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Summary:. Because the auricle plays an important role in facial aesthetics, all earlobe operations must seek to limit postoperative ear deformity. This report describes the single-stage posterior-auricle bilobed cartilage-skin flap technique for reconstructing the earlobe. A 31-year-old man incurred a left earlobe deficiency due to a human bite. Earlobe reconstruction was conducted 102 days later. A bilobed flap was designed on the posterior-auricular skin. Both flaps were pedicled in the caudal posterior-auricular area. The first incision raised the upper lobe, which consisted of posterior-auricle skin and conchal cartilage. The skin was sutured to the auricle base so that it formed the anterior earlobe. The cartilage was then cut to separate and processed to the natural curve. The second incision elevated the second flap from the caudal posterior-auricular area. This was sutured to the first flap so that it formed the posterior earlobe. The donor sites were closed with simple sutures. The reconstructed earlobe had no obvious contracture after surgery. Most donor-site scarring was hidden behind the auricle. At 9 months postoperative, the patient was satisfied with the result. Our technique allows us to harvest cartilage from the same operative field, perform a single-stage reconstruction, and recreate a relatively large earlobe with good size and shape. The posterior auricle bilobed cartilage-skin flap technique is useful for earlobe reconstruction.

Summary:. It remains difficult to reconstruct large preauricular defects in a single step with good cosmetic outcomes. We describe here the nasolabial external-rotation (NER) flap, which was combined with a cervical-rotation flap to reconstruct a large skin defect on the preauricular area that included the malar prominence. The patient in case 1 was a 91-year-old man who had a large defect on his right cheek after excision of a squamous cell carcinoma. Three weeks after excision, the 6.5 × 5.5 cm defect was covered with a 5 × 3 cm NER flap, which had a cephalad base and was rotated so its caudal tip covered the malar prominence. The resulting nasolabial defect and the remaining defect occupied the entire buccomandibular area, which was then covered with a 13 × 10 cm cervical-rotation flap. Revision surgery has not been needed for 8.5 months and the cosmetic outcomes are good. The patient in case 2 was a 90-year-old man who had a large defect on his right cheek after excision of a squamous cell carcinoma. Four weeks after excision, the 4.7 × 4 cm defect was covered with an 8 × 3 cm NER flap. The buccomandibular defect was covered with a 9.5 × 5 cm cervical-rotation flap. The flaps survived completely. The NER flap is unique because the flap is moved from the midface to the lateral face. It can reconstruct the malar prominence with thick skin tissue, and it is particularly suitable for older patients. Combining it with a cervical-rotation flap allows for natural subunit reconstruction in a relatively minimally invasive manner with good aesthetic outcomes.

Summary:. Postoperative fixation is required for skin grafts on mobile sites. External wire-frame fixation technique has demonstrated a beneficial role for grafts in specific areas such as lips, eyelids, and fingers. Although this technique is sufficient in most cases, patients with psychosis fail to maintain the lip in resting position, which led us to consider using a more rigid fixation method, known as “Geometric wire-frame fixation.” Surgical technique included fixing a perimeter frame around skin graft similar to the conventional external wire-frame fixation. In addition, a geometric frame was prepared to divide the area of the graft geometrically. Then, it was placed on gauze to compress the grafted skin, and connected to the perimeter frame. In case 1, a 33-year-old man with a history of schizophrenia and presenting with flame burn injury sustained while attempting suicide was admitted. The scar on the lips was excised, and an external wire-frame fixation was performed. However, postoperative vigorous mouth movements caused incomplete survival of the skin graft. Geometric wire-frame fixation was performed in the next operation, and the graft fully survived. The patient in case 2 was a 62-year-old man who developed a facial scar contracture after chemical injury by sulfuric acid. We performed geometric wire-frame fixation with contracture release of the upper lip, and the skin graft was fully taken. The geometric wire-frame fixation method allows for rigid fixation of the skin graft and can be considered as a valuable option, especially for lip reconstruction in poorly compliant patients who are unable to maintain proper resting lips.

Abstract The existence of lightning discharges in the Venus atmosphere has been controversial for more than 30 years, with many positive and negative reports published. The lightning and airglow camera (LAC) onboard the Venus orbiter, Akatsuki, was designed to observe the light curve of possible flashes at a sufficiently high sampling rate to discriminate lightning from other sources and can thereby perform a more definitive search for optical emissions. Akatsuki arrived at Venus during December 2016, 5 years following its launch. The initial operations of LAC through November 2016 have included a progressive increase in the high voltage applied to the avalanche photodiode detector. LAC began lightning survey observations in December 2016. It was confirmed that the operational high voltage was achieved and that the triggering system functions correctly. LAC lightning search observations are planned to continue for several years.

Abstract The ultraviolet imager (UVI) has been developed for the Akatsuki spacecraft (Venus Climate Orbiter mission). The UVI takes ultraviolet (UV) images of the solar radiation reflected by the Venusian clouds with narrow bandpass filters centered at the 283 and 365 nm wavelengths. There are absorption bands of SO2 and unknown absorbers in these wavelength regions. The UV images provide the spatial distribution of SO2 and the unknown absorber around cloud top altitudes. The images also allow us to understand the cloud top morphologies and haze properties. Nominal sequential images with 2-h intervals are used to understand the dynamics of the Venusian atmosphere by estimating the wind vectors at the cloud top altitude, as well as the mass transportation of UV absorbers. The UVI is equipped with off-axial catadioptric optics, two bandpass filters, a diffuser installed in a filter wheel moving with a step motor, and a high sensitivity charge-coupled device with UV coating. The UVI images have spatial resolutions ranging from 200 m to 86 km at sub-spacecraft points. The UVI has been kept in good condition during the extended interplanetary cruise by carefully designed operations that have maintained its temperature maintenance and avoided solar radiation damage. The images have signal-to-noise ratios of over 100 after onboard desmear processing.

Abstract Since insertion into orbit on December 7, 2015, the Akatsuki orbiter has returned global images of Venus from its four imaging cameras at eleven discrete wavelengths from ultraviolet (283 and 365 nm) and near infrared (0.9–2.3 µm), to the thermal infrared (8–12 µm) from a near-equatorial orbit. The Venus Express and Pioneer Venus Orbiter missions have also monitored the planet for long periods but from polar or near-polar orbits. The wavelength coverage and views of the planet also differ for all three missions. In reflected light, the images reveal features seen near the cloud tops (~ 70 km altitude), whereas in the near-infrared images of the nightside, features seen are at mid- to lower cloud levels (~ 48–60 km altitude). The dayside cloud cover imaged at the ultraviolet wavelengths shows morphologies similar to what was observed from Mariner 10, Pioneer Venus, Galileo, Venus Express and MESSENGER. The daytime images at 0.9 and 2.02 µm also reveal some interesting features which bear similarity to the ultraviolet images. The nighttime images at 1.74, 2.26 and 2.32 µm and at 8–12 µm reveal features not seen before and show new details of the nightside including narrow wavy ribbons, curved string-like features, long-scale waves, long dark streaks, isolated bright spots, sharp boundaries and even mesoscale vortices. Some features previously seen such as circum-equatorial belts (CEBs) and occasional areal brightenings at ultraviolet (seen in Venus Express observations) of the cloud cover at ultraviolet wavelengths have not been observed thus far. Evidence for the hemispheric vortex organization of the global circulation can be seen at all wavelengths on the day- and nightsides. Akatsuki images reveal new and puzzling morphology of the complex nightside cloud cover. The cloud morphologies provide some clues to the processes occurring in the atmosphere and are thus, a key diagnostic tool when quantitative dynamical analysis is not feasible due to insufficient information.

Abstract The status and initial products of the 1-μm camera onboard the Akatsuki mission to Venus are presented. After the successful retrial of Venus’ orbit insertion on Dec. 2015 (5 years after the failure in Dec. 2010), and after a long cruise under intense radiation, damage in the detector seems small and fortunately insignificant in the final quality of the images. More than 600 dayside images have been obtained since the beginning of regular operation on Apr. 2016 although nightside images are less numerous (about 150 in total at three wavelengths) due to the light scattered from the bright dayside. However, data acquisition stopped after December 07, 2016, due to malfunction of the electronics and has not been resumed since then. The 0.90-µm dayside images are of sufficient quality for the cloud-tracking procedure to retrieve wind field in the cloud region. The results appear to be similar to those reported by previous 1-μm imaging by Galileo and Venus Express. The representative altitude sampled for such dayside images is estimated to be 51–55 km. Also, the quality of the nightside 1.01-µm images is sufficient for a search for active volcanism, since interference due to cloud inhomogeneity appears to be insignificant. The quality of the 0.97-µm images may be insufficient to achieve the expected spatial resolution for the near-surface H2O mixing ratio retrievals.

Abstract We provide an overview of data products from observations by the Japanese Venus Climate Orbiter, Akatsuki, and describe the definition and content of each data-processing level. Levels 1 and 2 consist of non-calibrated and calibrated radiance (or brightness temperature), respectively, as well as geometry information (e.g., illumination angles). Level 3 data are global-grid data in the regular longitude–latitude coordinate system, produced from the contents of Level 2. Non-negligible errors in navigational data and instrumental alignment can result in serious errors in the geometry calculations. Such errors cause mismapping of the data and lead to inconsistencies between radiances and illumination angles, along with errors in cloud-motion vectors. Thus, we carefully correct the boresight pointing of each camera by fitting an ellipse to the observed Venusian limb to provide improved longitude–latitude maps for Level 3 products, if possible. The accuracy of the pointing correction is also estimated statistically by simulating observed limb distributions. The results show that our algorithm successfully corrects instrumental pointing and will enable a variety of studies on the Venusian atmosphere using Akatsuki data.

Abstract The first year (December 2015 to November 2016) of IR2 after Akatsuki’s successful insertion to an elongated elliptical orbit around Venus is reported with performance evaluation and results of data acquisition. The single-stage Stirling-cycle cryo-cooler of IR2 has been operated with various driving voltages to achieve the best possible cooling under the given thermal environment. A total of 3091 images of Venus (1420 dayside images at 2.02 μm and 1671 night-side images at 1.735, 2.26, and 2.32 μm) were acquired in this period. Additionally, 159 images, including images of stars for calibration and dark images for the evaluation of noise levels, were captured. Low-frequency flat images (not available in pre-launch calibration data) have been constructed using the images of Venus acquired from near the pericenter to establish the procedure to correct for the IR2 flat-field response. It was noticed that multiple reflections of infrared light in the PtSi detector caused a weak but extended tail of the point-spread function (PSF), contaminating the night-side disk of Venus with light from the much brighter dayside crescent. This necessitated the construction of an empirical PSF to remove this contamination and also to improve the dayside data by deconvolution, and this work is also discussed. Detailed astrometry is performed on star-field images in the H-band (1.65 μm), hereby confirming that the geometrical distortion of IR2 images is negligible.

Abstract The Venus Climate Orbiter Akatsuki arrived at Venus in December 2015, and the Longwave Infrared Camera (LIR) onboard the spacecraft started making observations. LIR has acquired more than 8000 images during the first two Venusian years since orbit insertion without any serious faults. However, brightness temperature derived from LIR images contained an unexpected bias that related not to natural phenomena but to a thermal condition of the instrument. The bias could be partially eliminated by keeping the power supply unit for LIR always active, while the residual bias was simply correlated with the baffle temperature. Therefore, deep-space images were acquired at different baffle temperatures on orbit, and a reference table for eliminating the bias from images was prepared. In the corrected images, the brightness temperature was ~ 230 K at the center of the Venus disk, where the effect of limb darkening is negligible. The result is independent of the baffle temperature and consistent with the results of previous studies. Later, a laboratory experiment with the proto model of LIR showed that when the germanium (Ge) lens was heated, its actual temperature was slightly higher than the temperature measured by a thermal sensor attached to the lens holder. The experiment confirmed that transitory baffle heating accounted for the background bias found in the brightness temperature observed by LIR.

Abstract After the arrival of Akatsuki spacecraft of Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency at Venus in December 2015, the radio occultation experiment, termed RS (Radio Science), obtained 19 vertical profiles of the Venusian atmosphere by April 2017. An onboard ultra-stable oscillator is used to generate stable X-band downlink signals needed for the experiment. The quantities to be retrieved are the atmospheric pressure, the temperature, the sulfuric acid vapor mixing ratio, and the electron density. Temperature profiles were successfully obtained down to ~ 38 km altitude and show distinct atmospheric structures depending on the altitude. The overall structure is close to the previous observations, suggesting a remarkable stability of the thermal structure. Local time-dependent features are seen within and above the clouds, which is located around 48–70 km altitude. The H2SO4 vapor density roughly follows the saturation curve at cloud heights, suggesting equilibrium with cloud particles. The ionospheric electron density profiles are also successfully retrieved, showing distinct local time dependence. Akatsuki RS mainly probes the low and middle latitude regions thanks to the near-equatorial orbit in contrast to the previous radio occultation experiments using polar orbiters. Studies based on combined analyses of RS and optical imaging data are ongoing. Graphical abstract .

Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) perform well for crack detection in concrete structures. However, a large dataset with accurate labeling is required for CNN training. The generation of large datasets by capturing real images and applying manual image labeling is a time- and labor-intensive task. Hence, large dataset generation and labeling are critical for crack detection. Among the existing methods of dataset generation, random cropping is the most effective. For crack detection, only crack images are required for the crack dataset. However, no-crack images are also generated from crack sample images by random cropping, which is a major issue. Here, an image-augmentation method; namely, the crack-cropping method, is proposed for generating a large training dataset for concrete walls. The proposed method solves the issue of random cropping by discarding no-crack images at the time of crack dataset generation. In addition, image labeling was automatically applied using the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Crack detection plays a critical role in structural maintenance to ensure structure safety and durability. The convolutional neural network (CNN)-based crack detection method is among the most promising crack detection methods currently available. However, because the image attributes of structures are different in each target structure, large datasets with accurate image labeling of each maintenance target are required for proper CNN training. In this study, the performance of CNN-based crack detection using training datasets generated by the crack cropping method from each maintenance target is examined. Specifically, the crack cropping method is used for generating training datasets in each target structure. The generated datasets are used for CNN training and crack detection is done for each target structure . The results of numerical experiments on real concrete walls show that the performance of CNN-based crack detection using the CNN trained with the dataset generated from each target concrete wall by the crack cropping method outperforms CNN trained with datasets generated from different walls or an open dataset. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]