A method for objectively determining supratentorial cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) production rate is described. The method employs cine phase-contrast magnetic resonance imaging with high temporal and spatial resolution at the level of the aqueduct of Sylvius. Automatic encircling of the aqueduct was accomplished by using a pulsatility-based segmentation approach. Results in 23 healthy adults (18 men, five women; age range, 21-39 years) yielded an average CSF production rate of 305 microL/min +/- 145 (standard deviation); this rate is in good agreement with literature-reported values obtained with invasive ventriculolumbar perfusion measurements. Average operator imprecision was 23.1% if automatic segmentation was not used. The proposed method is potentially an effective means for measuring supratentorial CSF production rate in humans.

This paper proposes an automatic singing evaluation system. The system provides the user with the score that was assessed by acoustic features and the rhythmic similarity between the original song and the user input. The assessment system is divided into two stages. In the first stage, acoustic similarities are measured by dynamic time warping (DTW). In the second stage, the rhythmic similarity is measured by analysing the optimal path of DTW by quadratic polynomial regression. Finally, the similarity of two stages is combined into one score by corresponding weights. The experimental results show the good performance for the automatic singing evaluation system. 1