Best AI for Resume

Best AI for Resume — hands-on reviews, top picks, pricing, pros and cons and a practical how-to guide on Aizhi.

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  Time-compressed speech

  Time-compressed speech refers to an audio recording of verbal text in which the text is presented in a much shorter time interval than it would through normally-paced real time speech. The basic purpose is to make recorded speech contain more words in a given time, yet still be understandable. For example: a paragraph that might normally be expected to take 20 seconds to read, might instead be presented in 15 seconds, which would represent a time-compression of 25% (5 seconds out of 20). The term "time-compressed speech" should not be confused with "speech compression", which controls the volume range of a sound, but does not alter its time envelope. == Methods == While some voice talents are capable of speaking at rates significantly in excess of general norms, the term "time-compressed speech" most usually refers to examples in which the time-reduction has been accomplished through some form of electronic processing of the recorded speech. In general, recorded speech can be electronically time-compressed by: increasing its speed (linear compression); removing silences (selective editing); a combination of the two (non-linear compression). The speed of a recording can be increased, which will cause the material to be presented at a faster rate (and hence in a shorter amount of time), but this has the undesirable side-effect of increasing the frequency of the whole passage, raising the pitch of the voices, which can reduce intelligibility. There are normally silences between words and sentences, and even small silences within certain words, both of which can be reduced or removed ("edited-out") which will also reduce the amount of time occupied by the full speech recording. However, this can also have the effect of removing verbal "punctuation" from the speech, causing words and sentences to run together unnaturally, again reducing intelligibility. Vowels are typically held a minimum of 20 milliseconds, over many cycles of the fundamental pitch. DSP systems can detect the beginning and end of each cycle and then skip over some fraction of those cycles, causing the material to be presented at a faster rate, without changing the pitch, maintaining a "normal" tone of voice. The current preferred method of time-compression is called "non-linear compression", which employs a combination of selectively removing silences; speeding up the speech to make the reduced silences sound normally-proportioned to the text; and finally applying various data algorithms to bring the speech back down to the proper pitch. This produces a more acceptable result than either of the two earlier techniques; however, if unrestrained, removing the silences and increasing the speed can make a selection of speech sound more insistent, possibly to the point of unpleasantness. == Applications == === Advertising === Time-compressed speech is frequently used in television and radio advertising. The advantage of time-compressed speech is that the same number of words can be compressed into a smaller amount of time, reducing advertising costs, and/or allowing more information to be included in a given radio or TV advertisement. It is usually most noticeable in the information-dense caveats and disclaimers presented (usually by legal requirement) at the end of commercials—the aural equivalent of the "fine print" in a printed contract. This practice, however, is not new: before electronic methods were developed, spokespeople who could talk extremely quickly and still be understood were widely used as voice talents for radio and TV advertisements, and especially for recording such disclaimers. === Education === Time-compressed speech has educational applications such as increasing the information density of trainings, and as a study aid. A number of studies have demonstrated that the average person is capable of relatively easily comprehending speech delivered at higher-than-normal rates, with the peak occurring at around 25% compression (that is, 25% faster than normal); this facility has been demonstrated in several languages. Conversational speech (in English) takes place at a rate of around 150 wpm (words per minute), but the average person is able to comprehend speech presented at rates of up to 200-250 wpm without undue difficulty. Blind and severely visually impaired subjects scored similar comprehension levels at even higher rates, up to 300-350 wpm. Blind people have been found to use time-compressed speech extensively, for example, when reviewing recorded lectures from high school and college classes, or professional trainings. Comprehension rates in older blind subjects have been found to be as good, or in some cases better than those found in younger sighted subjects. Other studies have determined that the ability to comprehend highly time-compressed speech tends to fall off with increased age, and is also reduced when the language of the time-compressed speech is not the listener's native language. Non-native speakers can, however, improve their comprehension level of time-compressed speech with multiday training. === Voice Mail === Voice mail systems have employed time-compressed speech since as far back as the 1970s. In this application, the technology enables the rapid review of messages in high-traffic systems, by a relatively small number of people. === Streaming Multimedia === Time-compressed speech has been explored as one of a variety of interrelated factors which may be manipulated to increase the efficiency of streaming multimedia presentations, by significantly reducing the latency times involved in the transfer of large digitally encoded media files.

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  Reference Software International

  Reference Software International, Inc. (RSI), was an American software developer active from 1985 to 1993 and based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and San Francisco, California. The company released several productivity and reference software packages, including the Grammatik grammar checker, for MS-DOS. The company was acquired by WordPerfect Corporation in 1993. == History == === Background (1980–1985) === Reference Software International, Inc., was founded by Donald "Don" Emery and Bruce Wampler in 1985 in San Francisco, California. Both Wampler and Emery were college professors when they founded RSI: Wampler at the University of New Mexico as a professor of computer science and Emery a professor of marketing at San Francisco State University. After graduating from the University of Utah in around 1978, Wampler founded his first software company, Aspen Software, in Tijeras, New Mexico, in 1979. Wampler founded Aspen to develop an early spell checker software package, called Proofreader, for the TRS-80, licensing Random House's Webster's Unabridged Dictionary for the package's lexicon. In 1980, he began development on a grammar checker inspired by Writer's Workbench, a pioneering grammar checker for Unix systems. Wampler used Writer's Workbench heavily during the writer of his doctoral dissertation but disliked having to jump between the Apple II on which he composed the dissertation and the mainframe on which Writer's Workbench ran, and so wanted to develop a version of the latter for microcomputers. Wampler's work came to fruition as Grammatik in 1981, eventually ported to several other microcomputer platforms in the early 1980s. In 1983, by which point the company had 12 employees and sold a combined 80,000 units of Grammatik and Proofreader, Wampler sold Aspen to Dictronics, a software company best known for developing the Electronic Thesaurus, an early thesaurus program for microcomputers. Dictronics was in turn purchased by Wang Laboratories; according to Wampler, "Wang bought [Aspen] and sat on it. They did nothing with it". Wampler moved on to teach for the University of New Mexico, but, frustrated by Wang's inaction, got the urge to resurrect his work. In 1985, he was able to license back Grammatik and Proofreader from a small California-based software firm that had grandfathered rights to a forked version of both. In the same year, he met Emery, who, impressed by Wampler's, founded Reference Software International to market his software. RSI's research and development headquarters were based in Albuquerque, while the company's sales and marketing department was based in Walnut Creek, California. === Success (1985–1992) === In August 1985, RSI released their first product: the Random House Reference Set, a new version of Proofreader for the IBM Personal Computer and compatibles, revised to be a terminate-and-stay-resident program that ran atop other word processors such as WordStar or WordPerfect. At the time, Reference Set was the only such program on the market that functioned like this. RSI netted $114,000 from sales of Reference Set by the end of 1985. In June 1986, they released version 2.0 of Grammatik as Grammatik II for the PC. The latter was a breakout hit for RSI, receiving praise in the press (including technology journals such as PC Magazine) and RSI selling 1,000 units a month. In spring 1987, they released Reference Set II, which allowed users to import their own words into the built-in dictionary and added a thesaurus of 300,000 words. In November 1987, they released version 3.0 of Reference Set, which comprised two new field-specific dictionaries for the medical and legal professions. As well as the general Random House dictionary and thesaurus, it included Stedman's Medical Dictionary and Black's Law Dictionary. Emery consulted Paul Brest and Bob Jackson—professors of law at Stanford Law School and San Francisco State respectively—for the curation of the law dictionary; and Burton Grebin—at the time the executive director of Mount Saint Mary's Hospital—for the curation of the medical dictionary. In fall 1988, the company released Grammatik III, a total rewrite that made use of artificial intelligence to more accurately judge the grammar of sentences by breaking them down into a syntactic hierarchy. Grammatik III received universal acclaim, with Gloria Morris of InfoWorld calling it the apparent leader in the grammar checking field and Sandra Anderson of Mac Home Journal calling it "hands down ... the best of the industry" six years after its release. By 1989, the product had competitors in Correct Grammar by Lifetree Software and RightWriter by Rightsoft, Inc. By 1990, RSI achieved annual sales of $9.7 million. In the same year they released Grammatik IV, which was the first to offer direct integration with WordPerfect on both MS-DOS and Windows. In March 1992—by which point RSI had sold 1.5 million copies of Grammatik across all versions—the company released version 5 of the program, another rewrite that updated the lexicon further and added new functions such as word redundancy detection. Around the same time, the company introduced Easy Proof, a pared-down version of Grammatik intended for novice writers, students, and family computers. In 1991, the company was engaged in a trademark dispute with Systems Compatibility Corporation (SCC) of Chicago, Illinois, over the rights to the Software Toolkit title. Both companies had published software bundles bearing the name in the turn of the 1990s; SCC had published theirs first in 1988 and registered the trademark with the USPTO. SCC was granted a restraining order against RSI in January 1991. The following month, RSI agreed to rename their product, preventing a protracted legal battle. === Decline and acquisition (1992–1993) === By early 1992, RSI achieved annual sales of more than $13 million, employed 120 people, and had opened international offices in London, Belgium, and Antwerp to sell foreign versions of Reference Set and Grammatik. The company reached peak employment in the middle of 1992, with 140 employees. However, RSI's launch of six disparate titles in the year proved problematic for the company when they failed to sell as well as they had projected, and the company laid off employees by the dozens. By December 1992, only 71 employees were left, 32 from their San Francisco office. On the last day of 1992, RSI received an acquisition offer from WordPerfect Corporation, makers of the namesake word processor based in Orem, Utah. The deal was inked in January 1993, RSI's stakeholders receiving $19 million. The company's remaining employees were absorbed into WordPerfect in Orem. WordPerfect continued selling Grammatik as a standalone product for several years.

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  LCD crosstalk

  LCD crosstalk is a visual defect in an LCD screen which occurs because of interference between adjacent pixels. Owing to the way rows and columns in the display are addressed, and charge is pushed around, the data on one part of the display has the potential to influence what is displayed elsewhere. This is generally known as crosstalk, and in matrix displays typically occurs in the horizontal and vertical directions. Crosstalk used to be a serious problem in the old passive-matrix (STN) displays, but is rarely discernable in modern active-matrix (TFT) displays. A fortunate side effect of inversion (see above) is that, for most display material, what little crosstalk there is largely cancelled out. For most practical purposes, the level of crosstalk in modern LCDs is negligible. Certain patterns, particularly those involving fine dots, can interact with the inversion and reveal visible crosstalk. If you try moving a small Window in front of the inversion pattern (above) which makes your screen flicker the most, you may well see crosstalk in the surrounding pattern. Different patterns are required to reveal crosstalk on different displays (depending on their inversion scheme).

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  Are You Dead?

  Are You Dead? (Chinese: 死了么; pinyin: Sǐleme), also known by its English name Demumu, is a Chinese application designed for young people living alone. It requires setting up one emergency contact and sends automatic notifications if the user has not checked in via the app for consecutive days. The app was released on the App Store on 10 June 2025. In early January 2026, the application gained popularity due to its name and the issue of safety for people living alone, and ranked high on the list of paid applications in the Chinese region of the Apple App Store before being removed. The app's rise in popularity sparked discussions about taboos about death in China. == History == Are You Dead? was founded and operated independently by three people born in the 1990s, and developed in a way that involved remote collaboration in their spare time. According to the New Yellow River report, Guo, the product manager, said that the application was designed for young people and that the inspiration came from the discussion of netizens on social platforms about "an app that everyone must have and will definitely download" that he observed two or three years ago. The name was also "not their original creation". After realizing its potential demand and social significance, the team successfully registered the name and completed the product development in about a month. Regarding the development entity, the New Yellow River cited information from the Apple App Store that the application was developed by Yuejing (Zhengzhou) Technology Service Co., Ltd. According to Tianyancha information, the company was established in March 2025 with a registered capital of 100,000 yuan. === Rise in popularity === The app has been generating buzz on social media since 9 January 2026, due to its name and the topic of safety for people living alone. Around 10 January, it topped the Apple paid app chart. As of 10:00 a.m. on January 11, it ranked first in the App Store paid app chart. It also ranked highly in the utility app chart; it ranked first or second in the paid utility app charts in the United States, Singapore and Hong Kong, and first or fourth in Australia and Spain. The app was subsequently removed from the Apple App Store in China. In terms of functionality and usage, First Financial praised the product for its "simple interface and single function," but pointed out that the interface lacks a display of consecutive check-in days, and there is also the possibility that users may forget to check in, leading to the mistaken issuance of reminders. In addition, since the application mainly relies on email reminders and lacks SMS or telephone notifications, it does not conform to Chinese social habits; the untimely notifications also make the application more like a "death notification" tool, losing its early warning significance for emergency rescue. Hu Xijin, former editor-in-chief of the Global Times, commented on the application on Weibo that it is "really good and can help many lonely elderly people." The Beijing News Quick Review pointed out that the role of technical tools is limited and needs to be connected with real support such as community patrols and liaison mechanisms. Due to the price increase, there have also been questions about the motivation for the price increase. The app's rise in popularity sparked discussions about taboos about death in China. Regarding the popularity of the application, both Southern Metropolis Daily and The Beijing News commented that it reflects the public issue of the risks of living alone and reflects the general anxiety of the living alone group about dying alone. Shangguan News further pointed out that although such technology products provide a certain "low-cost sense of security", their "cold notifications" may not only cause false alarms, but also highlight the embarrassing reality that "there is no one to fill in the emergency contact". It also emphasized that algorithms or applications cannot bring true happiness and called on society to reconstruct a support network full of humanistic care while relying on technology. The name of the application has also sparked controversy. Most netizens believe that the name "Are You Dead?" is unlucky and makes it awkward to share the application. They suggest changing it to a milder name such as "Are You Alive?". Hu Xijin also said that the name change could "give the elderly who use it more psychological comfort" and "believe that the application will become more popular after the name change". Some people also believe that this straightforward name just points out the real dilemma faced by people living alone and has a special meaning. BBC News commented that the name "Are You Dead" is playing a word game with Ele.me (Chinese: 饿了么; pinyin: Èleme) and the pronunciation is also similar. Legal professionals believe that its name is highly similar to Ele.me and may cause confusion. They also raised the possibility of trademark infringement and unfair competition. However, the developers said that the application is developed for young people and death is not a sensitive topic. They will "consider launching a new application that is more suitable for middle-aged and elderly people". They have not yet received any name change requests from relevant departments. On the evening of 13 January 2026, the Are You Dead? team announced that it would change its name to the English brand name Demumu in the upcoming new version. On 11 January, the development team also issued a statement through its official Weibo account, stating that it would study the renaming suggestion and plan to enrich the SMS reminder function, consider adding the message function and explore the direction of age-friendly products; it also stated that it would launch an 8 yuan paid plan to cover the costs of SMS, servers, etc., and welcomed investors to discuss cooperation. In terms of financing and valuation, it plans to sell 10% of the company's shares for 1 million yuan and proposed a valuation of 10 million yuan. On the evening of January 15, the application was removed from the app store in mainland China. == Functions == The application does not require users to enter phone numbers or other information to register. After filling in their name and setting an emergency contact, users can click the sign-in button every day. If they fail to sign in for two consecutive days, the system will send an email reminder to the emergency contact the next day. In addition, users can also bind a smart bracelet to monitor physiological signs, pre-designate a hearse driver and funeral music, and trigger the "one-click body collection" function when no pulse is detected. The application was initially available for free download, but a one yuan paid download option was introduced at the end of 2025. In January 2026, the application team issued a statement saying that an 8 yuan paid option would be launched based on the costs of SMS, servers, etc.

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  Supertoroid

  In geometry and computer graphics, a supertoroid or supertorus is usually understood to be a family of doughnut-like surfaces (technically, a topological torus) whose shape is defined by mathematical formulas similar to those that define the superellipsoids. The plural of "supertorus" is either supertori or supertoruses. The family was described and named by Alan Barr in 1994. Barr's supertoroids have been fairly popular in computer graphics as a convenient model for many objects, such as smooth frames for rectangular things. One quarter of a supertoroid can provide a smooth and seamless 90-degree joint between two superquadric cylinders. However, they are not algebraic surfaces (except in special cases). == Formulas == Alan Barr's supertoroids are defined by parametric equations similar to the trigonometric equations of the torus, except that the sine and cosine terms are raised to arbitrary powers. Namely, the generic point P(u, v) of the surface is given by P ( u , v ) = ( X ( u , v ) Y ( u , v ) Z ( u , v ) ) = ( ( a + C u s ) C v t ( b + C u s ) S v t S u s ) {\displaystyle P(u,v)=\left({\begin{array}{c}X(u,v)\\Y(u,v)\\Z(u,v)\end{array}}\right)=\left({\begin{array}{c}(a+C_{u}^{s})C_{v}^{t}\\(b+C_{u}^{s})S_{v}^{t}\\S_{u}^{s}\end{array}}\right)} where C θ ε = sgn ⁡ ( cos ⁡ θ ) | cos ⁡ θ | ε , S θ ε = sgn ⁡ ( sin ⁡ θ ) | sin ⁡ θ | ε , {\displaystyle {\begin{aligned}C_{\theta }^{\varepsilon }&=\operatorname {sgn} (\cos \theta )\,\left|\,\cos \theta \,\right|^{\varepsilon },\\S_{\theta }^{\varepsilon }&=\operatorname {sgn} (\sin \theta )\ \left|\,\sin \theta \ \right|^{\varepsilon },\end{aligned}}} sgn is the sign function, and the parameters u, v range from 0 to 360 degrees (0 to 2π radians). In these formulas, the parameter s > 0 controls the "squareness" of the vertical sections, t > 0 controls the squareness of the horizontal sections, and a, b ≥ 1 are the major radii in the x and y directions. With s = t = 1 and a = b = R one obtains the ordinary torus with major radius R and minor radius 1, with the center at the origin and rotational symmetry about the z-axis. In general, the supertorus defined as above spans the intervals: − ( a + 1 ) ≤ x ≤ + ( a + 1 ) − ( b + 1 ) ≤ y ≤ + ( b + 1 ) − 1 ≤ z ≤ + 1 {\displaystyle {\begin{array}{rcccl}-(a+1)&\leq &x&\leq &+(a+1)\\[4pt]-(b+1)&\leq &y&\leq &+(b+1)\\[4pt]-1&\leq &z&\leq &+1\end{array}}} The whole shape is symmetric about the planes x = 0, y = 0, and z = 0. The hole runs in the z direction and spans the intervals − ( a − 1 ) ≤ x ≤ + ( a − 1 ) − ( b − 1 ) ≤ y ≤ + ( b − 1 ) − ∞ ≤ z ≤ + ∞ {\displaystyle {\begin{array}{rcccl}-(a-1)&\leq &x&\leq &+(a-1)\\[4pt]-(b-1)&\leq &y&\leq &+(b-1)\\[4pt]-\infty &\leq &z&\leq &+\infty \end{array}}} A curve of constant u on this surface is a horizontal Lamé curve with exponent ⁠ 2 t , {\displaystyle {\tfrac {2}{t}},} ⁠ scaled in x and y and displaced in z. A curve of constant v, projected on the plane x = 0 or y = 0, is a Lamé curve with exponent ⁠ 2 s , {\displaystyle {\tfrac {2}{s}},} ⁠ scaled and horizontally shifted. If v = 0, the curve is planar and spans the intervals: a − 1 ≤ x ≤ a + 1 − 1 ≤ z ≤ + 1 {\displaystyle {\begin{array}{rcccl}a-1&\leq &x&\leq &a+1\\[4pt]-1&\leq &z&\leq &+1\end{array}}} and similarly if v = 90°, 180°, 270°. The curve is also planar if a = b. In general, if a ≠ b and v is not a multiple of 90 degrees, the curve of constant v will not be planar; and, conversely, a vertical plane section of the supertorus will not be a Lamé curve. The basic supertoroid shape defined above is often modified by non-uniform scaling to yield supertoroids of specific width, length, and vertical thickness. == Plotting code == The following GNU Octave code generates plots of a supertorus:

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  LumenVox

  LumenVox is a privately held speech recognition software company based in San Diego, California. LumenVox has been described as one of the market leaders in the speech recognition software industry. == History == LumenVox was founded in 2001 as subsidiary of Progressive Computing. According to LumenVox CEO Edward Miller, when Progressive had initially looked to add speech recognition to its own phone system, it found the existing offerings too expensive and recognized a niche in the market for a more affordable speech recognition product. This led to the development of LumenVox with an aim to bring speech recognition to small-to-midsized businesses. LumenVox is one of the major providers of automatic speech recognition for telephone systems, and as of 2006, became the second largest provider of speech recognition software. == Products == The primary LumenVox product is the LumenVox Speech Engine. It is a speaker-independent automatic speech recognizer that uses the Speech Recognition Grammar Specification for building and defining grammars. It has been integrated with several of the major voice platforms, including Avaya Voice Portal/Interactive Response, Aculab, and BroadSoft's BroadWorks. The Speech Engine was originally derived from CMU Sphinx, but LumenVox has added considerable development effort to make it a commercial-ready product. LumenVox also offers a product called the Speech Tuner, which provides a graphical means of testing and troubleshooting speech recognition applications. == Open source support == LumenVox was recognized as one of the top VoIP companies in 2008 for its work in providing its offerings to the open source community, an effort by the company that began in 2006 when it partnered with Digium. At that time, Digium, maintainer of the open source Asterisk PBX, integrated the LumenVox Speech Engine into Asterisk. This made LumenVox the first commercially available speech recognition engine for Asterisk. As one of the earlier commercial software integrations with Asterisk, the LumenVox integration has been described as one of the applications that helped to mainstream Asterisk. In 2009, LumenVox also began offering access to the Speech Engine as a monthly subscription, bringing the cost of entry down even lower for open source users. LumenVox is also integrated with the open source UniMRCP project, which provides open source client and server libraries for the Media Resource Control Protocol.

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  Teleradiology

  Teleradiology is the transmission of radiological patient images from procedures such as x-rays, Computed tomography (CT), and MRI imaging, from one location to another for the purposes of sharing studies with other radiologists and physicians. Teleradiology allows radiologists to provide services without actually having to be at the location of the patient. This is particularly important when a sub-specialist such as an MRI radiologist, neuroradiologist, pediatric radiologist, or musculoskeletal radiologist is needed, since these professionals are generally only located in large metropolitan areas working during daytime hours. Teleradiology allows for specialists to be available at all times. Teleradiology utilizes standard network technologies such as the Internet, telephone lines, wide area networks, local area networks (LAN) and the latest advanced technologies such as medical cloud computing. Specialized software is used to transmit the images and enable the radiologist to effectively analyze potentially hundreds of images of a given study. Technologies such as advanced graphics processing, voice recognition, artificial intelligence, and image compression are often used in teleradiology. Through teleradiology and mobile DICOM viewers, images can be sent to another part of the hospital or to other locations around the world with equal effort. Teleradiology is a growth technology given that imaging procedures are growing approximately 15% annually against an increase of only 2% in the radiologist population. == Reports == Teleradiology services commonly provide either preliminary or final interpretations of medical imaging studies. Preliminary reads are frequently used in emergency settings to support immediate clinical decisions and may include direct communication of critical findings to the referring physician. Some providers report turnaround times of approximately 30 minutes for emergency cases, with faster processing for time-sensitive conditions such as stroke. Final reads are definitive and used in official patient records and billing. These reports typically include all relevant findings and may require access to prior imaging and clinical data. Teleradiology is also employed to provide off-hour or overflow coverage for healthcare institutions lacking continuous on-site radiology staffing. == Subspecialties == Some teleradiologists are fellowship trained and have a wide variety of subspecialty expertise including such difficult-to-find areas as neuroradiology, pediatric neuroradiology, thoracic imaging, musculoskeletal radiology, mammography, and nuclear cardiology. There are also various medical practitioners who are not radiologists that take on studies in radiology to become sub specialists in their respected fields, an example of this is dentistry where oral and maxillofacial radiology allows those in dentistry to specialize in the acquisition and interpretation of radiographic imaging studies performed for diagnosis of treatment guidance for conditions affecting the maxillofacial region. == Teleultrasound == Teleradiology infrastructure has also been adapted to support point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) in remote and austere environments. In teleultrasound—also known as telementored ultrasound—a remote expert guides a non-specialist in real time during image acquisition. This technique has been successfully demonstrated in extreme settings, including aboard the International Space Station, on Mount Everest, and during helicopter flight. == Regulations == In the United States, Medicare and Medicaid laws require the teleradiologist to be on U.S. soil in order to qualify for reimbursement of the Final Read. In addition, advanced teleradiology systems must also be HIPAA compliant, which helps to ensure patients' privacy. HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996) is a uniform, federal floor of privacy protections for consumers. It limits the ways that entities can use patients' personal information and protects the privacy of all medical information no matter what form it is in. Quality teleradiology must abide by important HIPAA rules to ensure patients' privacy is protected. Also State laws governing the licensing requirements and medical malpractice insurance coverage required for physicians vary from state to state. Ensuring compliance with these laws is a significant overhead expense for larger multi-state teleradiology groups. Medicare (Australia) has identical requirements to that of the United States, where the guidelines are provided by the Department of Health and Ageing, and government based payments fall under the Health Insurance Act. The regulations in Australia are also conducted at both federal and state levels, ensuring that strict guidelines are adhered to at all times, with regular yearly updates and amendments are introduced (usually around March and November of every year), ensuring that the legislation is kept up to date with changes in the industry. One of the most recent changes to Medicare and radiology / teleradiology in Australia was the introduction of the Diagnostic Imaging Accreditation Scheme (DIAS) on 1 July 2008. DIAS was introduced to further improve the quality of Diagnostic Imaging and to amend the Health Insurance Act. == Industry growth == Until the late 1990s teleradiology was primarily used by individual radiologists to interpret occasional emergency studies from offsite locations, often in the radiologists home. The connections were made through standard analog phone lines. Teleradiology expanded rapidly as the growth of the internet and broad band combined with new CT scanner technology to become an essential tool in trauma cases in emergency rooms throughout the country. The occasional 2–3 x-ray studies a week soon became 3–10 CT scans, or more, a night. Because ER physicians are not trained to read CT scans or MRIs, radiologists went from working 8–10 hours a day, five and half days a week to a schedule of 24 hours a day, 7 days a week coverage. This became a particularly acute challenge in smaller rural facilities that only had one solo radiologist with no other to share call. These circumstances spawned a post-dot.com boom of firms and groups that provided medical outsourcing, off-site teleradiology on-call services to hospitals and Radiology Groups around the country. As an example, a teleradiology firm might cover trauma at a hospital in Indiana with doctors based in Texas. Some firms even used overseas doctors in locations like Australia and India. Nighthawk, founded by Paul Berger, was the first to station U.S. licensed radiologists overseas (initially Australia and later Switzerland) to maximize the time zone difference to provide nightcall in U.S. hospitals. Currently, teleradiology firms are facing pricing pressures. Industry consolidation is likely as there are more than 500 of these firms, large and small, throughout the United States.

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  Photoanalysis

  Photoanalysis (or photo analysis) refers to the study of pictures to compile various types of data, for example, to measure the size distribution of virtually anything that can be captured by photo. Photoanalysis technology has changed the way mines and mills quantify fragmented material. Images are an effective way to document conditions before, after, and even during blasting activities. The technology is advancing at a high rate, and lenses, storage media memory, light sensitivity and resolution have been improving steadily. Today's digital cameras and camcorders include high-resolution optics, compact size, automatic time and date stamps, good battery life, shutters to freeze motion, and computers to autofocus and eliminate jitter using image stabilization. == Mining == Photoanalysis in mining operations can provide an automated system that forewarns a company of potential problems with materials, leading to economies and reduced damage caused from over-sized materials. It can also help determine the effectiveness of blasts. A company can use this technology to monitor materials moving on a conveyor belt in an underground environment, to measure piles left over from a blast, and even measure the amount of material being carried by dump trucks or vessels to a destination. Photoanalysis is being used on SAG mills worldwide to control the size of rock being crushed. Companies are using this technology to determine the size of particles being processed in the SAG Mill.[1] Archived 2009-05-23 at the Wayback Machine Having oversize material entering the SAG mill makes an operation less efficient, costing companies money in electrical and maintenance costs. Photoanalysis technology can eliminate unwanted material before it enters the mill, keeping rock crushing costs low. == Forestry == Wood chip size can affect the overall quality of a product. With automated photoanalysis systems, companies can remove any unwanted wrong-size particles without stopping their mill process. Photoanalysis can affect how efficiently forestry companies operate. In mills worldwide, photoanalysis technology is improving the use of lumber products, cutting back on the amount of trees being used to operate, and saving companies money through quality control optimization.[2] With the current downturn in the North American forestry industry, operators are looking at making their mills more efficient and effective when processing materials. Photoanalysis technology helps identify any weaknesses in the process by continuously monitoring different sections of an operation. == Agriculture == Agricultural companies can, using photoanalysis, monitor conveyor belts of food without contaminating the product by touching it. Other benefits of photoanalysis systems include: Automated removal of any unwanted material on food conveyor Improved quality control for the most important parts of the agricultural process Pinpoint accuracy that helps the efficiency and effectiveness of product handling techniques The importance of photoanalysis technology is being noticed by the agricultural industry as it identifies any unwanted materials going through the process. In an example, if a mouse is on a conveyor of corn, photoanalysis technology would be able to identify the unwanted object and remove it before it contaminates the whole process. == Origins of photoanalysis technology == Photoanalysis technology was created by using the Waterloo Image Enhancement Process in the 1980s. After further development of the imaging process with explosives producer DuPont, engineers Tom Palangio and Takis Katsabanis began selling photoanalysis software commercially. They later renamed the process WipFrag, standing for Waterloo Image Process Fragmentation Today, photoanalysis technology has evolved into stabilized and portable systems that can automatically capture and analyze results instantly. Thousands of these products are currently being used around the world to measure fragmented material. == Photoanalysis equipment photos == == Fragmentation analysis == Fragmentation analysis is becoming a popular term in mining, agricultural and forestry industries. With the majority of money in these industries directed towards the proper sizing of materials, companies are using fragmentation analysis to determine various factors within an operation.[3] The two main ways a company keeps track of fragmented material are through manual and automated sieving procedures. Manual sieving involves extracting a sample of material to analyze the size distribution. The results can be tabulated within two days. Automated sieving is an advanced way of sieving materials running through a process. Without having to extract the material, photoanalysis can take place, allowing for immediate results with pinpoint accuracy. == Blast Fragmentation Software == Operators are using fragmentation analysis to determine the effectiveness of various blasts. With automated sieving technology, workers can track the success of these blasts and receive instant results. Companies are using these results to determine what blasting method yielded the best results for their specific operation. The common variables associated with blast optimization are the provided Particle Size Distribution (PSD) from a shovel fragmentation system, geology including rock type and fracturing, and energy factor. By using photoanalysis the fragmented materials can be monitored, offering pinpoint accuracy and allowing mine operators to make adjustments to future blasting procedures. See Optical Granulometry to view the automated sieving process. == Pre-crushing analysis == Maintenance costs can be significantly reduced if an operation focuses on the fragmentation of the particles passing through their process. Automated sieving systems can detect and help remove any oversize material before it enters the crusher and causes maintenance problems. It also helps determine the effectiveness of the mining process prior to crushing; the sizing of material is always a critical part of operations in the mining, forestry and agricultural industries. Having an analysis taking place at every major point in an operation allows for the proper tracking of material being processed. Engineers can then determine what part of the process needs improving based solely on the size of material. == Post-crushing analysis == Measuring how effective industrial crushers are, can help save a company millions of dollars in energy costs on an annual basis. There are two components that affect a typical crusher: the size of the material inputted, and the speed at which the crusher is moving. If the user can find a perfect balance between these two components, the materials will be crushed to the right size in the shortest time possible. Meeting the material standards set by governments and large companies can be hard. Having a post-crushing analysis taking place ensures that no oversize material gets shipped; eliminating the chance of getting fined for not meeting industry specifications.

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  List of Ada software and tools

  This is a list of software and programming tools for the Ada programming language, including IDEs, compilers, libraries, verification and debugging tools, numerical and scientific computing libraries, and related projects. == Compilers == GNAT — GCC Ada compiler and toolchain, maintained by AdaCore AdaCore GNAT Pro — commercial Ada compiler with advanced tooling for high-integrity and real-time systems Green Hills compiler for Ada — Ada compiler for embedded and safety-critical systems ObjectAda — Ada development environment for safety-critical and embedded systems == Integrated development environments (IDEs) and editors == GNAT Studio — IDE developed by AdaCore Emacs — supports Ada editing with Ada mode and syntax checking Eclipse — supports Ada through GNATbench plugin Visual Studio Code — Ada support via Ada Language Server extensions == Libraries and frameworks == See also: Ada Libraries on Wikibooks Ada.Calendar — date and time library Ada Web Services (AWS) — support for RESTful and SOAP web services Ada.Text_IO — standard library for text input/output Florist (POSIX Ada binding) – open-source implementation of the POSIX Ada bindings GNAT – Ada compiler part of GCC, which also provides an extensive runtime and library package hierarchy. GtkAda – Ada bindings for the GTK+ graphical user interface toolkit Matreshka – multipurpose Ada framework supporting Unicode, XML, JSON, and more. XML/Ada – XML and Unicode processing library == Real-time and embedded systems == Ada tasking — built-in concurrency support with tasks, protected objects, and rendezvous. Ada.Real_Time — real-time clocks, delays, and scheduling. ARINC 653 Ada profiles — for avionics real-time applications OpenMP Ada bindings — parallel programming for multi-core embedded systems Ravenscar profile — subset of Ada tasking for real-time and deterministic execution == Numerical and scientific computing == Ada.Numerics — libraries for numerical methods, linear algebra, and mathematical functions. SPARK math libraries — formal-methods-compliant numerical routines == Verification, debugging, and analysis == GNATprove — formal verification and static analysis tool for Ada and SPARK GNATstack — runtime stack analysis and checking GNATcoverage — code coverage measurement for Ada projects AdaControl — style checking and metrics for Ada == Testing frameworks == AUnit — unit testing framework for Ada GNATtest — automated testing framework for Ada == Documentation and code generation == GNATdoc — generates HTML documentation from Ada source code

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  Automated Lip Reading

  Automated Lip Reading (ALR) is a software technology developed by speech recognition expert Frank Hubner. A video image of a person talking can be analysed by the software. The shapes made by the lips can be examined and then turned into sounds. The sounds are compared to a dictionary to create matches to the words being spoken. The technology was used successfully to analyse silent home movie footage of Adolf Hitler taken by Eva Braun at their Bavarian retreat Berghof. The video, with words, was included in a documentary titled "Hitler's Private World", Revealed Studios, 2006 Source: New Technology catches Hitler off guard

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  Adobe GoLive

  Adobe GoLive was a WYSIWYG HTML editor and web site management application from Adobe Systems. It replaced Adobe PageMill as Adobe's primary HTML editor and was itself discontinued in favor of Dreamweaver. The last version of GoLive that Adobe released was GoLive 9. == History == GoLive originated as the flagship product of a company named GoNet Communication, Inc. then based in Menlo Park, California, and the development company GoNet Communications GmbH in Hamburg, Germany, in 1996. Later GoNet changed its name to GoLive Systems, Inc, and the name of its product to GoLive CyberStudio. Adobe acquired GoLive in 1999 and re-branded the GoLive CyberStudio product to what became Adobe GoLive. Adobe took over the Hamburg office as an Adobe development site to continue to develop the product. At the time of the acquisition, CyberStudio was a Macintosh-only application. In the spring of 1999 Adobe released Adobe GoLive for both Macintosh and Microsoft Windows. The first versions of Dreamweaver and CyberStudio were released in a similar timeframe. However, Dreamweaver eventually became the dominant WYSIWYG HTML editor in market share. After the Adobe acquisition of Macromedia (the company that had owned Dreamweaver), GoLive was progressively re-targeted toward Adobe's traditional design market, and the product became better integrated with Adobe's existing suite of design-oriented software products and less focused on the professional web development market. The Adobe CS2 Premium suite contained GoLive CS2. With the release of Creative Suite 3, Adobe integrated Dreamweaver as a replacement for GoLive and released GoLive 9 as a standalone product. In April 2008, Adobe announced that sales and development of GoLive would cease in favor of Dreamweaver. == General description and distinctive aspects == GoLive incorporated a largely modeless workflow that relied heavily on drag-and-drop. Most user interaction was done via a contextual inspector rather than the modal workflow found in Dreamweaver. Among its features were a separate editor for tables that supported nesting, and a two-dimensional panel for applying CSS styles to elements. GoLive supported drag-and-drop of native Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator files via what the company called "Smart Objects", which then automatically guided the user through saving those files in web-supported formats. Updates to the original Photoshop or Illustrator assets were automatically tracked by GoLive. It also implemented a tool called "Components" which allowed updates to interface elements throughout a site to be updated globally by changing one single file. As a website management tool, GoLive allowed users to transfer and publish content directly from within the application, and allowed individual files to be excluded from uploading. == Features == One of the new features of GoLive version 5 was Dynamic Link, which was a method of creating dynamic, database-driven web content without the need to know a server-side language and with full WYSIWYG support in the GoLive user interface. GoLive had a powerful set of extensibility API which could be used to add additional functionality to the product. The GoLive SDK provided interfaces which allowed developers to use a combination of XML, JavaScript and C/C++ to create plugins for the product. The extensibility API allowed developers access to custom drawing and event handling using JavaScript, as well as a full JavaScript debugger and command line interpreter. This allowed intermediate-level developers using interpreted JavaScript to create sophisticated user interfaces. == Language and framework structure == Adobe GoLive is coded in the C++ programming language. It uses a custom C++ framework called SCL (Simple Class Library) which was initially built from scratch by the engineers at GoLive Systems Inc. The SCL framework was also used in the short-lived Adobe Atmosphere 3D software. == Release history == As the final version, GoLive 9 was discontinued in April 2008.

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  Autonomous logistics

  Autonomous logistics describes systems that provide unmanned, autonomous transfer of equipment, baggage, people, information or resources from point-to-point with minimal human intervention. Autonomous logistics is a new area being researched and currently there are few papers on the topic, with even fewer systems developed or deployed. With web enabled cloud software there are companies focused on developing and deploying such systems which will begin coming online in 2018. == Autonomous logistics vehicles == There are several subclasses of autonomous logistics vehicles: Ground autonomous logistics Based on Unmanned ground vehicle technology, a large autonomous logistics tracked carrier, which can be deployed in a tropical forest for day and night, has been developed. Another example is the TerraMax autonomous truck based on Oshkosh's Medium Tactical Vehicle Replacement (MTVR) military truck platform. Most recently, TerraMax competed in the 2007 Darpa Urban Challenge. The MTVR was designed for the U.S. Marine Corps with a 70% off-road mission profile. TerraMax's unmanned ground vehicle kit does not interfere with the conventional operation of the vehicle. A robust sensor suite allows for 360-degree situational awareness around TerraMax. Elements of the autonomous navigation kit could be used to enhance driver awareness. The complete kit could be used in applications such as snow removal on airport runways. Aerial autonomous logistics Based on unmanned aerial vehicle technology, aerial autonomous logistics (or logistics UAVs) provides transfer of resources and equipment in disaster relief situations, replenishment operations, reconnaissance operations where information is gathered, and general parcel or package delivery. Space autonomous logistics Describes the ability to provide logistics to and from space, be that orbital, lunar or beyond. Current space logistics vehicle examples are the Progress spacecraft, Russian expendable freighter uncrewed resupply spacecraft and the Automated Transfer Vehicle, expendable uncrewed resupply spacecraft developed by the European Space Agency. Above Water autonomous logistics Based on unmanned surface vehicle technology, this class of vehicles provides a range of surface fleet replenishment and equipment transfer capabilities. Subsea autonomous logistics Using autonomous underwater vehicle technology, these vehicles provide re-supply to underwater facilities, reconnaissance of underwater structures, emergency recovery capability, and so on. == Agent-based logistics == Shipping containers handle most of today's intercontinental transport of packaged goods. Managing them in terms of planning and scheduling is a challenging task due to the complexity and dynamics of the involved processes. Hence, recent developments show an increasing trend towards autonomous control with software agents acting on behalf of the logistic objects. Despite the high degree of autonomy it is still necessary to cooperate in order to achieve certain goals. The current trends and recent changes in logistics lead to new, complex and partially conflicting requirements for logistic planning and control systems. Due to the distributed nature of logistics, the usage of agent technology is promising. Due to the mobile nature of logistics, the usage of mobile agent technology is promising as well. Scenarios of usage of mobile agents in logistics has been envisioned.

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  GeneTalk

  GeneTalk is a web-based platform, tool, and database for filtering, reduction and prioritization of human sequence variants from next-generation sequencing (NGS) data. GeneTalk allows editing annotation about sequence variants and build up a crowd sourced database with clinically relevant information for diagnostics of genetic disorders. GeneTalk allows searching for information about specific sequence variants and connects to experts on variants that are potentially disease-relevant. == Application to diagnostics == Users can upload NGS data in Variant Call Format (VCF) onto the GeneTalk server into their accounts. All entries of the file are preprocessed and shown in the integrated VCF viewer. Filtering tools are set by the user to reduce the number of clinically non-relevant variants. After filtering and prioritization users can interpret relevant variants by retrieving information (annotations) about variants from the GeneTalk database. The communication platform allow users to contact experts about specific variants, genes, or genetic disorders, to exchange knowledge and expertise. === Analysis procedure === Steps required to analyze VCF files Upload VCF file Edit pedigree and phenotype information for segregation filtering Filter VCF file by editing the filtering options View results and annotations Add annotations === Filtering tools === The following filtering options may be used to reduce the non-relevant sequence variants in VCF files. Functional – filter out variants that have effects on protein level Linkage – filter out variants that are on specified chromosomes Gene panel – filter variants by genes or gene panels, subscribe to publicly available gene panels or create own ones Frequency – show only variants with a genotype frequency lower than specified Inheritance – filter out variants by presumed mode of inheritance Annotation – show only variants with a score for medical relevance and scientific evidence == Communication platform and expert network == Users can share VCF files with colleagues and coworkers. The integrated mailing systems allows users to contact experts easily. Users can create annotations and comments and rate annotations regarding medical relevance and scientific evidence, that is helpful for the community of users for diagnosis of genetic disorders. Registered users provide information about their field of knowledge in their profile and can be contacted by other users. == Potential applications == Developing diagnostics Genetic analysis Capturing data generated by community Communication and exchange of knowledge and expertise

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  Picture Prowler

  Picture Prowler was an early piece of photo management software developed around and meant to show off Xing Technology's JPEG image decompression library during the early 1990s. Little known today, it featured thumbnail based picture management, printing, etc. The primary developer was Ray Bunnage from compression / decompression libraries developed by Howard Gordon and Chris Eddy.

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  Kuwahara filter

  The Kuwahara filter is a non-linear smoothing filter used in image processing for adaptive noise reduction. Most filters that are used for image smoothing are linear low-pass filters that effectively reduce noise but also blur out the edges. However the Kuwahara filter is able to apply smoothing on the image while preserving the edges. It is named after Michiyoshi Kuwahara, Ph.D., who worked at Kyoto and Osaka Sangyo Universities in Japan, developing early medical imaging of dynamic heart muscle in the 1970s and 80s. == The Kuwahara operator == Suppose that I ( x , y ) {\displaystyle I(x,y)} is a grey scale image and that we take a square window of size 2 a + 1 {\displaystyle 2a+1} centered around a point ( x , y ) {\displaystyle (x,y)} in the image. This square can be divided into four smaller square regions Q i = 1 ⋯ 4 {\displaystyle Q_{i=1\cdots 4}} each of which will be Q i ( x , y ) = { [ x , x + a ] × [ y , y + a ] if i = 1 [ x − a , x ] × [ y , y + a ] if i = 2 [ x − a , x ] × [ y − a , y ] if i = 3 [ x , x + a ] × [ y − a , y ] if i = 4 {\displaystyle Q_{i}(x,y)={\begin{cases}\left[x,x+a\right]\times \left[y,y+a\right]&{\mbox{ if }}i=1\\\left[x-a,x\right]\times \left[y,y+a\right]&{\mbox{ if }}i=2\\\left[x-a,x\right]\times \left[y-a,y\right]&{\mbox{ if }}i=3\\\left[x,x+a\right]\times \left[y-a,y\right]&{\mbox{ if }}i=4\\\end{cases}}} where × {\displaystyle \times } is the cartesian product. Pixels located on the borders between two regions belong to both regions so there is a slight overlap between subregions. The arithmetic mean m i ( x , y ) {\displaystyle m_{i}(x,y)} and standard deviation σ i ( x , y ) {\displaystyle \sigma _{i}(x,y)} of the four regions centered around a pixel (x,y) are calculated and used to determine the value of the central pixel. The output of the Kuwahara filter Φ ( x , y ) {\displaystyle \Phi (x,y)} for any point ( x , y ) {\displaystyle (x,y)} is then given by Φ ( x , y ) = m i ( x , y ) {\textstyle \Phi (x,y)=m_{i}(x,y)} where i = a r g min j ⁡ σ j ( x , y ) {\displaystyle i=\operatorname {arg\min } _{j}\sigma _{j}(x,y)} . This means that the central pixel will take the mean value of the area that is most homogenous. The location of the pixel in relation to an edge plays a great role in determining which region will have the greater standard deviation. If for example the pixel is located on a dark side of an edge it will most probably take the mean value of the dark region. On the other hand, should the pixel be on the lighter side of an edge it will most probably take a light value. On the event that the pixel is located on the edge it will take the value of the more smooth, least textured region. The fact that the filter takes into account the homogeneity of the regions ensures that it will preserve the edges while using the mean creates the blurring effect. Similarly to the median filter, the Kuwahara filter uses a sliding window approach to access every pixel in the image. The size of the window is chosen in advance and may vary depending on the desired level of blur in the final image. Bigger windows typically result in the creation of more abstract images whereas small windows produce images that retain their detail. Typically windows are chosen to be square with sides that have an odd number of pixels for symmetry. However, there are variations of the Kuwahara filter that use rectangular windows. Additionally, the subregions do not need to overlap or have the same size as long as they cover all of the window. == Color images == For color images, the filter should not be performed by applying the filter to each RGB channel separately, and then recombining the three filtered color channels to form the filtered RGB image. The main problem with that is that the quadrants will have different standard deviations for each of the channels. For example, the upper left quadrant may have the lowest standard deviation in the red channel, but the lower right quadrant may have the lowest standard deviation in the green channel. This situation would result in the color of the central pixel to be determined by different regions, which might result in color artifacts or blurrier edges. To overcome this problem, for color images a slightly modified Kuwahara filter must be used. The image is first converted into another color space, the HSV color space. The modified filter then operates on only the "brightness" channel, the Value coordinate in the HSV model. The variance of the "brightness" of each quadrant is calculated to determine the quadrant from which the final filtered color should be taken from. The filter will produce an output for each channel which will correspond to the mean of that channel from the quadrant that had the lowest standard deviation in "brightness". This ensures that only one region will determine the RGB values of the central pixel. ImageMagick uses a similar approach, but using the Rec. 709 Luma as the brightness metric. === Julia Implementation === == Applications == Originally the Kuwahara filter was proposed for use in processing RI-angiocardiographic images of the cardiovascular system. The fact that any edges are preserved when smoothing makes it especially useful for feature extraction and segmentation and explains why it is used in medical imaging. The Kuwahara filter however also finds many applications in artistic imaging and fine-art photography due to its ability to remove textures and sharpen the edges of photographs. The level of abstraction helps create a desirable painting-like effect in artistic photographs especially in the case of the colored image version of the filter. These applications have known great success and have encouraged similar research in the field of image processing for the arts. Although the vast majority of applications have been in the field of image processing there have been cases that use modifications of the Kuwahara filter for machine learning tasks such as clustering. The Kuwahara filter has been implemented in CVIPtools. The Kuwahara filter is present as a shader node in Blender. == Drawbacks and restrictions == The Kuwahara filter despite its capabilities in edge preservation has certain drawbacks. At a first glance it is noticeable that the Kuwahara filter does not take into account the case where two regions have equal standard deviations. This is not often the case in real images since it is rather hard to find two regions with exactly the same standard deviation due to the noise that is always present. In cases where two regions have similar standard deviations the value of the center pixel could be decided at random by the noise in these regions. Again this would not be a problem if the regions had the same mean. However, it is not unusual for regions of very different means to have the same standard deviation. This makes the Kuwahara filter susceptible to noise. Different ways have been proposed for dealing with this issue, one of which is to set the value of the center pixel to ( m 1 + m 2 ) / 2 {\textstyle (m_{1}+m_{2})/2} in cases where the standard deviation of two regions do not differ more than a certain value D {\displaystyle D} . The Kuwahara filter is also known to create block artifacts in the images especially in regions of the image that are highly textured. These blocks disrupt the smoothness of the image and are considered to have a negative effect in the aesthetics of the image. This phenomenon occurs due to the division of the window into square regions. A way to overcome this effect is to take windows that are not rectangular(i.e. circular windows) and separate them into more non-rectangular regions. There have also been approaches where the filter adapts its window depending on the input image. == Extensions of the Kuwahara filter == The success of the Kuwahara filter has spurred an increase the development of edge-enhancing smoothing filters. Several variations have been proposed for similar use most of which attempt to deal with the drawbacks of the original Kuwahara filter. The "Generalized Kuwahara filter" proposed by P. Bakker considers several windows that contain a fixed pixel. Each window is then assigned an estimate and a confidence value. The value of the fixed pixel then takes the value of the estimate of the window with the highest confidence. This filter is not characterized by the same ambiguity in the presence of noise and manages to eliminate the block artifacts. The "Mean of Least Variance"(MLV) filter, proposed by M.A. Schulze also produces edge-enhancing smoothing results in images. Similarly to the Kuwahara filter it assumes a window of size 2 d − 1 × 2 d − 1 {\displaystyle 2d-1\times 2d-1} but instead of searching amongst four subregions of size d × d {\displaystyle d\times d} for the one with minimum variance it searches amongst all possible d × d {\displaystyle d\times d} subregions. This means the central pixel of the window will be assigned the mean of the one subregion out of a poss

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