Graphical User Interface Toolkit Research Articles

TL-SDA: A designed toolkit for the deconvolution analysis of thermoluminescence glow curves

In the present study, a graphical user interface (GUI) toolkit has been developed to analyze the thermoluminescence (TL) glow-curve and evaluate the trapping parameters using TL expression based on the one-trap one-recombination model. The basic idea of the deconvolution analysis in the developed toolkit is based on performing a sequence of successful fits, where the information provided by each fit is used by the next fit until the deconvolution of the entire glow curve approaches an optimum solution. The starting values and ranges of the fitting parameters can be controlled and adjusted to improve the deconvolution analysis of complex structure glow curves. The designed toolkit is also supported by the background-subtraction option to improve the analysis at low irradiation dose levels. The expanded uncertainty at the 95 % confidence level of the fitted trapping parameters is also provided. All the evaluations performed using the designed toolkit are allowed to be extracted into an Excel spreadsheet. The TL-SDA toolkit can be freely downloaded from: TLSDA_v1 - File Exchange - MATLAB Central (https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/154136-tlsda_v1-1)

Design of Crop Irrigation Decision-Making System Based on ZigBee Technology

Abstract: To promote the high-quality development of agriculture, meet the needs of agricultural products grown in greenhouses, and achieve precise monitoring of greenhouse plants, a small greenhouse micro-environment multi-parameter monitoring system was designed and implemented. The system consists of three parts: a monitoring node, a gateway node, and a remote management platform. The monitoring node used the ESP32 microcontroller as the main control chip, combined ZigBee technology, and embedded different sensors to complete the collection and transmission of environmental parameters. In the gateway node, the 4G Data Transfer Unit module was used as the carrier, and the communication protocol was used to realize data communication between the monitoring terminal and the gateway. The remote management platform was based on the PyCharm development platform. It used the PyQt5 graphical user interface (GUI) toolkit to complete the design of the host computer monitoring platform, establish a database, and realize the storage and analysis of environmental parameters. The remote management platform embedded the crop reference evapotranspiration, online calculation model, to provide irrigation decisions for greenhouse crop management and improve the applicability and accuracy of irrigation decisions. After the experimental test platform was built to test the system communication distance, communication reliability, control reliability, and data reliability, the small greenhouse micro-environment multi-parameter monitoring system designed in this paper can operate stably for a long time. Its functions meet the expected requirements and are in line with modern requirements for multi-parameter monitoring of smart greenhouses.

DeepImageTranslator: A free, user-friendly graphical interface for image translation using deep-learning and its applications in 3D CT image analysis.

The advent of deep-learning has set new standards in an array of image translation applications. At present, the use of these methods often requires computer programming experience. Non-commercial programs with graphical interface usually do not allow users to fully customize their deep-learning pipeline. Therefore, our primary objective is to provide a simple graphical interface that allows researchers with no programming experience to easily create, train, and evaluate custom deep-learning models for image translation. We also aimed to test the applicability of our tool in CT image semantic segmentation and noise reduction. DeepImageTranslator was implemented using the Tkinter library, the standard Python interface to the Tk graphical user interface toolkit; backend computations were implemented using data augmentation packages such as Pillow, Numpy, OpenCV, Augmentor, Tensorflow, and Keras libraries. Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) were trained using DeepImageTranslator. The effects of data augmentation, deep-supervision, and sample size on model accuracy were also systematically assessed. The DeepImageTranslator a simple tool that allows users to customize all aspects of their deep-learning pipeline, including the CNN, training optimizer, loss function, and the types of training image augmentation scheme. We showed that DeepImageTranslator can be used to achieve state-of-the-art accuracy and generalizability in semantic segmentation and noise reduction. Highly accurate 3D segmentation models for body composition can be obtained using training sample sizes as small as 17 images. In conclusion, an open-source deep-learning tool for accurate image translation with a user-friendly graphical interface was presented and evaluated. This standalone software can be downloaded at: https://sourceforge.net/projects/deepimagetranslator/.

BCCT: A GUI Toolkit for Brain Structural Covariance Connectivity Analysis on MATLAB.

Brain structural covariance network (SCN) can delineate the brain synchronized alterations in a long-range time period. It has been used in the research of cognition or neuropsychiatric disorders. Recently, causal analysis of structural covariance network (CaSCN), winner-take-all and cortex–subcortex covariance network (WTA-CSSCN), and modulation analysis of structural covariance network (MOD-SCN) have expended the technology breadth of SCN. However, the lack of user-friendly software limited the further application of SCN for the research. In this work, we developed the graphical user interface (GUI) toolkit of brain structural covariance connectivity based on MATLAB platform. The software contained the analysis of SCN, CaSCN, MOD-SCN, and WTA-CSSCN. Also, the group comparison and result-showing modules were included in the software. Furthermore, a simple showing of demo dataset was presented in the work. We hope that the toolkit could help the researchers, especially clinical researchers, to do the brain covariance connectivity analysis in further work more easily.

PyChart – A Python module for analysis and visual view of 2D/3D Charts

The paper describes the PyChart module (aimed at analysis and visual view of 2D/3D Charts), which was created with the help of free and Open Source resources, using Python as a programming language and wx.Python as a graphical user interface toolkit. The chart data is imported from a Excel/CSV file with a template structure and is drawn in the PyChart module as XY or XYZ curves similar with Excel scatter with smooth lines and markers style. The main functions of the charts are activated using the toolbar. The module is provided with zooming instruments (fit, pan, zoom in, zoom out), cubic spline curves interpolation, chart intersection with constant X, Y or Z values, visual follow of the 2D chart points to view coordinates, export of data in Windows Clipboard, Excel or Microsoft Word format and saving the chart as a image file.

Practical computational toolkits for dendrimers and dendrons structure design.

Dendrimers and dendrons offer an excellent platform for developing novel drug delivery systems and medicines. The rational design and further development of these repetitively branched systems are restricted by difficulties in scalable synthesis and structural determination, which can be overcome by judicious use of molecular modelling and molecular simulations. A major difficulty to utilise in silico studies to design dendrimers lies in the laborious generation of their structures. Current modelling tools utilise automated assembly of simpler dendrimers or the inefficient manual assembly of monomer precursors to generate more complicated dendrimer structures. Herein we describe two novel graphical user interface toolkits written in Python that provide an improved degree of automation for rapid assembly of dendrimers and generation of their 2D and 3D structures. Our first toolkit uses the RDkit library, SMILES nomenclature of monomers and SMARTS reaction nomenclature to generate SMILES and mol files of dendrimers without 3D coordinates. These files are used for simple graphical representations and storing their structures in databases. The second toolkit assembles complex topology dendrimers from monomers to construct 3D dendrimer structures to be used as starting points for simulation using existing and widely available software and force fields. Both tools were validated for ease-of-use to prototype dendrimer structure and the second toolkit was especially relevant for dendrimers of high complexity and size.

A graphical user interface (GUI) toolkit for the calculation of three-dimensional (3D) multi-phase biological effective dose (BED) distributions including statistical analyses

A toolkit has been developed for calculating the 3-dimensional biological effective dose (BED) distributions in multi-phase, external beam radiotherapy treatments such as those applied in liver stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) and in multi-prescription treatments. This toolkit also provides a wide range of statistical results related to dose and BED distributions. MATLAB 2010a, version 7.10 was used to create this GUI toolkit. The input data consist of the dose distribution matrices, organ contour coordinates, and treatment planning parameters from the treatment planning system (TPS). The toolkit has the capability of calculating the multi-phase BED distributions using different formulas (denoted as true and approximate). Following the calculations of the BED distributions, the dose and BED distributions can be viewed in different projections (e.g. coronal, sagittal and transverse). The different elements of this toolkit are presented and the important steps for the execution of its calculations are illustrated. The toolkit is applied on brain, head & neck and prostate cancer patients, who received primary and boost phases in order to demonstrate its capability in calculating BED distributions, as well as measuring the inaccuracy and imprecision of the approximate BED distributions. Finally, the clinical situations in which the use of the present toolkit would have a significant clinical impact are indicated.

A layout inference algorithm for Graphical User Interfaces

Context: Graphical User Interface (GUI) toolkits currently provide layout managers which lay out widgets in views according to certain constraints that characterise each type of layout manager. In some scenarios such as GUI migration and the automated generation of GUIs from wireframes, the layout of views is implicitly expressed through the use of coordinates. In these cases, it is desirable to represent the layout explicitly in terms of layout managers.Objective: To represent a coordinate-based GUI in terms of a set of layout managers, in order to provide different alternative solutions for a given view and select the best alternative.Method: The layout inference process consists of two phases. Firstly, the coordinate-based positioning system is changed to a relative positioning system based on directed graphs and Allen relations. Secondly, an exploratory algorithm based on pattern matching and graph rewriting is applied in order to obtain different layout solutions. The algorithm has been evaluated through a case study related to the automatic generation of fluid web interfaces from wireframes, involving 20 IT professionals.Results: The case study showed that the layout obtained is faithful to the original views in 97% of cases, and maintains its proportions when resized in 84% of views. The majority of the participants were satisfied with the results and found the approach useful.Conclusions: The layout manager representation obtained from the coordinate-based GUIs can be used to generate fluid layouts. The algorithm has two main features that overcome the limitations of the existing approaches: independence of specific layout managers and ability to generate several alternative solutions.

SU‐E‐P‐06: A Graphical User Interface (GUI) Toolkit Created for Multi‐Phase Biological Effective Dose (BED) Calculations Including Statistical Analyses

Purpose:There is growing interest amongst clinics in applying the biological effective dose (BED) to their treatment plan evaluations, as well as potential optimizations due to its stronger correlation with radiobiological effects. An approximate, multi‐phase biological effective dose (BEDA) equation was introduced in order to simplify BED calculations using many current treatment planning systems (TPS). The purpose of this work is to create a MATLAB graphical user interface (GUI) in order to determine the accuracy and precision of BEDA in common clinical treatments.Methods:A number of algorithms were written in order to read exported treatment plans from the TPS Pinnacle. Those algorithms were then tested and compared with the results on Pinnacle in order to determine its accuracy. BED algorithms were then created in order to calculate the BEDT and BEDA distributions. The algorithms for the DVH statistics, the Bland‐Altman Analysis, and the Percent Error were written and added to this GUI in order to study the accuracy and precision of BEDA.Results:When comparing the DVH results from the created MATLAB GUI to those from Pinnacle, there was less than a 1% difference in the dose distribution statistics such as the maximum, minimum, mean, and standard deviation for the dose in the specific region of interest. The amount of time needed to calculate the BED distributions ranged anywhere from 5 to 90 seconds due to its dependence on the size of the dose distribution matrix.Conclusion:Due to the dose distribution accuracy, it is safe to use this MATLAB GUI toolkit to study the approximate BED calculation method. It can also be used to analyze patient treatment plans using the true BED distributions and the biological effective dose volume histograms (BEDVHs). In addition, further studies can be performed in determining BED constraints for different organs and endpoints.

GESearch: An Interactive GUI Tool for Identifying Gene Expression Signature.

The huge amount of gene expression data generated by microarray and next-generation sequencing technologies present challenges to exploit their biological meanings. When searching for the coexpression genes, the data mining process is largely affected by selection of algorithms. Thus, it is highly desirable to provide multiple options of algorithms in the user-friendly analytical toolkit to explore the gene expression signatures. For this purpose, we developed GESearch, an interactive graphical user interface (GUI) toolkit, which is written in MATLAB and supports a variety of gene expression data files. This analytical toolkit provides four models, including the mean, the regression, the delegate, and the ensemble models, to identify the coexpression genes, and enables the users to filter data and to select gene expression patterns by browsing the display window or by importing knowledge-based genes. Subsequently, the utility of this analytical toolkit is demonstrated by analyzing two sets of real-life microarray datasets from cell-cycle experiments. Overall, we have developed an interactive GUI toolkit that allows for choosing multiple algorithms for analyzing the gene expression signatures.

Granger causality analysis implementation on MATLAB: A graphic user interface toolkit for fMRI data processing

A lot of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have indicated that Granger causality analysis (GCA) is a suitable method to reveal causal effect among brain regions. Based on another MATLAB GUI toolkit, Resting State fMRI Data Analysis Toolkit (REST), we implemented GCA on MATLAB as a graphical user interface (GUI) toolkit. This toolkit, namely REST-GCA, could output both the residual-based F and the signed-path coefficient. REST-GCA also intergrates a programme that could transform the distribution of residual-based F to approximately normal distribution and then permit parametric statistical inference at group level. Using REST-GCA, we tested the causal effect of the right frontal-insular cortex (rFIC) onto each voxel in the whole brain, and vice versa, each voxel in the whole brain on the rFIC, in a voxel-wise way in a resting-state fMRI dataset from 30 healthy college students. Using Jarque-Bera goodness-of-fit test and the Lilliefors goodness-of-fit test, we found that the transformation from F to F′ and the further standardization from F′ to Z score substantially improved the normality. The results of one sample t-tests on Z score showed bi-directional positive causal effect between rFIC and the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC). One sample t-tests on the signed-path coefficients showed positive causal effect from rFIC to dACC but negative from dACC to rFIC. All these results indicate that REST-GCA may be useful toolkit for caudal analysis of fMRI data.

Lessons learned from programmers' experiences with one-way constraints: Research Articles

One-way constraints have been incorporated in many graphical user interface toolkits because they are simple to learn, easy to write, and can express many types of useful graphical relationships. This paper is an evaluative paper that examines users' experience with one-way constraints in two user interface development toolkits, Garnet and Amulet, over a 15-year time span. The lessons gained from this examination can help guide the design of future constraint systems. The most important lessons are that (1) constraints should be allowed to contain arbitrary code that is written in the underlying toolkit language and does not require any annotations, such as parameter declarations, (2) constraints are difficult to debug and better debugging tools are needed, and (3) programmers will readily use one-way constraints to specify the graphical layout of an application, but must be carefully and time-consumingly trained to use them for other purposes. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

TheRCommander: A Basic-Statistics Graphical User Interface toR

Unlike S-PLUS, R does not incorporate a statistical graphical user interface (GUI), but it does include tools for building GUIs. Based on the tcltk package (which furnishes an interface to the Tcl/Tk GUI toolkit), the Rcmdr package provides a basic-statistics graphical user interface to R called the

Toolkit design for interactive structured graphics

Here, we analyze toolkit designs for building graphical applications with rich user interfaces, comparing polylithic and monolithic toolkit-based solutions. Polylithic toolkits encourage extension by composition and follow a design philosophy similar to 3D scene graphs supported by toolkits including JavaSD and Openlnventor. Monolithic toolkits, on the other hand, encourage extension by inheritance, and are more akin to 2D graphical user interface toolkits such as Swing or MFC. We describe Jazz (a polylithic toolkit) and Piccolo (a monolithic toolkit), each of which we built to support interactive 2D structured graphics applications in general, and zoomable user interface applications in particular. We examine the trade offs of each approach in terms of performance, memory requirements, and programmability. We conclude that a polylithic approach is most suitable for toolkit builders, visual design software where code is automatically generated, and application builders where there is much customization of the toolkit. Correspondingly, we find that monolithic approaches appear to be best for application builders where there is not much customization of the toolkit.

Experience with SAND-Tcl: A Scripting Tool for Spatial Databases

The use of scripting makes it possible to overcome many important difficulties in the development of database applications. By extending a general-purpose scripting language with constructs derived both from the database kernel and from the intended application domain, issues such as query processing and user interfacing can be approached in an economical and flexible way. This is illustrated by describing our experience with SAND-Tcl, a scripting tool developed by us for building spatial database applications. SAND-Tcl is an extension of the Tcl-embedded scripting language with the constructs of the SAND environment for developing applications involving both spatial and non-spatial data. SAND-Tcl acts as a ‘glue’ to hold together all the subsystems of SAND. In fact, query evaluation plans are SAND-Tcl programs (or scripts) which are written on-the-fly by SAND in response to a query defined by the user. This permits the rapid prototyping of algorithms and makes SAND a useful tool both for applications and research. The focus is on data storage, retrieval operations, and spatial indexing. Implementations of operations such as spatial selection, ranking and spatial join are given. In addition, tools are described to make possible the construction of graphical user interfaces to a spatial database as well as providing users the ability to view and interact with spatial objects in a graphical manner. This is achieved through the use of SAND-Tcl scripts and the Tk graphical user interface toolkit which is tightly coupled to Tcl.

Events in Haskell, and how to implement them

We describe a new and simpler implementation in Haskell of CML's events, which encode reactions by a thread to combinations of messages from other threads. We add a new type of Guarded Events, by which recipients can filter messages with conditions on their value known as Guards. We implement guarded channels. The guard type and the indexing algorithm are not part of the channel definition, so that the user can trade off what guards are required against the cost of indexing. As an example we sketch the encapsulation of a graphical user interface toolkit. This can be done concisely not only because of guarded events, but also because we construct events monadically. Monadic events are especially helpful for representing concurrent processes which transform themselves in reaction to external communications.

Object oriented framework development

As an example, consider building a Graphical User Interface (GUI) tool kit. We might choose to design and implement a single tool kit. On the other hand, if we design the tool kit as a framework, our single design will enable us to generate a collection of tool kits for a variety of GUI applications. Frameworks must generate applications for an entire domain. Consequently, there must be points of flexibility that can be customized to suit the application. For example, one point of extensibility might be the algorithm used to draw graphical elements.

FEView: An interactive visualization tool for finite elements

This paper presents a finite element visualization facility, FEView, which has been implemented based upon an object-oriented graphics library. The visualization tool works as an external module to an interactive program Geomview for viewing and manipulating geometric objects. The graphical user interface has been built on top of the Forms Library, a graphical user interface toolkit for Silicon Graphics workstations. A finite element mesh can be considered as a collection of faces with edges, wire frame, or point cloud, and the corresponding numerical results gained through finite element analyses can be visualized via color shading and field icons (such as arrows) on the geometric shapes. Also, a scalar field can be represented as a weather map to highlight color shading domains with scalar values falling into the range of interest. Numerical results for two-dimensional cases can be shown with three-dimensional effects by using values of the scalar field. FEView provides animation control over single frame stepping and adjustable speed playing. It has been equipped with geometry operation functionality, in which a particular part of an object can be obtained by specifying material indices, element numbers, and cutting boxes. In local analysis mode, FEView is able to provide local information about finite element objects by picking up the position of interest via mouse manipulation.

Tactus: toolkit-level support for synchronized interactive multimedia

Tactus addresses problems of synchronizing and controlling various interactive continuous-time media. The Tactus system consists of two main parts. The first is a server that synchronizes the presentation of multiple media, including audio, video, graphics, and MIDI at a workstation. The second is a set of extensions to a graphical user interface toolkit to help compute and/or control temporal streams of information and deliver them to the Tactus Server. Temporal toolkit objects schedule computation events that generate media. Computation is scheduled in advance of real time to overcome system latency, and timestamps are used to allow accurate synchronization by the server in spite of computation and transmission delays. Tactus supports precomputing branches of media streams to minimize latency in interactive applications.

Object oriented run control for the CEBAF data acquisition system

The Eiffel object-oriented language has been selected for the design and implementation of the run control portion in the CEBAF (Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility) data acquisition system. The OSF/Motif graphical user interface toolkit and DataViews process control system have been incorporated into this framework. A discussion is presented of the evaluation process, the status of the implementation, and the lessons learned, particularly in the use of object-oriented techniques.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>