold high dimensional Gaussian filter is used. As its time complexity is 0(ND), it leads to accelerating the marginal update in the message passing step. Its time complexity is linear and relative to... 

Speech enhancement in real-time applications improves the quality and intelligibility of the speech and reduces communication fatigue. Nowadays, due to reactivity of the systems and spread of online real-time applications, including VoIP, state-space models have been used broadly. This paper presents a speech enhancement method based on adaptive Bayesian-Kalman filter and Bayesian-MAP estimation to improve the performance and the quality of the enhancement procedure. The enhancement method includes a combination of Bayesian-Kalman filter for noise reduction and Bayesian-MAP estimation for parameter estimation of the lost speech segments. Performance evaluation and result of the proposed... 

Segmentation of aerial images has been a challenging task in recent years. This paper introduces a simple and efficient method for segmentation and classification of aerial images based on a pixel-level classification. To this end, we use the Gabor texture features in HSV color space as our best experienced features for aerial images segmentation and classification. We test different classifiers including KNN, SVM and a classifier based on sparse representation. Comparison of our proposed method with a sample of segmentation pre-process based classification methods shows that our pixel-wise approach results in higher accuracy results with lower computation time  

Most of the clinically useful information in Electrocardiogram (ECG) signal can be obtained from the intervals, amplitudes and wave shapes (morphologies). The automatic detection of ECG waves is important to cardiac disease diagnosis. In this paper, we propose an efficient method for extraction of characteristic points of ECG. The method is based on a nonlinear dynamic model, previously introduced for generation of synthetic ECG signals. For estimating the parameters of model, we use an Extendend Kalman Filter (EKF). By introducing a simple AR model for each of the dynamic parameters of Gaussian functions in model and considering separate states for ECG waves, the new EKF structure was... 

The automatic detection of Electrocardiogram (ECG) waves is important to cardiac disease diagnosis. A good performance of an automatic ECG analyzing system depends heavily upon the accurate and reliable detection of QRS complex, as well as P and T waves. In this paper, we propose an efficient method for extraction of characteristic points of ECG signal. The method is based on a nonlinear dynamic model, previously introduced for generation of synthetic ECG signals. For estimating the parameters of model, we use an Extendend Kalman Filter (EKF). By introducing a simple AR model for each of the dynamic parameters of Gaussian functions in model and considering separate states for ECG waves, the... 

In this study, a nonlinear poroelastic model of intervertebral disc as an infrastructure was developed. Moreover, a new element was defined consisting a disc (Viscoelastic Euler Beam Element) and a vertebra (Rigid Link) as a unit element. Using the new element, three different viscoelastic finite element models were prepared for lumbar motion segment (L4/L5). Prolonged loading (short-term and long-term creep) and cyclic loading were applied to the models and the results were compared with results of in vivo tests. Simplification of the models by using the new element leads to reduction of the runtime of the models in dynamic analyses to few minutes without losing the accuracy in the results  

Cardiovascular diseases are very common and are one of the main reasons of death. Being among the major types of these diseases, correct and in-time diagnosis of coronary artery disease (CAD) is very important. Angiography is the most accurate CAD diagnosis method; however, it has many side effects and is costly. Existing studies have used several features in collecting data from patients, while applying different data mining algorithms to achieve methods with high accuracy and less side effects and costs. In this paper, a dataset called Z-Alizadeh Sani with 303 patients and 54 features, is introduced which utilizes several effective features. Also, a feature creation method is proposed to...