bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Feline primary open angle glaucoma
Authors: Jacobi Susan , Dubielzig Richard R. 
Published: April 2008

AbstractObjectives  We have documented the histomorphological features of feline primary open angle glaucoma.Design  A retrospective morphologic study of eight affected eyes from eight cats, from 1992 to 2006 extracted from a pathology collection, which includes 4000 feline submissions and 1100 cases of feline glaucoma.Procedure  Sections of affected globes, stained with H&E or with alcian blue were examined with a light microscope. Eyes that did not fulfill the criteria for primary open angle glaucoma were excluded from the study.Results  The mean age was 9.1 years. Five cats were female and three cats were male. The breeds included five DSH, two Burmese, and one DLH cat. Significant histomorphological findings included an open irido‐corneal angle with an open ciliary cleft in all cases, loss of ganglion cells in eight of eight cases, cupping and gliosis of the optic nerve head in four of four cases in which the optic nerve was adequately sampled, and myxomatous changes of the stroma surrounding the vortex veins in seven of eight cases.Conclusions  Primary open angle glaucoma in cats is a rare disease that should be taken into consideration when investigating cases of feline glaucoma. The pathogenesis of aqueous outflow obstruction in these cases is not known. This study describes eight additional cases of feline primary open angle glaucoma in cats without an identified cause.
Does the current World Health Organization classification predict the outcome better in patients with noninvasive bladder cancer of early or regular onset?
Authors: Burger Maximilian , Denzinger Stefan , Wieland Wolf‐Ferdinand , Stief Christian G. , Hartmann Arndt , Zaak Dirk 
Published: April 2008

OBJECTIVETo compare the clinical outcome and prognostic power of the former and current World Health Organization (WHO) grading system in patients with early vs regular onset of noninvasive urothelial bladder cancer (UBC), as little is known of the natural history of early onset UBC and in how far it is reflected by histopathological grading and staging in guiding clinical decisions.PATIENTS AND METHODSThe medical records of 69 consecutive patients presenting with initial UBC of early onset (≥45 years old, EO) and of 100 randomly chosen patients with regular onset (RO) were reviewed. There were no significant differences in gender distribution, risk factors or tumour stage. All histopathological specimens were re‐staged and re‐graded according to the former and current WHO grading.RESULTSIn all, 51 EO and 63 RO patients with tumours staged pTa and complete follow‐up information were analysed. Recurrence‐free survival (RFS) was prolonged in patients with EO. In EO neither the former nor the current WHO grading system was significantly related to RFS or to progression to muscle‐invasive disease. In RO, while both WHO grading systems were significantly related to RFS, only the current WHO grading system was related to progression.CONCLUSIONWhile larger studies are needed, UBC in patients with EO and RO do not seem to differ in risk factors and oncological outcome. The current WHO classification reflects the outcome more accurately than the former classification in patients with RO. However, for EO no grading system has sufficient prognostic power and novel methods, i.e. molecular markers, need to be evaluated for clinical use.
Kidneys from patients with small renal tumours: a novel source of kidneys for transplantation
Authors: Nicol David L. , Preston John M. , Wall Daryl R. , Griffin Anthony D. , Campbell Scott B. , Isbel Nicole M. , Hawley Carmel M. , Johnson David W. 
Published: April 2008

OBJECTIVETo report the use of a novel donor source as a further option to increase the number of patients who might be able to receive a renal transplant.PATIENTS AND METHODSBetween May 1996 and July 2007, 43 kidneys were transplanted using kidneys obtained from patients with small (<3 cm diameter) incidentally detected tumours. After bench surgery to excise the tumour, they were all successfully transplanted into patients who were elderly or had significant comorbidities.RESULTSApart from four patients who died from unrelated illnesses, all grafts continued to function with a median and mean follow‐up of 25 and 32 months. The follow‐up, which included 3‐monthly renal ultrasonography and chest X‐rays, showed only one case of tumour recurrence, which occurred 9 years after transplantation; the patient remains stable under observation after 18 months.CONCLUSIONSFrom our experience we consider that where nephrectomy is used for small, localized, incidentally detected renal tumours, the kidney should be considered for transplantation into carefully selected patients. Such patients with numerous medical comorbidities might benefit from renal transplantation, but not survive the waiting period if they are dependent on a deceased donor graft. Paradoxically the use of these marginal kidneys has the potential to increase the quality and length of life of these patients, despite the apparent contradiction of an intuitive principle of organ transplantation and immunosuppression.
An assessment of urologists’ training and knowledge of energy‐based surgical devices
Authors: Lehman Daniel S. , Phillips Courtney K. , Hruby Gregory W. , Lambert Sarah , Landman Jaime 
Published: April 2008

OBJECTIVETo assess surgeons’ training and current understanding of existing energy‐based surgical instrumentation (ESI), we disseminated an online questionnaire to urology residents, fellows and attending urologists.SUBJECTS AND METHODSA two part 24‐question survey was disseminated to 1000 urology residents, fellows and attending physicians. The first part of the questionnaire assessed the respondents’ demographics and education about ESI; the second part evaluated the respondent’s knowledge of surgical energy methods and ESI, and was stratified into nine basic‐ and six advanced‐knowledge questions.RESULTSIn all, 136 people (13.6%) viewed the survey and it was completed by 63 (6.3%). Respondents comprised 27 (43%) attending physicians, 14 (22%) minimally‐invasive urology fellows and 22 (35%) urology residents. Among participants, 41 (64%) had received no formal didactic training on ESI, and a further 14% of respondents’ didactic experience was limited to one lecture. Of the respondents, 70% said that monopolar energy was the mode most often used in surgery. Overall, the participants correctly answered 41% of the questions. Of the nine questions classified as ‘basic’ knowledge, respondents correctly answered 49%. Of the six questions classified as ‘advanced’ knowledge, 29% were answered correctly. The highest percentage score was obtained by the attending urologists, with a mean (range) score of 41 (29–86)%, followed by the fellows, with a mean score of 39.5 (29–57)%, and then the residents, at 34 (14–64)%.CONCLUSIONDespite widespread and growing use of ESI, there is currently minimal formal training on energy modes and current energy devices being provided to urological surgeons. Both practising and training urologists have a limited understanding of surgical energy modes and of existing ESI.
PATERNALISM AND FAIRNESS IN CLINICAL RESEARCH
Authors: JANSEN LYNN A. , WALL STEVEN 
Published: April 2008

ABSTRACTIn this paper, we defend the ethics of clinical research against the charge of paternalism. We do so not by denying that the ethics of clinical research is paternalistic, but rather by defending the legitimacy of paternalism in this context. Our aim is not to defend any particular set of paternalistic restrictions, but rather to make a general case for the permissibility of paternalistic restrictions in this context. Specifically, we argue that there is no basic liberty‐right to participate in clinical research and that considerations of distributive fairness justify some paternalistic protections of research subjects.
Render2MPEG: A Perception‐based Framework Towards Integrating Rendering and Video Compression
Authors: Herzog Robert , Kinuwaki Shinichi , Myszkowski Karol , Seidel Hans‐Peter 
Published: April 2008

AbstractCurrently 3D animation rendering and video compression are completely independent processes even if rendered frames are streamed on‐the‐fly within a client‐server platform. In such scenario, which may involve time‐varying transmission bandwidths and different display characteristics at the client side, dynamic adjustment of the rendering quality to such requirements can lead to a better use of server resources. In this work, we present a framework where the renderer and MPEG codec are coupled through a straightforward interface that provides precise motion vectors from the rendering side to the codec and perceptual error thresholds for each pixel in the opposite direction. The perceptual error thresholds take into account bandwidth‐dependent quantization errors resulting from the lossy com‐pression as well as image content‐dependent luminance and spatial contrast masking. The availability of the discrete cosine transform (DCT) coefficients at the codec side enables to use advanced models of the human visual system (HVS) in the perceptual error threshold derivation without incurring any significant cost. Those error thresholds are then used to control the rendering quality and make it well aligned with the compressed stream quality. In our prototype system we use the lightcuts technique developed by Walter et al., which we enhance to handle dynamic image sequences, and an MPEG‐2 implementation. Our results clearly demonstrate many advantages of coupling the rendering with video compression in terms of faster rendering. Furthermore, temporally coherent rendering leads to a reduction of temporal artifacts.
Curvature‐Domain Shape Processing
Authors: Eigensatz Michael , Sumner Robert W. , Pauly Mark 
Published: April 2008

AbstractWe propose a framework for 3D geometry processing that provides direct access to surface curvature to facilitate advanced shape editing, filtering, and synthesis algorithms. The central idea is to map a given surface to the curvature domain by evaluating its principle curvatures, apply filtering and editing operations to the curvature distribution, and reconstruct the resulting surface using an optimization approach. Our system allows the user to prescribe arbitrary principle curvature values anywhere on the surface. The optimization solves a nonlinear least‐squares problem to find the surface that best matches the desired target curvatures while preserving important properties of the original shape. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this processing metaphor with several applications, including anisotropic smoothing, feature enhancement, and multi‐scale curvature editing.
Spectral Geometry Processing with Manifold Harmonics
Authors: Vallet B. , Lévy B. 
Published: April 2008

AbstractWe present an explicit method to compute a generalization of the Fourier Transform on a mesh. It is well known that the eigenfunctions of the Laplace Beltrami operator (Manifold Harmonics) define a function basis allowing for such a transform. However, computing even just a few eigenvectors is out of reach for meshes with more than a few thousand vertices, and storing these eigenvectors is prohibitive for large meshes. To overcome these limitations, we propose a band‐by‐band spectrum computation algorithm and an out‐of‐core implementation that can compute thousands of eigenvectors for meshes with up to a million vertices. We also propose a limited‐memory filtering algorithm, that does not need to store the eigenvectors. Using this latter algorithm, specific frequency bands can be filtered, without needing to compute the entire spectrum. Finally, we demonstrate some applications of our method to interactive convolution geometry filtering. These technical achievements are supported by a solid yet simple theoretic framework based on Discrete Exterior Calculus (DEC). In particular, the issues of symmetry and discretization of the operator are considered with great care.
Real‐Time Rendering and Editing of Vector‐based Terrains
Authors: Bruneton Eric , Neyret Fabrice 
Published: April 2008

AbstractWe present a method to populate very large terrains with very detailed features such as roads, rivers, lakes and fields. These features can be interactively edited, and the landscape can be explored in real time at any altitude from flight view to car view. We use vector descriptions of linear and areal features, with associated shaders to specify their appearance (terrain color and material), their footprint (effect on terrain shape), and their associated objects (bridges, hedges, etc.).In order to encompass both very large terrains and very fine details we rely on a view dependent quadtree refinement scheme. New quads are generated when needed and cached on the GPU. For each quad we produce on the GPU an appearance texture, a footprint texture, and some object meshes, based on the features vector description and their associated shaders. Adaptive refinement, procedural vector features and a mipmap pyramid provide three LOD mechanisms for small, medium and large scale quads. Our results and attached video show high performance with high visual quality.
Simulation of Human Motion Data using Short‐Horizon Model‐Predictive Control
Authors: Da Silva M. , Abe Y. , Popović J. 
Published: April 2008

AbstractMany data‐driven animation techniques are capable of producing high quality motions of human characters. Few techniques, however, are capable of generating motions that are consistent with physically simulated environments. Physically simulated characters, in contrast, are automatically consistent with the environment, but their motions are often unnatural because they are difficult to control. We present a model‐predictive controller that yields natural motions by guiding simulated humans toward real motion data. During simulation, the predictive component of the controller solves a quadratic program to compute the forces for a short window of time into the future. These forces are then applied by a low‐gain proportional‐derivative component, which makes minor adjustments until the next planning cycle. The controller is fast enough for interactive systems such as games and training simulations. It requires no precomputation and little manual tuning. The controller is resilient to mismatches between the character dynamics and the input motion, which allows it to track motion capture data even where the real dynamics are not known precisely. The same principled formulation can generate natural walks, runs, and jumps in a number of different physically simulated surroundings.
Automatic Conversion of Mesh Animations into Skeleton‐based Animations
Authors: De Aguiar Edilson , Theobalt Christian , Thrun Sebastian , Seidel Hans‐Peter 
Published: April 2008

AbstractRecently, it has become increasingly popular to represent animations not by means of a classical skeleton‐based model, but in the form of deforming mesh sequences. The reason for this new trend is that novel mesh deformation methods as well as new surface based scene capture techniques offer a great level of flexibility during animation creation. Unfortunately, the resulting scene representation is less compact than skeletal ones and there is not yet a rich toolbox available which enables easy post‐processing and modification of mesh animations. To bridge this gap between the mesh‐based and the skeletal paradigm, we propose a new method that automatically extracts a plausible kinematic skeleton, skeletal motion parameters, as well as surface skinning weights from arbitrary mesh animations. By this means, deforming mesh sequences can be fully‐automatically transformed into fullyrigged virtual subjects. The original input can then be quickly rendered based on the new compact bone and skin representation, and it can be easily modified using the full repertoire of already existing animation tools.
Articulated Object Reconstruction and Markerless Motion Capture from Depth Video
Authors: Pekelny Yuri , Gotsman Craig 
Published: April 2008

AbstractWe present an algorithm for acquiring the 3D surface geometry and motion of a dynamic piecewise‐rigid object using a single depth video camera. The algorithm identifies and tracks the rigid components in each frame, while accumulating the geometric information acquired over time, possibly from different viewpoints. The algorithm also reconstructs the dynamic skeleton of the object, thus can be used for markerless motion capture. The acquired model can then be animated to novel poses. We show the results of the algorithm applied to synthetic and real depth video.
Higher Order Barycentric Coordinates
Authors: Langer Torsten , Seidel Hans‐Peter 
Published: April 2008

AbstractIn recent years, a wide range of generalized barycentric coordinates has been suggested. However, all of them lack control over derivatives. We show how the notion of barycentric coordinates can be extended to specify derivatives at control points. This is also known as Hermite interpolation. We introduce a method to modify existing barycentric coordinates to higher order barycentric coordinates and demonstrate, using higher order mean value coordinates, that our method, although conceptually simple and easy to implement, can be used to give easy and intuitive control at interactive frame rates over local space deformations such as rotations.
A Fast Simulation Method Using Overlapping Grids for Interactions between Smoke and Rigid Objects
Authors: Dobashi Yoshinori , Matsuda Yasuhiro , Yamamoto Tsuyoshi , Nishita Tomoyuki 
Published: April 2008

AbstractRecently, many techniques using computational fluid dynamics have been proposed for the simulation of natural phenomena such as smoke and fire. Traditionally, a single grid is used for computing the motion of fluids. When an object interacts with a fluid, the resolution of the grid must be sufficiently high because the shape of the object is represented by a shape sampled at the grid points. This increases the number of grid points that are required, and hence the computational cost is increased. To address this problem, we propose a method using multiple grids that overlap with each other. In addition to a large single grid (a global grid) that covers the whole of the simulation space, separate grids (local grids) are generated that surround each object. The resolution of a local grid is higher than that of the global grid. The local grids move according to the motion of the objects. Therefore, the process of resampling the shape of the object is unnecessary when the object moves. To accelerate the computation, appropriate resolutions are adaptively‐determined for the local grids according to their distance from the viewpoint. Furthermore, since we use regular (orthogonal) lattices for the grids, the method is suitable for GPU implementation. This realizes the real‐time simulation of interactions between objects and smoke.
Visualizing Underwater Ocean Optics
Authors: Gutierrez Diego , Seron Francisco J. , Munoz Adolfo , Anson Oscar 
Published: April 2008

AbstractSimulating the in‐water ocean light field is a daunting task. Ocean waters are one of the richest participating media, where light interacts not only with water molecules, but with suspended particles and organic matter as well. The concentration of each constituent greatly affects these interactions, resulting in very different hues. Inelastic scattering events such as fluorescence or Raman scattering imply energy transfers that are usually neglected in the simulations. Our contributions in this paper are a bio‐optical model of ocean waters suitable for computer graphics simulations, along with an improved method to obtain an accurate solution of the in‐water light field based on radiative transfer theory. The method provides a link between the inherent optical properties that define the medium and its apparent optical properties, which describe how it looks. The bio‐optical model of the ocean uses published data from oceanography studies. For inelastic scattering we compute all frequency changes at higher and lower energy values, based on the spectral quantum efficiency function of the medium. The results shown prove the usability of the system as a predictive rendering algorithm. Areas of application for this research span from underwater imagery to remote sensing; the resolution method is general enough to be usable in any type of participating medium simulation.
Interactive Volume Rendering with Dynamic Ambient Occlusion and Color Bleeding
Authors: Ropinski Timo , Meyer‐Spradow Jennis , Diepenbrock Stefan , Mensmann Jörg , Hinrichs Klaus 
Published: April 2008

AbstractWe propose a method for rendering volumetric data sets at interactive frame rates while supporting dynamic ambient occlusion as well as an approximation to color bleeding. In contrast to ambient occlusion approaches for polygonal data, techniques for volumetric data sets have to face additional challenges, since by changing rendering parameters, such as the transfer function or the thresholding, the structure of the data set and thus the light interactions may vary drastically. Therefore, during a preprocessing step which is independent of the rendering parameters we capture light interactions for all combinations of structures extractable from a volumetric data set. In order to compute the light interactions between the different structures, we combine this preprocessed information during rendering based on the rendering parameters defined interactively by the user. Thus our method supports interactive exploration of a volumetric data set but still gives the user control over the most important rendering parameters. For instance, if the user alters the transfer function to extract different structures from a volumetric data set the light interactions between the extracted structures are captured in the rendering while still allowing interactive frame rates. Compared to known local illumination models for volume rendering our method does not introduce any substantial rendering overhead and can be integrated easily into existing volume rendering applications. In this paper we will explain our approach, discuss the implications for interactive volume rendering and present the achieved results.
Viewfinder Alignment
Authors: Adams Andrew , Gelfand Natasha , Pulli Kari 
Published: April 2008

AbstractThe viewfinder of a digital camera has traditionally been used for one purpose: to display to the user a preview of what is seen through the camera's lens. High quality cameras are now available on devices such as mobile phones and PDAs, which provide a platform where the camera is a programmable device, enabling applications such as online computational photography, computer vision‐based interactive gaming, and augmented reality. For such online applications, the camera viewfinder provides the user's main interaction with the environment. In this paper, we describe an algorithm for aligning successive viewfinder frames. First, an estimate of inter‐frame translation is computed by aligning integral projections of edges in two images. The estimate is then refined to compute a full 2D similarity transformation by aligning point features. Our algorithm is robust to noise, never requires storing more than one viewfinder frame in memory, and runs at 30 frames per second on standard smartphone hardware. We use viewfinder alignment for panorama capture, low‐light photography, and a camera‐based game controller.