Purpose: Tagged and cine magnetic resonance imaging (tMRI and cMRI) techniques are used for evaluating regional and global heart function, respectively. Measuring global function parameters directly from tMRI is challenging due to the obstruction of the anatomical structure by the tagging pattern. The purpose of this study was to develop a method for processing the tMRI images to improve the myocardium-blood contrast in order to estimate global function parameters from the processed images. Materials and methods: The developed method consists of two stages: (1) removing the tagging pattern

System Verilog Assertions (SVA) is widely used by hardware designers and verification engineers to apply Assertion Based Verification (ABV) methodology on their hardware designs. However, the complexity in understanding different protocol standards in general and JEDEC memory protocol standards in specific imposes numerous difficulties on designers and verification engineers when translating design specifications into SVA. This motivated us to devise new techniques that can be used to automatically generate SVA for DDR memory protocols with no ambiguity when capturing design requirements from

The integration of biometric recognition with smartphones is necessary to increase security, especially in financial transactions such as online payments. Vein recognition of the dorsal hand is superior to other methods such as palm, finger, and wrist, as it has a wide area to be captured and does not have any wrinkles. Most current systems that depend on dorsal hand vein recognition do not work in real-time and have poor results. In this paper, a dorsal hand recognition system working in real-time is proposed to achieve good results with a high frame rate. A contactless device consists of a

Based on stability theory of linear fractional order systems and stability theory of linear integer order systems, the problem of coexistence of various types of synchronization between different dimensional fractional chaotic systems is investigated in this paper. Numerical and simulation results have clearly shown the effectiveness of the novel approach developed herein. © 2018, Springer International Publishing AG.

An intelligent adaptive fuzzy logic control technique, Fractional Order Self Organizing Fuzzy Controller (FOSOFC) is presented and applied to control a two link planar electrically-driven rigid robotic (EDRR) manipulator system. As EDRR is a multi-input multi-output complex nonlinear system, an intelligent adaptive controller, FOSOFC is considered to control it perfectly. To show the efficacy of the FOSOFC controller, the obtained performance is compared with fractional order fuzzy proportional integral and derivative (FOFPID) controller for study in servo as well as the regulatory problems

The internet of things (IoT) has provided a promising opportunity to build powerful systems and applications. Security is the main concern in IoT applications due to the privacy of exchanged data using limited resources of IoT devices (sensors/actuators). In this paper, we present a classification of IoT modes of operation based on the distribution of IoT devices, connectivity to the internet, and the typical field of application. It has been found that the majority of IoT services can be classified into one of four IoT modes: Gateway, device to device, collaborative, and centralized. The

Quantum cryptography is a promising technology that achieves unconditional security, which is essential to a wide range of sensitive applications. In contrast to optical fiber, the free-space optical (FSO) link is efficiently used as a quantum channel without affecting the polarization of transmitted photons. However, the FSO link has several impairments, such as atmospheric turbulence and pointing errors, which affect the performance of the quantum channel. This paper proposes a quantum key distribution (QKD) scheme that uses a time-bin entanglement protocol over the FSO channel that suffers

A wide-band lumped element model for a through silicon via (TSV) is proposed based on electromagnetic simulations. Closed form expressions for the TSV parasitics based on the dimensional analysis method are introduced. The proposed model enables direct extraction of the TSV resistance, self-inductance, oxide capacitance, and parasitic elements due to the finite substrate resistivity. The model's compactness and compatibility with SPICE simulations allows the fast investigation of a TSV impact on a 3-D circuit performance. The parameters' values of the proposed TSV model are fitted to the

The effect of microwave irradiation on the phase dynamics of intrinsic Josephson junctions in high temperature superconductors is investigated. We compare the current-voltage characteristics for a stack of coupled Josephson junctions under external irradiation calculated in the framework of CCJJ and CCJJ+DC models.

We demonstrate the creation of a charge density wave (CDW) along a stack of coupled Josephson junctions (JJs) in layered superconductors. Electric charge in each superconducting layer oscillates around some average value, forming a breathing CDW. We show the transformation of a longitudinal plasma wave to CDW in the state corresponding to the outermost branch. Transition between different types of CDW's related to the inner branches of IV characteristic is demonstrated. The effect of the external electromagnetic radiation on the states corresponding to the inner branches differs crucially from