Abstract
Minimally invasive cardiovascular interventions guided by multiple imaging modalities are rapidly gaining clinical acceptance for the treatment of several cardiovascular diseases. These images are typically fused with richly detailed pre-operative scans through registration techniques, enhancing the intra-operative clinical data and easing the image-guided procedures. Nonetheless, rigid models have been used to align the different modalities, not taking into account the anatomical variations of the cardiac muscle throughout the cardiac cycle. In the current study, we present a novel strategy to compensate the beat-to-beat physiological adaptation of the myocardium. Hereto, we intend to prove that a complete myocardial motion field can be quickly recovered from the displacement field at the myocardial boundaries, therefore being an efficient strategy to locally deform the cardiac muscle. We address this hypothesis by comparing three different strategies to recover a dense myocardial motion field from a sparse one, namely, a diffusion-based approach, thin-plate splines, and multiquadric radial basis functions. Two experimental setups were used to validate the proposed strategy. First, an in silico validation was carried out on synthetic motion fields obtained from two realistic simulated ultrasound sequences. Then, 45 mid-ventricular 2D sequences of cine magnetic resonance imaging were processed to further evaluate the different approaches. The results showed that accurate boundary tracking combined with dense myocardial recovery via interpolation/diffusion is a potentially viable solution to speed up dense myocardial motion field estimation and, consequently, to deform/compensate the myocardial wall throughout the cardiac cycle. Copyright (C) 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Abstract
Cattle muzzle classification can be considered as a biometric identifier important to animal traceability systems to ensure the integrity of the food chain. This paper presents a muzzle-based classification system that combines local invariant features with graph matching. The proposed approach consists of three phases; namely feature extraction, graph matching, and matching refinement. The experimental results showed that our approach is superior than existing works as ours achieves an all correct identification for the tested images. In addition, the results proved that our proposed method achieved this high accuracy even if the testing images are rotated in various angles.

Abstract
The development of future HVDC grids for transnational interconnections and offshore wind farms development should be compliant with specific requirements regarding frequency support and inertia emulation. Therefore, this paper presents the development of communication-free control solutions capable of dealing with these control requirements. The proposed solution exploit a coordinated control approach between offshore wind turbines and VSC-HVDC converter stations based on the DC grid voltage modulation. The effectiveness of the proposed control solutions are demonstrated to be of utmost importance for improving future grids frequency regulation capabilities. Recognizing that numerical simulations provide valuable knowledge regarding HVDC grids operation and control, this paper introduces a further step encompassing the development of a reduced scale laboratorial prototype of a DC grid making possible the demonstration of key frequency control functionalities. Following the theoretical/conceptual background that is demonstrated through numerical simulation, laboratorial tests were then performed in order to test and demonstrate the performance and effectiveness of the proposed control mechanisms that future HVDC grids will provide to frequency control in mainland AC grids.

Abstract
The detection of thrombin based on aptamer binding is studied using two different optical fiber-based configurations: long period gratings coated with a thin layer of titanium dioxide and surface plasmon resonance devices in optical fibers coated with a multilayer of gold and titanium dioxide. These structures are functionalized and the performance to detect thrombin in the range 10 to 100 nM is compared in transmission mode. The sensitivity to the surrounding refractive index (RI) of the plasmonic device is higher than 3100 nmRIU(-1) in the RI range 1.335 to 1.355, a factor of 20 greater than the sensitivity of the coated grating. The detection of 10 nM of thrombin was accomplished with a wavelength shift of 3.5 nm and a resolution of 0.54 nM. (C) 2016 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE)

Abstract
Pectus Excavatum (PE) is the most common congenital chest wall deformity, affecting 1 in 400 live births. This deformity is commonly corrected using the minimally invasive Nuss procedure, where a bar is positioned under the sternum. Although recent procedure advances based on patientspecific prosthesis were proposed, correct bar placement is still challenging. In this work, we propose a novel augmented reality system to guide the surgeon during PE bar placement. This system combines a 3D sensor with a projector to superimpose the thoracic ribs cage on the chest wall of the patient, thus indicating the optimal insertion and bar placement points. This system was validated in three different scenarios: 1) simulated chest surface models; 2) 3D printed phantom; and 3) 3D commercial thoracic phantom. An error of 3.93 ± 3.44 mm, and 3.08 ± 1.57 mm were obtained in the first and second experiments, respectively. In the final experiment, visual assessment of the result proved that a high similarity was obtained between the projected model and the real ribs cage position. Overall, the proposed system showed high feasibility with low error, proving that 3D projection of the ribs on the patient’s chest wall may facilitate PE bar insertion and ultimately provide useful information to guide Nuss procedure. © 2016 Taylor & Francis Group, London.

Abstract