Visual Appearance Research Articles

Expression of Concern: CD30 expression is frequently decreased in relapsed classic Hodgkin lymphoma after anti-CD30 CAR T-cell therapy.

Marques-Piubelli, M.L., Kim, D.H., Medeiros, L.J., Lu, W., Khan, K., Gomez-Bolanos, L.I., Rodriguez, S., Parra, E.R., Ok, C.Y., Aradhya, A., Solis, L.M., Nieto, Y.L., Steiner, R., Ahmed, S. and Vega, F. (2023), CD30 expression is frequently decreased in relapsed classic Hodgkin lymphoma after anti-CD30 CAR T-cell therapy. Histopathology, 83: 143-148. https://doi.org/10.1111/his.14910 This Expression of Concern is for the above article, published online on 30 March 2023 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com), and has been published by agreement between the journal Editor-in-Chief, Daniel Berney and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. The Expression of Concern has been agreed due to concerns raised by a third party regarding duplicated sections within some of the panels of Figure 1. The authors admitted to these image alterations which were performed to enhance the visual appearance of the images (correcting folded areas or filling in blank spaces). The authors were able to provide the original, unmodified images and stated that they did not want to misrepresent the critical data or to compromise the scientific integrity of the manuscript. However, the modification of the images to change the appearance is clearly against the ethical policy of Histopathology and Wiley's Best Practice Guidelines on Research Integrity and Publishing Ethics. Therefore, the journal has decided to issue an Expression of Concern to inform and alert the readers.

Ultra-Lightweight Fast Anomaly Detectors for Industrial Applications.

Quality inspection in the pharmaceutical and food industry is crucial to ensure that products are safe for the customers. Among the properties that are controlled in the production process are chemical composition, the content of the active substances, and visual appearance. Although the latter may not influence the product's properties, it lowers customers' confidence in drugs or food and affects brand perception. The visual appearance of the consumer goods is typically inspected during the packaging process using machine vision quality inspection systems. In line with the current trends, the processing of the images is often supported with deep neural networks, which increases the accuracy of detection and classification of faults. Solutions based on AI are best suited to production lines with a limited number of formats or highly repeatable production. In the case where formats differ significantly from each other and are often being changed, a quality inspection system has to enable fast training. In this paper, we present a fast method for image anomaly detection that is used in high-speed production lines. The proposed method meets these requirements: It is easy and fast to train, even on devices with limited computing power. The inference time for each production sample is sufficient for real-time scenarios. Additionally, the ultra-lightweight algorithm can be easily adapted to different products and different market segments. In this work, we present the results of our algorithm on three different real production data gathered from food and pharmaceutical industries.

Variations in morphology of permanent maxillary lateral incisors and its impact on oral hygiene and diseases

The permanent maxillary lateral incisors are of great importance from an aesthetic standpoint, as any variation in their shape can lead to an unfavorable visual appearance. Furthermore, morphological variations such as peg-shaped, barrel-shaped, shovel-shaped, and canine-shaped teeth can impact oral hygiene and lead to additional health problems. The etiology of these variations is multifactorial, including genetic, epigenetic, and environmental factors. This paper aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the most common morphological variations of the permanent lateral incisors, including their causes, associated dilemmas, treatment modalities, and the various health and hygiene issues associated with these diverse physical characteristics. By highlighting the potential health and hygiene issues associated with these variations, this paper aims to increase awareness among dental professionals and the general public about the importance of regular dental care and check-ups to maintain oral health and aesthetics. A comprehensive understanding of the causes, dilemmas, and treatment modalities of these morphological variations can aid dental professionals in providing effective and personalized care to their patients. In conclusion, the morphology of the permanent maxillary lateral incisors plays a critical role in dental aesthetics, hygiene, and health.

Integrating Users’ Perceptions to Identify Features Indicating the Quality of Cancer-Related Podcasts Provided by Non-Profit Cancer Organisations

While cancer podcasts are valuable for support and information, there is a significant gap in understanding their quality features from users’ perspectives. Understanding quality features from users’ perspectives is important to ensure that cancer-affected people receive the support they need. This study addresses this gap by combining multiple theoretical perspectives: a. the IQ assessment framework, source credibility theory, two-factor theory of website design to assess the quality of podcasts, and b. reception theory to highlight listeners’ perception of quality. These perspectives, together, enrich the concept of information systems quality and provide a comprehensive understanding of podcasts’ quality. Through semi-structured interviews with 17 cancer-affected individuals, the research found that credibility, content, and design were essential quality features, with the visual appearance serving as a motivational factor. The integration of Reception Theory highlights users’ active role in shaping quality perceptions, offering new insights into the effective design of cancer-related podcasts. This novel approach bridges a critical research gap, illuminating the complex interplay of technical and human factors in assessing podcast quality from the perspective of users.

Aesthetic Preference of Timber Joints in Architectural Products

This study investigates how Australian consumers’ aesthetic preferences for timber joints in architectural products are influenced by their sociodemographic characteristics and the visual appearance of the joints. Visual appearance in architecture and product design is a vital factor in consumer response and success of a product; however, designed items are often created without aesthetic research rigour to better understand user acceptance. We see this as an opportunity for greater penetration of aesthetics for designed products and, in this instance, contemporary architecture. We provide extensive literature defining aesthetics and outline the theoretical framework for experimental computer-generated visual stimuli. An online survey was conducted with 114 participants, who rated five timber joints on seven visual appearance attributes. The findings reveal that Joint 1 (angular) and Joint 5 (curved) were the most preferred joints. Employment status was the only sociodemographic factor that significantly affected the aesthetic preference. The findings of the study were used to inform design decisions for building a pagoda in a cemetery in Melbourne. The study contributes to the literature on aesthetics and design by providing empirical evidence on consumer preferences for architectural products. The study also suggests an opportunity to bridge aesthetics with sustainability, as timber is a sustainable material that can be designed to resonate with consumers’ aesthetic sensibilities while adhering to environmental principles.

An Evaluation Study of Shading Devices and Their Impact on the Aesthetic Perception vs. Their Energy Efficiency

Sunlight control tools, such as shading devices, are used to improve buildings' thermal and visual conditions. One of the concerns about using shading devices is their potential to harm the visual appearance of buildings. This study aims to study the aesthetic perception of different shading devices while concurrently evaluating their energy performance. Augmented reality was used to place virtual shading devices onto a building's façade at Jordan University of Science and Technology (JUST). One hundred two students from JUST evaluated eight shading devices on a seven-step semantic differential scale. Participants comprised 49 students from Architecture and Design College and 53 students from other colleges. The energy efficiency of shading devices was tested using DesignBuilder. The results revealed that certain types of shading devices were perceived as more aesthetically pleasing than others. Architecture students and non-architecture students showed significant differences in their affective responses. Regarding shading devices, shape-morphing and horizontal-louvres devices are the most preferred by participants, while egg-crate devices are the least recommended. Regarding energy efficiency, results showed that the tested shading devices improved buildings' energy efficiency by 7% (vertical fins) to 17% (egg crate) compared to the base case and did not negatively impact their visual appearance.

Implementing Fractal to Define Balinese Traditional Architectural Facade Beauty: The Kori Agung

Fractals have been theoretically used to explain visual beauty from the urban scale to the context of architectural facades. How we perceive the visual beauty of architecture is likely dependent on subjectivity. However, the fractal is applicable for defining visual beauty and as a quantifiable method that provides objectivity for analysis. Previous research has used fractals, particularly in faca­des, to determine the beauty in complex geometry and quantify the complexity. However, the application of fractals in traditional architecture remains to be explored. Therefore, this article will discuss in detail how fractal is a suitable method to study the visual beauty of traditional architectural facades using fractal geometry and fractal dimension index. The case used to illustrate the imple­mentation is Kori Agung of Balinese traditional architecture, known for its grandeur and luxurious facade images. It embodies the visual beauty of its facade due to its textured, layered, and complex visual appearance.

Anthropomorphic Design and Self-Reported Behavioral Trust: The Case of a Virtual Assistant in a Highly Automated Car

The latest advances in car automation present new challenges in vehicle–driver interactions. Indeed, acceptance and adoption of high levels of automation (when full control of the driving task is given to the automated system) are conditioned by human factors such as user trust. In this work, we study the impact of anthropomorphic design on user trust in the context of a highly automated car. A virtual assistant was designed using two levels of anthropomorphic design: “voice-only” and “voice with visual appearance”. The visual appearance was a three-dimensional model, integrated as a hologram in the cockpit of a driving simulator. In a driving simulator study, we compared the three interfaces: two versions of the virtual assistant interface and the baseline interface with no anthropomorphic attributes. We measured trust versus perceived anthropomorphism. We also studied the evolution of trust throughout a range of driving scenarios. We finally analyzed participants’ reaction time to takeover request events. We found a significant correlation between perceived anthropomorphism and trust. However, the three interfaces tested did not significantly differentiate in terms of perceived anthropomorphism while trust converged over time across all our measurements. Finally, we found that the anthropomorphic assistant positively impacts reaction time for one takeover request scenario. We discuss methodological issues and implication for design and further research.

An Adaptive Fractal Image Steganography Using Mandelbrot and Linear Congruent Generator

Despite the advancements that occurred in the field of technology, information security (i.e., IS) is still deemed important and critical topic. It is still especially deemed so during the transfer process. In this research, a new approach is proposed for hiding information through the use of iterated function systems (i.e., IFS) from Fractals. This approach employs the main feature of fractals that concentrate on the idea that hackers who seek to find the hidden data shall not be able of locating it. Therefore, there is a need to carry out a decoding process in the aim of revering the conversion for securing the transmitted information. In this research, the secure information is hidden inside a fractal Mandelbrot image using the Linear Congruent Generator (i.e., LCG). Regarding the proposed system, it generates the fractal image through the use of the predefined knowledge gained from the hider site that works as a host for different types of secret messages. The knowledge that comes from the key of image dimensions, parameters of Mandelbrot, LCG key, and key agreement of cryptography method, which makes Stego-image analyses of hidden data unacceptable without the correct knowledge. Based on the results that are obtained through carrying out experiments showed the proposed method meets all the requirements for steganography. Such requirements include: the ones related to capacity, visual appearance, undetectability, robustness against extraction (i.e., security), and hit the highest capacities with a visual appearance of high quality.

Social support of virtual characters reduces pain perception.

Psychosocial factors, such as social support, can reduce pain. Virtual reality (VR) is a powerful tool to decrease pain, but social factors in VR-based pain analgesia have rarely been studied. Specifically, it is unclear whether social support by virtual characters can reduce pain and whether the perceived control behind virtual characters (agency) and varying degrees of social cues impact pain perception. Healthy participants (N = 97) received heat pain stimulation while undergoing four within-subject conditions in immersive VR: (1) virtual character with a low number of social cues (virtual figure) provided verbal support, (2) virtual character with a high number of social cues (virtual human) provided verbal support, (3) no social support (hearing neutral words), (4) no social support. Perceived agency of the virtual characters served as between-subjects factor. Participants in the avatar group were led to believe that another participant controlled the virtual characters. Participants in the agent group were told they interacted with a computer. However, in both conditions, virtual characters were computer-controlled. Pain ratings, psychophysiological measurements and presence ratings were recorded. Virtual social support decreased pain intensity and pain unpleasantness ratings but had no impact on electrodermal activity nor heart rate. A virtual character with a high number of social cues led to lower pain unpleasantness and higher feelings of presence. Agency had no significant impact. Virtual characters providing social support can reduce pain independent of perceived agency. A more human visual appearance can have beneficial effects on social pain modulation by virtual characters. Social influences are important factors in pain modulation. The current study demonstrated analgesic effects through verbal support provided by virtual characters and investigated modulating factors. A more human appearance of a virtual character resulted in a higher reduction of pain unpleasantness. Importantly, agency of the virtual characters had no impact. Given the increasing use of digital health interventions, the findings suggest a positive impact of virtual characters for digital pain treatments.

Incorporation of Young Coconut (Cocos nucifera) Mesocarp Increases the Antioxidant Activity, Phenolic Compounds and Oxidative Stability of Cookies

Young coconut mesocarp (YCM) contains considerable phenolic compounds that provide high antioxidant activity. However, the YCM is identified as an underutilized by-product in food industries. A novel functional food derived from YCM, viz., cookies, was proposed through this study to take advantage of the containing antioxidants. The cookies were prepared using regular flour (CR) or substituted with YCM powder at 8 (C8) or 16 % (C16). The macro components (carbohydrate, protein, fat and ash), in vitro antioxidant activities, and the level of individual phenolic compounds in the cookies were measured. The addition of YCM powder increased the crude fiber by up to 5 % and moisture content by about 2 - 3 %. Conversely, the fat level was lowered by 1 %. The in vitro antioxidant activities of cookies C8 and C16 were noticeably increased compared to the CR. The increase was attributable to the presence of phenolic compounds such as catechin and 3 caffeic acid derivatives, which were retained after the baking process. The addition of YCM changed the visual appearance by darkening the color of cookies which was indicated by lightness at 45.33 and 23.87; a* value was 17.30 and 18.97; b* value was 29.47 and 19.83; and chroma at 34.15 and 27.49, for C8 and C16, respectively. The addition of YCM also reduced the hardness due to the presence of moisture content in the incorporated cookies. Additionally, the addition of YCM was effective in prolonging shelf-life by increasing the oxidative stability of YCM-based cookies, indicated by the lower peroxide value (0.1 mEq O2·kg–1) after 4 months of storage compared to the regular cookies. YCM powder can be an alternative source of antioxidants, and it may be possible to include YCM powder in cookies and other pastries to increase their nutritional value and antioxidant activity to produce functional food. HIGHLIGHTS Young coconut mesocarp (YCM) was used as an ingredient to produce functional cookies and produce a higher fiber and ash but lower lipid and protein content compared to regular cookies The incorporation of YCM into the cookies increased the antioxidant activity and phenolic compounds in the cookies The addition of YCM prolongs the shelf-life of cookies compared to the reference cookies by lowering the fat content due to the high fiber and inhibiting the oxidation process due to the presence of catechin, chlorogenic and 3 caffeic acid derivatives GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

The Effect of Interocular Contrast Differences on the Appearance of Augmented Reality Imagery

Augmented reality (AR) devices seek to create compelling visual experiences that merge virtual imagery with the natural world. These devices often rely on wearable near-eye display systems that can optically overlay digital images to the left and right eyes of the user separately. Ideally, the two eyes should be shown images with minimal radiometric differences (e.g., the same overall luminance, contrast, and color in both eyes), but achieving this binocular equality can be challenging in wearable systems with stringent demands on weight and size. Basic vision research has shown that a spectrum of potentially detrimental perceptual effects can be elicited by imagery with radiometric differences between the eyes, but it is not clear whether and how these findings apply to the experience of modern AR devices. In this work, we first develop a testing paradigm for assessing multiple aspects of visual appearance at once, and characterize five key perceptual factors when participants viewed stimuli with interocular contrast differences. In a second experiment, we simulate optical see-through AR imagery using conventional desktop LCD monitors and use the same paradigm to evaluate the multi-faceted perceptual implications when the AR display luminance differs between the two eyes. We also include simulations of monocular AR systems (i.e., systems in which only one eye sees the displayed image). Our results suggest that interocular contrast differences can drive several potentially detrimental perceptual effects in binocular AR systems, such as binocular luster, rivalry, and spurious depth differences. In addition, monocular AR displays tend to have more artifacts than binocular displays with a large contrast difference in the two eyes. A better understanding of the range and likelihood of these perceptual phenomena can help inform design choices that support high-quality user experiences in AR.

Manipulating Underfoot Tactile Perceptions of Flooring Materials in Augmented Virtuality

Underfoot haptics, a largely unexplored area, offers rich tactile information close to that of hand-based interactions. Haptic feedback gives a sense of physicality to virtual environments, making for a more realistic and immersive experience. Augmented Virtuality offers the ability to render virtual materials on a physical object, or haptic proxy, without the user being aware of the object’s physical appearance while seeing their own body. In this research, we investigate how the visual appearance of physical objects can be altered virtually to impact the tactile perception of the object. An Augmented Virtuality system was developed to explore this, and two tactile perception experiments, consisting of 18 participants, were conducted. Specifically, we explore whether changing the visual appearance of materials affects a person’s underfoot tactile perception and which tactile perception is most affected by the change through a within-subjects experiment. Additionally, the study examines whether people are aware of changes in visual appearance when focused on other tasks through a between-subjects experiment. The study showed that a change in visual appearance significantly impacts the tactile perception of roughness. Matching visual appearance to physical materials was found to increase awareness of tactile perception.

Study on the coupling effect of chemical color and structural color for Lushan speckle porcelain glaze in the Tang Dynasty (618-907 A.D.)

The Lushan speckle porcelain glaze with charming color fired in the Tang Dynasty (618-907A.D.), is the earliest high-temperature kiln-changed glaze. To clarify its coloring mechanism, the correlation among composition, microstructure and visual appearance of the shards excavated from Lushan kiln site was investigated by XRF, XPS, SEM and TEM. The results indicated that the coloring of sky-blue or moon-white opalescence glaze of the Lushan speckle porcelain was the combination of the chemical color of iron ions and the structural color formed by the coherent scattering of phase-separated droplets. The high atomic ratio of Fe2+/Fe3+ and the small average diameter of phase-separated droplets were beneficial for the formation of the blue opalescence with high color saturation. In addition, it was precisely the presence of black bottom-glaze that incoherent scattering light was greatly absorbed, leading to a higher contrast and a more pronounced structural color of the opalescence glaze.

Nitric Oxide (NO) Improves Wheat Growth under Dehydration Conditions by Regulating Phytohormone Levels and Induction of the Expression of the TADHN Dehydrin Gene

Nitric oxide (NO) is a universal signaling molecule with important regulatory functions in the plant’s life cycle and adaptation to a wide spectrum of environmental stresses including drought. The effect of pre-sowing seed treatment with the donor of NO sodium nitroprusside (SNP, 200 μM) on wheat Triticum aestivum L. plants subjected to dehydration (PEG-8000, 12%) was investigated. SNP pretreatment stimulated germination and seedling growth in normal conditions and protected them under dehydration. These effects were confirmed by percentage of seed germination, changes in fresh and dry weight of 5–6-day-old seedlings, as well as by seedlings’ linear dimensions, visual appearance, and mitotic index of the root apical meristem. Assessment of the transpiration intensity (TI) and relative water content (RWC) showed that SNP pretreatment helped to maintain the water status of seedlings subjected to dehydration stress. The data obtained by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) suggested that the positive effects of SNP may be due to its influence on the phytohormonal system. SNP pretreatment induced an increase in the level of indolylacetic acid (IAA) and especially cytokinins (CK), while essential changes in ABA content were not detected. Water deficiency caused a substantial increase in ABA content and a decrease in the levels of CK and IAA. Pre-sowing SNP treatment decreased stress-induced fluctuations in the content of all studied phytohormones. Using reverse-transcription PCR (RT-PCR), we obtained data on the increase in expression of the TADHN dehydrin gene in SNP-pretreated seedlings under normal and, especially, under dehydration conditions. These findings may indicate the participation of dehydrins in NO-induced defense reactions in wheat plants under water stress. Furthermore, exogenous NO had a stabilizing effect on membrane cellular structures, as evidenced by the reduction of electrolyte leakage (EL) levels and malondialdehyde (MDA) content in dehydrated wheat seedlings under the influence of pre-sowing SNP treatment.

Efficient Contrast Adjustment and Fusion Method for Underexposed Images in Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems

Owing to imaging equipment's environment and limitations, the images obtained in industrial cyber-physical systems (ICPSs) are degraded and available in various visual appearances. The process of highlighting the hidden contents in night-time contrast-distorted images is complex. Earlier approaches have solved this problem from a different perspective and achieved remarkable results that are generally unsatisfactory for images with diverse illumination distortions in ICPSs. Hence, an effective visibility enhancement model is proposed to eliminate inconsistent color casts while highlighting more hidden content for improved inspection, safety in large spaces, and monitoring of large systems. Our proposed model has four steps: 1) removal of the unnatural color cast via a white balance technique, 2) use of probability density and softplus functions to process the images with the actual color cast, 3) using an optimization algorithm to estimate the illumination and adjusting it using a nonlinear function, and 4) blending by multiscale fusion to obtain the most effective visual result. Evaluation of ten benchmark datasets using 14 quality metrics for 22 conventional and modern algorithms shows that our approach is robust, flexible, and applicable to numerous vision-based applications, such as ICPSs, autonomous vehicles, smart cameras, smart mobility, and transportation, especially in low-light environments.

Parameterized Gompertz-Guided Morphological AutoEncoder for Predicting Pulmonary Nodule Growth.

The growth rate of pulmonary nodules is a critical clue to the cancerous diagnosis. It is essential to monitor their dynamic progressions during pulmonary nodule management. To facilitate the prosperity of research on nodule growth prediction, we organized and published a temporal dataset called NLSTt with consecutive computed tomography (CT) scans. Based on the self-built dataset, we develop a visual learner to predict the growth for the following CT scan qualitatively and further propose a model to predict the growth rate of pulmonary nodules quantitatively, so that better diagnosis can be achieved with the help of our predicted results. To this end, in this work, we propose a parameterized Gempertz-guided morphological autoencoder (GM-AE) to generate any future-time-span high-quality visual appearances of pulmonary nodules from the baseline CT scan. Specifically, we parameterize a popular mathematical model for tumor growth kinetics, Gompertz, to predict future masses and volumes of pulmonary nodules. Then, we exploit the expected growth rate on the mass and volume to guide decoders generating future shape and texture of pulmonary nodules. We introduce two branches in an autoencoder to encourage shape-aware and textural-aware representation learning and integrate the generated shape into the textural-aware branch to simulate the future morphology of pulmonary nodules. We conduct extensive experiments on the self-built NLSTt dataset to demonstrate the superiority of our GM-AE to its competitive counterparts. Experiment results also reveal the learnable Gompertz function enjoys promising descriptive power in accounting for inter-subject variability of the growth rate for pulmonary nodules. Besides, we evaluate our GM-AE model on an in-house dataset to validate its generalizability and practicality. We make its code publicly available along with the published NLSTt dataset.

A Deep Convolutional Gated Recurrent Unit for CT Image Reconstruction.

Computed tomography (CT) is one of the most important medical imaging technologies in use today. Most commercial CT products use a technique known as the filtered backprojection (FBP) that is fast and can produce decent image quality when an X-ray dose is high. However, the FBP is not good enough on low-dose X-ray CT imaging because the CT image reconstruction problem becomes more stochastic. A more effective reconstruction technique proposed recently and implemented in a limited number of CT commercial products is an iterative reconstruction (IR). The IR technique is based on a Bayesian formulation of the CT image reconstruction problem with an explicit model of the CT scanning, including its stochastic nature, and a prior model that incorporates our knowledge about what a good CT image should look like. However, constructing such prior knowledge is more complicated than it seems. In this article, we propose a novel neural network for CT image reconstruction. The network is based on the IR formulation and constructed with a recurrent neural network (RNN). Specifically, we transform the gated recurrent unit (GRU) into a neural network performing CT image reconstruction. We call it "GRU reconstruction." This neural network conducts concurrent dual-domain learning. Many deep learning (DL)-based methods in medical imaging are single-domain learning, but dual-domain learning performs better because it learns from both the sinogram and the image domain. In addition, we propose backpropagation through stage (BPTS) as a new RNN backpropagation algorithm. It is similar to the backpropagation through time (BPTT) of an RNN; however, it is tailored for iterative optimization. Results from extensive experiments indicate that our proposed method outperforms conventional model-based methods, single-domain DL methods, and state-of-the-art DL techniques in terms of the root mean squared error (RMSE), the peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), and the structure similarity (SSIM) and in terms of visual appearance.

Assessments of Mean Reflectance Surface Exitance and Contrast in a Museum: Comparison Between Simulation, Calculation and Field Measurements

Museums are artistic centers that attract people as tourist destinations, allowing them to appreciate art, and learn about history, culture, society, and science. The visual presentation of museum spaces is crucial in enhancing the appeal to visitors. It is closely tied to visual appearance and ambient illumination of the space, which can be represented by Mean Room Surface Exitance (MRSE). The objectives of this research are to determine the lighting specifications in exhibition spaces by considering lighting metrics, including MRSE and contrast, and to compare the MRSE values obtained from the calculation, simulation, and measurements from field experiments. The findings of this research indicate that the type of luminaire that can be used is a spotlight with a TAIR (Target-to-Ambient Illuminance Ratio (TAIR) of 3:1 or higher, particularly if the object needs to appear brighter than its surroundings. The error between the experimental and simulated results with the DIALux evo simulation tool was relatively low at 1.4%. However, the error between the experimental results and the calculated results was relatively high, at 25.25%, which is caused by the TAIR factor. The lowest contrast error was obtained for the displayed statue, with a 4% error in the calculation method and 0% error in the simulation method. The highest contrast error was obtained for the wall, with a 66% error in the simulation method due to differences in the room size of the simulation model and the actual space.

Debate 4: Morphological Assessment of Embryos is Outdated

Motion: For The Outdated Significance of Morphological Assessment in Embryo Selection and the Rise of Advanced Technologies in Reproductive Medicine This symposium lecture presents a compelling debate, shedding light on the diminishing relevance of traditional static morphological assessment as a primary criterion for embryo. The speaker aims to challenge the long-standing reliance on morphological evaluation and advocate for the integration of cutting-edge technologies as a more reliable and objective means of embryo quality assessment. During the debate, the speaker will examine the limitations of morphological assessment, acknowledging its subjective nature, potential bias, and lack of comprehensive insight into embryonic development. The traditional morphological assessment based solely on visual appearance may not adequately predict an embryo’s true potential for successful implantation and healthy pregnancy. A variety of available new technologies will be highlighted during the lecture, showcasing alternatives to morphological embryo assessment. Attendees will gain insight into how these innovative methods can offer more objective and precise measures of embryo quality, enhancing the success rates of assisted reproductive procedures. The symposium will foster an engaging environment, encouraging active participation and thoughtful discussions among attendees from the reproductive medicine community. Participants will have the opportunity to challenge prevailing notions and explore the implications of adopting new technologies in clinical practice. In summary, this debate aims to catalyze a paradigm shift in embryo evaluation, emphasizing the need to move beyond traditional morphological assessment towards embracing advanced technologies, to optimize embryo selection and lead to improved outcomes in IVF. Motion: Against Morphological Assessment of Embryos is Not Outdated In the era of new technologies and artificial intelligence, looking good has never been more important! On-time progression through specific events is requisite for human preimplantation development and provides important visual insights into the health and physiology of the embryo. The formation of 2 distinct pronuclei, the times and patterns of cleavage, and how the cells compact are all key markers of development. Following compaction, the formation of the blastocyst is not only a temporally regulated event, but also an energetically demanding process, one that reflects the metabolic activity (a biomarker of viability) of the embryo. Further, at the blastocyst stage it is possible to visualise and quantitate the formation of both the inner cell mass (ICM) and trophectoderm, with all parameters of blastocyst development linked to transfer outcomes. The development of time-lapse incubation, which can be described as embryo morphology over time, has led to the incorporation of several key morphological features to support embryo selection, further reflecting the significance of embryo morphology. Interestingly, AI algorithms used for embryo selection reflect predominantly those morphological parameters that are known to affect transfer outcomes, such as blastocyst quality. While only specific molecular tests can accurately determine the precise chromosomal composition of an embryo, key morphological features and events can also be used to tag those embryos at greatest risk of being genetically abnormal. In conclusion, key morphological developmental events indirectly inform us of the physiology of the embryo (degree of blastocyst expansion reflects metabolic activity for example), and hence this is why morphological grading systems (such as the Gardner Grade for blastocysts) have been shown to be effective in embryo selection for over the past 25 years, and further have proven to be as useful as AI or biomarker analysis for the majority of patients.