3D Medical Volume Reconstruction Using Web Services
We address the problem of 3D medical volume reconstruction using Web services. The use of proposed Web services is motivated by the fact that the problem of 3D medical volume reconstruction requires significant computer resources and human expertise in medical and computer science areas. Web services were implemented as an additional layer to a dataflow framework called data to knowledge. In the collaboration between UIC and NCSA, pre-processed input images at NCSA were made accessible to medical collaborators for registration. Every time medical collaborators inspected images and selected corresponding features for registration, the Web server at NCSA was contacted and the registration processing query was executed using the image to knowledge library of registration methods. Co-registered frames were returned for verification by medical collaborators in a new window. This paper presents 3D volume reconstruction problem requirements, architecture of the developed prototype system and the tradeoffs of our system design.

title: Multisensor raster and vector data fusion based on uncertainty modeling
abstract: We propose a new methodology for fusing temporally changing multisensor raster and vector data by developing a spatially and temporally varying uncertainty model of acquired and transformed multisensor measurements. The proposed uncertainty model includes errors due to (1) each sensor by itself, e.g., sensor noise; (2) transformations of measured values to obtain comparable physical entities for data fusion and/or to calibrate sensor measurements; (3) vector data spatial interpolation that is needed to match different spatial resolutions of multisensor data; and (4) temporal interpolation that has to take place if multisensor acquisitions are not accurately synchronized. The proposed methodology was tested using simulated data with varying (a) amount of sensor noise, (b) spatial offset of point sensors generating vector data, and (c) model complexity of the underlying physical phenomenon. We demonstrated the multisensor fusion approach with a data set from a structural health monitoring application domain.

title: Spatial Intensity Correction of Fluorescent Confocal Laser Scanning Microscope Images
abstract: Fluorescent confocal laser scanning microscope (CLSM) imaging has become popular in medical domain for the purpose of 3D information extraction. 3D information is extracted either by visual inspection or by automated techniques. Nonetheless, 3D information extraction from CLSM suffers from significant lateral intensity heterogeneity. We propose a novel lateral intensity heterogeneity correction technique to improve accurate image analysis, e.g., quantitative analysis, segmentation, or visualization. The proposed technique is novel in terms of its design (spatially adaptive mean-weight filtering) and application (CLSM), as well as its properties and full automation. The key properties of the intensity correction techniques include adjustment of intensity heterogeneity, preservation of fine structural details, and enhancement of image contrast. The full automation is achieved by data-driven parameter optimization and introduction of several evaluation metrics. We evaluated the performance by comparing with three other techniques, four quality metrics, and two realistic synthetic images and one real CLSM image.

title: Three-Dimensional Volume Reconstruction Based on Trajectory Fusion from Confocal Laser Scanning Microscope Images
abstract: In this paper, we address the problem of 3D volume reconstruction from depth adjacent subvolumes (i.e., sets of image frames) acquired using a confocal laser scanning microscope (CLSM). Our goal is to align sub-volumes by estimating an optimal global image transformation which preserves morphological smoothness of medical structures (called features, e.g., blood vessels) inside of a reconstructed 3D volume. We approached the problem by learning morphological characteristics of structures inside of each sub-volume, i.e. centroid trajectories of features. Next, adjacent sub-volumes are aligned by fusing the morphological characteristics of structures using extrapolation or model fitting. Finally, a global sub-volume to subvolume transformation is computed based on the entire set of fused structures. The trajectory-based 3D volume reconstruction method described here is evaluated with a pair of consecutive physical sections using two evaluation metrics for morphological continu

title: A Web Service Approach to Universal Accessibility in Collaboration Services
abstract: The enormous growth in wireless communications and miniaturized handheld devices in the last few years, have given rise to a vast range of new services, for heterogeneous user environments. In this paper, we investigate the nature of designing distributed services that accommodate pervasive devices. We introduce Universal Accessible Web service architecture, CAROUSEL Web service. We present our collaborative Web services model linked with an event brokering service, NaradaBrokering. We discuss how a rich synchronous and asynchronous collaboration environment can support virtual communications while being built on top of a Web service infrastructure, based on industry standard portal technologies such as XML, Apache’s Jetspeed, and WSDL. The linkage of the event brokering system with a Web service based architecture is one of the critical design issues in message-based collaborative application. We also describe the approach to universal access mechanisms in our collaborative Web service model. Also included is a discussion of the prototype collaborative SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) browser that we developed as a Web service.

title: SmartSeer: Using a DHT to Process Continuous Queries Over Peer-to-Peer Networks
abstract: As the academic world moves away from physical journals and proceedings towards online document repositories, the ability to efficiently locate work of interest among the torrent of newly-generated papers will become increasingly important. To aid in this endeavor, we designed SmartSeer, a system that allows users to register personalized continuous queries over the CiteSeer database of technical documents. Users are then alerted whenever papers that match their queries are put online. SmartSeer has two main design requirements. First, to allow effective information retrieval, it should support rich continuous queries (as opposed to simple keyword searches). Second, to make effective use of donated infrastructure, it should be capable of running on a loosely maintained group of unreliable machines spread across multiple organizations (as opposed to assuming a reliable and tightly coupled distributed system). Existing work on distributed continuous query systems fails at least one of these requirements. Our design for SmartSeer is based on Distributed Hash Tables (DHTs), and thereby leverages previous work on DHT-based query systems. A prototype of SmartSeer has been implemented and evaluated on Planetlab. Though we evaluate our design only for the SmartSeer application, we believe it also provides useful insights into other distributed and rich continuous query systems (web alerts, news alerts etc).

title: Wireless reliable messaging protocol for Web services (WS-WRM)
abstract: By employing Web services technology, the grid system is evolving to be more manageable service infrastructure, including lifetime management, discovery of characteristics, and notifications. Reliable messaging is one of the key issues addressed for quality of services in Web services. In this paper, we propose a reliable message scheme designed for mobile environments in the context of a Web services architecture; Web services-Wireless Reliable Messaging (WS-WRM). We also consider the federation issues with emerging specifications proposed by leading Web services standard groups. We eventually intend to extend the reliability to mobile end-nodes in a more efficient way. In this paper, we address the design issues and describe the detailed scheme of messaging architecture.

title: FERMA: An Efficient Geocasting Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks with Multiple Target Regions
abstract: Some sensor applications are interested in collecting data from multiple regions. For supporting such applications with multiple target regions, most conventional protocols are based on either a network flooding or multiple unicastig to cover those more than one target region. Either one will result in a lot of redundant packets to transmit by energy scared sensor nodes. To alleviate this problem, we propose a novel geocasting scheme which can make a suitable shared path among multiple target regions. We utilize the theorem of “Fermat Point,” in order to find an optimal junction point branching into each region. By using this shared path, an interest dissemination can be performed very efficiently. Our simulation study shows that the proposed scheme FERMA reduces a lot of network traffic and achieves significant energy saving as the number of target regions increase.

title: A performance comparison study of ad hoc wireless multicast protocols
abstract: In this paper we investigate the performance of multicast routing protocols in wireless mobile ad hoc networks. An ad hoc network is composed of mobile nodes without the presence of a wired support infrastructure. In this environment, routing/multicasting protocols are faced with the challenge of producing multihop routes under host mobility and bandwidth constraints. In recent years, a number of new multicast protocols of different styles have been proposed for ad hoc networks. However, systematic performance evaluations and comparative analysis of these protocols in a common realistic environment has not yet been performed. In this study, we simulate a set of representative wireless ad hoc multicast protocols and evaluate them in various network scenarios. The relative strengths, weaknesses, and applicability of each multicast protocol to diverse situations are studied and discussed.