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PurposeRespiratory motion prediction using an artificial neural network (ANN) was integrated with pseudocontinuous arterial spin labeling (pCASL) MRI to allow free-breathing perfusion measurements in the kidney. In this study, we evaluated the performance of the ANN to accurately predict the location of the kidneys during image acquisition.MethodsA pencil-beam navigator was integrated with a pCASL sequence to measure lung/diaphragm motion during ANN training and the pCASL transit delay. The ANN algorithm ran concurrently in the background to predict organ location during the 0.7-s 15-slice acquisition based on the navigator data. The predictions were supplied to the pulse sequence to prospectively adjust the axial slice acquisition to match the predicted organ location. Additional navigators were acquired immediately after the multislice acquisition to assess the performance and accuracy of the ANN. The technique was tested in eight healthy volunteers.ResultsThe root-mean-square error (RMSE) and mean absolute error (MAE) for the eight volunteers were 1.91 ± 0.17 mm and 1.43 ± 0.17 mm, respectively, for the ANN. The RMSE increased with transit delay. The MAE typically increased from the first to last prediction in the image acquisition. The overshoot was 23.58% ± 3.05% using the target prediction accuracy of ± 1 mm.ConclusionRespiratory motion prediction with prospective motion correction was successfully demonstrated for free-breathing perfusion MRI of the kidney. The method serves as an alternative to multiple breathholds and requires minimal effort from the patient.

Viewpoint calibration is a method to manipulate hand-eye for generating calibration parameters for active viewpoint control and object grasping. In robot vision applications, accurate vision sensor calibration and robust vision-based robot control are essential for developing an intelligent and autonomous robotic system. This paper presents a new approach to hand--eye robotic calibration for vision-based object modeling and grasping. Our method provides a 1.0-pixel level of image registration accuracy when a standard Puma/Kawasaki robot generates an arbitrary viewpoint. To attain this accuracy, our new formalism of hand--eye calibration deals with a lens distortion model of a vision sensor. Our most distinguished approach of optimizing intrinsic parameters is to utilize a new parameter estimation algorithm using an extended Kalman filter. Most previous approaches did not even consider the optimal estimates of the intrinsic and extrinsic camera parameters, or chose one of the estimates obtained from multiple solutions, which caused a large amount of estimation error in hand-eye calibration. We demonstrate the power of this new method for: 1) generating 3-D object models using an interactive 3-D modeling editor; 2) recognizing 3-D objects using stereovision systems; and 3) grasping 3-D objects using a manipulator. Experimental results using Puma and Kawasaki robots are shown. Index Terms--Hand-eye calibration, Kalman filter, lens distortion, multiple viewpoints, robot vision.

This paper presents a human-computer interaction (HCI) framework for building vision models of three-dimensional (3-D) objects from their two-dimensional (2-D) images. Our framework is based on two guiding principles of HCI: 1) provide the human with as much visual assistance as possible to help the human make a correct input; and 2) verify each input provided by the human for its consistency with the inputs previously provided. For example, when stereo correspondence information is elicited from a human, his/her job is facilitated by superimposing epipolar lines on the images. Although that reduces the possibility of error in the human marked correspondences, such errors are not entirely eliminated because there can be multiple candidate points close together for complex objects. For another example, when pose-to-pose correspondence is sought from a human, his/her job is made easier by allowing the human to rotate the partial model constructed in the previous pose in relation to the partial model for the current pose. While this facility reduces the incidence of human-supplied pose-to-pose correspondence errors, such errors cannot be eliminated entirely because of confusion created when multiple candidate features exist close together. Each input provided by the human is therefore checked against the previous inputs by invoking situation-specific constraints. Different types of constraints (and different human-computer interaction protocols) are needed for the extraction of polygonal features and for the extraction of curved features. We will show results on both polygonal objects and object containing curved features. Index Terms--Human-computer interaction, pose-to-pose correspondence, 2-D, 3-D, vision models.