An open-ended rectangular waveguide filled with a dielectric has been used as a contact-type antenna of microwave radiometer for non-invasive measurement of temperature in a biological object. In this application, the thermal radiation emitted by the object is measured as the brightness temperature by the instrument via the antenna. The brightness temperature is related to the physical temperatures in the object through the radiometric weighting function. By virtue of the reciprocity of antenna, the weighting function can be derived from the field distribution induced in the object by the antenna when it is operated in the active mode. In this work, we treat a problem of the rectangular waveguide antenna radiating into a four-layered medium by modal analysis. The results are first compared with those obtained by the FD-TD method to indicate that the results of the two methods are in a good agreement. The operation of an antenna used in a radiometer system in our laboratory is analyzed by this method and the weighting functions at different frequencies are computed, and the results are presented along with discussions on the results.

MRI is a widely used diagnostic imaging modality because it has excellent diagnostic capabilities, is safe to use and generates images not affected by bone artifacts. Images are obtained by utilizing the phenomenon of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) by which protons located in a static magnetic field absorb radiofrequency (RF) pulses with a specific frequency and release a part of the energy as a NMR signal. Potentially MRI has the ability to provide functional and metabolic information (such as flow, temperature, diffusion, neuron activity) in addition to morphological information. This paper describes the imaging principles and provides a general outline of some applications: flow imaging, metabolite imaging and temperature imaging.

We study the correspondence between problem descriptions and requirements specification documents derived from them. Based on the results of this investigation, a model that integrates the problem space and the requirements specification space is developed. This integration is based on a semantic network representation. We also propose a model of the requirements elicitation process that is consistent with our empirical studies of traceability in requirements documents. In this process, analysts derived requirements specifications from incomplete and ambiguous problem descriptions given by customers, identify missing information, completed it, and then decide the system boundaries that define which part of the problem descriptions to implement as the target system. The model can be used to complete problem descriptions given by customers and determine the system boundaries.

There are various difficulties in processing spoken dialogs because of acoustic, phonetic, and grammatical ill-formedness, and because of interactions among participants. This paper describes temporal characteristics of utterances in human-human task-oriented dialogs and interactions between the participants, analyzed in relation to the topic structure of the dialog. We analyzed 12 task-oriented simulated dialogs of ASJ continuous speech corpus conducted by 13 different participants whose total length being 66 minutes. Speech data was segmented into utterance units each of which is a speech interval segmented by pauses. There were 3876 utterance units, and 38.9% of them were interjections, fillers, false starts and chiming utterances. Each dialog consisted of 6 to 15 topic segments in each of which participants exchange specific information of the task. Eighty-six out of 119 new topic segments started with interjectory utterances and filled pauses. It was found that the durations of turn-taking interjections and fillers including the preceding silent pause were significantly longer in topic boundaries than the other positions. The results indicate that the duration of interjection words and filled pauses is a sign of a topic shift in spoken dialogs. In natural conversations, participants' speaking modes change dynamically as the conversation develops. Response time of both client and agent role speakers became shorter as the dialog proceeded. This indicates that interactions between the participants become active as the dialog proceeds. Speech rate was also affected by the dialog structure. It was generally fast in the initiating and terminating parts where most utterances are of fixed expressions, and slow in topic segments of the body part of the dialog where both client and agent participants stalled to speak in order to retrieve task knowledge. The results can be utilized in man-machine dialog systems, e.g., in order to detect topic shifts of a dialog, and to make the speech interface of dialog systems more natural to a human participant.

This paper presents a method for spatial and temporal segmentation of long image sequences which include multiple independently moving objects, based on the Minimum Description Length (MDL) principle. By obtaining an optimal motion description, we extract spatiotemporal (ST) segments in the image sequence, each of which consists of edge segments with similar motions. First, we construct a family of 2D motion models, each of which is completely determined by its specified set of equations. Then, based on these sets of equations we formulate the motion description length in a long sequence. The motion state of one object at one moment is determined by finding the model with shortest description length. Temporal segmentation is carried out when the motion state is found to have changed. At the same time, the spatial segmentation is globally optimized in such a way that the motion description of the entire scene reaches a minimum.

We developed piezoresistors with an intrinsic compensation of the offset temperature characteristics. High energy ion implantation was applied to fabricate this type of piezoresistor. The dopant profile of the buried piezoresistor resembles to that of the junction gate field effect transistor (JFET). The buried layer corresponds to a channel of JFET, and the substrate bias corresponds to the gate voltage. Owing to the independent temperature varying parameters, i.e., width of the depletion layer and carrier mobility in the channel, the drain current of the JFET has a temperature independent point at an appropriate gate source voltage. The effect was used in the new type of buried piezoresistor which has a driving point of zero temperature coefficient of resistance at an appropriate gate source voltage.

The double-stage threshold-type foreground-background congestion control for the common-store queueing system with multiple nonpreemptive priority classes is proposed to improve the transient performance, where the numbers of accepted priority packets in both foreground and background stores are controlled under the double-stage threshold-type scheduling. In the double-stage threshold-type congestion control, the background store is used for any priority packets, and some parts of the background store are reserved for lower-priority packets to accommodate more lower-priority packets in the background store, whereas some parts of the foreground store are reserved for higher-priority packets to avoid the priority deadlock. First, we derive the general set of coupled differential equations describing the system-state, and the expressions for mean system occupancy, throughput and loss probability. Second, the transient behavior of system performance is evaluated from the time-dependent state probabilities by using the Runge-Kutta procedure. It is shown that when the particular traffic class becomes overloaded, high throughputs and low loss probabilities of other priority classes can be obtained.

A queueing model suitable for multimedia packets with Poisson and batch Poisson arrivals is studied. In the queueing model, priority is given to the packets with batch Poisson arrival, and the packets with Poisson arrival, accumulated in a buffer, are routed by utilizing intervals of the packets with priority. The queueing performance of the proposed model is evaluated by the mean system delay. We also consider the effect of batch size and the ratio of the traffic with batch Poisson arrival and the one with Poisson arrival on the mean system delay. It is found that the proposed queueing model is useful to reduce the mean system delay of the packets with Poisson arrival, while maintaining the means system delay of the packets with batch Poisson arrival.

This paper describes a new method for pose estimation of human face moving abruptly in real world. The virtue of this method is to use a very simple calculation, disparity, among multiple model images, and not to use any facial features such as facial organs. In fact, since the disparity between input image and a model image increases monotonously in accordance with the change of facial pose, view direction, we can estimate pose of face in input image by calculating disparity among various model images of face. To overcome a weakness coming from the change of facial patterns due to facial individuality or expression, the first model image of face is detected by employing a qualitative feature model of frontal face. It contains statistical information about brightness, which are observed from a lot of facial images, and is used in model-based approach. These features are examined in everywhere of input image to calculate faceness" of the region, and a region which indicates the highest faceness" is taken as the initial model image of face. To obtain new model images for another pose of the face, some temporary model images are synthesized through texture mapping technique using a previous model image and a 3-D graphic model of face. When the pose is changed, the most appropriate region for a new model image is searched by calculating disparity using temporary model images. In this serial processes, the obtained model images are used not only as templates for tracking face in following image sequence, but also texture images for synthesizing new temporary model images. The acquired model images are accumulated in memory space and its permissible extent for rotation or scale change is evaluated. In the later of the paper, we show some experimental results about the robustness of the qualitative facial model used to detect frontal face and the pose estimation algorithm tested on a long sequence of real images including moving human face.

This paper presents a cost-effective network for very large ATM cross-connects. In order to develop it, we propose the delta network with expanded middle stages. This proposed network is the intermediate network between a nonblocking network and the delta network with respect to the cost of hardware and internal blocking probability. Using this network, we explore the tradeoff between the cost and internal blocking probability, and derive the optimum configuration under temporarily deviating traffic. Internal blocking occurs when input traffic temporarily deviates from its average value. However, we cannot evaluate the internal blocking probability by using conventional traffic models. In this paper, we adopt temporarily deviating traffic such that all traffic is described as the superposition of the paths which are defined by traffic parameters. As can easily be seen, the path corresponds to virtual path (VP) or virtual channel (VC). Therefore, we believe that our model describes actual traffic more exactly than conventional models do. We show that the optimum configuration is the proposed network whose expansion ratio γ=3 when the maximum number of paths that can be accommodated in one link is greater than 22. This network achieves the internal blocking probability of 10-10. As an example of this network, we show that the proposed network of size 7272 is constructed with only 40% of the hardware required by the nonblocking network.

Precise measurements of temperature dependence of the Andreev reflection current for the N–I–S junctions were carried out. Au and Pb were used as N (normal metal) and S (superconducting material), respectively. The experimental results agreed with the analyses based on the Arnold theory.

We have studied in detail the effect of gas flow rates on the film properties of low-temperature (300) polycrystalline silicon (poly-Si) films prepared by conventional plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (13.56 MHz) with SiF4/SiH4/H2 gases. The effect of SiH4 flow rate on crystallization is shown to be large. A small amount of SiH4 with high SiF4 and H2 flow rates (50[H2]/[SiH4]1200, 20[SiF4]/[SiH4]150, 1[H2]/[SiF4]16) is important to form poly-Si films. The poly-Si films deposited under such optimized conditions had shown preferential 〈110〉-orientation and the crystalline fraction is estimated to be more than 80%. The deposition rates are in the range of 5-30 nm/min. The conductivity is in the range of 10-8-10-6 S/cm. Further, the electrical conduction indicates an activation type, and the activation energy is in the range of 0.5-0.6 eV.

We developed a simple, practical, adaptive data compression algorithm of the LZ78 class. According to the Lempel-Ziv greedy parsing, a string boundary is not related to the statistical history modeled by finite-state sources. We have already reported an algorithm classifying data into subdictionaries (CSD), which uses multiple subdictionaries and conditions the current string by using the previous one to obtain a higher compression ratio. In this paper, we present a practical implementation of this method suitable for any kinds of data, and show that CSD is more efficient than the LZC which is the method used by the program compress available on UNIX systems. The CSD compression performance was about 10% better than that of LZC with the practical dictionary size, an 8k-entry dictionary when the test data was from the Calgary Compression Corpus. With hashing, the CSD processing speed became as fast as that of LZC, although the CSD algorithm was more complicated than LZC.

A polarity-convertible driver is necessary as a basic component of several Josephson random access memories. This driver must be able to inject a current having positive or negative polarity into a load transmission line such as a word or bit line of the RAM. In this paper, we propose a resistor coupled Josephson polarity-convertible driver which is highly sensitive to input signals and has a wide operating margin. The driver consists of several Josephson junctions and several resistors. The input signal is directly injected to the driver through the resistors. The circuit design is discussed on the operating principle of the driver. The driver is fabricated by 1.5 µm Nb technology with Nb/AlOx/Nb Josephson junctions, two layer Nb wirings, an Nb ground plane, Mo resistors, and SiO2 insulators. The Nb/AlOx/Nb Josephson junctions are fabricated using technology refined for sub-micron size junctions. The insulators between wirings are formed using bias sputtering technique to obtain good step coverage. The driver circuit size is 53 µm34 µm. Measurements are carried out at 10 kHz to quasistatically test the polarity-convertible function and the operating margin of the driver. Proper polarity-convertible operation is confirmed for a large operating bias margin of 70% at a fairly small input current of 0.3 mA.

We have fabricated Nb/AlOx/Nb Josephson tunnel junctions by a sputtering apparatus with a load-lock system. This sputtering apparatus had the sub chamber for preparation and the main chamber for sputtering. The substrate temperature was confirmed to be kept less than 85 during Nb sputtering at the deposition rate of 1.18 nm/s for 7 minutes. The junctions that had 50µm50 µm area successfully showed the Vm value (the product of the critical current and the subgap resistance at 2 mV) as high as 50 mV at the current density of 100 A/cm2.

This paper presents a low-power 8-valued cellular array VLSI for high-speed image processing based on logical neighborhood operations with 33 windows. This array is useful for performing low-level image processing such as noise removal and edge detection, in intelligent integrated systems where immediate response to input change as well as high throughput is needed. In order to achieve high-speed image processing, template matching for neighborhood operations can be performed in parallel on each row. Each row of the image is operated in a pipelining manner. The direct 8-valued encoding of the matched results for three different 33 masks makes it possible to reduce the number of operations by one-third. In the hardware implementation, the matching cell for logical neighborhood operations can be implemented compactly using MOS transistors with different threshold voltage, which are programmed by multiple ion implants. Moreover, a new literal circuit for detecting multiple-valued signals using a dynamic design style eliminates hazards due to timing skews in the difference of various input voltage levels, so that the dynamic power dissipation of the proposed circuit is greatly reduced. Finally, it is demonstrated that the processing time of the proposed cellular array is reduced to about 40 percent in comparison with that of a corresponding binary circuit when power dissipation/area = 0.3 W/100 mm2.

A semicylindrical microstrip applicator system is proposed and designed, both for microwave heating and for noninvasive temperature estimation, in application to hyperthermia treatment. The experimental results showed that the system functions both as a heating device and as a means of noninvasive temperature estimation. Therefore, electrical switching of these two functions makes the system realize both heating and temperature estimation. These functions reduce the pain of hyperthermia therapy for patients. The system is constructed of a water-loaded cylindrical applicator. Thus, the whole system can be made compact compared to conventional applicators. This improvement allows for various merits, such as realizing a surface cooling effect and decreased leakage of electromagnetic (EM) waves. When the applicator is set as an array arrangement, the system can be used as a microwave heating device. The penetration depth can be varied by adjusting phases of the EM wave radiated from each applicator. The experimental results at 430 MHz showed that semicylindrical microstrip applicators can be expected to be valid for tumor heating at depths within 55 mm. Moreover, by measuring transmission power between the two applicators, the system can be used to estimate temperature inside the medium. The transmission power which was measured in the frequency domain was converted in the time domain. By such a method, temperature distribution was calculated by solving simple simultaneous primary equations. The results of the temperature estimation show that the number of estimated temperature segments which have an error within 0.5 is 28 out of 36. The system can be easily used as a temperature measuring applicator as well as a heating applicator.

An approach to estimate the information of moving objects is described in terms of their kinetic and static properties such as 2D velocity, acceleration, position, and the size of each object for the features of motion snd shape. To obtain the information of motion/shape of multiple objects, an advanced contour matching scheme is developed, which includes the synthesis of edge images and the analysis of object shape with a high matching confidence as well as a low computation cost. The scheme is composed of three algorithms: a motion estimation by an iterative triple cross-correlation, an image synthesis by shifting and masking the object, and a shape analysis for determining the object size. Implementing fuzzy membership functions to the object shape, the scheme gets improved in accuracy of capturing motion and shape of multiple moving objects. Experimental result shows that the proposed method is valid for several walking men in real scene.

An image type resonator method is proposed as a method to evaluate precisely the temperature dependence of dielectric material. At first, the temperature coefficients of the resonant frequencies, TCf are measured separately using the shielded dielectric resonators of three types; that is a parallel plate type, and an image type, and a MIC type resonator. Secondly, an intrinsic temperature coefficient of the resonant frequency TCf0, which is defined as the temperature coefficient of a resonant frequency when all the stored energy is confined inside a dielectric, is estimated from these measured TCf. Actually, the TCf0 values of a sapphire and (ZrSn) TiO4 rod are estimated from the TCf values measured for the resonators of three types. As a result, for the parallel plate type, the precision of TCf0 is about 0.1 ppm/. For the image and MIC types, the errors of about 0.5 ppm/ in the TCf0 values arise from the errors in the linear expansion coefficients of the resonators, rather than from the experimental errors in TCf. Then, another image type resonator is designed to estimate TCf0 within error of 0.1 ppm/. In this design, dimensions of the shielding cavity is determined to reduce the influence of the errors in the linear expansion coefficients on precision of the TCf0 estimation. Finally, for a (ZrSn) TiO4 ceramic rod, a TCf0 value estimated from TCf measured for the image type resonator is obtained with accuracy of about0.1 ppm/.

A method is presented to perform image segmentation by accumulatively observing apparent motion in a long image sequence of a dynamic scene. In each image in the sequence, locations are grouped into small patches of approximately uniform optical flow. To reduce the noise in computed flow vectors, a local image motion vector of each patch is computed by averaging flow vectors in the corresponding patches in several images. A segment contains patches belonging to the same 3-D plane in the scene. Initial segments are obtained in the image, and then an attempt to merge or split segments is iterated to update the segments. In order to remove inherent ambiguities in motion-based segmentation, temporal coherence between the local image motion of a patch and the apprent motion of every plane is investigated over long time. In each image, a patch is grouped into the segment of the plane whose apparent motion is temporally most coherent with the local image motion of the patch. When apparent motions of two planes are temporally incoherent, segments of the planes are retained as individual ones.