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Bedside imaging of ventilation and perfusion is a leading application of 2-D medical electrical impedance tomography (EIT), in which dynamic cross-sectional images of the torso are created by numerically solving the inverse problem of computing the conductivity from voltage measurements arising on electrodes due to currents applied on electrodes on the surface. Methods of reconstruction may be direct or iterative. Calderón's method is a direct reconstruction method based on complex geometrical optics solutions to Laplace's equation capable of providing real-time reconstructions in a region of interest. In this paper, the importance of accurate modeling of the electrode location on the body is demonstrated on simulated and experimental data, and a method of including a priori spatial information in dynamic human subject data is presented. Saracatinib purchase The results of accurate electrode modeling and a spatial prior are shown to improve detection of inhomogeneities not included in the prior and to improve the resolution of ventilation and perfusion images in a human subject.Panax ginseng has been used as a traditional medicine to strengthen human health for centuries. Over the last decade, significant agronomical progress has been made in the development of elite ginseng cultivars, increasing their production and quality. However, as one of the significant environmental factors, heat stress remains a challenge and poses a significant threat to ginseng plants' growth and sustainable production. This study was conducted to investigate the phenotype of ginseng leaves under heat stress using hyperspectral imaging (HSI). A visible/near-infrared (Vis/NIR) and short-wave infrared (SWIR) HSI system were used to acquire hyperspectral images for normal and heat stress-exposed plants, showing their susceptibility (Chunpoong) and resistibility (Sunmyoung and Sunil). The acquired hyperspectral images were analyzed using the partial least squares-discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) technique, combining the variable importance in projection and successive projection algorithm methods. The correlation of each group was verified using linear discriminant analysis. The developed models showed 12 bands over 79.2% accuracy in Vis/NIR and 18 bands with over 98.9% accuracy at SWIR in validation data. The constructed beta-coefficient allowed the observation of the key wavebands and peaks linked to the chlorophyll, nitrogen, fatty acid, sugar and protein content regions, which differentiated normal and stressed plants. This result shows that the HSI with the PLS-DA technique significantly differentiated between the heat-stressed susceptibility and resistibility of ginseng plants with high accuracy.Nanomodified smart cement-based sensors are an emerging self-sensing technology for the structural health monitoring (SHM) of reinforced concrete (RC) structures. To date, several literature works demonstrated their strain-sensing capabilities, which make them suited for damage detection and localization. Despite the most recent technological improvements, a tailored measurement technique allowing feasible field implementations of smart cement-based sensors to concrete structures is still missing. In this regard, this paper proposes a multichannel measurement technique for retrieving strains from smart cement-based sensors embedded in RC structures using a distributed biphasic input. The experiments performed for its validation include the investigation on an RC beam with seven embedded sensors subjected to different types of static loading and a long-term monitoring application on an RC plate. Results demonstrate that the proposed technique is effective for retrieving time-stable simultaneous strain measurements from smart cement-based sensors, as well as for aiding the identification of the changes in their electrical outputs due to the influence of environmental effects variable over time. Accordingly, the proposed multichannel strain measurement technique represents a promising approach for performing feasible field implementations of smart cement-based sensors to concrete structures.Surface acoustic wave (SAW) sensors for the detection of magnetic fields are currently being studied scientifically in many ways, especially since both their sensitivity as well as their detectivity could be significantly improved by the utilization of shear horizontal surface acoustic waves, i.e., Love waves, instead of Rayleigh waves. By now, low-frequency limits of detection (LOD) below 100 pT/Hz can be achieved. However, the LOD can only be further improved by gaining a deep understanding of the existing sensor-intrinsic noise sources and their impact on the sensor's overall performance. This paper reports on a comprehensive study of the inherent noise of SAW delay line magnetic field sensors. In addition to the noise, however, the sensitivity is of importance, since both quantities are equally important for the LOD. Following the necessary explanations of the electrical and magnetic sensor properties, a further focus is on the losses within the sensor, since these are closely linked to the noise. The considered parameters are in particular the ambient magnetic bias field and the input power of the sensor. Depending on the sensor's operating point, various noise mechanisms contribute to f0 white phase noise, f-1 flicker phase noise, and f-2 random walk of phase. Flicker phase noise due to magnetic hysteresis losses, i.e. random fluctuations of the magnetization, is usually dominant under typical operating conditions. Noise characteristics are related to the overall magnetic and magnetic domain behavior. Both calculations and measurements show that the LOD cannot be further improved by increasing the sensitivity. Instead, the losses occurring in the magnetic material need to be decreased.Gait analysis has many applications, and specifically can improve the control of prosthesis, exoskeletons, or Functional Electrical Stimulation systems. The use of canes is common to complement the assistance in these cases, and the synergy between upper and lower limbs can be exploited to obtain information about the gait. This is interesting especially in the case of unilateral assistance, for instance in the case of one side lower limb exoskeletons. If the cane is instrumented, it can hold sensors that otherwise should be attached to the body of the impaired user. This can ease the use of the assistive system in daily life as well as its acceptance. Moreover, Force Sensing Resistors (FSRs) are common in gait phase detection systems, and force sensors are also common in user intention detection. Therefore, a cane that incorporates FSRs on the handle can take advantage from the direct interface with the human and provide valuable information to implement real-time control. This is done in this paper, and the results confirm that many events are detected from variables derived from the readings of the FSRs that provide rich information about gait. However, a large inter-subject variability points to the need of tailored control systems.Colorectal cancer has become the third most commonly diagnosed form of cancer, and has the second highest fatality rate of cancers worldwide. Currently, optical colonoscopy is the preferred tool of choice for the diagnosis of polyps and to avert colorectal cancer. Colon screening is time-consuming and highly operator dependent. In view of this, a computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) method needs to be developed for the automatic segmentation of polyps in colonoscopy images. This paper proposes a modified SegNet Visual Geometry Group-19 (VGG-19), a form of convolutional neural network, as a CAD method for polyp segmentation. The modifications include skip connections, 5 × 5 convolutional filters, and the concatenation of four dilated convolutions applied in parallel form. The CVC-ClinicDB, CVC-ColonDB, and ETIS-LaribPolypDB databases were used to evaluate the model, and it was found that our proposed polyp segmentation model achieved an accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, precision, mean intersection over union, and dice coefficient of 96.06%, 94.55%, 97.56%, 97.48%, 92.3%, and 95.99%, respectively. These results indicate that our model performs as well as or better than previous schemes in the literature. We believe that this study will offer benefits in terms of the future development of CAD tools for polyp segmentation for colorectal cancer diagnosis and management. In the future, we intend to embed our proposed network into a medical capsule robot for practical usage and try it in a hospital setting with clinicians.For the tracking of high-dynamic satellite navigation signals, the conventional scalar tracking loop (STL) is vulnerable. Frequent signal-tracking interruption affects the continuity of navigation. The vector tracking loop (VTL) can overcome this disadvantage. However, there are some difficulties in implementing existing vector tracking methods on a real-time hardware receiver, such as the synchronization problem and computation load. This paper proposes an implementation framework of VTL based on a partial open-loop numerically controlled oscillator (NCO) control mode that can be implemented with minor modifications on an existing receiver platform. The structure of VTL, the design of the navigation filter, and the key points of hardware implementation are introduced in detail. Lastly, the VTL performance was verified by a GPS simulator test. The results show that the proposed VTL can run in real-time and be significantly improved in the tracking continuity of high-dynamic signals, tracking sensitivity, positioning accuracy, and recovery time for interrupted signals compared with those of STL.When e-textile EMG electrodes are integrated into clothing, the fit of the clothing on the body, and therefore its pattern and cut become important factors affecting the EMG signal quality in relation to the seamless contact between the skin and the e-textile electrode. The research so far on these effects was conducted on commercially available clothing or in tubular sleeve forms for arms. There is no study that investigated different clothing pattern and fit conditions and their effect on e-textile EMG electrode performance. This study investigates the effect of clothing pattern and fit in EMG applications using e-textile electrodes integrated onto the sleeves of custom drafted t-shirts in set-in and raglan sleeve pattern variations. E-textile electrode resistance, signal-to-noise ratio (SNRdB), power spectral density and electrode-skin impedance are measured and evaluated in set-in sleeve and raglan sleeve conditions with participants during a standardized arm movement protocol in comparison to the conventional hydrogel Ag/AgCl electrodes. The raglan sleeve pattern, widely used in athletic wear to provide extra ease for the movement of the shoulder joint, showed superior performance and therefore indicated the pattern and cut of a garment could have significant effect on EMG signal quality in designing smart clothing.In practice, self-interference (SI) in full-duplex (FD) wireless communication systems cannot be completely eliminated due to imperfections in different factors, such as the SI channel estimation and hardware circuits. Therefore, residual SI (RSI) always exists in FD systems. In addition, hardware impairments (HIs) cannot be avoided in FD systems due to the non-ideal characteristics of electronic components. These issues motivate us to consider an FD-HI system with a decode-and-forward (DF) relay that is applied for vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication. Unlike previous works, the performance of the proposed FD-HI-V2V system is evaluated over cascaded Rayleigh fading channels (CRFCs). We mathematically obtain the exact closed-form expressions of the outage probability (OP), system throughput (ST), and ergodic capacity (EC) of the proposed FD-HI-V2V system under the joint and crossed effects of the RSI, HIs, and CRFCs. We validate all derived expressions via Monte-Carlo simulations. Based on these expressions, the OP, ST, and EC of the proposed FD-HI-V2V system are investigated and compared with other related systems, such as ideal hardware (ID) and half-duplex (HD) systems, as well as a system over traditional Rayleigh fading channels (RFCs), to clearly show the impacts of negative factors.