Abstract-This paper presents a new automatic initialization procedure for a level-set based segmentation algorithm that works on all slices for a given CT dataset. Level set segmentation algorithms provide promising results, are robust to dataset variations and do not require prior training. As such, they can be reliably used for segmentation of major organs in abdominal CT scans. However, level set algorithms still require user intervention to plot the initial contour for each slice in a given dataset, which is a time consuming process. Therefore, we propose here, a technique of using multiple views to automatically initialize and propagate the contour through each slice in the CT dataset. The technique requires a user to only initialize a single point within the organ of interest in order to initiate the automated segmentation process. We report the segmentation results for liver and spleen organs within the abdominal region using three different datasets. We conclude that this technique can be used to reduce the processing time for any level set algorithm suitable to abdominal CT scans. We typically achieve time efficiency up to 203.03% for complete segmentation of three organs as compared to manually initializing the level set contour for each slice.

No abstract

Context-awareness is a pervasive computing enabling technology that allows context-aware applications to respond to multiple contexts such as activity, location, temperature, and so on. When many users attempt to access the same context-aware application, user conflicts may emerge. This issue is emphasized, and a conflict resolution approach is presented to address it. Although there are other conflict resolution approaches in the literature, the one presented here is unique in that it considers the users’ special cases such as their sickness, examinations, and so on when resolving conflicts. The proposed approach is helpful when several users with different special cases try to access the same context-aware application. To demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed approach, a conflict manager is integrated with the UbiREAL simulated context-aware home environment. The integrated conflict manager resolves conflicts by taking users special cases into account and employing either automated, mediated, or hybrid conflict resolution approaches. The evaluation of the proposed approach demonstrates that users are satisfied with it and that it is critical and essential to employ users’ special cases in detecting and resolving users conflicts.

No abstract