Disparity estimation for multi-scale multi-sensor fusion

The perception module of advanced driver assistance systems plays a vital role.Perception schemes often use a single sensor for data processing and environmental perception or adopt the information processing results of various sensors for the fusion of the detection layer.This paper proposes a multi-scale and multi-sensor data fusion strategy in the front end of perception and accomplishes a multi-sensor function disparity map generation scheme.A binocular stereo vision sensor composed of two cameras and a light deterction and ranging(LiDAR)sensor is used to jointly perceive the environment,and a multi-scale fusion scheme is employed to improve the accuracy of the disparity map.This solution not only has the advantages of dense perception of binocular stereo vision sensors but also considers the perception accuracy of LiDAR sensors.Experiments demonstrate that the multi-scale multi-sensor scheme proposed in this paper significantly improves disparity map estimation.

Spatial Disparity in Availability of Tuberculosis Diagnostic Services Based on Sector and Level of Care in Nigeria

Background: Delay in Tuberculosis (TB) diagnosis can contribute to late presentation, severe disease, and continued transmission. KNCV TB Foundation Nigeria through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) funded the TB Local Organization Network (LON) 1 and 2 projects that explored the availability of Tuberculosis services based on sector and levels of care. Methods: TB Patient Pathway Analysis was carried out in 14 states comprising 92 facilities. It involved primary, secondary, and tertiary levels of health care in both the public and private sectors. This was a cross-sectional study under program implementation. Proforma was used to collect data on the available TB diagnostic services. Results: In public health facilities, GeneXpert was available at 100% in tertiary facilities in 8 (57%) states;up to 82% in 4 (33%) states, 50% available at secondary facilities in 2 states, and There is none at the primary facilities. Smear microscopy was available at 100% in tertiary facilities in 9 (64%) states and 3 (25%) states have 50% to 82%;secondary -10 (71%) states have > 70% at facilities;primary 1 (7%) state has it in 61% of facilities. Loop-mediated isothermal amplification (TB-LAMP) in tertiary 2 (17%) states have 20% and 100% respectively;secondary 4 (<30%) states have in 1 or 2 facilities;none for primary facilities. In private health facilities, 79% of states have Smear microscopy at both primary and secondary facilities, and only 2 states (14%) at tertiary facilities. Only 1 (7%) state has GeneXpert in all tertiary facilities, 2 (14%) states have secondary facilities, and 4 states in about 1% of facilities. TB LAMP was not available in any tertiary facility, one (7%) state at secondary with coverage of 1%, and 2 (14%) states at primary both with 4% overall facility coverage. Conclusions: There is an inequitable distribution of TB diagnostic services in both sectors and levels of care in Nigeria. TB care and control will improve with enhanced equitable distribution of TB diagnostic services across the health system.

Regional disparity in the changes of agricultural land use intensity in China during 1980-2002

Based on the cost-benefit data （1980-2002） of farm products and China Agriculture Yearbooks, this paper studies the regional disparity in the changes of the agricultural land use in China during the period 1980-2002 from three aspects such as the degree of intensity, the sown area and the abandoned farmland. The results show that： （1） The degree of intensity of land use in the westena region during 1980-2000 has a strong uptrend, but in the eastern and central regions the degree of intensity descends obviously and has shown a continuous downtrend since 1997. （2） The total sown area shrinks notably in the eastern region, while it enlarges constantly in the western region. （3） The sown area in the eastern, central and western regions has gone through a similar cyclic process： down （1980-1985）-up （1985-1991）-down （1991-1994）-up （1994-1999）-down （1999-2002）. However, there are obvious differences in amplitude variation and tendency among them. The sown area has shrunk in the eastern region and expanded in the central and western regions especially before 1999. （4） The most cases of abandoned farmland are reported in the central region, the second in the eastern region and the least in the western region. The abandonment phenomena chiefly occurred during 1992-1995 in the eastern region, and during 1998-2002 in the central region.

Analyzing Population Density Disparity in China with GIS-automated Regionalization: The Hu Line Revisited

The famous ’Hu Line’, proposed by Hu Huanyong in 1935, divided China into two regions(southeast and northwest) of comparable area size but drastically different in population. However, the classic Hu Line was derived manually in absence of reliable census data and computational technologies of modern days. It has been subject to criticism of lack of scientific rigor and accuracy. This research uses a GIS-automated regionalization method, termed REDCAP(Regionalization with Dynamically Constrained Agglomerative Clustering and Partitioning), to reconstruct the demarcation line based on the 2010 county-level census data in China. The results show that the logarithmic transformation of population density is a better measure of attributive homogeneity in derived regions than density itself, and produces two regions of nearly identical area size and greater contrast in population. Specifically, the revised Hu Line by Hu Huanyong in 1990 had the southeast region with 94.4% of total population and 42.9% of total land, and our delineation line yields a southeast region with 97.4% population and 50.8% land. Therefore, the population density ratio of the two regions is 27.1 by our line, much higher than the ratio of 22.4 by the Hu Line, and thus outperforms the Hu Line in deriving regions of maximum density contrast with comparable area size. Furthermore, more regions are delineated to further advance our understanding of population distribution disparity in China.

PHYSICAL STRUCTURE OF GEOGRAPHICAL ENVIRONMENT-INTEGRITY AND DISPARITY,GENERALITY AND INDIVIDUALITY

Integrity and disparity are two of the basic characteristics implied in the scientific connotation of the physical environment as a material system. From a dialectical materialistic point of view the physical character of geographical environment of the earth surface is the unity in diversity. It is on such grounds that the two basic characteristics were put forth by the author in his monograph 'Physical Structure of South American Geographical Environment' as the underlying theme. This holds true for the hierarchy of physical regions. For instance, the physical environment of the earth surface in unity behaves as a huge whole, yet, in differentiation into continents, it displays disparity; each continent differs from others and becomes an integrity in its own right. The same is true of regions of lower levels. In the case of generality and individuality of regional types and their constituent distributive areas in different continents, the same relationship exists among them. Owing to similar origin

Saliency detection based on superpixels clustering and stereo disparity

Reliable saliency detection can be used to quickly and effectively locate objects in images. In this paper, a novel algorithm for saliency detection based on superpixels clustering and stereo disparity （SDC） is proposed. Firstly, we use an improved superpixels clustering method to decompose the given image. Then, the disparity of each superpixel is computed by a modified stereo correspondence algorithm. Finally, a new measure which combines stereo disparity with color contrast and spatial coherence is defined to evaluate the saliency of each superpixel. From the experiments we can see that regions with high disparity can get higher saliency value, and the saliency maps have the same resolution with the source images, objects in the map have clear boundaries. Due to the use of superpixel and stereo disparity information, the proposed method is computationally efficient and outperforms some state-of-the-art color- based saliency detection methods.

Methods to evaluate the impacts of physio- geographical pattern on spatio-temporal disparity of regional development

With the rapid economic development during the last 30 years in China, more and more disparities have emerged among different regions. It has been one of the hot topics in the fields of physical geography and economic geography, and also has been the task for Chinese government to handle. Nevertheless, to quantitatively assess the impacts of physio-geographical patterns （PGP） on the regional development disparity has been ignored for a long time. In this paper, a quantitative method was adopted to assess the marginal effects of the PGP on spatio-temporal disparity using the partial determination coefficients. The paper described the construction of the evaluation model step by step following its key scientific thinking. Total GDP, per capita GDP, primary industrial output value and secondary industrial output value were employed in this study as the indicators to reflect the impacts of PGP on the regional development disparity. Based on the evaluation methods built by researchers, this study firstly analyzed the temporal impacts of the PGP on spatio-temporal disparity of the regional development in China during the past 50 years, and then explained the spatial differences at each development stage. The results show that the spatio-temporal disparity in China is highly related to the PGP, and that the marginal contribution rate could be employed as an effective way to quantitatively assess the impact of the PGP on spatio-temporal disparity of the regional development.

Improved block matching approach to fast disparity estimation

An improved block matching approach to fast disparity estimation in machine vision applications is proposed, where the matching criterion is the sum of the absolute difference（SAD）.By evaluating the lower bounds, which become increasingly tighter for the matching criteria, the method tries to successively terminate unnecessary computations of the matching criteria between the reference block in one image and the ineligible candidate blocks in another image.It also eliminates the ineligible blocks as early as possible, while ensuring the optimal disparity of each pixel.Also, the proposed method can further speed up the elimination of ineligible candidate blocks by efficiently using the continuous constraint of disparity to predict the initial disparity of each pixel.The performance of the new algorithm is evaluated by carrying out a theoretical analysis, and by comparing its performance with the disparity estimation method based on the standard block matching.Simulated results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm achieves a computational cost reduction of over 50.5% in comparision with the standard block matching method.

Effects of disparity distribution on visual comfort for multiple objects of stereoscopic images

With the development of stereoscopic technology, more attention is attracted on the stereoscopic three-dimensional(S3 D) content and service, and researches on images and videos have emerged in large numbers. This paper focuses mainly on visual comfort affected by characteristics of disparity for multiple objects. To find the relationship between disparity distribution and visual comfort perception, several subject evaluation experiments are done. The study contains two spatial distribution types of disparity: 1) only one of the foreground objects has zero disparity; 2) one of the foreground objects has positive disparity, while the other one has negative disparity. The experimental results and relative regression analysis provide appropriate relationship between disparity distribution and visual comfort for both conditions, which is significant to meet the applicant field in S3 D content acquisition, display adjustment and quality evaluation.

Disparity-Based Generation of Line-of-Sight DSM for Image-Elevation Co-Registration to Support Building Detection in Off-Nadir VHR Satellite Images

The integration of optical images and elevation data is of great importance for 3D-assisted mapping applications. Very high resolution (VHR) satellite images provide ideal geo-data for mapping building information. Since buildings are inherently elevated objects, these images need to be co-registered with their elevation data for reliable building detection results. However, accurate co-registration is extremely difficult for off-nadir VHR images acquired over dense urban areas. Therefore, this research proposes a Disparity-Based Elevation Co-Registration (DECR) method for generating a Line-of-Sight Digital Surface Model (LoS-DSM) to efficiently achieve image-elevation data co-registration with pixel-level accuracy. Relative to the traditional photogrammetric approach, the RMSE value of the derived elevations is found to be less than 2 pixels. The applicability of the DECR method is demonstrated through elevation-based building detection (EBD) in a challenging dense urban area. The quality of the detection result is found to be more than 90%. Additionally, the detected objects were geo-referenced successfully to their correct ground locations to allow direct integration with other maps. In comparison to the original LoS-DSM development algorithm, the DECR algorithm is more efficient by reducing the calculation steps, preserving the co-registration accuracy, and minimizing the need for elevation normalization in dense urban areas.

Racial disparity in colorectal cancer: Gut microbiome and cancer stem cells

Over the past two decades there has been remarkable progress in cancer diagnosis, treatment and screening. The basic mechanisms leading to pathogenesis of various types of cancers are also understood better and some patients, if diagnosed at a particular stage go on to lead a normal pre-diagnosis life. Despite these achievements, racial disparity in some cancers remains a mystery. The higher incidence, aggressiveness and mortality of breast, prostate and colorectal cancers(CRCs) in AfricanAmericans as compared to Caucasian-Americans are now well documented. The polyp-carcinoma sequence in CRC and easy access to colonic epithelia or colonic epithelial cells through colonoscopy/colonic effluent provides the opportunity to study colonic stem cells early in course of natural history of the disease. With the advent of metagenomic sequencing, uncultivable organisms can now be identified in stool and their numbers correlated with the effects on colonic epithelia. It would be expected that these techniques would revolutionize our understanding of the racial disparity in CRC and pave a way for the same in other cancers as well. Unfortunately, this has not happened. Our understanding of the underlying factors responsible in African-Americans for higher incidence and mortality from colorectal carcinoma remains minimal. In this review, we aim to summarize the available data on role of microbiome and cancer stem cells in racial disparity in CRC. This will provide a platform for further research on this topic.

Cross-country income disparity and its effect on carbon emissions

This study is motivated by the interesting relationship between the income Kuznets curve and the carbon Kuznets curve.This paper focuses on the interaction effects of income distribution and income per capita on CO_2 emissions using country group panel data over the period of 1980 to 2006 by employing fixed effects(FE),random effects(RE)and feasible generalized least squares(FGLS)estimation methods.The main findings are as follows.(1)There exists an inverted-U relationship between CO_2 emissions per capita and income per capita in all sample countries and high-income groups.(2)The cross-country income disparity has a negative effect on the average level of CO_2 emissions but a positive effect on the aggregate income elasticity of CO_2 emissions.(3)This negative effect of income disparity on the average level of CO_2emissions decreases along with the growth of per capita income.Thus,economic growth contributes to the reduction of this negative impact.

Dimensionality and Angular Disparity Influence Mental Rotation in Computer Gaming

Computer gaming is one of the most common activities that individuals are indulged in their usual activities concerning interactive systembased entertainment.Visuospatial processing is an essential aspect of mental rotation(MR)in playing computer-games.Previous studies have explored how objects’features affect theMRprocess;however,non-isomorphic 2Dand 3D objects lack a fair comparison.In addition,the effects of these features on brain activation during the MR in computer-games have been less investigated.This study investigates how dimensionality and angular disparity affect brain activation duringMRin computer-games.EEG(electroencephalogram)data were recorded from sixty healthy adults while playing an MR-based computer game.Isomorphic 2D and 3D visual objects with convex and reflex angular disparity were presented in the game.Cluster-based permutation tests were applied on EEG spectral power for frequency range 3.5–30 Hz to identify significant spatio-spectral changes.Also,the band-specific hemispheric lateralization was evaluated to investigate task-specific asymmetry.The results indicated higher alpha desynchronization in the left hemisphere during MR compared to baseline.The fronto-parietal areas showed neural activations during the game with convex angular disparities and 3D objects,for a frequency range of 7.8–14.2Hz and 7.8–10.5Hz,respectively.These areas also showed activations during the game with reflex angular disparities and 2D objects,but for narrower frequency bands,i.e.,8.0–10.0 Hz and 11.0–11.7 Hz,respectively.Left hemispheric dominance was observed for alpha and beta frequencies.However,the right parietal region was notably more dominant for convex angular disparity and 3D objects.Overall,the results showed higher neural activities elicited by convex angular disparities and 3D objects in the game compared to the reflex angles and 2Dobjects.The findings suggest future applications,such as cognitive modeling and controlled MR training using computer games.

An improved seed growth method for accurate stereo matching in disparity space

Matching is a classical problem in stereo vision. To solve the matching problem that components cannot continue growing on the occlusions region and repetitive patterns, an improved seed growth method is proposed. The method obtains a set of interesting points defined as initial seeds from a rectified image. Through global optimization the seeds and their neighbors can be selected in- to a match table. Finally the components grow with the matching points and create a semi-dense map under the maximum similar subset according to the principle of the unique constraint. Experimental results show that the proposed method in the grown process can rectify some errors in matching. The semi-dense map has a good performance in the occlusions region and repetitive patterns. This algorithm is faster and more accurate than the traditional seed growing method.

Current status of disparity in liver disease

Disparities have emerged as an important issue in many aspects of healthcare in developed countries and may be based on race,ethnicity,sex,geographical location,and socioeconomic status.For liver disease specifically,these potential disparities can affect access to care and outcome in viral hepatitis,chronic liver disease,and hepatocellular carcinoma.Shortages in hepatologists and medical providers versed in liver disease may amplify these disparities by compromising early detection of liver disease,surveillance for hepatocellular carcinoma,and prompt referral to subspecialists and transplant centers.In the United States,continued efforts have been made to address some of these disparities with better education of healthcare providers,use of telehealth to enhance access to specialists,reminders in electronic medical records,and modifying organ allocation systems for liver transplantation.This review will detail the current status of disparities in liver disease and describe current efforts to minimize these disparities.

Generation of triangle mesh surface from the disparity map for telerobotic welding

3D reconstruction of environment and weld workpiece can provide geometrical model for telerobotic welding and improve its intelligence. A novel framework of spacetime stereo is employed to overcome the lack of texture of the weld workpiece and obtain subpixel disparity map of the scene. Anisotropic diffusion is adopted to smooth the original subpixel disparity map in order to reduce the noise while preserving the depth discontinuity. A simple algorithm of generation triangle mesh surface from the disparity map of the spucetime stereo is presented. The experimental results of real weld scenes are shown.

An Empirical Analysis of Regional Disparity of Financial Exclusion Based on Types and Levels of Financial Institution

We make an empirical analysis of regional characteristics of influence factors of financial exclusion by using the data of types and levels of financial institutions in China from 1998 to 2012. The study shows that the number of financial institutions continues to increase,but with uneven distribution; the density of financial institutions increases steadily and the gap between the eastern regions and the Midwest is huge; the commercial banks of the eastern regions account for the highest proportion but the rate of basic outlets of the commercial bank is low,the rate of basic outlets of the rural institution bank is relatively higher,and the proportion of the Midwest rural banks is high. Even though the financial exclusion eases,large differences still exist in different areas and the situation is rather critical in rural areas,especially the financial exclusion in western rural areas is the worst. The economic development level,area scale,government expenditure,personal savings level,per capita consumption and educational level have different effects on financial exclusion. Accordingly,this paper puts forward the recommendations for coordinating the financial resource from all regions and reducing the regional financial exclusion.

Performance Analysis of Disparity for Stereoscopic Image Pairs

Disparity is the geometrical difference between images of a stereoscopic pair. In this paper we give a comprehensive analysis of the statistical characteristics of disparity. Based on experiments, we discuss the relations between disparity, depth and object relation between block size and disparity estimation, and the influence of error criteria on disparity estimation.

Spatial Analysis of the Evolvement of Urban and Rural Economic Disparity in Yunnan Province,China

The per capita disposable income of urban households and the per capita net income of rural households in Yunnan Province are selected as the variable indices.Data are from the Yunnan Statistical Yearbook and the Yunnan Statistical Yearbook.Theil index and RHL value are used to carry out quantitative research on the occurrence,development and change of urban and rural economic disparity in Yunnan Province,China.Regression analysis on the evolvement trend of urban and rural economic disparity and spatial analysis on the convergence and divergence of urban and rural disparity caused by economic growth in Yunnan Province are carried out.Result shows that cities in Yunnan Province show a downward convergence;while rural areas show a downward divergence in the years 1978-2007,causing the economic disparity between urban and rural areas.Therefore,urban and rural disparity increases in Yunnan Province and the development of rural areas lags far behind the development of urban areas.Urban and rural economic disparity in Yunnan Province shows an inverted "U" shape of Kuznets Curve.In order to promote the coordinated development of urban and rural economy,suggestions are put forward,such as adopting the unbalanced development strategy,accelerating the overall economic development,promoting the development of small and medium-sized cities,enhancing the integration of urban and rural economics,appropriately supporting rural areas under poverty,and fully exerting the comparative advantage.

Urban Rural Disparity in Westernization Related Cancers and the Increasing Incidence in Parallel with Socioeconomic Development and Urbanization from 2000-2015 among a Rural Chinese Population: An Observational Study

Abstract China used to have great urban rural disparity in socioeconomic development. Since the late 1980s, rapid socioeconomic development and urbanization have been taking place in rural settings. It is epidemiologically established that cancer scale and profile will transit as economy prospers and urbanization develops. However, there are few published studies reporting what changes are undergoing in cancer pattern in Chinese rural settings. Population-based tumor registration data collected by us in urban Shijiazhuang city (available for 2,374,827 people in 2012) and in rural Shexian County (available for 408,995 people since 2000) were used for urban rural comparison of age standardized incidence rate (ASIR) of westernization-related cancers in 2012, and the trend of biennial ASIR of these cancers for 2000-2015 in Shexian County was examined following a decade of rapid socioeconomic development and urbanization. From 1988-2015, the Gross Domestic Product per Capita (GDP) in rural Shexian County increased from 860 to 3000 US$, and urbanization rate from 22.4% to 54.8%. The biennial ASIRs of lung, colorectal, gallbladder cancer and leukemia in both sexes, and that of breast, ovary, thyroid, and kidney cancer in women increased significantly from 2000 - 2015. The increase from 2000-2001 to 2014-2015 in man and women for lung cancer was from 15.9 to 34.7 per 105 (P = 0.05) and 9.6 to 16.7 (P = 0.00), for colorectal cancer from 6.6 to 15.9 (P = 0.00) and 4.0 to 11.7 (P = 0.00), for gallbladder cancer from 0.1 to 2.4 (P = 0.00) and 0.3 to 2.7 (P = 0.00), for leukemia from 2.8 to 7.7 (P = 0.00) and 2.3 to 6.2 (P = 0.00);and in women for cancer of breast from 2.8 to 17.3 (P = 0.00), kidney from 0.2 to 2.4 (P = 0.00), ovary from 0.2 to 4.3 (P = 0.00), and thyroid from 0.2 to 4.2 (P = 0.00). Notwithstanding these increases, their ASIRs in 2012 in Shexian County were still significantly lower than that in Shijiazhuang city. Westernization-related cancer is increasing rapidly in rural China. Comprehensive measures are needed to strengthen prevention to ensure sustainable development.