BACKGROUND Governments are preparing for a potential influenza pandemic. Therefore they need data to assess the possible impact of interventions. Face-masks worn by the general population could be an accessible and affordable intervention, if effective when worn under routine circumstances. METHODOLOGY We assessed transmission reduction potential provided by personal respirators, surgical mas...

We often identify people using face images. This is true in occupational settings such as passport control as well as in everyday social environments. Mapping between images and identities assumes that facial appearance is stable within certain bounds. For example, a person's apparent age, gender and ethnicity change slowly, if at all. It also assumes that deliberate changes beyond these bounds...

This paper describes and compares techniques for registering an image with respect to a template image when one or both are partially occluded. These techniques can be used to build correlation-based image registration (alignment of similar images) and image search (finding a sub-image within a larger image) algorithms. Binary masks as developed by Stone and Shamoon [18], and extended by Stone ...

Problem statement: Edge detection is an important field in image processing. Edges characterize object boundaries and are therefore useful for segmentation, registration, feature extraction, and identification of objects in a scene. Approach: This study presented a novel method for edge detection using 2D Gamma distribution. Edge detection is traditionally implemented by convolving the image wi...

Organotin compounds in polyvinyl chloride toys were determined by GC/MS after ethyl derivatization with sodium tetraethylborate. The samples were 12 balls, 12 soft toys, 10 food toys and 13 face masks for children. Monooctyltin, dioctyltin and trioctyltin compounds were found in all face masks at the levels of 74.8-917 micrograms/g. 474-3,960 micrograms/g and 1.0-213 micrograms/g, respectively....