Processing of Seismic-While-Drilling Data from the DrillCAM System Acquired with Wireless Geophones, Top-Drive, and Downhole Vibrations Sensors

We present processing details of seismic-while-drilling data recently acquired on one of the onshore wells by a prototype DrillCAM system with wireless geophones, top-drive, and downhole vibration sensors. The general flow follows an established practice and consists of correlation with a drillbit pilot signal, vertical stacking, and pilot deconvolution. This work's novelty is the usage of the memory-based near-bit sensor with a significant time drift reaching 30-40 minutes at the end of each drilling run. A data-driven automatic time alignment procedure is developed to accurately eliminate time drift error by utilizing the top-drive acceleration sensor as a reference. After the alignment, the processing flow can utilize the top-drive or the near-bit pilots similarly. We show each processing step's effect on the final data quality and discuss some implementation details.

Real-Time Image-Guided Navigation in the Management of Alveolar Cleft Repair

Objectives: To present the use of dynamic navigation system in the repair of alveolar cleft. Patients and Participants: A total of three non-syndromic patients with unilateral alveolar cleft were involved in this study. Real-time computer-aided navigation were used to achieve restoration and reconstruction with standardized surgical technique. Methods: With the individual virtual 3-dimensional (3-D) modeling based on computed tomography (CT) data, preoperative planning and surgical simulation were carried out with the navigation system. During preoperative virtual planning, the defect volume or the quantity of graft is directly assessed at the surgical region. With the use of this system, the gingival periosteum flap incision can be tracked in real-time, and the bone graft can be navigated under the guidance of the 3-D views until it matches the preoperatively planned position. Results: Three patients with alveolar cleft were successfully performed under navigation guidance. Through the model alignment procedure, accurate matches between the actual intraoperative position and the CT images were achieved within the systematic error of 0.3 mm. The grafted bone was implanted according to the preoperative plan with the aid of instrument- and probe-based navigation. All the patients were healed well without serious complications. Conclusions: These findings suggest that image-guided surgical navigation, including preoperative planning, surgical simulation, postoperative assessment, and computer-assisted navigation was feasible and yielded good clinical outcomes. Clinical relevance: This dynamic navigation could be proved to be a valuable option for this complicated surgical procedure in the management of alveolar cleft repair.

Automated Quantum Entanglement and Cryptography for Networks of Robotic Systems

In this paper the procedure for automating the photon quantum experiments for mobile robotic applications is presented. Due to the rapid advances of quantum technologies and quantum engineering, the integration of quantum capabilities in robotic and autonomous systems will be inevitable, and therefore the study and investigation of compatibility and adaptability of quantum systems and classical autonomous systems is of great importance. In a quantum-classical hybrid setup, the source of single photon generation is placed on a leader robot which can send correlated single photons to robot followers. In the case of quantum entanglement, spontaneous parametric down-conversion process using nonlinear paired BBO crystals is implemented which sends entangled photons to the single photon counting modules installed on mobile robots. In the case of quantum cryptography, single photons are sent from Alice robot to Bob robot, where Alice has the course of single photon and Bob has a polarizing beamsplitter and two detectors and that can detect the polarization of photons as vertical and horizontal. Bob then can convert the polarizations to a digital signals as zeros and ones and use them as communication information for control purposes through a classical channel. Motorized optics equipment can automatically align the source of photons to detectors on the mobile robots. The automated alignment procedure is one of the key enabling technologies in integrating quantum capabilities with control of mobile robotic systems. In this paper, in particular, the automated alignment is studied while considering the uncertainties in the dynamic of the system which can potentially cause the alignment task very challenging. The uncertainty analysis in the automated alignment is implemented by Optimal Uncertainty Quantification technique to ensure achieving the quantum control of the robotic systems and presented here for the first time.

A semi-automated procedure for the emitter-receiver geometry characterization of motor-controlled lidars

To correctly understand and interpret lidar acquired signals and to provide high quality data, the characterization of the lidar transmitter-receiver geometry is required. For example, being fundamental to correctly align lidar systems, this characterization is useful to improve the efficiency of the alignment procedure. In addition, some applications (e.g. air quality monitoring) need to quantitatively interpret the observations even in the range where the overlap between the telescope field of view and the laser beam is incomplete. This is generally accomplished by correcting for the overlap function. Within the frame of Lidar based networks (e.g. ACTRIS/EARLINET) there is a need to define standardized approaches to deal with lidar geometry issues. The multi-wavelength multi-telescope Rayleigh-Mie-Raman “9-eyes” system in Rome Tor Vergata, part of ACTRIS/EARLINET, has the capability to change through computer-controlled servomotors, the orientation of the laser beams and the 3D position of the diaphragm of the receiving optical system around the focal point of the telescopes. Taking advantage of these instrumental design characteristics an original approach to characterize the dependency of the acquired signal from the system relative transmitter-receiver geometry (the mapping procedure) was developed. The procedure consists in a set of programs controlling both the signal acquisition as well as the motor movements. The approach includes solutions to account for atmospheric and laser power variability likely to occur during the mapping sessions. The paper describes in detail the developed procedure and applications such as the optimization of the telescope/beam alignment and the estimation of the overlap function. The results of the mapping applied to a single combination of telescope-laser beam are shown and discussed. The effectiveness of the mapping-based alignment was successfully verified by comparing the whole signal profile and the outcome of the telecover test, adopted in EARLINET, for a manual and a mapping-based alignment. A significant signal increase and lowering of the full overlap height (from 1500 m to less than 1000 m) was found. The overlap function was estimated down to 200 m and compared against the one obtained from a geometric model. The developed procedure allowed also estimating the absolute and relative tilt of the laser beam. The mapping approach, even in simplified versions, can be adapted to other lidars to characterize and align systems with non-motorized receiving geometry.

Functional Fiber Junctions for Circuit Routing in E-Textiles: Deterministic Alignment of MEMS Layout With Fabric Structure

Fabrics and fibrous materials offer a soft, porous, and flexible substrate for microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) packaging in breathable, wearable formats that allow airflow. Device-on-fiber systems require developments in the field of E-Textiles including smart fibers, functional fiber intersections, textile circuit routing, and alignment methods that adapt to irregular materials. In this paper, we demonstrate a MEMS-on-fabric layout workflow that obtains fiber intersection locations from high-resolution fabric images. We implement an image processing algorithm to drive the MEMS layout software, creating an individualized MEMS “gripper” layout designed to grasp fibers on a specific fabric substrate during a wafer-to-fabric parallel transfer step. The efficiency of the algorithm in terms of a number of intersections identified on the complete image is analyzed. The specifications of the MEMS layout design such as the length of the MEMS gripper, spatial distribution, and orientation are derivable from the MATLAB routine implemented on the image. Furthermore, the alignment procedure, tolerance, and hardware setup for the alignment method of the framed sample fabric to the wafer processed using the custom gripper layout are discussed along with the challenges of the release of MEMS devices from the Si substrate to the fabric substrate.

Flat Specimen Shape Recognition Based on Full-Field Optical Measurements and Registration Using Mapping Error Minimization Method

In the paper, an alignment methodology of finite element and full-field measurement data of planar specimens is presented. The alignment procedure represents an essential part of modern material response characterisation using heterogeneous strain-field specimens. The methodology addresses both the specimen recognition from a measurement’s image and the alignment procedure and is designed to be applied on a single measurement system. This is essential for its practical application because both processes, shape recognition and alignment, must be performed only after the specimen is fully prepared for the digital image correlation (DIC) measurements (white background and black speckles) and placed into a testing machine. The specimen can be observed with a single camera or with a multi-camera system. The robustness of the alignment method is presented on a treatment of a specimen with a metamaterial-like structure and compared with the well-known iterative closest point (ICP) algorithm. The performance of the methodology is also demonstrated on a real DIC application.

Refining pairwise sequence alignments of membrane proteins by the incorporation of anchors

The alignment of primary sequences is a fundamental step in the analysis of protein structure, function, and evolution, and in the generation of homology-based models. Integral membrane proteins pose a significant challenge for such sequence alignment approaches, because their evolutionary relationships can be very remote, and because a high content of hydrophobic amino acids reduces their complexity. Frequently, biochemical or biophysical data is available that informs the optimum alignment, for example, indicating specific positions that share common functional or structural roles. Currently, if those positions are not correctly matched by a standard pairwise sequence alignment procedure, the incorporation of such information into the alignment is typically addressed in an ad hoc manner, with manual adjustments. However, such modifications are problematic because they reduce the robustness and reproducibility of the aligned regions either side of the newly matched positions. Previous studies have introduced restraints as a means to impose the matching of positions during sequence alignments, originally in the context of genome assembly. Here we introduce position restraints, or “anchors” as a feature in our alignment tool AlignMe, providing an aid to pairwise global sequence alignment of alpha-helical membrane proteins. Applying this approach to realistic scenarios involving distantly-related and low complexity sequences, we illustrate how the addition of anchors can be used to modify alignments, while still maintaining the reproducibility and rigor of the rest of the alignment. Anchored alignments can be generated using the online version of AlignMe available at www.bioinfo.mpg.de/AlignMe/.

Retraction: Jeon, K.; et al. Laboratory Alignment Procedure for Improving Reproducibility of Tyre Wet Grip Measurement. World Electr. Veh. J. 2015, 7, 414–419

The journal retracts the article, ”Laboratory Alignment Procedure for Improving Reproducibility of Tyre Wet Grip Measurement” [...]

Evaluation of an Ultrasound-Based Navigation System for Spine Neurosurgery: A Porcine Cadaver Study

BackgroundWith the growing incidence of patients receiving surgical treatment for spinal metastatic tumours, there is a need for developing cost-efficient and radiation-free alternatives for spinal interventions. In this paper, we evaluate the capabilities and limitations of an image-guided neurosurgery (IGNS) system that uses intraoperative ultrasound (iUS) imaging for guidance.MethodsUsing a lumbosacral section of a porcine cadaver, we explored the impact of CT image resolution, ultrasound depth and ultrasound frequency on system accuracy, robustness and effectiveness. Preoperative CT images with an isotropic resolution of , and were acquired. During surgery, vertebrae L1 to L6 were exposed. For each vertebra, five iUS scans were acquired using two depth parameters (5 cm and 7 cm) and two frequencies (6 MHz and 12 MHz). A total of 120 acquisition trials were evaluated. Ultrasound-based registration performance is compared to the standard alignment procedure using intraoperative CT. We report target registration error (TRE) and computation time. In addition, the scans’ trajectories were analyzed to identify vertebral regions that provide the most relevant features for the alignment.ResultsFor all acquisitions, the median TRE ranged from 1.42 mm to 1.58 mm and the overall computation time was 9.04 s ± 1.58 s. Fourteen out of 120 iUS acquisitions (11.66%) yielded a level-to-level mismatch (and these are included in the accuracy measurements reported). No significant effect on accuracy was found with CT resolution (F(2,10) = 1.70, p = 0.232), depth (F(1,5) = 0.22, p= 0.659) nor frequency (F(1,5) = 1.02, p = 0.359). While misalignment increases linearly with the distance from the imaged vertebra, accuracy was satisfactory for directly adjacent levels. A significant relationship was found between iUS scan coverage of laminae and articular processes, and accuracy.ConclusionIntraoperative ultrasound can be used for spine surgery neuronavigation. We demonstrated that the IGNS system yield acceptable accuracy and high efficiency compared to the standard CT-based navigation procedure. The flexibility of the iUS acquisitions can have repercussions on the system performance, which are not fully identified. Further investigation is needed to understand the relationship between iUS acquisition and alignment performance.