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Publications

Publications by CSE

2017

The Integration of Augmented Reality and the Concept of Sticker Album Collection for Informal Learning in Museums

Authors
Coelho, A; Costa, LM;

Publication
Immersive Learning Research Network - Third International Conference, iLRN 2017, Coimbra, Portugal, June 26-29, 2017, Proceedings

Abstract
Informal learning can have an important role in today’s Education but, to be effective, it should be contextualized individually for each learner, and situated to enhance experience. Museums have invaluable collections of assets that are in display and curators use their knowledge to engage the audience. Museums are places where informal learning can be fostered to engage the students and provide opportunities for situated learning. Pervasive systems, that take into account context, from both the learner and the location, have a good potential to promote this effectiveness in a gamified process that transforms the regular museum exploration into an engaging experience that provides learning opportunities at the appropriate time and place. In this paper, we propose a gamified approach based on the concept of sticker album collection and its integration in an Augmented Reality (AR) mobile application. The concept of sticker album collection is quite familiar to most people, mainly from their youth, and is the main dynamic of the gamification design, engaging the learner to collect more stickers and progress in the exploration of the museum. As a pervasive solution, we do not use physical support, but instead, a mobile application to provide the learning experiences by uncovering the stickers using AR over the museum collection, in order to enhance the knowledge transfer and rewarding. We present a prototype developed for a boat museum where, digital stickers are obtained by overcoming challenges in the context of the exploration of the boats in the museum. Furthermore, we provide two evaluations fromexperts: a preliminary evaluation of user experienceand a gamification evaluation using the Octalsysframework. © Springer International Publishing AG 2017.

2017

Towards an Automated Test Bench Environment for Prolog Systems

Authors
Gonçalves, R; Areias, M; Rocha, R;

Publication
6th Symposium on Languages, Applications and Technologies, SLATE 2017, June 26-27, 2017, Vila do Conde, Portugal

Abstract
Software testing and benchmarking is a key component of the software development process. Nowadays, a good practice in big software projects is the Continuous Integration (CI) software development technique. The key idea of CI is to let developers integrate their work as they produce it, instead of doing the integration at the end of each software module. In this paper, we extend a previous work on a benchmark suite for the Yap Prolog system and we propose a fully automated test bench environment for Prolog systems, named Yet Another Prolog Test Bench Environment (YAPTBE), aimed to assist developers in the development and CI of Prolog systems. YAPTBE is based on a cloud computing architecture and relies on the Jenkins framework and in a set of new Jenkins plugins to manage the underneath infrastructure. We present the key design and implementation aspects of YAPTBE and show its most important features, such as its graphical user interface and the automated process that builds and runs Prolog systems and benchmarks. © Ricardo Gonçalves, Miguel Areias, and Ricardo Rocha

2017

Fast and Fully Automatic Left Ventricular Segmentation and Tracking in Echocardiography Using Shape-Based B-Spline Explicit Active Surfaces

Authors
Pedrosa, J; Queiros, S; Bernard, O; Engvall, J; Edvardsen, T; Nagel, E; D'hooge, J;

Publication
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MEDICAL IMAGING

Abstract
Cardiac volume/function assessment remains a critical step in daily cardiology, and 3-D ultrasound plays an increasingly important role. Fully automatic left ventricular segmentation is, however, a challenging task due to the artifacts and low contrast-to-noise ratio of ultrasound imaging. In this paper, a fast and fully automatic framework for the full-cycle endocardial left ventricle segmentation is proposed. This approach couples the advantages of the B-spline explicit active surfaces framework, a purely image information approach, to those of statistical shape models to give prior information about the expected shape for an accurate segmentation. The segmentation is propagated throughout the heart cycle using a localized anatomical affine optical flow. It is shown that this approach not only outperforms other state-of-the-art methods in terms of distance metrics with a mean average distances of 1.81 +/- 0.59 and 1.98 +/- 0.66 mm at end-diastole and end-systole, respectively, but is computationally efficient (in average 11 s per 4-D image) and fully automatic.

2017

heartBEATS: A hybrid energy approach for real-time B-spline explicit active tracking of surfaces

Authors
Barbosa, D; Pedrosa, J; Heyde, B; Dietenbeck, T; Friboulet, D; Bernard, O; D'hooge, J;

Publication
Computerized Medical Imaging and Graphics

Abstract
In this manuscript a novel method is presented for left ventricle (LV) tracking in three-dimensional ultrasound data using a hybrid approach combining segmentation and tracking-based clues. This is accomplished by coupling an affine motion model to an existing LV segmentation framework and introducing an energy term that penalizes the deviation to the affine motion estimated using a global Lucas–Kanade algorithm. The hybrid nature of the proposed solution can be seen as using the estimated affine motion to enhance the temporal coherence of the segmented surfaces, by enforcing the tracking of consistent patterns, while the underlying segmentation algorithm allows to locally refine the estimated global motion. The proposed method was tested on a dataset composed of 24 4D ultrasound sequences from both healthy volunteers and diseased patients. The proposed hybrid tracking platform offers a competitive solution for fast assessment of relevant LV volumetric indices, by combining the robustness of affine motion tracking with the low computational burden of the underlying segmentation algorithm. © 2017 Elsevier Ltd

2017

Automatic definition of an anatomic field of view for volumetric cardiac motion estimation at high temporal resolution

Authors
Ortega, A; Pedrosa, J; Heyde, B; Tong, L; D'hooge, J;

Publication
Applied Sciences (Switzerland)

Abstract
Fast volumetric cardiac imaging requires reducing the number of transmit events within a single volume. One way of achieving this is by limiting the field of view (FOV) of the recording to the myocardium when investigating cardiac mechanics. Although fully automatic solutions towards myocardial segmentation exist, translating that information in a fast ultrasound scan sequence is not trivial. In particular, multi-line transmit (MLT) scan sequences were investigated given their proven capability to increase frame rate (FR) while preserving image quality. The aim of this study was therefore to develop a methodology to automatically identify the anatomically relevant conically shaped FOV, and to translate this to the best associated MLT sequence. This approach was tested on 27 datasets leading to a conical scan with a mean opening angle of 19.7° ± 8.5°, while the mean "thickness" of the cone was 19° ± 3.4°, resulting in a frame rate gain of about 2. Then, to subsequently scan this conical volume, several MLT setups were tested in silico. The method of choice was a 10MLT sequence as it resulted in the highest frame rate gain while maintaining an acceptable cross-talk level. When combining this MLT scan sequence with at least four parallel receive beams, a total frame rate gain with a factor of approximately 80 could be obtained. As such, anatomical scan sequences can increase frame rate significantly while maintaining information of the relevant structures for functional myocardial imaging. © 2017 by the authors.

2017

Learning Frameworks in a Social-Intensive Knowledge Environment - An Empirical Study

Authors
Flores, N; Aguiar, A;

Publication
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SOFTWARE ENGINEERING AND KNOWLEDGE ENGINEERING

Abstract
Application frameworks are a powerful technique for large-scale reuse, but require a considerable effort to understand them. Good documentation is costly, as it needs to address different audiences with disparate learning needs. When code and documentation prove insuficient, developers turn to their network of experts. Nevertheless, this proves difficult, mainly due to the lack of expertise awareness (who to ask), wasteful interruptions of the wrong people and unavailability ( either due to intrusion or time constraints). The DRIVER platform is a collaborative learning environment where framework users can, in a non-intrusive way, store and share their learning knowledge while following the best practices of framework understanding (patterns). Developed by the authors, it provides a framework documentation repository, mounted on a wiki, where the learning paths of the community of learners can be captured, shared, rated, and recommended. Combining these social activities, the DRIVER platform promotes collaborative learning, mitigating intrusiveness, unavailability of experts and loss of tacit knowledge. This paper presents the assessment of DRIVER using a controlled academic experiment that measured the performance, effectiveness and framework knowledge intake of MSc students. The study concluded that, especially for novice learners, the platform allows for a faster and more effective learning process.

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