Removal of ring artifacts in CT imaging through detection and correction of stripes in the sinogram

Anas, Emran Mohammad Abu,Lee, Soo Yeol,Hasan, Md. Kamrul Institute of Physics in association with the Ameri 2010 Physics in medicine & biology Vol.55 No.22

<P>Due to malfunctioning and mis-calibration of cells in digital x-ray detectors as well as impurities on the scintillator screens, stripe artifacts arise in the sinogram which in turn generate ring artifacts in the reconstructed x-ray computed tomography images. In this paper, a novel technique is proposed for the detection and removal of stripe artifacts in a sinogram with a view to suppress the ring artifacts from the tomographic images. To accurately detect the stripe creating pixels using a derivative-based algorithm, at first the sinogram is windowed to create a sub-sinogram by keeping the pixel of examination at the center position in the sub-sinogram. The other pixels in the sub-sinogram are selected from a polyphase component of the sinogram. A new mathematical index is proposed here to isolate the strong and weak ring-generating stripes from the good ones. For the correction of strong ring artifacts resulting from the defective detector elements and dusty scintillator crystals, 2D variable window moving average and weighted moving average filters are proposed in this work. On the other hand, a conventionally trusted constant bias correction scheme is adopted to correct the responses of the mis-calibrated detector elements. To evaluate and compare the performance of the proposed algorithm, real micro-CT images acquired from two flat panel detectors under different operating conditions are used. Experimental results show that the proposed method can remove ring artifacts more effectively without imparting noticeable distortion in the image as compared to a recently reported technique in the literature.</P>

Update on the Effects of Sound Wave on Plants

Md. Emran Khan Chowdhury,배한홍,임현섭 한국식물병리학회 2014 식물병연구 Vol.20 No.1

Plant growth is considered the sum of cell proliferation and subsequent elongation of the cells. The continuousproliferation and elongation of plant cells are vital to the production of new organs, which have a significantimpact on overall plant growth. Accordingly, the relationship between environmental stimuli, such as temperature,light, wind, and sound waves to plant growth is of great interest in studies of plant development. Sound waves can have negative or positive effects on plant growth. In this review paper we have summarizedthe relationship between sound waves and plant growth response. Sound waves with specific frequenciesand intensities can have positive effects on various plant biological indices including seed germination, rootelongation, plant height, callus growth, cell cycling, signaling transduction systems, enzymatic and hormonalactivities, and gene expression.

Update on the Effects of Sound Wave on Plants

Chowdhury, Md. Emran Khan,Lim, Hyoun-Sub,Bae, Hanhong The Korean Society of Plant Pathology 2014 식물병연구 Vol.20 No.1

Plant growth is considered the sum of cell proliferation and subsequent elongation of the cells. The continuous proliferation and elongation of plant cells are vital to the production of new organs, which have a significant impact on overall plant growth. Accordingly, the relationship between environmental stimuli, such as temperature, light, wind, and sound waves to plant growth is of great interest in studies of plant development. Sound waves can have negative or positive effects on plant growth. In this review paper we have summarized the relationship between sound waves and plant growth response. Sound waves with specific frequencies and intensities can have positive effects on various plant biological indices including seed germination, root elongation, plant height, callus growth, cell cycling, signaling transduction systems, enzymatic and hormonal activities, and gene expression.

Early Detection of Lung Cancer Risk Using Data Mining

Ahmed, Kawsar,Abdullah-Al-Emran, Abdullah-Al-Emran,Jesmin, Tasnuba,Mukti, Roushney Fatima,Rahman, Md. Zamilur,Ahmed, Farzana Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention 2013 Asian Pacific journal of cancer prevention Vol.14 No.1

Background: Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death worldwide Therefore, identification of genetic as well as environmental factors is very important in developing novel methods of lung cancer prevention. However, this is a multi-layered problem. Therefore a lung cancer risk prediction system is here proposed which is easy, cost effective and time saving. Materials and Methods: Initially 400 cancer and non-cancer patients' data were collected from different diagnostic centres, pre-processed and clustered using a K-means clustering algorithm for identifying relevant and non-relevant data. Next significant frequent patterns are discovered using AprioriTid and a decision tree algorithm. Results: Finally using the significant pattern prediction tools for a lung cancer prediction system were developed. This lung cancer risk prediction system should prove helpful in detection of a person's predisposition for lung cancer. Conclusions: Most of people of Bangladesh do not even know they have lung cancer and the majority of cases are diagnosed at late stages when cure is impossible. Therefore early prediction of lung cancer should play a pivotal role in the diagnosis process and for an effective preventive strategy.

Biodiesel production from oleander (Thevetia Peruviana) oil and its performance testing on a diesel engine

Ashok Kumar Yadav,Mohd Emran Khan,Amit Pal 한국화학공학회 2017 Korean Journal of Chemical Engineering Vol.34 No.2

Oleander oil has been used as raw material for producing biodiesel using ultrasonic irradiation method at the frequency of 20 kHz and horn type reactor 50 watt. A two-step transesterification process was carried out for optimum condition of 0.45 v/v methanol to oil ratio, 1.2% v/v H2SO4 catalyst, 45 oC reaction temperature and 15min reaction time, followed by treatment with 0.25 v/v methanol to oil ratio, 0.75% w/v KOH alkaline catalyst, 50 oC reaction temperature and 15 min reaction time. The fuel properties of Oleander biodiesel so obtained confirmed the requirements of both the standards ASTM D6751 and EN 14214 for biodiesel. Further Oleander biodiesel-diesel blends were tested to evaluate the engine performance and emission characteristics. The performance and emission of 20% Oleander biodiesel blend (B20) gave a satisfactory result in diesel engines as the brake thermal efficiency increased 2.06% and CO and UHC emissions decreased 41.4% and 32.3% respectively, compared to mineral diesel. Comparative investigation of performance and emissions characteristics of Oleander biodiesel blends and mineral diesel showed that oleander seed is a potential source of biodiesel and blends up to 20% can be used for realizing better performance from an unmodified diesel engine.

Direct Mean Strain Estimation for Elastography Using Nearest-Neighbor Weighted Least-Squares Approach in the Frequency Domain

Hasan, Md. Kamrul,Anas, Emran Mohammad Abu,Alam, S. Kaisar,Lee, Soo Yeol Elsevier 2012 Ultrasound in medicine & biology Vol.38 No.10

<P>Ultrasound elastography is emerging with enormous potential as a medical imaging modality for effective discrimination of pathological changes in soft tissue. It maps the tissue elasticity or strain due to a mechanical deformation applied to it. The strain image most often calculated from the derivative of the local displacement field is highly noisy because of the de-correlation effect mainly due to unstable free-hand scanning and/or irregular tissue motion; consequently, improving the SNR of the strain image is still a challenging problem in this area. In this paper, a novel approach using the nearest-neighbor weighted least-squares is presented for direct estimation of the 'mean' axial strain for high quality strain imaging. Like other time/frequency domain reported schemes, the proposed method exploits the fact that the post-compression rf echo signal is a time-scaled and shifted replica of the pre-compression rf echo signal. However, the elegance of our technique is that it directly computes the mean strain without explicitly using any post filter and/or previous local displacement/strain estimates as is usually done in the conventional approaches. It is implemented in the short-time Fourier transform domain through a nearest-neighbor weighted least-squares-based Fourier spectrum equalization technique. As the local tissue strain is expected to maintain continuity with its neighbors, we show here that the mean strain at the interrogative window can be directly computed from the common stretching factor that minimizes a cost function derived from the exponentially weighted windowed pre- and post-compression rf echo segments in both the lateral and axial directions. The performance of our algorithm is verified for up to 8% applied strain using simulation and experimental phantom data and the results reveal that the SNR of the strain image can be significantly improved compared to other reported algorithms in the literature. The efficacy of the algorithm is also tested with in vivo breast data known to have malignant or benign masses from histology.</P>

Regional Human Rights Mechanism and the Alternatives for Asia

Young Sun Chung,Naser Emran 전북대학교 동북아법연구소 2017 동북아법연구 Vol.11 No.2

제2차 세계대전을 겪은 후 인권 문제는 나날이 더 중요해지고 있으며, 보편적 인권에 대한 도전도 계속 제기되고 있다. 그 동안 전 세계인의 인권을 보호하고 신장시키는 역할은 유엔을 중심으로 일정 부분 진행되고 있지만, 사실상 몇몇 지역 차원의 인권보호 및 신장 노력은 유엔의 역할을 뛰어넘는 정도의 기능을 수행하고 있다. 예를 들면, 유럽인권기구, 미주인권기구, 아프리카 인권기구 등이 상당한 역할을 하고 있는데, 이에 따라 전세계적인 규모의 인권제도보다는 적정 규모의 지역을 관할하고 이를 아우르는 차원의 인권제도가 인권 보호에 좀더 효율적일 수 있다는 주장과 논리가 상당한 힘을 얻고 전개되고 있다. 그런데 이미 그러한 규모의 인권제도를 운용하고 있는 유럽이나 아프리카, 그리고 미주대륙과는 달리 가장 덩치가 큰 아시아에서는 문화적 다양성 및 정치적 이해 관계 등으로 인해 아직까지 지역 차원의 인권제도가 만들어지지 못하고 있다. 여기서 왜 아시아는 전지역을 아우르는 인권제도를 만들어내지 못하고 있는 지에 대한 이유를 살펴 보고 진단을 해보는 것은 의미있는 연구작업이라 본다. 아시아 지역의 인권 제도 정립 과정이나, 기능 및 발전 정도가 다른 대륙에 비해서 많이 뒤쳐지고 있다는 사실에 착안하여 본 연구에서는 그 이유를 분석해 보고 바람직한 대안이 무엇인가를 전망해 보고자 한다. 특히, 명실상부한 인권제도를 수립하는데 있어서 문제점은 무엇인가를 분석하는 한편, 여전히 존재하고 있는 위기 요소들과 장벽들을 진단하고, 그 문제를 해결하고 인권제도를 구축할 수 있는 방안을 모색하고자 한다. After the Second World War, the United Nations has been working to protect and promote human rights all over the world, but the concerned focus on human rights has become more important and given rise to challenge to the universal human rights system. As a matter of fact, several regional initiatives for the protection and promotion of human rights have been contributing parallel with the universal human rights system. There are three major regional human rights mechanism existing in the present world such as the European human rights mechanism which is established under auspices of the Council of Europe (COE), the Inter-American human rights mechanism which is established under the auspices of the Organization of American States (OAS) and the African human rights mechanism which is established under the auspices of the African Union (AU). In fact, the regional human rights mechanism compared to the universal human rights mechanism is appeared as one of the effective human rights protection system ensuring justice in the different region of the present world. Unfortunately, Asia which is the largest continent in the world could not establish regional human rights mechanism like Europe, Inter-America and Africa because of its cultural diversities, political conflicts and so on. Therefore, it is crucially important to identify the reasons or factors why Asia is randomly failing to establish human rights mechanism in Asia. For that, we have analysed those reasons and factors throughout the paper and come into the conclusion that the institutional, the procedural and the functional developments of the human rights mechanism for Asia should not be the same as European, Inter-American or African human rights mechanisms. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to show a direction for establishing an appropriate human rights mechanism in Asia finding the initial problems, present crises and different barriers along with the proper possible solutions and suggestions.

Comparison Chosen DFT Methods with Six Basis Sets on Harmine Molecule

Malekzadeh, Maryam,Heshmati, Emran Korean Chemical Society 2013 대한화학회지 Vol.57 No.1

The effect of the DFT methods and basis sets on harmine molecule has been investigated. 26 DFT methods with 6 basis sets were used. Two main comparison chosen DFT methods in this work has been investigated. It is concluded that this contribution is very important and cannot be neglected. In the following analysis, changes in energy levels were investigated by two different methods. Considering a specific basis set, changes in energy levels were obtained using different DFT methods. A specific DFT method is chosen and changes in energy levels have been investigated by means of various basis sets. Effect of the choice of basis sets on geometrical parameters on harmine molecule has also been investigated.

Direct and gradient-based average strain estimation by using weighted nearest neighbor cross-correlation peaks

Hussain, Mohammad,Abu Anas, Emran,Alam, S.,Lee, Soo,Hasan, Md. IEEE 2012 and Frequency Control Vol.59 No.8

<P>In this paper, two novel approaches, gradientbased and direct strain estimation techniques, are proposed for high-quality average strain imaging incorporating a cost function maximization. Stiffness typically is a continuous function. Consequently, stiffness of proximal tissues is very close to that of the tissue corresponding to a given data window. Hence, a cost function is defined from exponentially weighted neighboring pre- and post-compression RF echo normalized cross-correlation peaks in the lateral (for displacement estimation) or in both the axial and the lateral (for direct strain estimation) directions. This enforces a controlled continuity in displacement/strain and average displacement/strain is calculated from the corresponding maximized cost function. Axial stress causes lateral shift in the tissue. Therefore, a 1-D post-compression echo segment is selected by incorporating Poisson's ratio. Two stretching factors are considered simultaneously in gradient-based strain estimation that allow imaging the lesions properly. The proposed time-domain gradient-based and direct-strain-estimation-based algorithms demonstrate significantly better performance in terms of elastographic signal-to-noise ratio (SNRe), elastographic contrast-to-noise ratio (CNRe), peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), and mean structural similarity (MSSIM) than the other reported time-domain gradientbased and direct-strain-estimation techniques in finite element modeling (FEM) simulation and phantom experiments. For example, in FEM simulation, it has been found that the proposed direct strain estimation method can improve up to approximately 2.49 to 8.71, 2.2 to 6.63, 1.5 to 5, and 1.59 to 2.45 dB in the SNRe, CNRe, PSNR, and MSSIM compared with the traditional direct strain estimation method, respectively, and the proposed gradient-based algorithm demonstrates 2.99 to 16.26, 18.74 to 23.88, 3 to 9.5, and 0.6 to 5.36 dB improvement in the SNRe, CNRe, PSNR, and MSSIM, respectively, compared with a recently reported time-domain gradient-based technique. The range of improvement as noted above is for low to high applied strains. In addition, the comparative results using the in vivo breast data (including malignant or benign masses) also show that the lesion size is better defined by the proposed gradient-based average strain estimation technique.</P>

The Electrochemical Behavior of Ni-base Metallic Glasses Containing Cr in H₂SO₄ Solutions

Arab, Sanaa.T.,Emran, Khadijah.M.,Al-Turaif, Hamad A. Korean Chemical Society 2012 대한화학회지 Vol.56 No.4

In order to develop alloy resistance in aggressive sulphat ion, the corrosion behavior of metallic glasses $Ni_{92{\cdot}3}Si_{4.5}B_{32}$, $Ni_{82,3}Cr_7Fe_3Si_{4.5}B_{3.2}$ and $Ni_{75.5}Cr_{13}Fe_{4.2}Si_{4.5}B_{2.8}$ (at %) at different concentrations of $H_2SO_4$ solutions was examined by electrochemical methods and Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) and X-ray Photoelectron Microscopy (XPS) analyses. The corrosion kinetics and passivation behavior was studied. A direct proportion was observed between the corrosion rate and acid concentration in the case of $Ni_{92{\cdot}3}Si_{4.5}B_{32}$ and $Ni_{75.5}Cr_{13}Fe_{4.2}Si_{4.5}B_{2.8}$ alloys. Critical concentration was observed in the case of $Ni_{82,3}Cr_7Fe_3Si_{4.5}B_{3.2}$ alloy. The influence of the alloying element is reflected in the increasing resistance of the protective film. XPS analysis confirms that the protection film on the $Ni_{92{\cdot}3}Si_{4.5}B_{32}$ alloy was NiS which is less protective than that formed on Cr containing alloys. The corrosion rate of $Ni_{82,3}Cr_7Fe_3Si_{4.5}B_{3.2}$ and $Ni_{75.5}Cr_{13}Fe_{4.2}Si_{4.5}B_{2.8}$. alloys containing 7% and 13% Cr are $7.90-26.1{\times}10^{-3}$ mm/y which is lower about 43-54 times of the alloy $Ni_{92{\cdot}3}Si_{4.5}B_{32}$ (free of Cr). The high resistance of $Ni_{75.5}Cr_{13}Fe_{4.2}Si_{4.5}B_{2.8}$ alloy at the very aggressive media may due to thicker passive film of $Cr_2O_3$ which hydrated to hydrated chromium oxyhydroxide.