No abstract

This paper presents the development of a portable system with the aim of allowing blind people to detect and recognize Euro banknotes. The developed device is based on a Raspberry Pi electronic instrument and a Raspberry Pi camera, Pi NoIR (No Infrared filter) dotted with additional infrared light, which is embedded into a pair of sunglasses that permit blind and visually impaired people to independently handle Euro banknotes, especially when receiving their cash back when shopping. The banknote detection is based on the modified Viola and Jones algorithms, while the banknote value recognition relies on the Speed Up Robust Features (SURF) technique. The accuracies of banknote detection and banknote value recognition are 84% and 97.5%, respectively.

No abstract

The paper presents a new wearable Cognitive Aid System for Blind People (CASBIiP). The prototype device was developed as an obstacle detector, orientation and navigation Electronic Travel Aid (ETA) for blind people. The device provides a binaural acoustic image representation. The environmental information acquisition system is based on an array of lx64 CMOS Time-of-Flight sensors. Through stereoscopic (binaural) acoustic sounds the device relays the surrounding near and far environment. Experimental results demonstrate that blind users are able to detect obstacles and navigate through unknown and known environments safety and confidently. CASBIiP works accurately in range of 15m in distance and 64° in azimuth, providing significant advantages in comparison with currently existing ETA systems.

The strip comparison method, based on the serial exploration method described by Torgerson [Theory and Methods of Scaling; Wiley & Sons (1958); Chap. 7], for the development of near-threshold color difference models was presented and validated with theoretical data by the authors in a previous work. In this study, we investigate parametric effects derived from the use of the strip comparison method on chromaticity-discrimination ellipses around the red CIE color center. The results obtained led to the conclusion that the strip comparison method has little effect on the parameters of the chromaticity-discrimination ellipses determined by the pair comparison method when pairs of patches in the strips are separated by a black line 0.5 mm thick or are separated by 3 mm spacing on a white background and also correlates well with the parameters reported by other authors using the pair comparison method at the threshold.

Acne vulgaris is an inflammatory chronic disease of pilosebaceous units-a pilosebaceous unit is formed by all the hair follicles related to the same sebaceous gland. The main affected regions are face, neck, chest and back. Clinical manifestations are seborrhoea or overproduction of sebum, the presence of non-inflammatory and inflammatory lesions on skin (open and closed commedos, and pustules and papules, respectively), and scars. 1 It is the most common dermatological pathology worldwide. 2 85% of adolescents suffer from acne. 3 In order to monitor and treat acne properly, a precise and reliable method to establish acne severity is needed. 4 Currently, there is a wide range of acne grading systems, which shows the lack of a global standard. These systems can be divided into two groups: those based on manual lesion counting and the ones that use a model photography. 3,4 Several studies have proven lesion counting to be an objective and reliable method. 4,5

No abstract

An alternative approach based on statistical Bayesian inference is presented to deal with the development of color-difference models and the precision of parameter estimation. The approach was applied to simulated data and real data, the latter published by selected authors involved with the development of color-difference formulae using traditional methods. Our results show very good agreement between the Bayesian and classical approaches. Among other benefits, our proposed methodology allows one to determine the marginal posterior distribution of each random individual parameter of the color-difference model. In this manner, it is possible to analyze the effect of individual parameters on the statistical significance calculation of a color-difference equation.