Abstract: Hand-drawn symbols can take many different and distorted shapes from their ideal representation. Then, very flexible methods are needed to be able to handle unconstrained drawings. We propose here to extend our previous work in hand-drawn symbol recognition based on a Bayesian framework and deformable template matching. This approach gets flexibility enough to fit distorted shapes in the drawing while keeping fidelity to the ideal shape of the symbol. In this work, we define the similarity measure between an image and a symbol based on the distance from every pixel in the image to the lines in the symbol. Matching is carried out using an implementation of the EM algorithm. Thus, we can improve recognition rates and computation time with respect to our previous formulation based on a simulated annealing algorithm.

Abstract: The recognition of symbols in graphic documents is an intensive research activity in the community of pattern recognition and document analysis. A key issue in the interpretation of maps, engineering drawings, diagrams, etc. is the recognition of domain dependent symbols according to a symbol database. In this work we first review the most outstanding symbol recognition methods from two different points of view: application domains and pattern recognition methods. In the second part of the paper, open and unaddressed problems involved in symbol recognition are described, analyzing their current state of art and discussing future research challenges. Thus, issues such as symbol representation, matching, segmentation, learning, scalability of recognition methods and performance evaluation are addressed in this work. Finally, we discuss the perspectives of symbol recognition concerning to new paradigms such as user interfaces in handheld computers or document database and WWW indexing by graphical content.

Abstract: This paper presents a patient-sensitive simulation strategy capable of using the most efficient way the high-performance computational resources. The proposed strategy directly involves three different players: Computational Mechanics Scientists (CMS), Image Processing Scientists and Cardiologists, each one mastering its own expertise area within the project. This paper describes the general integrative scheme but focusing on the CMS side presents a massively parallel implementation of computational electrophysiology applied to cardiac tissue simulation. The paper covers different angles of the computational problem: equations, numerical issues, the algorithm and parallel implementation. The proposed methodology is illustrated with numerical simulations testing all the different possibilities, ranging from small domains up to very large ones. A key issue is the almost ideal scalability not only for large and complex problems but also for medium-size meshes. The explicit formulation is particularly well suited for solving this highly transient problems, with very short time-scale.