Developing An Improved Heart Rate Monitor With Work-Out Training Android Application And Real Time Audio Coaching

TechnoHeart is a digital way of monitoring heart rate using a Heart Rate Monitor device and an android phone. Moreover, this is made more special through its work-out training which is designed to help users set and achieve their target heart rate and monitor at what training intensity they are during a strenuous exercise. The training is made more interactive as the application has its real-time audio coaching. The need for this application comes from three sources; First, some athletes, non-athletes and even doctors are still using the traditional way of getting the heart rate; Second, training intensity is not monitored and target heart rate is not achieved; Third, most mobile developments do not tailor the need of users who undergo work-out training. With the following needs, objectives were set; First, to connect an HRM (Heart Rate Monitoring) device to an android mobile device and display individual’s heart rate in digital form through mobile; Second, to create a work-out training program using the Karvonen Formula; Third, to enable users know one’s target heart rate by using a Karvonen calculator; Fourth, to notify users in real time with every sudden change and the needed action in order to keep an effective training exercise. The project is to explore this and other similar concepts to develop a design that optimally satisfies all of these objectives. The project addresses all of these objectives while meeting the constraints given. The project was deployed in three different sets of users: The University of Mindanao Athletes, The elderly users aging from 50-80 years old and the other users aging from 12-49 years old. The researchers recommend the use of TechnoHeart for athletes and non-athletes who are aiming for an effective cardiovascular training. And for the next researchers, they can focus on the compatibility of the said application to other mobile platforms like iOS, Blackberry, Windows and etc. And also, they may upload application in the internet such as in social networking sites or any features that would make this project more usable.

Reversible Watermarking and its Applications

In the last decade, watermarking applications have increased considerably. The main reason is that watermarking has emerged as a prospective technique, which can provide copyright protection and authentication of digital content. However, the disadvantage of watermarking is that it introduces small modifications in the original work and thus causes slight degradation. These modifications may be undesirable in some sensitive applications, like medical imagery, 3D reconstruction, and military applications. As a remedy to this problem, researchers have introduced the concept of reversible watermarking. The main objective of reversible watermarking scheme is to restore the watermarked image to its original state after watermark extraction. In this thesis, new reversible watermarking techniques as well as their novel applications are presented. In some of these techniques, computational intelligence (CI) approaches have been employed to improve the watermark capacity versus imperceptibility tradeoff. The research work is carried out in four phases. In the first phase, reversible watermarking is employed on medical imagery, which comprises regions of sensitive information. Slight modification in these regions affects the diagnostic analysis and thus can lead to wrong decisions. For this purpose, a novel reversible watermarking technique has been developed that utilizes genetic algorithm (GA) to improve capacity versus imperceptibility tradeoff. The algorithm makes use of block based companding technique, which helps in increasing the watermark capacity. Experimental analysis depicts that the developed watermarking technique provides good performance compared to the existing approaches. As the technique is reversible, therefore, it is even capable of embedding in the sensitive regions of the image. Reversible watermarking of images with depth information is discussed in the second phase of this work. 3D imaging is widely used in 3D gaming, robotics, controlling and routing devices etc. Different techniques and algorithms are reported to compute the depth information of an object. In this phase, depth information is computed through shape from focus algorithm. The depth information is reversibly embedded in its corresponding 2D image. This technique also utilizes GA to compute near-optimal threshold matrix for performance improvement in terms of capacity versus imperceptibility tradeoff. An additional attribute is achieved by using the threshold matrix for authentication purpose. The third phase focuses on reversible watermarking of 3D camera images. 3D cameras work on different principles for depth map computation. Cameras working on time of flight principle for depth Reversible Watermarking and Its Applications Page xviii map calculation are used in the experimental analysis of the proposed technique. The developed technique utilizes 3D information to embed as a watermark. In this way, protection and secure transmission of an image along with its corresponding depth map is provided. Two CI approaches, namely, differential evolution and a hybrid approach (comprising particle swarm optimization and differential evolution) are utilized to optimize the capacity and imperceptibility tradeoff. This technique is also able to provide authentication capability against manipulation and collage attacks. In the first three phases, CI is exploited to improve the performance of the proposed reversible watermarking techniques. However, CI approaches are more time and resource consuming. Therefore, in fourth phase, a novel and fast reversible watermarking technique is proposed based on histogram processing and down sampling. Histogram based reversible watermarking techniques are easy to implement and are computationally less expensive. A concept of down sampling is employed to generate a reference image and thus create more space for hiding bits. Block selection is used to generate a location map. However, the location map is required at the receiving side to perform extraction and recovery processes. An additional use of location map is devised, which makes the technique capable of authenticating digital images.