Automatic Museum Audio Guide.

An automatic "museum audio guide" is presented as a new type of audio guide for museums. The device consists of a headset equipped with a camera that captures exhibit pictures and the eyes of things computer vision device (EoT). The EoT board is capable of recognizing artworks using features from accelerated segment test (FAST) keypoints and a random forest classifier, and is able to be used for an entire day without the need to recharge the batteries. In addition, an application logic has been implemented, which allows for a special highly-efficient behavior upon recognition of the painting. Two different use case scenarios have been implemented. The main testing was performed with a piloting phase in a real world museum. Results show that the system keeps its promises regarding its main benefit, which is simplicity of use and the user's preference of the proposed system over traditional audioguides.

Optimum web viewer application for DICOM whole slide image visualization in anatomical pathology.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Digital scanners are being increasingly adopt-ed in anatomical pathology, but there is still a lack of a standardized whole slide image (WSI) format. This translates into the need for interoperability and knowledge representation for shareable and computable clinical information. This work describes a robust solution, called Visilab Viewer, able to interact and work with any WSI based on the DICOM standard. METHODS: Visilab Viewer is a web platform developed and integrated alongside a proposed web architecture following the DICOM definition. To prepare the information of the pyramid structure proposed in DICOM, a specific module was defined. The same structure is used by a second module that aggregates on the cache browser the adjacent tiles or frames of the current user's viewport with the aim of achieving fast and fluid navigation over the tissue slide. This solution was tested and compared with three different web viewers, publicly available, with 10 WSIs. RESULTS: A quantitative assessment was performed based on the average load time per frame together with the number of fully loaded frames. Kruskal-Wallis and Dunn tests were used to compare each web viewer latency results and finally to rank them. Additionally, a qualitative evaluation was done by 6 pathologists based on speed and quality for zooming, panning and usability. The proposed viewer obtained the best performance in both assessments. The entire architecture proposed was tested in the 2nd worldwide DICOM Connectathon, obtaining successful results with all participant scanner vendors. CONCLUSIONS: The online tool allows users to navigate and obtain a correct visualization of the samples avoiding any restriction of format and localization. The two strategical modules allow to reduce time in displaying the slide and therefore, offer high fluidity and usability. The web platform manages not only the visualization with the developed web viewer but also includes the insertion, manipulation and generation of new DICOM elements. Visilab Viewer can successfully exchange DICOM data. Connectathons are the ultimate interoperability tests and are therefore required to guarantee that solutions as Visilab Viewer and its architecture can successfully exchange data following the DICOM standard. Accompanying demo video. (Link to Youtube video.).

Low-cost oblique illumination: an image quality assessment.

We study the effectiveness of several low-cost oblique illumination filters to improve overall image quality, in comparison with standard bright field imaging. For this purpose, a dataset composed of 3360 diatom images belonging to 21 taxa was acquired. Subjective and objective image quality assessments were done. The subjective evaluation was performed by a group of diatom experts by psychophysical test where resolution, focus, and contrast were assessed. Moreover, some objective nonreference image quality metrics were applied to the same image dataset to complete the study, together with the calculation of several texture features to analyze the effect of these filters in terms of textural properties. Both image quality evaluation methods, subjective and objective, showed better results for images acquired using these illumination filters in comparison with the no filtered image. These promising results confirm that this kind of illumination filters can be a practical way to improve the image quality, thanks to the simple and low cost of the design and manufacturing process.