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In this paper, an event synchronous adaptive filter (ESAF) is proposed to estimate atrial activity (AA) from a single-lead AF ECG in real time. The proposed ESAF is a kind of adaptive filter designed to have the reference fed with the impulse train synchronized with the R peak in a raw atrial fibrillation (AF) ECG and to input the timely delayed AF ECG into the primary input. To assess the performance, for ten simulated AF ECGs, the cross-correlation coefficient (ρ) and the normalized mean square error (NMSE) between estimated AAs and ten original simulated AAs were calculated and, for ten real AF ECGs, the ventricular residue (VR) in QRS interval and similarity (S) in non-QRS interval were computed. As a result, these four parameters were revealed as ρ = 0.938 ± 0.016 and NMSE = 0.243 ± 0.051 for simulated AF ECGs and VR = 1.190 ± 0.476 and S = 0.967 ± 0.041 for real AF ECGs. These results were found to be better than those of the averaged beat subtraction (ABS) method, which had been previously considered the only way to estimate AA automatically in real time. In conclusion, even with single-lead AF ECGs, the proposed method estimated AAs accurately and calculated the atrial fibrillatory frequencies, the most valuable index in AF maintenance and therapy evaluation, with a remarkably low computational cost.

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A new deposition method used to prepare BaTiO3 thin films resulted in multilayered structure with higher dielectric constant, capacitance per unit area, and breakdown strength than those prepared by a conventional stacking method; the new method continuously decreased the substrate temperature after initial deposition of a polycrystalline BaTiO3 layer. The observed high dielectric constant could be explained only by a multilayered amorphous/microcrystalline/polycrystalline structure, the nature of which was confirmed by scanning electron microscopy and index of refraction measurement. Well-defined ferroelectric hysteresis loops were observed as well with insignificant leakage current effects.

Change detection (CD) of natural land cover is important for environmental protection and to maintain an ecological balance. The Landsat series of satellites provide continuous observation of the Earth’s surface and is sensitive to reflection of water, soil and vegetation. It offers fine spatial resolutions (15–80 m) and short revisit times (16–18 days). Therefore, Landsat imagery is suitable for monitoring natural land cover changes. Clustering-based CD methods using evolutionary algorithms (EAs) can be applied to Landsat images to obtain optimal changed and unchanged clustering centers (clusters) with minimum clustering index. However, they directly analyze difference image (DI), which finds itself subject to interference by Gaussian noise and local brightness distortion in Landsat data, resulting in false alarms in detection results. In order to reduce image interferences and improve CD accuracy, we proposed an unsupervised CD method based on multi-feature clustering using the differential evolution algorithm (M-DECD) for Landsat Imagery. First, according to characteristics of Landsat data, a multi-feature space is constructed with three elements: Wiener de-noising, detail enhancement, and structural similarity. Then, a CD method based on differential evolution (DE) algorithm and fuzzy clustering is proposed to obtain global optimal clusters in the multi-feature space, and generate a binary change map (CM). In addition, the control parameters of the DE algorithm are adjusted to improve the robustness of M-DECD. The experimental results obtained with four Landsat datasets confirm the effectiveness of M-DECD. Compared with the results of conventional methods and the current state-of-the-art methods based on evolutionary clustering, the detection accuracies of the M-DECD on the Mexico dataset and the Sardinia dataset are very close to the best results. The accuracies of the M-DECD in the Alaska dataset and the large Canada dataset increased by about 3.3% and 11.9%, respectively. This indicates that multiple features are suitable for Landsat images and the DE algorithm is effective in searching for an optimal CD result.