Medical image fusion technique can help the physician execute combined diagnosis, preoperative planning, intraoperative guidance, and interventional treatment in many clinical applications by deriving the complementary information from medical images with different modalities. In this paper, we propose an end-to-end deep learning network, Multi-layer Concatenation Fusion Network (MCFNet), for feature extraction, feature fusion and image reconstruction without manually designing complex feature extraction and fusion rules. MCFNet connects the feature map of each layer in the image reconstruction network with the source map which has the same resolution due to down-sampling. And the spatial information lost in the fused medical image during two down-sampling processes is supplemented. The up-sampling operation at the image reconstruction stage uses fast up-convolution to reduce the checkerboard effect of traditional deconvolution. The proposed fusion method is tested on many clinical medical images and compared with several commonly used image fusion methods. Experimental results show that the proposed fusion method can provide better fusion results in terms of visual quality and objective evaluation.

Analyzing students’ emotions from classroom videos can help both teachers and parents quickly know the engagement of students in class. The availability of high-definition cameras creates opportunities to record class scenes. However, watching videos is time-consuming, and it is challenging to gain a quick overview of the emotion distribution and find abnormal emotions. In this article, we propose EmotionCues , a visual analytics system to easily analyze classroom videos from the perspective of emotion summary and detailed analysis, which integrates emotion recognition algorithms with visualizations. It consists of three coordinated views: a summary view depicting the overall emotions and their dynamic evolution, a character view presenting the detailed emotion status of an individual, and a video view enhancing the video analysis with further details. Considering the possible inaccuracy of emotion recognition, we also explore several factors affecting the emotion analysis, such as face size and occlusion. They provide hints for inferring the possible inaccuracy and the corresponding reasons. Two use cases and interviews with end users and domain experts are conducted to show that the proposed system could be useful and effective for analyzing emotions in the classroom videos.

In this paper, a method named Region Mosaicking on Laplacian Pyramids (RMLP) is proposed to fuse multi-focus images that is captured by microscope. First, the Sum-Modified-Laplacian is applied to measure the focus of multi-focus images. Then the density-based region growing algorithm is utilized to segment the focused region mask of each image. Finally, the mask is decomposed into a mask pyramid to supervise region mosaicking on a Laplacian pyramid. The region level pyramid keeps more original information than the pixel level. The experiment results show that RMLP has best performance in quantitative comparison with other methods. In addition, RMLP is insensitive to noise and can reduces the color distortion of the fused images on two datasets.

In non-destructive testing (NDT) of metal welds, weld line tracking is usually performed outdoors, where the structured light sources are always disturbed by various noises, such as sunlight, shadows, and reflections from the weld line surface. In this paper, we design a cross structured light (CSL) to detect the weld line and propose a robust laser stripe segmentation algorithm to overcome the noises in structured light images. An adaptive monochromatic space is applied to preprocess the image with ambient noises. In the monochromatic image, the laser stripe obtained is recovered as a multichannel signal by minimum entropy deconvolution. Lastly, the stripe centre points are extracted from the image. In experiments, the CSL sensor and the proposed algorithm are applied to guide a wall climbing robot inspecting the weld line of a wind power tower. The experimental results show that the CSL sensor can capture the 3D information of the welds with high accuracy, and the proposed algorithm contributes to the weld line inspection and the robot navigation.

The consumption of conventional energy sources and environmental concerns have resulted in rapid growth in the amount of renewable energy introduced to power systems. With the help of distributed generations (DG), the improvement of power loss and voltage profile can be the salient benefits. However, studies show that improper placement and size of energy storage system (ESS) lead to undesired power loss and the risk of voltage stability, especially in the case of high renewable energy penetration. To solve the problem, this paper sets up a microgrid based on IEEE 34-bus distribution system which consists of wind power generation system, photovoltaic generation system, diesel generation system, and energy storage system associated with various types of load. Furthermore, the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm is proposed in the paper to minimize the power loss and improve the system voltage profiles by optimally managing the different sorts of distributed generations under consideration of the worst condition of renewable energy production. The established IEEE 34-bus system is adopted to perform case studies. The detailed simulation results for each case clearly demonstrate the necessity of optimal management of the system operation and the effectiveness of the proposed method. The consumption of conventional energy sources and environmental concerns have resulted in rapid growth in the amount of renewable energy introduced to power systems. With the help of distributed generations (DG), the improvement of power loss and voltage profile can be the salient benefits. However, studies show that improper placement and size of energy storage system (ESS) lead to undesired power loss and the risk of voltage stability, especially in the case of high renewable energy penetration. To solve the problem, this paper sets up a microgrid based on IEEE 34-bus distribution system which consists of wind power generation system, photovoltaic generation system, diesel generation system, and energy storage system associated with various types of load. Furthermore, the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm is proposed in the paper to minimize the power loss and improve the system voltage profiles by optimally managing the different sorts of distributed generations under consideration of the worst condition of renewable energy production. The established IEEE 34-bus system is adopted to perform case studies. The detailed simulation results for each case clearly demonstrate the necessity of optimal management of the system operation and the effectiveness of the proposed method.