The accurate characterization and description of the vascular network of a cancer lesion is of paramount importance in clinical practice and cancer research in order to improve diagnostic accuracy or to assess the effectiveness of a treatment. The aim of this study was to show the effectiveness of liposomes as an ultrasound contrast agent to describe the 3-D vascular architecture of a tumor. Eight C57BL/6 mice grafted with syngeneic B16-F10 murine melanoma cells were injected with a bolus of 1,2-Distearoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocoline (DSPC)-based non-targeted liposomes and with a bolus of microbubbles. 3-D contrast-enhanced images of the tumor lesions were acquired in three conditions: pre-contrast, after the injection of microbubbles, and after the injection of liposomes. By using a previously developed reconstruction and characterization image processing technique, we obtained the 3-D representation of the vascular architecture in these three conditions. Six descriptive parameters of these networks were also computed: the number of vascular trees (NT), the vascular density (VD), the number of branches, the 2-D curvature measure, the number of vascular flexes of the vessels, and the 3-D curvature. Results showed that all the vascular descriptors obtained by liposome-based images were statistically equal to those obtained by using microbubbles, except the VD which was found to be lower for liposome images. All the six descriptors computed in pre-contrast conditions had values that were statistically lower than those computed in presence of contrast, both for liposomes and microbubbles. Liposomes have already been used in cancer therapy for the selective ultrasound-mediated delivery of drugs. This work demonstrated their effectiveness also as vascular diagnostic contrast agents, therefore proving that liposomes can be used as efficient “theranostic” (i.e. therapeutic + diagnostic) ultrasound probes.

This article considers a low-cost and light weight platform for the task of autonomous flying for inspection in underground mine tunnels. The main contribution of this paper is integrating simple, efficient and well-established methods in the computer vision community in a state of the art vision-based system for Micro Aerial Vehicle (MAV) navigation in dark tunnels. These methods include Otsu's threshold and Moore-Neighborhood object tracing. The vision system can detect the position of low-illuminated tunnels in image frame by exploiting the inherent darkness in the longitudinal direction. In the sequel, it is converted from the pixel coordinates to the heading rate command of the MAV for adjusting the heading towards the center of the tunnel. The efficacy of the proposed framework has been evaluated in multiple experimental field trials in an underground mine in Sweden, thus demonstrating the capability of low-cost and resource-constrained aerial vehicles to fly autonomously through tunnel confined spaces.

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Managing assets in railway, including infrastructure and rolling stock, efficiently and effectively is challenging. The emerging digital technologies and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are expected to augment the decision making in Asset Management (AM) and Fleet Management (FM). The AI technologies need to be adapted to the specific needs of any industrial domain, e.g. railways, to facilitate the implementation and achievement of the overall business goals. This adaptation is denoted as ‘Industrial AI’(IAI). IAI for railways infrastructure and rolling stock, is dependent on an appropriate technology roadmap reflecting necessary know-hows. The IAI roadmap aims to provide a strategic and executive plan to augment managing railway assets i.e. ‘Augmented Asset Management (AAM)’. AAM can be applied through an end-to-end secure platform for e.g. data sharing among stakeholders, the development of analytics, and model sharing through distributed computing. AAM in railways can be enhanced through implementation of a generic fleet management (FM) approach. In the FM approach, any population of assets with common characteristics and also the relationship of the asset to the fleet is considered. This paper aims to develop and propose a concept for AAM enabled through IAI and digital technologies to provide augmented decision support through a secure platform, for AM in railways. A FM approach towards a holistic operation and maintenance of assets, based on a System of Systems thinking, for AAM in railways is applied for population of infrastructure assets and rolling stock assets with common characteristics. Finally, a taxonomy of issues and challenges, in the application of AAM to FM in railways is provided. The data for this taxonomy has been collected from railway organizations through iterative rounds of interviews. This taxonomy can be used for research and development of frameworks, approaches, technologies, and methodologies for AAM in railways.

Abstract-The selection of the structure of a controller in large scale industry processes requires extensive process knowledge. The aim of this paper is to present methods which help designers to comprehend a process by representing structural and functional relationships from actuators and process disturbances to measured or estimated variables. This paper describes similarities between brain connectivity theory and interaction analysis in multivariable processes. Results from both theories are combined to create new methods for the analysis of industry processes. The developed methods are applied to an illustrative example.

The aim of this article is to present an example of a novel cloud computing infrastructure for big data analytics in the Process Control Industry. Latest innovations in the field of Process Analyzer Techniques (PAT), big data and wireless technologies have created a new environment in which almost all stages of the industrial process can be recorded and utilized, not only for safety, but also for real time optimization. Based on analysis of historical sensor data, machine learning based optimization models can be developed and deployed in real time closed control loops. However, still the local implementation of those systems requires a huge investment in hardware and software, as a direct result of the big data nature of sensors data being recorded continuously. The current technological advancements in cloud computing for big data processing, open new opportunities for the industry, while acting as an enabler for a significant reduction in costs, making the technology available to plants of all sizes. The main contribution of this article stems from the presentation for a fist time ever of a pilot cloud based architecture for the application of a data driven modeling and optimal control configuration for the field of Process Control. As it will be presented, these developments have been carried in close relationship with the process industry and pave a way for a generalized application of the cloud based approaches, towards the future of Industry 4.0.

This paper proposes an automated pairing approach for configuration selection of decentralized controllers which considers system uncertainties. Following the Relative Interaction Array (RIA) pairing rules, the optimal control configuration, i.e. the configuration that fits best the pairing rules, is obtained automatically by formulating the control configuration selection problem as an Assignment Problem (AP). In this AP, the associated costs related to each input-output pairing are given by the RIA coefficients. The Push-Pull algorithm is used to solve the AP for the nominal system and to obtain the set of costs for which the resulting configuration remains optimal, also called the perturbation set. The introduction of uncertainty bounds on the RIA-based costs enables the testing of the possible violation of the optimality conditions. Examples to illustrate the proposed approach for a 3×3 system and a 4×4 gasifier plant are given.