Tag Archives: Imaging

Switzerland

Microtron Helps Keep the Swiss Ceneri Base Tunnel Railway Project On Track | Instant News



The Ceneri Base Tunnel (CBT) in Switzerland opened in December 2020. The last section of the New Railway through the Alps (NRLA), serves as a southern feeder to the Gotthard Base Tunnel, the longest railway tunnel in the world. Twenty-eight years after the country chose to support the construction of the NRLA, the entire project is now complete and operating a regular schedule service carrying passenger and freight trains.

The CBT establishes an uninterrupted rail route from the Dutch North Sea port in Rotterdam to the Italian city of Genoa on the Mediterranean. Thus, the 9.5-mile CBT flat rail allows longer and heavier freight trains to deliver goods more quickly by traveling through the Alps, and for passengers to arrive at their destinations much earlier. It consists of two single track tubes, approximately 100 yards apart, connected to each other for a total of 48 cross passes. At its deepest point it is roughly 8,000 feet below the summit of the Alps.

Busbars are used in the Ceneri Ground Tunnel as a replacement for conventional catenary overhead lines to supply power to the locomotive. Due to the lower overall height and because there is no need for grounding components in the overhead contact line crack area, the use of busbars significantly reduces infrastructure costs. Airway specialist Furrer + Frey AG engineers and manufactures a Rigid Overhead Conductor Rail System at CBT that integrates the busbar. The pantograph mounted on the roof of the train passing through the CBT collects power through contact with the Rigid Overhead Conductor Rail System, allowing the train to reach high speeds safely and efficiently.

With the help of a Microtron MotionBLITZ The high-speed recording system, Furrer + Frey, together with AlpTransit Gotthard AG and Swiss Federal Railways, can observe the behavior of the pantograph in the section separator. Featuring a 4 megapixel EoSens® 4CXP high-speed camera, the Microtron system captures even the tiniest of incidents within the pantograph area of ​​the train. Videos are recorded with the camera at a rate of 2,800 frames per second at a horizontal resolution of 2,336 pixels. This provides an excellent basis for assessment and evaluation for trains traveling at an average speed of 124 miles per hour.

Among the insights that the Microtron video system captures about the pantograph include the answers to these critical questions:

In many of the trials captured by the MotionBLITZ Microtron, the Rigid Overhead Conductor Rail System was thoroughly tested. The specially equipped ICE-S high-speed gauge cart was demonstrated to run safely at 170 miles per hour – the highest speed to be tested in the Ceneri Base Tunnel.

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New Zealand

MCRI experts developed the first guidelines on pediatric head injuries in Australia and New Zealand | Instant News


Australia and New Zealand’s first set of clinical guidelines for pediatric head injuries have been developed by a network of specialists based at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (MCRI).

The manual, developed by the Pediatric Research in Emergency Departments International Collaborative (PREDICT) and published in Australasia Emergency Medicine, will enable emergency physicians to diagnose and treat children’s head injuries while reducing unnecessary ones radiation exposure from a CT scan. They also treat head injuries in children with underlying problems, such as bleeding disorders.

Matthew Salter took his son Jakob, 15, to the emergency department of a large hospital late last year after he hit his head after a BMX accident.

Jakob tries to do a bike trick on one of our local BMX tracks but he missteps landing and crashes first. When my wife and I arrived at the scene, we found her helmet shield had been destroyed, she was depressed and I was worried she might have a concussion. When we arrived at the hospital he vomited several times so to confirm a head injury he received a CT scan and was observed overnight. “

Mr. Matthew Salter

Based on the new head injury guidelines, Jakob fulfills several risk factors for CT scan and observation.

Mr Salter said it was comforting to know these guidelines were in place to ensure all children receive the same treatment wherever they live in Australia.

Professor Franz Babl, Leader of the MCRI Emergency Research Group, said Australia and New Zealand do not yet have specific guidelines to help doctors decide how best to treat every child under 18 who comes to the emergency department with mild to moderate head injuries.

“Even though we need to rule out bleeding in the brain, we don’t want to order a CT scan unnecessarily, because it increases the lifetime radiation exposure of children,” he said.

“The lack of standardized guidelines means children receive different treatments depending on where they are seen. Broad adoption of these guidelines will change that.”

Following an extensive search and assessment of international guidelines such as those used in Canada, the US and the UK, the PREDICT working group developed 71 recommendations and imaging / observation algorithms relevant to the Australian and New Zealand setting. The new guidelines cover patient triage, imaging, observation versus admission, transfer, discharge and follow-up.

Head injuries are one of the most common reasons children come to the emergency department.

In Australia and New Zealand about 10 per cent of children who present with head injuries of all severity undergo CT scans. Although traumatic brain injury is rare, persistent post-concussion symptoms affect more than a third.

Professor Stuart Dalziel, Chair of Cure Kids Child Health Research at The University of Auckland and pediatric emergency doctor at Starship Children’s Hospital in New Zealand, said identifying traumatic brain injuries in children with seemingly minor injuries could be difficult and over the past 15 years has occurred. research focus in emergency departments around the world.

He said across Australia and New Zealand there had been variations in practice in the management of child head injuries.

The PREDICT working group that developed the guidelines includes emergency physicians, pediatricians, neurologists, neurosurgeons, radiologists, sports medicine doctors, neurologists, general practitioners, paramedics and nurses.

Guidelines can be found at predict.org.au

Source:

Murdoch Children’s Research Institute

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pakistan

The City South District got a new look | Instant News


KARACHI:

The city’s Southern District is changing, said Arsalan Chaurdhry, a Karachiite. “All kinds of colors and monuments are seen in this part of town.”

Chaudhry refers to the plethora of colors that have sprung up on at least four walls in the district, which also features ‘The Chess Corner’ and a street library. At least four walls in the area feature vivid murals and prismatic graffiti, painted over political slogans, malicious messages or scandals spreading hatred, and blemishes of piss and urine.

From hate to love

The sun that used to exude hate and lewd messages scattered on Karachi’s walls, now illuminates the multi-colored paintings of the Southern district, giving the area a youthful and vibrant vibe, thanks to the efforts of some 60 young men and women who volunteered to participate in the campaign to change the city walls. from hate to love.

“This wall clearly represents hatred and only hatred,” commented Saeed Ahmed, another resident. “These walls are even used for shamanism and misleading ordinary people with fake Pirs [advertisements],” she says.

Afnan Ahmed, coordinator of a group of volunteers working under the name, ‘Rang De Karachi,’ set out to change the aesthetic of the walls lining the district’s main streets, with support from Southern district management. They started painting road walls in their neighborhood a few months ago and immediately expanded their artwork to highways such as Dr Ziauddin Ahmed Street and Boat Basin.

The Southern government has also approached others interested in the project, including the non-profit organization ‘I am Karachi’, which focuses on socio-cultural activities.

“This is just the beginning,” said Afnan. “The idea is to get the hatred off the walls [at least]. “Speaking to The Express Tribune, Afnan said his friends wanted to paint all the streets in the city with a better message.” This is our city, and we want people to change their mindset – from my Karachi to our Karachi. “

Afnan and his friends have gathered at least 60 volunteers from various schools and universities and they all bring unique and astonishing ideas to remodel the wall so that it can attract the attention of anyone visiting the megalopolis. Apart from that, the paintings are striking to give the townspeople a sense of belonging and homeliness.

“People need to have their own walls and roads,” Afnan said, adding that some of the walls and sidewalks had been taken over by squatters while others were being used as landfills.

Speaking to The Express Tribune, Southern District Commissioner Irshad Ahmed Sodhar said that many people had been invited to be involved in the initiative, including an Australian artist. “The idea is to remove hateful wall chalk with aesthetic painting.”

Its district government is trying to bring modern changes to the city center, Sodhar said, adding that installing lights in various places in the district is also part of this effort. Sodhar assessed that the response from the community so far has been quite positive.

One brush stroke at a time

The residents of Saad view that this striking piece of art reflects a positive change in the city. “It’s because of peace. It’s because of his talent [Karachi] produce, “he said, adding that young people own the city.” Let your kids have it and see how they make a difference in it. “

Correspondingly, Chaudhry argues that now “there is something that gives peace of mind,” while the hateful slogans from before are divisive and disturbing.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 28th, 2020.

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Games

Automates material matching for films and video games | MIT News | Instant News


Very few of us who play video games or watch graphic-filled films created by computers have ever taken the time to sit back and appreciate all the work that makes their graphics so thrilling and immersive.

One of the key aspects of this is texture. The glossy images we see on screen are often displayed smoothly, but require a lot of work behind the scenes. When effects studios create a scene in a computer-aided design program, they first 3D model all of the objects they plan to place on the scene, and then texture each resulting object: for example, making a wooden table appear shiny, polished, or matte.

If a designer tries to recreate a particular texture from the real world, they may find themselves digging online trying to find a close fit that can be combined for the scene. But most of the time you can’t just take a photo of an object and use it in a scene – you have to create a set of “maps” that measure different properties such as roughness or lightness.

There are programs that make this process easier than ever, such as Adobe Substance software that helps drive the photorealistic ruins of Las Vegas in “Blade Runner 2049”. However, these so-called “procedural” programs can take months to learn, and still take hours or even days to create certain textures.

A team led by researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have developed an approach they think can make textures less boring, so you can take a picture of something you see in a store and leave. recreate the material on your home laptop.

“Imagine being able to take a photo of the jeans you would wear for your character in a video game,” said PhD student Liang Shi, lead author of the paper on “Competition“Projects.” We believe this system will further close the gap between ‘virtual’ and ‘reality’. “

Shi said that MATch’s goal is “to significantly simplify and speed up the manufacture of synthetic materials using machine learning”. The team evaluated MATch on both rendered synthetic materials and real material captured on camera, and demonstrated that MATch can reconstruct the material more accurately and at a higher resolution than current existing methods.

Collaborating with researchers at Adobe, one of the core elements is a new library called “DiffMat” which basically provides various building blocks for building different textured materials.

The team framework involves dozens of so-called “procedural graphs” consisting of different nodes that all act like mini-Instagram filters: they take multiple inputs and transform them in certain artistic ways to produce the output.

“A graph simply defines a way to combine hundreds of such filters to achieve very complex visual effects, such as certain textures,” Shi said. “The neural network selects the most suitable combination of filter nodes to exactly match the user’s input image display.”

Going forward, Shi said that Adobe is interested in incorporating team work into an upcoming version of Substance. For the next step, the team wanted to do more than just insert one flat sample, and instead be able to capture material from an image of a curved object, or with multiple materials in the image.

They also hope to expand the pipeline to handle more complex materials that have different properties depending on how they are pointed. (For example, with a piece of wood you can see stripes pointing in one direction “with the grain”; wood is stronger with the grain compared to “against the grain”).

Shi co-authored the paper with MIT Professor Wojciech Matusik, alongside MIT graduate student research scientist Beichen Li and Adobe researchers Miloš Hašan, Kalyan Sunkavali, Radomír Měch, and Tamy Boubekeur. This paper will be presented almost this month at SIGGRAPH Asia computer graphics conference.

This work was supported, in part, by the National Science Foundation.

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Health

The researchers developed a safe and accurate 3D imaging method to improve IVF treatment | Instant News


Tel Aviv University (TAU) researchers have developed a safe and accurate 3D imaging method to identify sperm cells that move at high speed.

Research, a study published in Progress of Science on April 10th, led by Prof. Natan Shaked from the Biomedical Engineering Department at the TAU Faculty of Engineering along with TAU doctoral student, Gili Dardikman-Yoffe.

This new technology can give doctors the ability to choose high-quality sperm to be injected into eggs during IVF treatment, potentially increasing a woman’s chances of getting pregnant and giving birth to a healthy baby.

The IVF procedure was created to help with fertility problems. The most common type of IVF today is intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), which involves sperm selection by clinical embryologists and injection into a woman’s egg. For this reason, an attempt is made to select the sperm cells most likely to make healthy embryos. “

Natan Shaked, Professor, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, TAU

Under natural fertilization in a woman’s body, the fastest sperm to reach the egg should contain high-quality genetic material. This progressive movement allows the “best” sperm to overcome the real obstacles of the female reproductive system.

“But this ‘natural selection’ is not available to embryologists, who choose sperm and inject it into the egg,” Prof. Shaked “Sperm cells are not only fast-moving, they are also mostly transparent under ordinary light microscopy, and cell staining is not permitted in human IVF.

“Existing imaging technology that can check the quality of sperm genetic material can cause embryonic damage, so it is also banned. In the absence of more precise criteria, sperm cells are chosen primarily according to their external characteristics and motility when swimming in water in the dish, which is very different from the natural environment of a woman’s body.

“In our research, we are trying to develop a completely new type of imaging technology that will provide as much information as possible about individual sperm cells, does not require cell staining to increase contrast, and has the potential to enable optimal sperm selection in fertilizing treatments.”

The researchers chose light computed tomography (CT) technology for the unique task of imaging sperm cells.

“In a standard medical CT scan, the device rotates around the subject and sends X-rays that produce several projections, ultimately creating a 3D image of the body,” said Prof. Shaked “In the case of sperm, instead of turning the device around this small subject, we rely on the natural feature of the sperm itself: its head continues to rotate during forward movement.

“We use weak light (and not X-rays), which does not damage cells. We record holographic sperm cells during ultra-fast motion and identify various internal components according to their refractive index. This creates an accurate, highly dynamic 3D map of the contents without using cell staining. “

Using this technique, the researchers obtained clear and accurate CT images of sperm at very high resolutions in four dimensions: three dimensions in space with a resolution of less than half a micron (one micron equals one millionth of a meter) and the exact time dimension (motion) of a sub second millisecond.

“Our new development provides a comprehensive solution to many known sperm imaging problems,” said Prof. Shaked “We are able to make high-resolution imaging of the sperm head when moving fast, without the need for stains that can harm the embryo. This new technology can greatly improve sperm cell selection in vitro, which has the potential to increase the chances of pregnancy and the birth of healthy babies.

“To help diagnose male fertility problems, we intend to use our new technique to explain the relationship between 3D motion, the structure and contents of sperm and its ability to fertilize an egg and produce a proper pregnancy,” Prof. Shaked concluded. “We believe that such imaging capabilities will contribute to other medical applications, such as developing efficient biomimetic micro robots to carry drugs in the body.”

Source:

American friend from Tel Aviv University

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