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- All Subjects: Electrical Engineering
Description
In this work, we present approximate adders and multipliers to reduce data-path complexity of specialized hardware for various image processing systems. These approximate circuits have a lower area, latency and power consumption compared to their accurate counterparts and produce fairly accurate results. We build upon the work on approximate adders and multipliers presented in [23] and [24]. First, we show how choice of algorithm and parallel adder design can be used to implement 2D Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) algorithm with good performance but low area. Our implementation of the 2D DCT has comparable PSNR performance with respect to the algorithm presented in [23] with ~35-50% reduction in area. Next, we use the approximate 2x2 multiplier presented in [24] to implement parallel approximate multipliers. We demonstrate that if some of the 2x2 multipliers in the design of the parallel multiplier are accurate, the accuracy of the multiplier improves significantly, especially when two large numbers are multiplied. We choose Gaussian FIR Filter and Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) algorithms to illustrate the efficacy of our proposed approximate multiplier. We show that application of the proposed approximate multiplier improves the PSNR performance of 32x32 FFT implementation by 4.7 dB compared to the implementation using the approximate multiplier described in [24]. We also implement a state-of-the-art image enlargement algorithm, namely Segment Adaptive Gradient Angle (SAGA) [29], in hardware. The algorithm is mapped to pipelined hardware blocks and we synthesized the design using 90 nm technology. We show that a 64x64 image can be processed in 496.48 µs when clocked at 100 MHz. The average PSNR performance of our implementation using accurate parallel adders and multipliers is 31.33 dB and that using approximate parallel adders and multipliers is 30.86 dB, when evaluated against the original image. The PSNR performance of both designs is comparable to the performance of the double precision floating point MATLAB implementation of the algorithm.
ContributorsVasudevan, Madhu (Author) / Chakrabarti, Chaitali (Thesis advisor) / Frakes, David (Committee member) / Gupta, Sandeep (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Advancements in mobile technologies have significantly enhanced the capabilities of mobile devices to serve as powerful platforms for sensing, processing, and visualization. Surges in the sensing technology and the abundance of data have enabled the use of these portable devices for real-time data analysis and decision-making in digital signal processing (DSP) applications. Most of the current efforts in DSP education focus on building tools to facilitate understanding of the mathematical principles. However, there is a disconnect between real-world data processing problems and the material presented in a DSP course. Sophisticated mobile interfaces and apps can potentially play a crucial role in providing a hands-on-experience with modern DSP applications to students. In this work, a new paradigm of DSP learning is explored by building an interactive easy-to-use health monitoring application for use in DSP courses. This is motivated by the increasing commercial interest in employing mobile phones for real-time health monitoring tasks. The idea is to exploit the computational abilities of the Android platform to build m-Health modules with sensor interfaces. In particular, appropriate sensing modalities have been identified, and a suite of software functionalities have been developed. Within the existing framework of the AJDSP app, a graphical programming environment, interfaces to on-board and external sensor hardware have also been developed to acquire and process physiological data. The set of sensor signals that can be monitored include electrocardiogram (ECG), photoplethysmogram (PPG), accelerometer signal, and galvanic skin response (GSR). The proposed m-Health modules can be used to estimate parameters such as heart rate, oxygen saturation, step count, and heart rate variability. A set of laboratory exercises have been designed to demonstrate the use of these modules in DSP courses. The app was evaluated through several workshops involving graduate and undergraduate students in signal processing majors at Arizona State University. The usefulness of the software modules in enhancing student understanding of signals, sensors and DSP systems were analyzed. Student opinions about the app and the proposed m-health modules evidenced the merits of integrating tools for mobile sensing and processing in a DSP curriculum, and familiarizing students with challenges in modern data-driven applications.
ContributorsRajan, Deepta (Author) / Spanias, Andreas (Thesis advisor) / Frakes, David (Committee member) / Turaga, Pavan (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Increasing the efficiency of Doppler processing and backend processing in medical ultrasound systems
Description
Ultrasound imaging is one of the major medical imaging modalities. It is cheap, non-invasive and has low power consumption. Doppler processing is an important part of many ultrasound imaging systems. It is used to provide blood velocity information and is built on top of B-mode systems. We investigate the performance of two velocity estimation schemes used in Doppler processing systems, namely, directional velocity estimation (DVE) and conventional velocity estimation (CVE). We find that DVE provides better estimation performance and is the only functioning method when the beam to flow angle is large. Unfortunately, DVE is computationally expensive and also requires divisions and square root operations that are hard to implement. We propose two approximation techniques to replace these computations. The simulation results on cyst images show that the proposed approximations do not affect the estimation performance. We also study backend processing which includes envelope detection, log compression and scan conversion. Three different envelope detection methods are compared. Among them, FIR based Hilbert Transform is considered the best choice when phase information is not needed, while quadrature demodulation is a better choice if phase information is necessary. Bilinear and Gaussian interpolation are considered for scan conversion. Through simulations of a cyst image, we show that bilinear interpolation provides comparable contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) performance with Gaussian interpolation and has lower computational complexity. Thus, bilinear interpolation is chosen for our system.
ContributorsWei, Siyuan (Author) / Chakrabarti, Chaitali (Thesis advisor) / Frakes, David (Committee member) / Papandreou-Suppappola, Antonia (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Image understanding has been playing an increasingly crucial role in vision applications. Sparse models form an important component in image understanding, since the statistics of natural images reveal the presence of sparse structure. Sparse methods lead to parsimonious models, in addition to being efficient for large scale learning. In sparse modeling, data is represented as a sparse linear combination of atoms from a "dictionary" matrix. This dissertation focuses on understanding different aspects of sparse learning, thereby enhancing the use of sparse methods by incorporating tools from machine learning. With the growing need to adapt models for large scale data, it is important to design dictionaries that can model the entire data space and not just the samples considered. By exploiting the relation of dictionary learning to 1-D subspace clustering, a multilevel dictionary learning algorithm is developed, and it is shown to outperform conventional sparse models in compressed recovery, and image denoising. Theoretical aspects of learning such as algorithmic stability and generalization are considered, and ensemble learning is incorporated for effective large scale learning. In addition to building strategies for efficiently implementing 1-D subspace clustering, a discriminative clustering approach is designed to estimate the unknown mixing process in blind source separation. By exploiting the non-linear relation between the image descriptors, and allowing the use of multiple features, sparse methods can be made more effective in recognition problems. The idea of multiple kernel sparse representations is developed, and algorithms for learning dictionaries in the feature space are presented. Using object recognition experiments on standard datasets it is shown that the proposed approaches outperform other sparse coding-based recognition frameworks. Furthermore, a segmentation technique based on multiple kernel sparse representations is developed, and successfully applied for automated brain tumor identification. Using sparse codes to define the relation between data samples can lead to a more robust graph embedding for unsupervised clustering. By performing discriminative embedding using sparse coding-based graphs, an algorithm for measuring the glomerular number in kidney MRI images is developed. Finally, approaches to build dictionaries for local sparse coding of image descriptors are presented, and applied to object recognition and image retrieval.
ContributorsJayaraman Thiagarajan, Jayaraman (Author) / Spanias, Andreas (Thesis advisor) / Frakes, David (Committee member) / Tepedelenlioğlu, Cihan (Committee member) / Turaga, Pavan (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Over the past fifty years, the development of sensors for biological applications has increased dramatically. This rapid growth can be attributed in part to the reduction in feature size, which the electronics industry has pioneered over the same period. The decrease in feature size has led to the production of microscale sensors that are used for sensing applications, ranging from whole-body monitoring down to molecular sensing. Unfortunately, sensors are often developed without regard to how they will be integrated into biological systems. The complexities of integration are underappreciated. Integration involves more than simply making electrical connections. Interfacing microscale sensors with biological environments requires numerous considerations with respect to the creation of compatible packaging, the management of biological reagents, and the act of combining technologies with different dimensions and material properties. Recent advances in microfluidics, especially the proliferation of soft lithography manufacturing methods, have established the groundwork for creating systems that may solve many of the problems inherent to sensor-fluidic interaction. The adaptation of microelectronics manufacturing methods, such as Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor (CMOS) and Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS) processes, allows the creation of a complete biological sensing system with integrated sensors and readout circuits. Combining these technologies is an obstacle to forming complete sensor systems. This dissertation presents new approaches for the design, fabrication, and integration of microscale sensors and microelectronics with microfluidics. The work addresses specific challenges, such as combining commercial manufacturing processes into biological systems and developing microscale sensors in these processes. This work is exemplified through a feedback-controlled microfluidic pH system to demonstrate the integration capabilities of microscale sensors for autonomous microenvironment control.
ContributorsWelch, David (Author) / Blain Christen, Jennifer (Thesis advisor) / Muthuswamy, Jitendran (Committee member) / Frakes, David (Committee member) / LaBelle, Jeffrey (Committee member) / Goryll, Michael (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Despite significant advances in digital pathology and automation sciences, current diagnostic practice for cancer detection primarily relies on a qualitative manual inspection of tissue architecture and cell and nuclear morphology in stained biopsies using low-magnification, two-dimensional (2D) brightfield microscopy. The efficacy of this process is limited by inter-operator variations in sample preparation and imaging, and by inter-observer variability in assessment. Over the past few decades, the predictive value quantitative morphology measurements derived from computerized analysis of micrographs has been compromised by the inability of 2D microscopy to capture information in the third dimension, and by the anisotropic spatial resolution inherent to conventional microscopy techniques that generate volumetric images by stacking 2D optical sections to approximate 3D. To gain insight into the analytical 3D nature of cells, this dissertation explores the application of a new technology for single-cell optical computed tomography (optical cell CT) that is a promising 3D tomographic imaging technique which uses visible light absorption to image stained cells individually with sub-micron, isotropic spatial resolution. This dissertation provides a scalable analytical framework to perform fully-automated 3D morphological analysis from transmission-mode optical cell CT images of hematoxylin-stained cells. The developed framework performs rapid and accurate quantification of 3D cell and nuclear morphology, facilitates assessment of morphological heterogeneity, and generates shape- and texture-based biosignatures predictive of the cell state. Custom 3D image segmentation methods were developed to precisely delineate volumes of interest (VOIs) from reconstructed cell images. Comparison with user-defined ground truth assessments yielded an average agreement (DICE coefficient) of 94% for the cell and its nucleus. Seventy nine biologically relevant morphological descriptors (features) were computed from the segmented VOIs, and statistical classification methods were implemented to determine the subset of features that best predicted cell health. The efficacy of our proposed framework was demonstrated on an in vitro model of multistep carcinogenesis in human Barrett's esophagus (BE) and classifier performance using our 3D morphometric analysis was compared against computerized analysis of 2D image slices that reflected conventional cytological observation. Our results enable sensitive and specific nuclear grade classification for early cancer diagnosis and underline the value of the approach as an objective adjunctive tool to better understand morphological changes associated with malignant transformation.
ContributorsNandakumar, Vivek (Author) / Meldrum, Deirdre R (Thesis advisor) / Nelson, Alan C. (Committee member) / Karam, Lina J (Committee member) / Ye, Jieping (Committee member) / Johnson, Roger H (Committee member) / Bussey, Kimberly J (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
The origin and function of color in animals has been a subject of great interest for taxonomists and ecologists in recent years. Coloration in animals is useful for many important functions like species identification, camouflage and understanding evolutionary relationships. Quantitative measurements of color signal and patch size in mammals, birds and reptiles, to name a few are strong indicators of sexual selection cues and individual health. These measurements provide valuable insights into the impact of environmental conditions on habitat and breeding of mammals, birds and reptiles. Recent advances in the area of digital cameras and sensors have led to a significant increase in the use of digital photography as a means of color quantification in animals. Although a significant amount of research has been conducted on ways to standardize image acquisition conditions and calibrate cameras for use in animal color quantification, almost no work has been done on designing automated methods for animal color quantification. This thesis presents a novel perceptual"–"based framework for the automated extraction and quantification of animal coloration from digital images with slowly varying (almost homogenous) background colors. This implemented framework uses a combination of several techniques including color space quantization using a few dominant colors, foreground"–"background identification, Bayesian classification and mixture Gaussian modelling of conditional densities, edge"–"enhanced model"–"based classification and Saturation"–"Brightness quantization to extract the colored patch. This approach assumes no prior information about the color of either the subject or the background and also the position of the subject in the image. The performance of the proposed method is evaluated for the plumage color of the wild house finches. Segmentation results obtained using the implemented framework are compared with manually scored results to illustrate the performance of this system. The segmentation results show a high correlation with manually scored images. This novel framework also eliminates common problems in manual scoring of digital images such as low repeatability and inter"–"observer error.
ContributorsBorkar, Tejas (Author) / Karam, Lina J (Thesis advisor) / Li, Baoxin (Committee member) / McGraw, Kevin J. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Human operators have difficulty driving cranes quickly, accurately, and safely because of the slow response of heavy crane structures, non-intuitive control interfaces, and payload oscillations. Recently, a novel hand-motion crane control system has been proposed to improve performance by coupling an intuitive control interface with an element that reduces the complex oscillatory behavior of the payload. Hand-motion control allows operators to drive a crane by simply moving a hand-held radio-frequency tag through the desired path. Real-time location sensors are used to track the movements of the tag and the tag position is used in a feedback control loop to drive the crane. An input shaper is added to eliminate dangerous payload oscillations. However, tag position measurements are corrupted by noise. It is important to understand the noise properties so that appropriate filters can be designed to mitigate the effects of noise and improve tracking accuracy. This work discusses implementing filtering techniques to address the issue of noise in the operating environment. Five different filters are used on experimentally-acquired tag trajectories to reduce noise. The filtered trajectories are then used to drive crane simulations. Filter performance is evaluated with respect to the energy usage of the crane trolley, the settling time of the crane payload oscillations, and the safety corridor of the crane trajectory. The effects of filter window lengths on these parameters are also investigated. An adaptive filtering technique, namely the Kalman filter, adapts to the noise characteristics of the workspace to minimize the tag tracking error and performs better than the other filtering techniques examined.
ContributorsRagunathan, Sudarshan (Author) / Frakes, David (Thesis advisor) / Singhose, William (Committee member) / Tillery, Stephen Helms (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Super-Resolution (SR) techniques are widely developed to increase image resolution by fusing several Low-Resolution (LR) images of the same scene to overcome sensor hardware limitations and reduce media impairments in a cost-effective manner. When choosing a solution for the SR problem, there is always a trade-off between computational efficiency and High-Resolution (HR) image quality. Existing SR approaches suffer from extremely high computational requirements due to the high number of unknowns to be estimated in the solution of the SR inverse problem. This thesis proposes efficient iterative SR techniques based on Visual Attention (VA) and perceptual modeling of the human visual system. In the first part of this thesis, an efficient ATtentive-SELective Perceptual-based (AT-SELP) SR framework is presented, where only a subset of perceptually significant active pixels is selected for processing by the SR algorithm based on a local contrast sensitivity threshold model and a proposed low complexity saliency detector. The proposed saliency detector utilizes a probability of detection rule inspired by concepts of luminance masking and visual attention. The second part of this thesis further enhances on the efficiency of selective SR approaches by presenting an ATtentive (AT) SR framework that is completely driven by VA region detectors. Additionally, different VA techniques that combine several low-level features, such as center-surround differences in intensity and orientation, patch luminance and contrast, bandpass outputs of patch luminance and contrast, and difference of Gaussians of luminance intensity are integrated and analyzed to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed selective SR frameworks. The proposed AT-SELP SR and AT-SR frameworks proved to be flexible by integrating a Maximum A Posteriori (MAP)-based SR algorithm as well as a fast two-stage Fusion-Restoration (FR) SR estimator. By adopting the proposed selective SR frameworks, simulation results show significant reduction on average in computational complexity with comparable visual quality in terms of quantitative metrics such as PSNR, SNR or MAE gains, and subjective assessment. The third part of this thesis proposes a Perceptually Weighted (WP) SR technique that incorporates unequal weighting parameters in the cost function of iterative SR problems. The proposed approach is inspired by the unequal processing of the Human Visual System (HVS) to different local image features in an image. Simulation results show an enhanced reconstruction quality and faster convergence rates when applied to the MAP-based and FR-based SR schemes.
ContributorsSadaka, Nabil (Author) / Karam, Lina J (Thesis advisor) / Spanias, Andreas S (Committee member) / Papandreou-Suppappola, Antonia (Committee member) / Abousleman, Glen P (Committee member) / Goryll, Michael (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is limited in speed and resolution by the inherently low Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) of the underlying signal. Advances in sampling efficiency are required to support future improvements in scan time and resolution. SNR efficiency is improved by sampling data for a larger proportion of total imaging time. This is challenging as these acquisitions are typically subject to artifacts such as blurring and distortions. The current work proposes a set of tools to help with the creation of different types of SNR efficient scans. An SNR efficient pulse sequence providing diffusion imaging data with full brain coverage and minimal distortion is first introduced. The proposed method acquires single-shot, low resolution image slabs which are then combined to reconstruct the full volume. An iterative deblurring algorithm allowing the lengthening of spiral SPoiled GRadient echo (SPGR) acquisition windows in the presence of rapidly varying off-resonance fields is then presented. Finally, an efficient and practical way of collecting 3D reformatted data is proposed. This method constitutes a good tradeoff between 2D and 3D neuroimaging in terms of scan time and data presentation. These schemes increased the SNR efficiency of currently existing methods and constitute key enablers for the development of SNR efficient MRI.
ContributorsAboussouan, Eric (Author) / Frakes, David (Thesis advisor) / Pipe, James (Thesis advisor) / Debbins, Joseph (Committee member) / Towe, Bruce (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011