This paper investigates the accuracy of Augmented Reality (AR) technologies, particularly commercially available optical see-through displays, in depicting virtual content inside the human body for surgical planning. Their inherent limitations result in inaccuracies in perceived object positioning. We examine how occlusion, specifically with opaque surfaces, affects perceived depth of virtual objects at arm's length working distances. A custom apparatus with a half-silvered mirror was developed, providing accurate depth cues excluding occlusion, differing from commercial displays. We carried out a study, contrasting our apparatus with a HoloLens 2, involving a depth estimation task under varied surface complexities and illuminations. In addition, we explored the effects of creating a virtual "hole" in the surface. Subjects' depth estimation accuracy and confidence were a ssessed. Results showed more depth estimation variation with HoloLens and significant depth error beneath complex occluding surfaces. However, creating a virtual hole significantly reduced depth errors and increased subjects' confidence, irrespective of accuracy enhancement. These findings have important implications for the design and use of mixed-reality technologies in surgical applications, and industrial applications such as using virtual content to guide maintenance or repair of components hidden beneath the opaque outer surface of equipment. A free copy of this paper and all supplemental materials are available at https://bit.ly/3YbkwjU.

Direct projection of 3D branching structures, such as networks of cables, blood vessels, or neurons onto a 2D image creates the illusion of intersecting structural parts and creates challenges for understanding and communication. We present a method for visualizing such structures, and demonstrate its utility in visualizing the abdominal aorta and its branches, whose tomographic images might be obtained by computed tomography or magnetic resonance angiography, in a single 2D stylistic image, without overlaps among branches. The visualization method, termed uncluttered single-image visualization (USIV), involves optimization of geometry. This paper proposes a novel optimization technique that utilizes an interesting connection of the optimization problem regarding USIV to the protein structure prediction problem. Adopting the integer linear programming-based formulation for the protein structure prediction problem, we tested the proposed technique using 30 visualizations produced from five patient scans with representative anatomical variants in the abdominal aortic vessel tree. The novel technique can exploit commodity-level parallelism, enabling use of general-purpose graphics processing unit (GPGPU) technology that yields a significant speedup. Comparison of the results with the other optimization technique previously reported elsewhere suggests that, in most aspects, the quality of the visualization is comparable to that of the previous one, with a significant gain in the computation time of the algorithm.

Computer aided detection (CAD) in computed tomography colonography (CTC) aims at detecting colonic polyps that are the precursors of colon cancer. In this work, we propose a colon wall evolution algorithm polyp enhancing level sets (PELS) based on the level-set formulation that regularizes and enhances polyps as a preprocessing step to CTC CAD algorithms. The underlying idea is to evolve the polyps towards spherical protrusions on the colon wall while keeping other structures, such as haustral folds, relatively unchanged and, thereby, potentially improve the performance of CTC CAD algorithms, especially for smaller polyps. To evaluate our methods, we conducted a pilot study using an arbitrarily chosen CTC CAD method, the surface normal overlap (SNO) CAD algorithm, on a nine patient CTC data set with 47 polyps of sizes ranging from 2.0 to 17.0 mm in diameter. PELS increased the maximum sensitivity by 8.1% (from 21/37 to 24/37) for small polyps of sizes ranging from 5.0 to 9.0 mm in diameter. This is accompanied by a statistically significant separation between small polyps and false positives. PELS did not change the CTC CAD performance significantly for larger polyps.

Empirical software engineering research needs research guidelines to improve the research and reporting processes. We propose a preliminary set of research guidelines aimed at stimulating discussion among software researchers. They are based on a review of research guidelines developed for medical researchers and on our own experience in doing and reviewing software engineering research. The guidelines are intended to assist researchers, reviewers, and meta-analysts in designing, conducting, and evaluating empirical studies. Editorial boards of software engineering journals may wish to use our recommendations as a basis for developing guidelines for reviewers and for framing policies for dealing with the design, data collection, and analysis and reporting of empirical studies.

No abstract available.

Article Free Access Share on X toolkits: the lessons learned Authors: Jarrett Rosenberg Sun Microsystems Sun MicrosystemsView Profile , Paul Asente Adobe Systems, Inc. Adobe Systems, Inc.View Profile , Mark Linton Stanford University Stanford UniversityView Profile , Andrey Palay Carnegie-Mellon University Carnegie-Mellon UniversityView Profile Authors Info & Claims UIST '90: Proceedings of the 3rd annual ACM SIGGRAPH symposium on User interface software and technologyAugust 1990 Pages 108–111https://doi.org/10.1145/97924.97937Online:01 August 1990Publication History 0citation275DownloadsMetricsTotal Citations0Total Downloads275Last 12 Months7Last 6 weeks5 Get Citation AlertsNew Citation Alert added!This alert has been successfully added and will be sent to:You will be notified whenever a record that you have chosen has been cited.To manage your alert preferences, click on the button below.Manage my AlertsNew Citation Alert!Please log in to your account Save to BinderSave to BinderCreate a New BinderNameCancelCreateExport CitationPublisher SiteeReaderPDF

Article Free Access Share on UIMSs: threat or menace? Authors: J. Rosenberg Hewlett-Packard Laboratories Hewlett-Packard LaboratoriesView Profile , R. Hill European Computer-Industry Research Center European Computer-Industry Research CenterView Profile , J. Miller Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation Microelectronics and Computer Technology CorporationView Profile , A. Schulert Apollo Computer Apollo ComputerView Profile , D. Shewmake Interactive Development Environments Interactive Development EnvironmentsView Profile Authors Info & Claims CHI '88: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing SystemsMay 1988 Pages 197–200https://doi.org/10.1145/57167.57200Online:01 May 1988Publication History 13citation212DownloadsMetricsTotal Citations13Total Downloads212Last 12 Months5Last 6 weeks1 Get Citation AlertsNew Citation Alert added!This alert has been successfully added and will be sent to:You will be notified whenever a record that you have chosen has been cited.To manage your alert preferences, click on the button below.Manage my AlertsNew Citation Alert!Please log in to your account Save to BinderSave to BinderCreate a New BinderNameCancelCreateExport CitationPublisher SiteeReaderPDF

In the domain of interaction languages, forms have been found to be of value in allowing users, especially non-programmers, to specify objects and operations with a minimum of training, time, and errors. Most of that research, however, has been on the use of data base query languages. The present research found that in a procedural task of specifying mail filtering instructions, non-programmers using a form were as fast as programmers using a procedural language, although programmers using the form were faster still.

It is widely believed that overlapping windows are preferable to tiled (non-overlapping) ones, but there is very little research to support that belief. An analysis of the basic characteristics of windowing regimes predicts that there are, in fact, situations where overlapping windows are inferior to tiled. An experiment to test this prediction verified that there are indeed tasks and users for which tiled windows yield faster performance. This result suggests a need for closer study of the principles underlying windowing regimes, so that designers have a better understanding of the tradeoffs involved in using them.

Most linguistic studies of human-computer communication have focused on the issues of syntax and discourse structure. However, another interesting and important area is the lexical semantics of command laguages. The names that users and system designers give the objects and actions of a computer system can greatly affect its usability, and the lexical issues involved are as complicated as those in natural languages. This paper presents an overview of the various studies of naming in computer systems, examining such issues as suggestiveness, memorability, descriptions of categories, and the use of non-words as names. A simple featural framework for the analysis of these phenomena is presented.

A variety of aspects of command names have been studied, such as suggestiveness, memorability, and the use of icons. A single framework for these disparate studies is desirable, and it is proposed that the concept of featural analysis prevalent in linguistics and psycholinguistics be adopted as an approach to command name design. Examples of the breadth of application of this approach are given for the naming issues of suggestiveness, learning and memory, congruence and hierarchicalness, universal commands, the relationships of names to the command language syntax, and the use of non-words as names.

An important feature of the design of human-computer interfaces is that of command languages: the vocabulary and syntax that allow a user to express commands to the system. If we look at command languages from the standpoint of natural languages, rather than formal ones, then there are three aspects to their user interface. The first is the overall structure of the user-system dialogue—its pragmatics, so to speak (e.g., [3]), which includes issues of contextual reference, presuppositions, and so on. The second aspect of command languages is their syntax (e.g., [1], [4]). The important issue here is the trade-off between consistency of the syntax and its similarity to that of natural language. The third aspect of command languages is their semantics, primarily that of their commands. Most command languages are fairly small, with simple data and control structures, and so their semantics are fairly trivial. More important is the “lexical” semantics of commands and their arguments and parameters. The crucial factor here is the names given to the entities and operations in the system by the command language: if those names are not apt, performance will be impaired just as with poorly designed syntax or dialogue structure. This paper investigates the psycholinguistic aspects of this naming problem.