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In this work, we propose a two-stage architecture to perform image inpainting from coarse to fine. The framework extracts advantages from different designs in the literature and integrates them into the inpainting network. We apply region normalization to generate coarse blur results with the correct structure. Then, contextual attention is applied to utilize the texture information of background regions to generate the final result. Although using region normalization can improve the performance and quality of the network, it often results in visible color shifts. To solve this problem, we introduce perceptual color distance in the loss function. In quantitative comparison experiments, the proposed method is superior to the existing similar methods in Inception Score, Fréchet Inception Distance, and perceptual color distance. In qualitative comparison experiments, the proposed method can effectively resolve the problem of color shifts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accidental fall is the most prominent factor that causes the accidental death of elder people due to their slow body reaction. Automatic fall detection technology integrated in a health-care system can assist human monitoring the occurrence of fall, especially in dusky environments. In this paper, a novel fall detection system focusing mainly on dusky environments is proposed. In dusky environments, the silhouette images of human bodies extracted from conventional CCD cameras are usually imperfect due to the abrupt change of illumination. Thus, our work adopts a thermal imager to detect human bodies. The proposed approach adopts a coarse-to-fine strategy. Firstly, the downward optical flow features are extracted from the thermal images to identify fall-like actions in the coarse stage. The horizontal projection of motion history images (MHI) extracted from fall-like actions are then designed to verify the incident by the proposed nearest neighbor feature line embedding (NNFLE) in the fine stage. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method can distinguish the fall incidents with high accuracy even in dusky environments and overlapping situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a vision-based fingertip handwriting recognition system to provide an alternative to input devices. Traditional handwriting recognition systems are limited because they require a specific or expensive input device, such as pen, tablet, or touch panel. Recently, cameras have gradually become standard components in many computer-based products. Therefore, a fingertip and camera combination provides a flexible and convenient input device. The proposed system combines fingertip detection, trajectory feature extraction, and character recognition. First, fingertip moving trajectories are tracked and recoded. The proposed cyclic chain code histograms are then obtained from the trajectories and used as features in the following recognition process. An improved radial basis function (RBF) neural network is used to recognize handwritten characters. Experimental results show that the proposed novel input system is feasible and effective. This study also presents possible applications for camera input devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some physical factors including initial pH of medium, cultivation temperature and shaking speed as well as reuse affecting the production of cholesterol oxidase (CholOx) in reactors containing calcium alginate-immobilized cells of Rhodococcus equi No. 23 were investigated. Results revealed that the free cells showed the maximum CholOx in the culture with an initial pH of 5.0, while culture inoculated with immobilized cells exhibited a broad pH range, 6.0–9.0, for maximum CholOx production. The immobilized and free cells produced the maximum CholOx in the culture incubated at 30 and 25°C, respectively. The CholOx production decreased upon increasing the cultivation temperature. Increasing CholOx activity was also noted for both immobilized and free cells of R. equi No. 23 in the culture with increasing shaking speed. Under the optimal culture conditions, that were established, a higher maximum CholOx production of 0.94 unit/ml was found for immobilized R. equi No. 23 compared to that of 0.84 unit/ml for free cells after 48 h of cultivation. Furthermore, no gel leakage was noted after re-use of the calcium alginate-immobilized R. equi No. 23 for seven consecutive 48 h batch culture. The CholOx production in the seventh cycle was about 60.4% of that obtained in the first cycle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]