Identifying people by their ear has recently received import attention in the literature. The accurate segmentation of the ear region is vital in order to make successful person identification decisions. This paper presents an effective approach for ear region segmentation from color ear images. Firstly, the RGB color model was converted to the HSV color model. Secondly, thresholding was utilized to segment the ear region. Finally, the morphological operations were applied to remove small islands and fill the gaps. The proposed method was tested on a database which consisted of 105 ear images taken from the right sides of 105 subjects. The experimental results of the proposed approach on a variety of ear images revealed that this approach is efficient in segmenting ear images under various environments and it gave a detection rate of 98.61% for ear segmentation.
Monaural source separation is a challenging issue due to the fact that there is only a single channel available; however, there is an unlimited range of possible solutions. In this paper, a monaural source separation model based hybrid deep learning model, which consists of convolution neural network (CNN), dense neural network (DNN) and recurrent neural network (RNN), will be presented. A trial and error method will be used to optimize the number of layers in the proposed model. Moreover, the effects of the learning rate, optimization algorithms, and the number of epochs on the separation performance will be explored. Our model was evaluated using the MIR-1K dataset for singing voice separation. Moreover, the proposed approach achi
... Show MoreActivity recognition (AR) is a new interesting and challenging research area with many applications (e.g. healthcare, security, and event detection). Basically, activity recognition (e.g. identifying user’s physical activity) is more likely to be considered as a classification problem. In this paper, a combination of 7 classification methods is employed and experimented on accelerometer data collected via smartphones, and compared for best performance. The dataset is collected from 59 individuals who performed 6 different activities (i.e. walk, jog, sit, stand, upstairs, and downstairs). The total number of dataset instances is 5418 with 46 labeled features. The results show that the proposed method of ensemble boost-based classif
... Show MoreMachine learning models have recently provided great promise in diagnosis of several ophthalmic disorders, including keratoconus (KCN). Keratoconus, a noninflammatory ectatic corneal disorder characterized by progressive cornea thinning, is challenging to detect as signs may be subtle. Several machine learning models have been proposed to detect KCN, however most of the models are supervised and thus require large well-annotated data. This paper proposes a new unsupervised model to detect KCN, based on adapted flower pollination algorithm (FPA) and the k-means algorithm. We will evaluate the proposed models using corneal data collected from 5430 eyes at different stages of KCN severity (1520 healthy, 331 KCN1, 1319 KCN2, 1699 KCN3 a
... Show MoreThe purpose of this paper is to develop a hybrid conceptual model for building information modelling (BIM) adoption in facilities management (FM) through the integration of the technology task fit (TTF) and the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) theories. The study also aims to identify the influence factors of BIM adoption and usage in FM and identify gaps in the existing literature and to provide a holistic picture of recent research in technology acceptance and adoption in the construction industry and FM sector.
In the present article, we implement the new iterative method proposed by Daftardar-Gejji and Jafari (NIM) [V. Daftardar-Gejji, H. Jafari, An iterative method for solving nonlinear functional equations, J. Math. Anal. Appl. 316 (2006) 753-763] to solve two problems; the first one is the problem of spread of a non-fatal disease in a population which is assumed to have constant size over the period of the epidemic, and the other one is the problem of the prey and predator. The results demonstrate that the method has many merits such as being derivative-free, overcome the difficulty arising in calculating Adomian polynomials to handle the nonlinear terms in Adomian Decomposition Method (ADM), does not require to calculate Lagrange multiplier a
... Show MoreHuman serum albumin (HSA) nanoparticles have been widely used as versatile drug delivery systems for improving the efficiency and pharmaceutical properties of drugs. The present study aimed to design HSA nanoparticle encapsulated with the hydrophobic anticancer pyridine derivative (2-((2-([1,1'-biphenyl]-4-yl)imidazo[1,2-a]pyrimidin-3-yl)methylene)hydrazine-1-carbothioamide (BIPHC)). The synthesis of HSA-BIPHC nanoparticles was achieved using a desolvation process. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) analysis showed the average size of HSA-BIPHC nanoparticles was 80.21 nm. The percentages of entrapment efficacy, loading capacity and production yield were 98.11%, 9.77% and 91.29%, respectively. An In vitro release study revealed that HSA-BIPHC nan
... Show MoreBrain tissues segmentation is usually concerned with the delineation of three types of brain matters Grey Matter (GM), White Matter (WM) and Cerebrospinal Fluid (CSF). Because most brain structures are anatomically defined by boundaries of these tissue classes, accurate segmentation of brain tissues into one of these categories is an important step in quantitative morphological study of the brain. As well as the abnormalities regions like tumors are needed to be delineated. The extra-cortical voxels in MR brain images are often removed in order to facilitate accurate analysis of cortical structures. Brain extraction is necessary to avoid the misclassifications of surrounding tissues, skull and scalp as WM, GM or tumor when implementing s
... Show More