Skin Lesion Segmentation Using Image Bit-Plane Multilayer Approach

The establishment of automatic diagnostic systems able to detect and classify skin lesions at the initial stage are getting really relevant and effective in providing support for medical personnel during clinical assessment. Image segmentation has a determinant part in computer-aided skin lesion diagnosis pipeline because it makes possible to extract and highlight information on lesion contour texture as, for example, skewness and area unevenness. However, artifacts, low contrast, indistinct boundaries, and different shapes and areas contribute to make skin lesion segmentation a challenging task. In this paper, a fully automatic computer-aided system for skin lesion segmentation in dermoscopic images is indicated. Adopting this method, noise and artifacts are initially reduced by the singular value decomposition; afterward lesion decomposition into a frame of bit-plane layers is performed. A specific procedure is implemented for redundant data reduction using simple Boolean operators. Since lesion and background are rarely homogeneous regions, the obtained segmentation region could contain some disjointed areas classified as lesion. To obtain a single zone classified as lesion avoiding spurious pixels or holes inside the image under test, mathematical morphological techniques are implemented. The performance obtained highlights the method validit

Acetic acid stress in budding yeast: From molecular mechanisms to applications

Acetic acid stress represents a frequent challenge to counteract for yeast cells under several environmental conditions and industrial bioprocesses. The molecular mechanisms underlying its response have been mostly elucidated in the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, where acetic acid can be either a physiological substrate or a stressor. This review will focus on acetic acid stress and its response in the context of cellular transport, pH homeostasis, metabolism and stress-signalling pathways. This information has been integrated with the results obtained by multi-omics, synthetic biology and metabolic engineering approaches aimed to identify major cellular players involved in acetic acid tolerance. In the production of biofuels and renewable chemicals from lignocellulosic biomass, the improvement of acetic acid tolerance is a key factor. In this view, how this knowledge could be used to contribute to the development and competitiveness of yeast cell factories for sustainable applications will be also discussed

Iterative complex network approach for chemical gas sensor array characterisation

Gas sensor arrays, also known as e-noses, are used in several heterogeneous fields, ranging from environmental monitoring to food quality control. Often, these measurement systems operate within dynamic environments and are subject to conditions which may dramatically vary over time. Furthermore, the response of an e-nose is influenced by several parameters, whose interactions may be complex and highly non-linear. Therefore, in this study, the authors propose a complex network approach to model the overall interaction pattern of e-noses. They show that this approach can significantly improve the understanding of the overall behaviour of e-noses, and can be used as a basis to optimise the design of these measurement systems

Galileo e Le lettere solari

Una riflessione sullo stile di pensiero e sulle scelte linguistiche di Galileo potrebbe significativamente prendere avvio da un singolare scambio epistolare iniziato nel 1612, che vede come protagonisti Marco Welser, duumviro di Augusta, Cristoph Scheiner, professore di matematica all’Università di Ingolstadt, e, naturalmente, Galileo, che Welser aveva conosciuto quando «gli [a Galileo] aveva sottoposto alcuni dubbi […] circa la montuosità della luna». Le forme e i tempi di una conversazione a distanza tra Welser, Scheiner e Galilei si iscrivono in una tipologia di discorso inteso a muovere gli interlocutori intorno a un tema astronomico quale era quello delle macchie solari, passando attraverso il fervente dibattito sulla “nuova scienza” di cui, particolarmente a Venezia e a Padova, erano promotori, oltre a Galilei, anche Paolo Sarpi e Santorio Santorio. Il dibattito a distanza di Galileo con Welser e in particolare con Scheiner non manca di toni aspri, a volte polemici: questo stesso dibattito si pone come prologo della riflessione galileiana consegnata a opere come Il Saggiatore e il Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo

Biomass characterization with semantic segmentation models and point cloud analysis for precision viticulture

The scientific progress in artificial intelligence and robotics has enabled precision viticulture to pursue sustainability and improve the final yield. For instance, monitoring the canopy volume of each plant can allow the correct ripening of the bunches. In this context, this paper proposes a novel approach for the characterization of biomass volume using images acquired in a vineyard with the low-cost Azure Kinect RGB-D camera. Semantic image segmentation is implemented using three encoder–decoder deep architectures (U-Net, DeepLabV3+, and MANet) to produce accurate masks of the vine leaf structure. In a transfer learning approach, a public dataset acquired with the Intel RealSense D435 depth camera is used to train the segmentation networks. Then, a complete pipeline to estimate possible changes in biomass volume is presented. Experiments are run to analyze the biomass removed during the trimming process of grapevine plants. The best segmentation result is obtained by the U-Net architecture with ResNet50 backbone, showing an accuracy of 92.10%, although the training and test sets consist of images acquired by different cameras. However, the DeepLabV3+ network with ResNeXt50 backbone, which scores an accuracy of 90.25% on the test set, gives the best estimate of the removed biomass, requiring the shortest time for training. These outcomes prove the potential capability of this automatic approach for controlling leaf growth and ensuring sustainable viticulture practices