Detection of early clinical keratoconus (KCN) is a challenging task, even for expert clinicians. In this study, we propose a deep learning (DL) model to address this challenge. We first used Xception and InceptionResNetV2 DL architectures to extract features from three different corneal maps collected from 1371 eyes examined in an eye clinic in Egypt. We then fused features using Xception and InceptionResNetV2 to detect subclinical forms of KCN more accurately and robustly. We obtained an area under the receiver operating characteristic curves (AUC) of 0.99 and an accuracy range of 97–100% to distinguish normal eyes from eyes with subclinical and established KCN. We further validated the model based on an independent dataset with 213 eyes examined in Iraq and obtained AUCs of 0.91–0.92 and an accuracy range of 88–92%. The proposed model is a step toward improving the detection of clinical and subclinical forms of KCN.
Many undergraduate learners at English departments who study English as a foreign language are unable to speak and use language correctly in their post -graduate careers. This problem can be attributed to certain difficulties, which they faced throughout their education years that hinder their endeavors to learn. Therefore, this study aims to discover the main difficulties faced by EFL students in language learning and test the difficulty variable according to gender and college variables then find suitable solutions for enhancing learning. A questionnaire with 15 items and 5 scales were used to help in discovering the difficulties. The questionnaire was distributed to the selected sample of study wh
... Show MoreBlogs have emerged as a powerful technology tool for English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms. This literature review aims to provide an overview of the use of blogs as learning tools in EFL classrooms. The study examines the benefits and challenges of using blogs for language learning and the different types of blogs that can be used for language learning. It provides suggestions for teachers interested in using blogs as learning tools in their EFL classrooms. The findings suggest that blogs are a valuable and effective tool for language learning, particularly in promoting collaboration, communication, and motivation.
Glaucoma is a visual disorder, which is one of the significant driving reason for visual impairment. Glaucoma leads to frustrate the visual information transmission to the brain. Dissimilar to other eye illness such as myopia and cataracts. The impact of glaucoma can’t be cured; The Disc Damage Likelihood Scale (DDLS) can be used to assess the Glaucoma. The proposed methodology suggested simple method to extract Neuroretinal rim (NRM) region then dividing the region into four sectors after that calculate the width for each sector and select the minimum value to use it in DDLS factor. The feature was fed to the SVM classification algorithm, the DDLS successfully classified Glaucoma d
For several applications, it is very important to have an edge detection technique matching human visual contour perception and less sensitive to noise. The edge detection algorithm describes in this paper based on the results obtained by Maximum a posteriori (MAP) and Maximum Entropy (ME) deblurring algorithms. The technique makes a trade-off between sharpening and smoothing the noisy image. One of the advantages of the described algorithm is less sensitive to noise than that given by Marr and Geuen techniques that considered to be the best edge detection algorithms in terms of matching human visual contour perception.
Voice Activity Detection (VAD) is considered as an important pre-processing step in speech processing systems such as speech enhancement, speech recognition, gender and age identification. VAD helps in reducing the time required to process speech data and to improve final system accuracy by focusing the work on the voiced part of the speech. An automatic technique for VAD using Fuzzy-Neuro technique (FN-AVAD) is presented in this paper. The aim of this work is to alleviate the problem of choosing the best threshold value in traditional VAD methods and achieves automaticity by combining fuzzy clustering and machine learning techniques. Four features are extracted from each speech segment, which are short term energy, zero-crossing rate, auto
... Show MorePavement crack and pothole identification are important tasks in transportation maintenance and road safety. This study offers a novel technique for automatic asphalt pavement crack and pothole detection which is based on image processing. Different types of cracks (transverse, longitudinal, alligator-type, and potholes) can be identified with such techniques. The goal of this research is to evaluate road surface damage by extracting cracks and potholes, categorizing them from images and videos, and comparing the manual and the automated methods. The proposed method was tested on 50 images. The results obtained from image processing showed that the proposed method can detect cracks and potholes and identify their severity levels wit
... Show MoreSurface electromyography (sEMG) and accelerometer (Acc) signals play crucial roles in controlling prosthetic and upper limb orthotic devices, as well as in assessing electrical muscle activity for various biomedical engineering and rehabilitation applications. In this study, an advanced discrimination system is proposed for the identification of seven distinct shoulder girdle motions, aimed at improving prosthesis control. Feature extraction from Time-Dependent Power Spectrum Descriptors (TDPSD) is employed to enhance motion recognition. Subsequently, the Spectral Regression (SR) method is utilized to reduce the dimensionality of the extracted features. A comparative analysis is conducted between the Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) class
... Show MoreThe research has been based on two main variables (information and communication technology) and the quality of blended education (physical and electronic), aiming to reveal the relationship between four dimensions (physical devices, software, databases, communication networks) and the elements of education represented by (the teacher, the student, the teaching process, curriculum). The methodology and post-analysis-based research were conducted at the Technical College of Management / Baghdad through polling the opinions of a random sample that included (80) teachers out of (86) and the number of students (276) representing a random sample from all departments of the college (for the morning study) out of (3500) stud
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