Video Camera Research Articles

Optical Flow-Based Obstacle Detection for Mid-Air Collision Avoidance.

The sky may seem big enough for two flying vehicles to collide, but the facts show that mid-air collisions still occur occasionally and are a significant concern. Pilots learn manual tactics to avoid collisions, such as see-and-avoid, but these rules have limitations. Automated solutions have reduced collisions, but these technologies are not mandatory in all countries or airspaces, and they are expensive. These problems have prompted researchers to continue the search for low-cost solutions. One attractive solution is to use computer vision to detect obstacles in the air due to its reduced cost and weight. A well-trained deep learning solution is appealing because object detection is fast in most cases, but it relies entirely on the training data set. The algorithm chosen for this study is optical flow. The optical flow vectors can help us to separate the motion caused by camera motion from the motion caused by incoming objects without relying on training data. This paper describes the development of an optical flow-based airborne obstacle detection algorithm to avoid mid-air collisions. The approach uses the visual information from a monocular camera and detects the obstacles using morphological filters, optical flow, focus of expansion, and a data clustering algorithm. The proposal was evaluated using realistic vision data obtained with a self-developed simulator. The simulator provides different environments, trajectories, and altitudes of flying objects. The results showed that the optical flow-based algorithm detected all incoming obstacles along their trajectories in the experiments. The results showed an F-score greater than 75% and a good balance between precision and recall.

Video camera and seismic monitoring of water bulge explosion at Strokkur Geyser, Iceland

Eruptions of volcanoes and geysers share many fundamental similarities: for example, they are manifestations of Earth’s geothermal energy, involving the pressure-driven expulsion of fluids from the Earth’s interior. However, while volcanoes can produce spectacular lava bubbles that burst, water bubbles are rarely observed on the surface of geysers. It is still unclear why some of these low-viscosity geyser systems produce none, while others produce them regularly. There is no quantification of the size, speed, and height of these bubbles at geysers, which is the gap we fill here. Strokkur creates a water bulge in its surface pool (bulge stage). When the bulge bursts, water is ejected into the air (jet stage). The steam then continues to rise buoyantly and drift away (drift stage). Here we study the evolution of the three stages using records from video camera campaigns and a local seismic network. We find that larger bulges are associated with larger ascent velocities and cause larger jet heights. As energy is channeled into a high jet, small seismic ground motions are recorded. The bulge formation itself is barely visible seismically. Our work suggests that the 0.74±0.27 s-long bulge stage can be used as a first-order proxy for predicting eruption height. This study might also be relevant for understanding fluid dynamics in volcanic systems.

Video-based sequential Bayesian homography estimation for soccer field registration

A novel Bayesian framework is proposed, which explicitly relates the homography of one video frame to the next through an affine transformation while explicitly modelling keypoint uncertainty. The literature has previously used differential homography between subsequent frames, but not in a Bayesian setting. In cases where Bayesian methods have been applied, camera motion is not adequately modelled, and keypoints are treated as deterministic. The proposed method, Bayesian Homography Inference from Tracked Keypoints (BHITK), employs a two-stage Kalman filter and significantly improves existing methods. Existing keypoint detection methods may be easily augmented with BHITK. It enables less sophisticated and less computationally expensive methods to outperform the state-of-the-art approaches in most homography evaluation metrics. Furthermore, the homography annotations of the WorldCup and TS-WorldCup datasets have been refined using a custom homography annotation tool that has been released for public use. The refined datasets are consolidated and released as the consolidated and refined WorldCup (CARWC) dataset.

Non-rigid scene reconstruction of deformable soft tissue with monocular endoscopy in minimally invasive surgery.

The utilization of image-guided surgery has demonstrated its ability to improve the precision and safety of minimally invasive surgery (MIS). Non-rigid scene reconstruction is a challenge in image-guided system duo to uniform texture, smoke, and instrument occlusion, etc. METHODS: In this paper, we introduced an algorithm for 3D reconstruction aimed at non-rigid surgery scenes. The proposed method comprises two main components: firstly, the front-end process involves the initial reconstruction of 3D information for deformable soft tissues using embedded deformation graph (EDG) on the basis of dual quaternions, enabling the reconstruction without the need for prior knowledge of the target. Secondly, the EDG is integrated with isometric nonrigid structure from motion (Iso-NRSFM) to facilitate centralized optimization of the observed map points and camera motion across different time instances in deformable scenes. For the quantitative evaluation of the proposed method, we conducted comparative experiments with both synthetic datasets and publicly available datasets against the state-of-the-art 3D reconstruction method, DefSLAM. The test results show that our proposed method achieved a maximum reduction of 1.6mm in average reconstruction error compared to method DefSLAM across all datasets. Additionally, qualitative experiments were performed on video scene datasets involving surgical instrument occlusions. Our method proved to outperform DefSLAM on both synthetic datasets and public datasets through experiments, demonstrating its robustness and accuracy in the reconstruction of soft tissues in dynamic surgical scenes. This success highlights the potential clinical application of our method in delivering surgeons with critical shape and depth information for MIS.

Effect of video angle on detection of induced front limb lameness in horses

BackgroundLameness examinations are commonly performed in equine medicine. Advancements in digital technology have increased the use of video recordings for lameness assessment, however, standardization of ideal video angle is not available yielding videos of poor diagnostic quality. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of video angle on the subjective assessment of front limb lameness. A randomized, blinded, crossover study was performed. Six horses with and without mechanically induced forelimb solar pain were recorded using 9 video angles including horses trotting directly away and towards the video camera, horses trotting away and towards a video camera placed to the left and right side of midline, and horses trotting in a circle with the video camera placed on the inside and outside of the circle. Videos were randomized and assessed by three expert equine veterinarians using a 0–5 point scoring system. Objective lameness parameters were collected using a body-mounted inertial sensor system (Lameness Locator®, Equinosis LLC). Interobserver agreement for subjective lameness scores and ease of grading scores were determined.ResultsInduction of lameness was successful in all horses. There was excellent agreement between objective lameness parameters and subjective lameness scores (AUC of the ROC = 0.87). For horses in the “lame” trials, interobserver agreement was moderate for video angle 2 when degree of lameness was considered and perfect for video angle 2 and 9 when lameness was considered as a binary outcome. All other angles had no to fair agreement. For horses in the “sound” trials, interobserver agreement was perfect for video angle 5. All other video angles had slight to moderate agreement.ConclusionsWhen video assessment of forelimb lameness is required, a video of the horse trotting directly towards the video camera at a minimum is recommended. Other video angles may provide supportive information regarding lameness characteristics.

Collective effects on the settling of clay flocs

In this work a high-magnification digital video camera in combination with a settling column is used to study in a first part the influence of the amount of flocs transferred into the settling column on their settling velocity. In a second part, the setup was used to study the properties of flocs prepared at different clay concentrations but at same flocculant to clay ratio (2.5mgg−1). Illite clay was used and flocculated in a 1 L jar with an anionic polyacrylamide (flocculant). Results show that the average settling velocity of flocs is a function of the amount of transferred flocs. It was also found that floc size and settling velocity depend on clay concentration. This is attributed to the fast aggregation happening in the jar when flocculant and clay are mixed: at higher clay concentrations, larger flocs are created in the first minutes of the experiment, with low densities that prevent them from settling to the bottom of the jar.

The A1 Adenosine Receptor Agonist N6 Cyclohexyl Adenosine Suppresses the Cold-Defense Threshold to a Surface Temperature Below 4°C in Sprague Dawley Rats

A1 adenosine receptor (A1AR) agonists have applications in targeted temperature management (TTM) for neurogenic fever, cardiac arrest and neonatal ischemic encephalopathy. By mitigating the cold-defense response the A1AR agonist N6 cyclohexyl adenosine (CHA) blocks shivering and cold-defense metabolic stress that limits the application and benefit of TTM. Stimulating CNS A1AR inhibits cold-induced shivering and nonshivering thermogenesis in rats and induces a torpor-like response in rats and hibernating species [1,2]. Dynamic control of surface temperature (Ts) in rats, designed to mimic conductive cooling used clinically, is an effective means to regulate body temperature after CHA [3]. In prior studies 17°C was the minimum Ts tested while in the clinic a fast rate of cooling is facilitated by setting cooling devices to 4°C. Unknown is if CHA suppresses the cold-defense response at a Ts of 4°C. The present study tests the hypothesis that the cold-defense threshold of CHA (1.0mg/kg, IP) is less than a Ts of 4°C, and we ask if the threshold differs between sexes. To define the cold-defense threshold, male and female Sprague-Dawley rats fed ad lib and housed at 20°C and 12:12 L:D were held overnight in a metabolic cage with a temperature-controlled surface set to 29°C and a video camera. The following day after 4h at 29°C with lights on, rats were injected with vehicle (week 1) or CHA (week 2) and the Ts was decreased to 28, 20, 16, 12, 8 and 4°C for 30min each. Cold-defense was assessed by an increase in the rate of oxygen consumption (VO2) and by behaviors suggestive of escape. Based on prior work showing a bimodal distribution of rats that respond to CHA and those that do not respond [4], we a priori chose to assess the proportion of nonresponders in the study population and to analyze responders and nonresponders separately. Of 9 rats (5 M, 4 F), one male did not respond to CHA. In rats that responded to CHA, vehicle (veh) treatment increased VO2 at Ts of 16°C to 4°C in both sexes (p<0.0001 drug x Ts, 2-way RM ANOVA; p<0.01, veh-29°C (lights on) vs veh-16, 12, 8, and 4°C, Tukey, n=8,8). CHA treatment decreased VO2 at all Ts tested (p<0.05 CHA vs Veh, Tukey, n=8,8). Females trended towards higher VO2 at 29°C than males at all Ts, but sex differences decreased after treatment with CHA. Blinded analysis of behavior is in progress. Results show that CHA lowers the threshold of Ts induced cold-defense from 16°C to below 4°C. Suppressed VO2 at Ts above 16°C illustrates CHA-induced metabolic suppression unrelated to thermogenesis. Results inform optimal Ts to minimize time to reach target temperature without a cold-defense response. 1. Jinka et al., 2011, J Neurosci 31 (30):10752-10758. 2. Tupone et al., 2013, J Neurosci 33 (36):14512-14525. 3. Laughlin et al., 2018, Ther Hypothermia Temp Manag 8 (2):108-116. 4. Bailey et., 2017, J Pharm Exp Ther 362 (3):424-430. NNX13AB28A, 22-22EPSCoR-0018, P20GM130443, P20GM103395. This is the full abstract presented at the American Physiology Summit 2024 meeting and is only available in HTML format. There are no additional versions or additional content available for this abstract. Physiology was not involved in the peer review process.

Time-resolved observation of 150 kHz high-power pulse burst high-frequency discharge using a high-speed video camera and an intensified charge coupled device camera

The discharge phase and time evolution of a 150 kHz high-power pulse burst discharge were observed. A vacuum chamber was constructed by connecting glass tubes on which a solenoid coil was wound. Burst pulses with a width of 1000 μs and a repetition rate of 10 Hz were applied to the solenoid coil. A high-speed video camera and an intensified CCD camera were used to record photographs of the discharges. Observation of the discharge phase using a high-speed camera showed that the discharge occurs at the time of 40 μs and propagates from the wall of the cylindrical reactor. Over time, the discharge pattern evolves, and a branched pattern appears. The number of the branches changes with time. The discharge blinks synchronize with the instantaneous power, which suggests that the discharge is generated and maintained by the electrostatic field generated by the sides of the coil. The propagation velocity calculated from downstream decreases with increasing pressure and increases with increasing power.

The influence of liquid height to bubble size ratio on the boiling crisis in pool boiling

We conducted experiments to analyze water boiling under 10 K subcooling and atmospheric conditions in a horizontal pool boiling test setup, focusing on the effect of liquid height above the heating surface. Our main interest was the transition in boiling crisis mechanisms at liquid heights comparable to bubble size. For pool heights above 4.0 mm, we observed a relatively constant critical heat flux (CHF) of approximately 1.21 MW/m^2. Conversely, CHF significantly dropped to around 0.19 MW/m^2 for liquid heights below 2.5 mm. For depths between 2.5 – 4.0 mm the measured CHF values varied within these limits. Our pool boiling facility featured a stainless-steel chamber filled with deionized water heated by external circulating oil. A ceramic cartridge supported a transparent heater at the cell’s center-bottom, which utilized an indium tin oxide layer on a sapphire substrate for heat dissipation. We monitored bubbles’ footprint dynamics during boiling using infrared and high-speed video cameras. Preliminary high-speed data analysis revealed different hydrodynamic mechanisms corresponding to the obtained CHFs. For heights above 4.0 mm, the formation of an irreversible dry patch is triggered by bubble interactions. Conversely, at heights below 2.5 mm, one of the bubbles nucleating shortly after the onset of boiling failed to detach from the surface shortly. Instead, it grew in size and eventually spread over the entire surface, prematurely triggering a boiling crisis. We attributed this behavior to a lack of buoyancy forces to detach the bubble from the surface as it grew above the liquid level. Pool heights between 2.5 – 4.0 mm showed both behaviors. Further investigations will focus on exploring the transition in boiling mechanisms shifting from buoyancy- to surface-tension-dominated processes by varying bubble dimensions through the introduction of surfactants. Ultimately, we aim to analyze fundamental boiling parameters and heat flux to characterize how boiling dynamics, boiling crisis and CHF value vary with the bubble-to-liquid height ratio.

Experimental investigation of electrically enhanced boiling of FC 72 using high-resolution phase-detection diagnostics

This work features the boiling of FC72 on a transparent sapphire substrate. Tests are performed using a thin ITO film (indium tin oxide) coated on the sapphire substrate as the heat source, a fast speed video camera to capture the boiling process using a technique to track the phase (liquid or vapor) in contact with the heating surface, an InfraRed video camera to capture the average temperature on the surface, and a metallic grid to impose an electric field perpendicular to the boiling surface. The maximum average electric field tested in this work is 3.3kV/mm, which led to a 18% increase of the critical heat flux. This study analyses in detail the phase distribution data showing that (1) there is no evidence of microlayer formation, and suggesting that (2) the triple contact line evaporation accounts for approximately 20% of the total heat flux, while (3) the quenching stage accounts for approximately 80%. Finally, phase distribution images are processed to characterize the size of vapor patches, showing that a boiling crisis occurs when the distribution of the vapor patches becomes scale-free, and corroborating the hypothesis that the boiling crisis can be modelled as a bubble interaction instability using a percolation model.

Model test study on the dynamic response of surrounding rock in deep buried tunnel under explosive plane wave

In order to clarify the dynamic failure mechanism in deep buried tunnels, a modeling test of the dynamic response of the surrounding rock in deep buried tunnels under the action of explosion plane wave was carried out by using the geotechnical multi-functional test device. Based on Froude’s similarity theory, a model with dimensions of 1600 × 1300 × 400 mm was constructed using low-strength cement mortar. Using the detonating fuse as the explosive source, the explosion tests were conducted with an equivalent TNT amount of 52.8 g and 105.6 g, respectively. According to the measured data, the stress and deformation characteristics of the surrounding rock, the motion and deformation characteristics of the tunnel and the dynamic instability process of the tunnel were analyzed. The results show that explosive stress waves exhibit exponential attenuation above the arch crown of the tunnel, with the rate of attenuation depending on the amount of explosive used. The deformation process of the surrounding rock of the crown in the tunnel arch under the action of the explosion stress wave was compression followed by tension, which fully proves the existence of the reflected tensile wave. Movement and deformation parameters within the tunnel escalate as the explosive charge increases, especially at the crown of the arch. According to the monitoring results of the motion camera, the dynamic instability process of the tunnel was divided into several stages, such as initial calm, tunnel vibration, particle ejection, atomization, local block ejection, and return to calm. The results of the study have important reference value for the safe excavation and effective support of deep underground engineering.

Moving Object Detection in Freely Moving Camera via Global Motion Compensation and Local Spatial Information Fusion.

Motion object detection (MOD) with freely moving cameras is a challenging task in computer vision. To extract moving objects, most studies have focused on the difference in motion features between foreground and background, which works well for dynamic scenes with relatively regular movements and variations. However, abrupt illumination changes and occlusions often occur in real-world scenes, and the camera may also pan, tilt, rotate, and jitter, etc., resulting in local irregular variations and global discontinuities in motion features. Such complex and changing scenes bring great difficulty in detecting moving objects. To solve this problem, this paper proposes a new MOD method that effectively leverages local and global visual information for foreground/background segmentation. Specifically, on the global side, to support a wider range of camera motion, the relative inter-frame transformations are optimized to absolute transformations referenced to intermediate frames in a global form after enriching the inter-frame matching pairs. The global transformation is fine-tuned using the spatial transformer network (STN). On the local side, to address the problem of dynamic background scenes, foreground object detection is optimized by utilizing the pixel differences between the current frame and the local background model, as well as the consistency of local spatial variations. Then, the spatial information is combined using optical flow segmentation methods, enhancing the precision of the object information. The experimental results show that our method achieves a detection accuracy improvement of over 1.5% compared with the state-of-the-art methods on the datasets of CDNET2014, FBMS-59, and CBD. It demonstrates significant effectiveness in challenging scenarios such as shadows, abrupt changes in illumination, camera jitter, occlusion, and moving backgrounds.

Algorithm for tracking an object observed by а video camera

Algorithm for tracking an object observed by а video camera

Robust tracking of deformable anatomical structures with severe occlusions using deformable geometrical primitives

Background and objective:Surgical robotics tends to develop cognitive control architectures to provide certain degree of autonomy to improve patient safety and surgery outcomes, while decreasing the required surgeons’ cognitive load dedicated to low level decisions. Cognition needs workspace perception, which is an essential step towards automatic decision-making and task planning capabilities. Robust and accurate detection and tracking in minimally invasive surgery suffers from limited visibility, occlusions, anatomy deformations and camera movements. Method:This paper develops a robust methodology to detect and track anatomical structures in real time to be used in automatic control of robotic systems and augmented reality. The work focuses on the experimental validation in highly challenging surgery: fetoscopic repair of Open Spina Bifida. The proposed method is based on two sequential steps: first, selection of relevant points (contour) using a Convolutional Neural Network and, second, reconstruction of the anatomical shape by means of deformable geometric primitives. Results:The methodology performance was validated with different scenarios. Synthetic scenario tests, designed for extreme validation conditions, demonstrate the safety margin offered by the methodology with respect to the nominal conditions during surgery. Real scenario experiments have demonstrated the validity of the method in terms of accuracy, robustness and computational efficiency. Conclusions:This paper presents a robust anatomical structure detection in present of abrupt camera movements, severe occlusions and deformations. Even though the paper focuses on a case study, Open Spina Bifida, the methodology is applicable in all anatomies which contours can be approximated by geometric primitives. The methodology is designed to provide effective inputs to cognitive robotic control and augmented reality systems that require accurate tracking of sensitive anatomies.

MMD-MSD: A Multimodal Multisensory Dataset in Support of Research and Technology Development for Musculoskeletal Disorders

Improper sitting positions are known as the primary reason for back pain and the emergence of musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) among individuals who spend prolonged time working with computer screens, keyboards, and mice. At the same time, it is well understood that automated technological tools can play an important role in the process of unhealthy habit alteration, so plenty of research efforts are focused on research and technology development (RTD) activities that aim to provide support for the prevention of back pain or the development of MSDs. Here, we report on creating a new resource in support of RTD activities aiming at the automated detection of improper sitting positions. It consists of multimodal multisensory recordings of 100 persons, made with a video recorder, camera, and wrist-attached sensors that capture physiological signals (PPG, EDA, skin temperature), as well as motion sensors (three-axis accelerometer). Our multimodal multisensory dataset (MMD-MSD) opens new opportunities for modeling the body stance (sitting posture and movements), physiological state (stress level, attention, emotional arousal and valence), and performance (success rate on the Stroop test) of people working with a computer. Finally, we demonstrate two use cases: improper neck posture detection from pictures, and task-specific cognitive load detection from physiological signals.

The Importance of an Unmanned Surface Vehicle: A Point of View

In the world there are various types of unmanned vehicles: Unmanned ground vehicle, unmanned aerial vehicle, unmanned surface vehicle and unmanned underwater vehicle. The objective of this paper, however, is to present the importance of an unmanned surface vehicle (USV) in the Black Sea. The safe operations of all USVs are carried out by experienced and qualified operators. These operators can control a USV from a ship or from land. An USV is equipped with various devices (eg. video camera, long range antennae or autopilot box) depending on the mission it has to carry out at sea. These boats are launched through launch and recovery system (LARS). Furthermore, the USVs do not pollute and do not make noise during their activity on sea. Finally, it is expected that the unmanned surface vehicles will further develop, depending on new requirements present in the Black Sea.

Cinematographic Camera Diffusion Model

AbstractDesigning effective camera trajectories in virtual 3D environments is a challenging task even for experienced animators. Despite an elaborate film grammar, forged through years of experience, that enables the specification of camera motions through cinematographic properties (framing, shots sizes, angles, motions), there are endless possibilities in deciding how to place and move cameras with characters. Dealing with these possibilities is part of the complexity of the problem. While numerous techniques have been proposed in the literature (optimization‐based solving, encoding of empirical rules, learning from real examples,…), the results either lack variety or ease of control.In this paper, we propose a cinematographic camera diffusion model using a transformer‐based architecture to handle temporality and exploit the stochasticity of diffusion models to generate diverse and qualitative trajectories conditioned by high‐level textual descriptions. We extend the work by integrating keyframing constraints and the ability to blend naturally between motions using latent interpolation, in a way to augment the degree of control of the designers. We demonstrate the strengths of this text‐to‐camera motion approach through qualitative and quantitative experiments and gather feedback from professional artists. The code and data are available at https://github.com/jianghd1996/Camera-control.

Bi-State Prediction Network Model for Mixed Traffic Congestion Prediction

Forecasting traffic congestion has become an important issue than ever before. Information provided by traffic congestion prediction methods becomes helpful to traffic management agencies to take suitable actions in due time. On the other hand, with prior information, passengers can plan their trip routes accordingly. In this paper, we tackle the problem of mixed traffic congestion prediction and develop a new Bi-State Prediction Network (BiSPNet). Two heads form BiSPNet. Each head information passed through the layers of three-dimensional convolution (Conv3D), two-dimensional convolutional long short-term memory (ConvLSTM2D), and two-dimensional convolution (Conv2D). Then the dense layer merges both head outputs. These layers capacitate the model to capture the characteristics of multiple inputs. The proposed model is validated by the ground truth data collected by the video cameras installed on the roadways in Delhi, India. Experimental results confirm that the prediction accuracy of the BiSPNet model surpasses that of several state-of-the-art benchmark models. In particular, the BiSPNet reduces mean absolute error by 53.23%, 40.95%, and 0.38%, respectively, in congestion score prediction for 5, 10, and 15-min time horizons compared to the mixed deep learning network (MDLNet). The source data and code can be accessed on GitHub at the following link: https://github.com/amanojup/ .

Asymmetric gap balancing improves knee kinematic following primary total knee arthroplasty

PurposeThe purpose of this study was to demonstrate closer-to-normal knee kinematics following primary total knee arthroplasty (TKA) performed establishing asymmetric gap balancing intraoperatively.Material and methodTwo age-, sex-, BMI-matched groups of patients underwent medially stabilized TKA because of isolated knee disease. Group A (12 patients) underwent “unrestricted” kinematic alignment (uKA) according to Howell while group B (15 patients) received robot-assisted “simplified” KA (sKA) with an alignment goal (Hip-Knee-Ankle axis-HKA) ± 5° respect to the mechanical axis. Intraoperatively, in group B, the flexion gap at 90° was first set at an average of 1.5 mm (0–5 mm; SD 4.4 mm) tighter in the medial compartment with respect to the lateral; in the same way, the extension gap was then set at an average of 2.0 mm (0–4.5 mm; SD 3.1 mm) tighter in the medial compartment with respect to the lateral. All patients, including a non-arthritic cohort (group C: 5 controls) underwent gait analysis using an instrumented treadmill (WalkerView–WV) equipped with an instrumented belt armed with a 3D video camera. The WV software evaluated multiple spatiotemporal and kinematic parameters, including: (1) contact time (s); (2) knee ROM during gait cycle; (3) step length percentage with respect to total gait (%) and pure step length (cm). Statistical analyses included t-Test and ANOVA and were conducted by using SPSS.ResultsAt the final FU, significant differences were noted during gait between the two TKA groups (uKA-sKA) and the controls. Both TKA groups showed superior mean contact time on the surgical knee (uKA 1 s; sKA 0.97 s) as compared to the controls (0.72 s) (P = 0.002) while no differences were found between them (P = 0.11). TKA groups showed a lower, maximum ROM in the surgical knee (mean uKA 36º; mean sKA 49º) relative to the controls (mean 57º) (P < 0.05) but a statistical difference was found between them (P = 0.003). Both TKA groups showed a higher step length percentage with respect to the total gait and a shorter step length on the surgical side (uKA: mean 8.28% and mean step length 35.5 cm; sKA: mean 8.38% and mean step length 34.6 cm) in comparison to the controls (mean 3.38%; mean step length 71.4 cm) (P < 0.05) while no statistical differences were found between them.ConclusionTo our knowledge, this was the first study to exhibit the kinematic advantages of a slightly asymmetric gap balancing during KA TKA. Combining a medially-stabilized implant design and a surgical technique aiming to obtain a tighter medial compartment represents a promising approach to improve outcomes after TKA.Graphical

Massive field-of-view sub-cellular traction force videography enabled by Single-Pixel Optical Tracers (SPOT)

We report a massive field-of-view and high-speed videography platform for measuring the sub-cellular traction forces of more than 10,000 biological cells over 13 mm2 at 83 frames per second. Our Single-Pixel Optical Tracers (SPOT) tool uses 2-dimensional diffraction gratings embedded into a soft substrate to convert cells' mechanical traction force into optical colors detectable by a video camera. The platform measures the sub-cellular traction forces of diverse cell types, including tightly connected tissue sheets and near isolated cells. We used this platform to explore the mechanical wave propagation in a tightly connected sheet of Neonatal Rat Ventricular Myocytes (NRVMs) and discovered that the activation time of some tissue regions are heterogeneous from the overall spiral wave behavior of the cardiac wave.