Volume 20, Issue 4

The near infrared spectroscopy may be implemented using various optoelectronic techniques, however, most of them do not allow to carry out measurements at short source-detector separation. We propose a method, based on time-gated intensified CCD camera, which allows for contactless measurements and can be carried out at short source-detector separation. This technique was tested on a phantom with absorbing inclusions buried in an optically turbid medium which mimics local changes in oxygenation of the brain tissue.

Liquid crystal cell (LCC) for space-borne laser rangefinder to space mission applications was developed, manufactured and tested under cooperation between Military University of Technology (MUT) in Poland and Vavilov State Optical Institute (Vavilov SOI) in Russia. LCC operates in twisted nematic mode, commutating the polarization plane of a laser beam working at 1.064 μm and the energy density not smaller than 0,15 J/cm2 at the pulse duration about 8 ns. The transmission of LCC is not smaller than 95% at the aperture diameter not less than 15 mm. Switching on and switching off times in a 2.5-μm thick LCC driven by voltage of 10 V are not larger than 0.7 ms and 7 ms, respectively, in the operating temperature range from 20°C to 40°C. The LCCs developed in MUT were positively tested under space requirements in Vavilov SOI.

This paper addresses a license plate localization (LPL) algorithm for a complex background. Most of LPL algorithm works on restricted conditions, as well as on a principle of sequential elimination of blocks from image level to final LP candidate region. In most of algorithms, blocks are filtered out for not satisfying required LP features in a top-down approach and this may result in a poor efficiency in a complex scenario. The major steps of the proposed approach are adaptive edge mapping, saliency measure of edge based rules with confidence level estimation using fuzzy rules and final step for reassessment of decision by colour attributes filtering. The proposed algorithm is adaptive to across the country variations in LP standards, as well as it is tested on two data sets each one consisting of more than 700 images, set-1 being for good images while set-2 including only constrained images. The algorithm is tested for a low contrast due to overexposure or poor lighting, existence of multiple plates, variation in aspect ratio and compatible background conditions. It has been observed, that the performance degradation imposing complex condition is nominal.

The paper gives the results of refractive indexes for three plastic materials: polyethylene, polymethyl methacrylate and polyvinyl chloride, which are measured and compared in two arrangements - a CW THz photomixer and a pulsed THz spectrometer.

An analysis of the 3-dB modulation bandwidth in planar waveguide laser based on 1D photonic crystal structures is presented. The theoretical model takes into account the gain saturation effect, transverse and longitudinal field distribution. A small-signal perturbation solution of the coupled laser rate equation is used to obtain relations describing the dynamic operation. In paper, the distributed Bragg resonator DBR created as 1D photonic crystal is considered. The active waveguide is surrounded by 1D photonic crystal mirrors consisting of alternately placed stripes with different refractive indices. In particular, the influence of the photonic crystal parameters on the 3-dB modulation bandwidth is investigated.

This paper presents a novel and efficient locally adaptive denoising method based on clustering of pixels into regions of similar geometric and radiometric structures. Clustering is performed by adaptively segmenting pixels in the local kernel based on their augmented variational series. Then, noise pixels are restored by selectively considering the radiometric and spatial properties of every pixel in the formed clusters. The proposed method is exceedingly robust in conveying reliable local structural information even in the presence of noise. As a result, the proposed method substantially outperforms other state-of-the-art methods in terms of image restoration and computational cost. We support our claims with ample simulated and real data experiments. The relatively fast runtime from extensive simulations also suggests that the proposed method is suitable for a variety of image-based products — either embedded in image capturing devices or applied as image enhancement software.

Erbium-doped fibre laser mode-locked by a graphene saturable absorber is presented. Pulses with 630-fs duration and 41.9-MHz repetition frequency were achieved at the centre wavelength of 1562 nm and 9-nm FWHM bandwidth. Multilayer graphene was obtained by mechanical exfoliation from a pure graphite block by using the scotch-tape method and deposited on a fibre ferrule to form a saturable absorber. The laser operated in a mode-locked regime with 37-mW pumping and 4-mW output power.

This paper proposes a human visual system based data hiding method with the consideration of the local complexity in images. It is known that human vision is more sensitive to the changes in smooth area than that of complex area, we embed less data into blocks with low complexity and embed more data into blocks with rich texture. We use the modified diamond encoding (MDE) as the embedding technique, and employ a sophisticated pixel pair adjustment process to maintain the complexity consistency of blocks before and after embedding data bits. Since the proposed method is robust to LSB-based steganalysis, it is more secure than other existing methods using the LSB replacement as their embedding technique. The experimental results revealed that the proposed method not only offers a better embedding performance, but is also secure under the attack of the LSB based steganalysis tools.

The Hall effect and photoluminescence measurements combined with annealing and/or ion milling were used to study the electrical and optical properties of HgCdTe films grown by molecular-beam epitaxy on GaAs substrates with ZnTe and CdTe buffer layers. Unintentional donor doping, likely from the substrate, which resulted in residual donor concentration of the order of 1015 cm−3, was observed in the films. Also, acceptor states, possibly related to structural defects, were observed.