Abstract: One of the biggest drawbacks related to the use of CT scanners is the cost (in memory and in time) associated. In this project many methods to simulate their functioning, but in a more feasible way (taking an industrial point of view), will be studied.
The main group of techniques that are being used are the one entitled as ’back-projection’. The concept behind is to simulate the X ray emission in CT scans by lines that cross with the image we want to reconstruct.
In the first part of this document euclidean geometry is used to face the tasks of projec- tion and back-projection. After analysing the results achieved it has been proved that this approach does not lead to a fully perfect reconstruction (and also has some other problems related to running time and memory cost). Because of this in the second part of the document ’Filtered Back-projection’ method is introduced in order to improve the results.
Filtered Back-projection methods rely on mathematical transforms (Fourier, Radon) in order to provide more accurate results that can be obtained in much less time. The main cause of this better results is the use of a filtering process before the back-projection in order to avoid high frequency-caused errors.
As a result of this project two different implementations (one for each approach) had been implemented in order to compare their performance.

Abstract: Pedestrian accidents are one of the leading preventable causes of death. In order to reduce the number of accidents, in the last decade the pedestrian protection systems have been introduced, a special type of advanced driver assistance systems, in witch an on-board camera explores the road ahead for possible collisions with pedestrians in order to warn the driver or perform braking actions. As a result of the variability of the appearance, pose and size, pedestrian detection is a very challenging task. So many techniques, models and features have been proposed to solve the problem. As the appearance of pedestrians varies signicantly as a function of distance, a system based on multiple classiers specialized on diferent depths is likely to improve the overall performance with respect to a typical system based on a general detector. Accordingly, the main aim of this work is to explore the eect of the distance in pedestrian detection. We have evaluated three pedestrian detectors (HOG, HAAR and EOH) in two dierent databases (INRIA and Daimler09) for two dierent sizes (small and big). By a extensive set of experiments we answer to questions like which datasets and evaluation methods are the most adequate, which is the best method for each size of the pedestrians and why or how do the method optimum parameters vary with respect to the distance

Abstract: On September 8, 2001 around 2 h UT, the largest uranian moon, Titania, occulted Hipparcos star 106829 (alias SAO 164538, a V=7.2, K0 III star). This was the first-ever observed occultation by this satellite, a rare event as Titania subtends only 0.11 arcsec on the sky. The star's unusual brightness allowed many observers, both amateurs or professionals, to monitor this unique event, providing fifty-seven occultations chords over three continents, all reported here. Selecting the best 27 occultation chords, and assuming a circular limb, we derive Titania's radius: View the MathML source (1-σ error bar). This implies a density of View the MathML source using the value View the MathML source derived by Taylor [Taylor, D.B., 1998. Astron. Astrophys. 330, 362–374]. We do not detect any significant difference between equatorial and polar radii, in the limit View the MathML source, in agreement with Voyager limb image retrieval during the 1986 flyby. Titania's offset with respect to the DE405 + URA027 (based on GUST86 theory) ephemeris is derived: ΔαTcos(δT)=−108±13 mas and ΔδT=−62±7 mas (ICRF J2000.0 system). Most of this offset is attributable to a Uranus' barycentric offset with respect to DE405, that we estimate to be: View the MathML source and ΔδU=−85±25 mas at the moment of occultation. This offset is confirmed by another Titania stellar occultation observed on August 1st, 2003, which provides an offset of ΔαTcos(δT)=−127±20 mas and ΔδT=−97±13 mas for the satellite. The combined ingress and egress data do not show any significant hint for atmospheric refraction, allowing us to set surface pressure limits at the level of 10–20 nbar. More specifically, we find an upper limit of 13 nbar (1-σ level) at 70 K and 17 nbar at 80 K, for a putative isothermal CO2 atmosphere. We also provide an upper limit of 8 nbar for a possible CH4 atmosphere, and 22 nbar for pure N2, again at the 1-σ level. We finally constrain the stellar size using the time-resolved star disappearance and reappearance at ingress and egress. We find an angular diameter of 0.54±0.03 mas (corresponding to View the MathML source projected at Titania). With a distance of 170±25 parsecs, this corresponds to a radius of 9.8±0.2 solar radii for HIP 106829, typical of a K0 III giant.

Abstract: Median graphs have been presented as a useful tool for capturing the essential information of a set of graphs. Nevertheless, computation of optimal solutions is a very hard problem. In this work we present a new and more efficient optimal algorithm for the median graph computation. With the use of a particular cost function that permits the definition of the graph edit distance in terms of the maximum common subgraph, and a prediction function in the backtracking algorithm, we reduce the size of the search space, avoiding the evaluation of a great amount of states and still obtaining the exact median. We present a set of experiments comparing our new algorithm against the previous existing exact algorithm using synthetic data. In addition, we present the first application of the exact median graph computation to real data and we compare the results against an approximate algorithm based on genetic search. These experimental results show that our algorithm outperforms the previous existing exact algorithm and in addition show the potential applicability of the exact solutions to real problems.

Abstract: The high variability of sign appearance in uncontrolled environments has made the detection and classification of road signs a challenging problem in computer vision. In this paper, we introduce a novel approach for the detection and classification of traffic signs. Detection is based on a boosted detectors cascade, trained with a novel evolutionary version of Adaboost, which allows the use of large feature spaces. Classification is defined as a multiclass categorization problem. A battery of classifiers is trained to split classes in an Error-Correcting Output Code (ECOC) framework. We propose an ECOC design through a forest of optimal tree structures that are embedded in the ECOC matrix. The novel system offers high performance and better accuracy than the state-of-the-art strategies and is potentially better in terms of noise, affine deformation, partial occlusions, and reduced illumination.