Cloud computing is a phenomenon that is changing information technology, with many companies no l... more Cloud computing is a phenomenon that is changing information technology, with many companies no longer having data and resources retained within their own premises. Instead they are utilising cloud computing and its centralised resources. There are many benefits of this approach such as pay-per-use model, elasticity of operation and on demand resourcing. However, this approach also introduces additional security challenges. Security involves a triad of considerations, those being confidentiality, integrity and availability, often abbreviated to CIA. This work focusses on the last aspect of the CIA triad – availability, which is even more crucial for cloud-based platforms as centralised resources need to be provided at a distance to the end customers. Several factors including ‘denial of service’ attack impact availability. Moreover, current protection frameworks do not sufficiently consider the issues of verification, scalability and end-to-end latency. Hence, a new framework has be...
Various images from massive image databases extract inherent, implanted information or different ... more Various images from massive image databases extract inherent, implanted information or different examples explicitly found in the images. These images may help the community in initial self-screening breast cancer, and primary health care can introduce this method to the community. This study aimed to review the different methods of abnormal mass detection in digital mammograms. One of best methods for the detection of breast malignancy and discovery at a nascent stage is digital mammography. Some of the mammograms with excellent images have a high intensity of resolution that enables preparing images with high computations. The fact that medical images are so common on computers is one of the main things that helps radiologists make diagnoses. Image preprocessing highlights the portion after extraction and arrangement in computerized mammograms. Moreover, the future scope of examination for paving could be the way for a top invention in computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) for mammograms...
International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning (iJET), 2021
The case study reported in the paper investigated the effect of Project-based learning on student... more The case study reported in the paper investigated the effect of Project-based learning on students training to be mathematics teachers, pursuing their final projects. The final projects had as an aim of designing attractive and interactive mathematics learning material. This study used a qualitative method to assess the impact on the trainee teachers in terms of their creative design thinking. The research made use of the Hawgent dynamic mathematics software package. The study participants were all students at Guangxi Normal University, China. The students were divided into three groups, each with four or five members. The results presented show that selecting material and combining it with art using dynamic mathematics software can improve the communication skills, problem-solving and creative thinking skills, and improve the prospective teachers' self-confidence. Moreover, it was found that prospective mathematics teachers need motivation and support during their projects'...
In the last few years, the immersive theater has become a new trend for modern performances. Venu... more In the last few years, the immersive theater has become a new trend for modern performances. Venues increasingly utilize widely available computer technologies, such as virtual/augmented reality and spatial sound, to help facilitate the realization of different ideas. Motivated by this current trend, a prototype platform has been developed that enables the design and implementation of an augmented theatrical experience based on spatial sound immersion. This paper describes the implementation of the platform and, through several use case scenarios, its evaluation. The paper concludes with a discussion of the results and offers some thoughts on future developments.
Computer methods and programs in biomedicine, 2018
Early diagnosis and classification of a cancer type can help facilitate the subsequent clinical m... more Early diagnosis and classification of a cancer type can help facilitate the subsequent clinical management of the patient. Cervical cancer ranks as the fourth most prevalent cancer affecting women worldwide and its early detection provides the opportunity to help save life. To that end, automated diagnosis and classification of cervical cancer from pap-smear images has become a necessity as it enables accurate, reliable and timely analysis of the condition's progress. This paper presents an overview of the state of the art as articulated in prominent recent publications focusing on automated detection of cervical cancer from pap-smear images. The survey reviews publications on applications of image analysis and machine learning in automated diagnosis and classification of cervical cancer from pap-smear images spanning 15 years. The survey reviews 30 journal papers obtained electronically through four scientific databases (Google Scholar, Scopus, IEEE and Science Direct) searched...
In the majority of robotic systems currently available, a change in the type of sensors employed ... more In the majority of robotic systems currently available, a change in the type of sensors employed will require significant change to other parts of the system. The knock on effect caused by changes to sensors arises from the lack of independence between the different functions of current robotic systems. A transputer-based system is described where the sensors and the software that control them are separate from the processors that use the information they provide. This separation of data provider from data user enables the software that controls the sensors (and even the sensors themselves) to be upgraded with no corresponding changes to the data user software. Additional sensors can easily be added to the system while obsolete sensors can simply be removed. The nature of the task under consideration suggests that an extendible parallel architecture would be better suited to providing the processing requirements of such a system, than a traditional Von Neumann architecture. In gener...
Human Activity Recognition (HAR) systems are designed to read sensor data and analyse it to class... more Human Activity Recognition (HAR) systems are designed to read sensor data and analyse it to classify any detected movement and respond accordingly. However, there is a need for more responsive and near real-time systems to distinguish between false and true alarms. To accurately determine alarm triggers, the motion pattern of legitimate users need to be stored over a certain period and used to train the system to recognise features associated with their movements. This training process is followed by a testing cycle that uses actual data of different patterns of activity that are either similar or different to the training data set. This paper evaluates the use of a combined Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) and Naive Bayes for accuracy and robustness to correctly identify true alarm triggers in the form of a buzzer sound for example. It shows that pattern recognition can be achieved using either of the two approaches, even when a partial motion pattern is derived as a subset out o...
This paper reports ongoing work in the development of self-aware artificial general intelligence,... more This paper reports ongoing work in the development of self-aware artificial general intelligence, called Nature-inspired Humanoid Cognitive Computing Platform for Self-aware and Conscious Agent (NiHA). It is based on a quantum and bio-inspired cognitive architecture for machine consciousness and artificial intelligence. So far, a number of different cognitive features have been implemented to help facilitate the realization of NiHA. These implemented features include imaginations, dreams, personal semantics, psychopsychological based motivations and ethics. Apart from these, some industrial applications are also underway. The review of the results obtained from these applications is encouraging and supports the potential to achieve a certain level of
Robotics, video games, environmental mapping and medical are some of the fields that use 3D data ... more Robotics, video games, environmental mapping and medical are some of the fields that use 3D data processing. In this paper we propose a novel optimization approach for the open source Point Cloud Library (PCL) that is frequently used for processing 3D data. Three main aspects of the PCL are discussed: point cloud creation from disparity of color image pairs; voxel grid downsample filtering to simplify point clouds; and passthrough filtering to adjust the size of the point cloud. Additionally, OpenGL shader based rendering is examined. An optimization technique based on CPU cycle measurement is proposed and applied in order to optimize those parts of the pre-processing chain where measured performance is slowest. Results show that with optimized modules the performance of the pre-processing chain has increased 69 fold.
Background: Digital pathology and microscopy image analysis is widely used for comprehensive stud... more Background: Digital pathology and microscopy image analysis is widely used for comprehensive studies of cell morphology especially for cervical cancer screening from pap-smears. Manual assessment of pap-smears is labour intensive and prone to interobserver variations. Computer-aided methods, which can significantly improve the objectivity and reproducibility, have attracted a great deal of interest in recent literature. A critical prerequisite in automated analysis of pap-smears is nucleus and cytoplasm segmentation, which is the basis of cervical cancer screening. This paper articulates a potent approach to the segmentation of cervical cells into nucleus and cytoplasm using a quadtree decomposition approach with statistical measures.Results: Choosing an appropriate quadtree decomposition strategy was a great challenge and a novel task in the proposed approach. The image is pre-processed using an enhanced median filter and is decomposed based on the mean, maximum entropy and the var...
Annals of Emerging Technologies in Computing, 2021
Mission-critical Communication Systems that are adaptable for use with the latest generation of m... more Mission-critical Communication Systems that are adaptable for use with the latest generation of multimedia services are crucial for system users. To determine the set of requirements that need to be hardcoded into such systems, a clear distinction between mission-critical and non-mission-critical systems is required. Moreover, the users of services provided by such systems are very different to those of current mobile commercial communication systems. These differences give rise to a set of challenges that need addressing to facilitate migration from existing systems to those now being proposed. One such challenge relates to the performance of the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) registration process. This is a crucial consideration for mission-critical systems, particularly in large-scale systems where thousands or even millions of users may seek to access the system in disaster scenarios. This paper presents an evaluation of IMS and Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) performance metri...
Annals of Emerging Technologies in Computing, 2020
Usually, railway accidents are caused by train derailment, the mechanical failure of tracks, such... more Usually, railway accidents are caused by train derailment, the mechanical failure of tracks, such as broken rails often caused by lack of railway condition monitoring. Such monitoring could identify track surface faults, such as squats, that act as a catalyst for the track to crack and ultimately break. The research presented in this paper enables real-time identification of railway track faults using image processing techniques such as Canny edge detection and 2D discrete wavelet transformation. The Canny edge detection outperforms traditional track damage detection techniques including Axle Based Acceleration using Inertial Measurement Units and is as reliable as Fiber Bragg Grating. The Canny edge detection employed can identify squats in real-time owing to its specific threshold amplitude using a camera module mounted on a specially designed handheld Track Recording Vehicle (TRV). The 2D discrete wavelet transformation validates the insinuation of the Canny edge detector regardi...
Annals of Emerging Technologies in Computing, 2018
We present a web-based methodology for the extraction of semantic information and object identifi... more We present a web-based methodology for the extraction of semantic information and object identification in poorly annotated Web3D scenes. Our approach is based on a set of rules that mimic human spatial cognition, backed by an indexing mechanism for the automated spatial correlation between objects in terms of linguistic predicates. The proposed methodology is comprised of real-time techniques with broad application areas, ranging from CAD and 3D room planning tools based on architectural designs, to medical and e-learning environments where their objects’ relative position is closely associated with identification attributes.
Cloud computing is a phenomenon that is changing information technology, with many companies no l... more Cloud computing is a phenomenon that is changing information technology, with many companies no longer having data and resources retained within their own premises. Instead they are utilising cloud computing and its centralised resources. There are many benefits of this approach such as pay-per-use model, elasticity of operation and on demand resourcing. However, this approach also introduces additional security challenges. Security involves a triad of considerations, those being confidentiality, integrity and availability, often abbreviated to CIA. This work focusses on the last aspect of the CIA triad – availability, which is even more crucial for cloud-based platforms as centralised resources need to be provided at a distance to the end customers. Several factors including ‘denial of service’ attack impact availability. Moreover, current protection frameworks do not sufficiently consider the issues of verification, scalability and end-to-end latency. Hence, a new framework has be...
Various images from massive image databases extract inherent, implanted information or different ... more Various images from massive image databases extract inherent, implanted information or different examples explicitly found in the images. These images may help the community in initial self-screening breast cancer, and primary health care can introduce this method to the community. This study aimed to review the different methods of abnormal mass detection in digital mammograms. One of best methods for the detection of breast malignancy and discovery at a nascent stage is digital mammography. Some of the mammograms with excellent images have a high intensity of resolution that enables preparing images with high computations. The fact that medical images are so common on computers is one of the main things that helps radiologists make diagnoses. Image preprocessing highlights the portion after extraction and arrangement in computerized mammograms. Moreover, the future scope of examination for paving could be the way for a top invention in computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) for mammograms...
International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning (iJET), 2021
The case study reported in the paper investigated the effect of Project-based learning on student... more The case study reported in the paper investigated the effect of Project-based learning on students training to be mathematics teachers, pursuing their final projects. The final projects had as an aim of designing attractive and interactive mathematics learning material. This study used a qualitative method to assess the impact on the trainee teachers in terms of their creative design thinking. The research made use of the Hawgent dynamic mathematics software package. The study participants were all students at Guangxi Normal University, China. The students were divided into three groups, each with four or five members. The results presented show that selecting material and combining it with art using dynamic mathematics software can improve the communication skills, problem-solving and creative thinking skills, and improve the prospective teachers' self-confidence. Moreover, it was found that prospective mathematics teachers need motivation and support during their projects'...
In the last few years, the immersive theater has become a new trend for modern performances. Venu... more In the last few years, the immersive theater has become a new trend for modern performances. Venues increasingly utilize widely available computer technologies, such as virtual/augmented reality and spatial sound, to help facilitate the realization of different ideas. Motivated by this current trend, a prototype platform has been developed that enables the design and implementation of an augmented theatrical experience based on spatial sound immersion. This paper describes the implementation of the platform and, through several use case scenarios, its evaluation. The paper concludes with a discussion of the results and offers some thoughts on future developments.
Computer methods and programs in biomedicine, 2018
Early diagnosis and classification of a cancer type can help facilitate the subsequent clinical m... more Early diagnosis and classification of a cancer type can help facilitate the subsequent clinical management of the patient. Cervical cancer ranks as the fourth most prevalent cancer affecting women worldwide and its early detection provides the opportunity to help save life. To that end, automated diagnosis and classification of cervical cancer from pap-smear images has become a necessity as it enables accurate, reliable and timely analysis of the condition's progress. This paper presents an overview of the state of the art as articulated in prominent recent publications focusing on automated detection of cervical cancer from pap-smear images. The survey reviews publications on applications of image analysis and machine learning in automated diagnosis and classification of cervical cancer from pap-smear images spanning 15 years. The survey reviews 30 journal papers obtained electronically through four scientific databases (Google Scholar, Scopus, IEEE and Science Direct) searched...
In the majority of robotic systems currently available, a change in the type of sensors employed ... more In the majority of robotic systems currently available, a change in the type of sensors employed will require significant change to other parts of the system. The knock on effect caused by changes to sensors arises from the lack of independence between the different functions of current robotic systems. A transputer-based system is described where the sensors and the software that control them are separate from the processors that use the information they provide. This separation of data provider from data user enables the software that controls the sensors (and even the sensors themselves) to be upgraded with no corresponding changes to the data user software. Additional sensors can easily be added to the system while obsolete sensors can simply be removed. The nature of the task under consideration suggests that an extendible parallel architecture would be better suited to providing the processing requirements of such a system, than a traditional Von Neumann architecture. In gener...
Human Activity Recognition (HAR) systems are designed to read sensor data and analyse it to class... more Human Activity Recognition (HAR) systems are designed to read sensor data and analyse it to classify any detected movement and respond accordingly. However, there is a need for more responsive and near real-time systems to distinguish between false and true alarms. To accurately determine alarm triggers, the motion pattern of legitimate users need to be stored over a certain period and used to train the system to recognise features associated with their movements. This training process is followed by a testing cycle that uses actual data of different patterns of activity that are either similar or different to the training data set. This paper evaluates the use of a combined Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) and Naive Bayes for accuracy and robustness to correctly identify true alarm triggers in the form of a buzzer sound for example. It shows that pattern recognition can be achieved using either of the two approaches, even when a partial motion pattern is derived as a subset out o...
This paper reports ongoing work in the development of self-aware artificial general intelligence,... more This paper reports ongoing work in the development of self-aware artificial general intelligence, called Nature-inspired Humanoid Cognitive Computing Platform for Self-aware and Conscious Agent (NiHA). It is based on a quantum and bio-inspired cognitive architecture for machine consciousness and artificial intelligence. So far, a number of different cognitive features have been implemented to help facilitate the realization of NiHA. These implemented features include imaginations, dreams, personal semantics, psychopsychological based motivations and ethics. Apart from these, some industrial applications are also underway. The review of the results obtained from these applications is encouraging and supports the potential to achieve a certain level of
Robotics, video games, environmental mapping and medical are some of the fields that use 3D data ... more Robotics, video games, environmental mapping and medical are some of the fields that use 3D data processing. In this paper we propose a novel optimization approach for the open source Point Cloud Library (PCL) that is frequently used for processing 3D data. Three main aspects of the PCL are discussed: point cloud creation from disparity of color image pairs; voxel grid downsample filtering to simplify point clouds; and passthrough filtering to adjust the size of the point cloud. Additionally, OpenGL shader based rendering is examined. An optimization technique based on CPU cycle measurement is proposed and applied in order to optimize those parts of the pre-processing chain where measured performance is slowest. Results show that with optimized modules the performance of the pre-processing chain has increased 69 fold.
Background: Digital pathology and microscopy image analysis is widely used for comprehensive stud... more Background: Digital pathology and microscopy image analysis is widely used for comprehensive studies of cell morphology especially for cervical cancer screening from pap-smears. Manual assessment of pap-smears is labour intensive and prone to interobserver variations. Computer-aided methods, which can significantly improve the objectivity and reproducibility, have attracted a great deal of interest in recent literature. A critical prerequisite in automated analysis of pap-smears is nucleus and cytoplasm segmentation, which is the basis of cervical cancer screening. This paper articulates a potent approach to the segmentation of cervical cells into nucleus and cytoplasm using a quadtree decomposition approach with statistical measures.Results: Choosing an appropriate quadtree decomposition strategy was a great challenge and a novel task in the proposed approach. The image is pre-processed using an enhanced median filter and is decomposed based on the mean, maximum entropy and the var...
Annals of Emerging Technologies in Computing, 2021
Mission-critical Communication Systems that are adaptable for use with the latest generation of m... more Mission-critical Communication Systems that are adaptable for use with the latest generation of multimedia services are crucial for system users. To determine the set of requirements that need to be hardcoded into such systems, a clear distinction between mission-critical and non-mission-critical systems is required. Moreover, the users of services provided by such systems are very different to those of current mobile commercial communication systems. These differences give rise to a set of challenges that need addressing to facilitate migration from existing systems to those now being proposed. One such challenge relates to the performance of the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) registration process. This is a crucial consideration for mission-critical systems, particularly in large-scale systems where thousands or even millions of users may seek to access the system in disaster scenarios. This paper presents an evaluation of IMS and Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) performance metri...
Annals of Emerging Technologies in Computing, 2020
Usually, railway accidents are caused by train derailment, the mechanical failure of tracks, such... more Usually, railway accidents are caused by train derailment, the mechanical failure of tracks, such as broken rails often caused by lack of railway condition monitoring. Such monitoring could identify track surface faults, such as squats, that act as a catalyst for the track to crack and ultimately break. The research presented in this paper enables real-time identification of railway track faults using image processing techniques such as Canny edge detection and 2D discrete wavelet transformation. The Canny edge detection outperforms traditional track damage detection techniques including Axle Based Acceleration using Inertial Measurement Units and is as reliable as Fiber Bragg Grating. The Canny edge detection employed can identify squats in real-time owing to its specific threshold amplitude using a camera module mounted on a specially designed handheld Track Recording Vehicle (TRV). The 2D discrete wavelet transformation validates the insinuation of the Canny edge detector regardi...
Annals of Emerging Technologies in Computing, 2018
We present a web-based methodology for the extraction of semantic information and object identifi... more We present a web-based methodology for the extraction of semantic information and object identification in poorly annotated Web3D scenes. Our approach is based on a set of rules that mimic human spatial cognition, backed by an indexing mechanism for the automated spatial correlation between objects in terms of linguistic predicates. The proposed methodology is comprised of real-time techniques with broad application areas, ranging from CAD and 3D room planning tools based on architectural designs, to medical and e-learning environments where their objects’ relative position is closely associated with identification attributes.
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Papers by Andrew Ware