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We present an improved parallel Sweep and Prune algorithm that solves the dynamic box intersection problem in three dimensions. It scales up to very large datasets, which makes it suitable for broad phase collision detection in complex moving body simulations. Our algorithm gracefully handles high-density scenarios, including challenging clustering behavior, by using a double-axis sweeping approach and a cache-friendly succinct data structure. The algorithm is realized by three parallel stages for sorting, candidate generation, and object pairing. By the use of temporal coherence, our sorting stage runs with close to optimal load balancing. Furthermore, our approach is characterized by a work-division strategy that relies on adaptive partitioning, which leads to almost ideal scalability. In addition, for scenarios that involves intense clustering along several axes simultaneously, we propose an enhancement that increases the context-awareness of the algorithm. By exploiting information gathered along three orthogonal axes, an efficient choice of what range query to perform can be made per object during run-time. Experimental results show high performance for up to millions of objects on modern multi-core CPUs.

In this article we present an external memory algorithm for computing the exact minimum enclosing ball of a massive set of points in any dimension. We test the performance of the algorithm on real-life three-dimensional data sets and demonstrate for the first time the practical efficiency of exact out-of-core algorithms. By use of simple heuristics, we achieve near-optimal I/O in all our test cases.

We propose an algorithm for computing the exact minimum enclosing ball of large point sets in general dimensions. It aims to reduce the number of passes by retrieving a well-balanced set of outliers in each linear search through the input by decomposing the space into orthants. The experimental evidence indicates that the convergence rate in terms of the required number of linear passes is superior compared to previous exact methods, and substantially faster execution times are observed in dimensions d≤16. In the important three-dimensional case, the execution times indicate real-time performance. Furthermore, we show how the algorithm can be adapted for parallel execution on both CPU and GPU architectures using OpenMP, AVX, and CUDA. For large datasets, our CUDA solution is superior. For example, the benchmark results show that optimal bounding spheres for inputs with tens of millions of points can be computed in just a few milliseconds.

During the last decade, interactive technology has entered mainstream society. Its many users also include children, even the youngest ones, who use the technology in different situations for both fun and learning. When designing technology for children, it is crucial to involve children in the process in order to arrive at an age-appropriate end product. In this study we describe the specific iterative process by which an interactive application was developed. This application is intended to facilitate young children's, three-to five years old, participation in healthcare situations. We also describe the specific contributions of the children, who tested the prototypes in a preschool, a primary health care clinic and an outpatient unit at a hospital, during the development process. The iterative phases enabled the children to be involved at different stages of the process and to evaluate modifications and improvements made after each prior iteration. The children contributed their own perspectives(the child's perspective) on the usability, content and graphic design of the application, substantially improving the software and resulting in an age-appropriate product.

Minimum enclosing balls are used extensively to speed up multidimensional data processing in, e.g., machine learning, spatial databases, and computer graphics. We present a case study of several acceleration techniques that are applicable in enclosing ball algorithms based on repeated farthest-point queries. Two different distance filtering heuristics are proposed aiming at reducing the cost of the farthest-point queries as much as possible by exploiting lower and upper distance bounds. Furthermore, auto-tunable GPU solutions using CUDA are developed for both low- and high-dimensional cases. Empirical tests apply these techniques to two recent algorithms and demonstrate substantial speedups of the ball computations. Our results also indicate that a combination of the approaches has the potential to give further performance improvements.

Computer aided diagnosis of medical images can help physicians in better detecting and early diagnosis of many symptoms and therefore reducing the mortality rate. Realization of an efficient mobile device for semi-automatic diagnosis of melanoma would greatly enhance the applicability of medical image classification scheme and make it useful in clinical contexts. In this paper, interactive object recognition methodology is adopted for border segmentation of clinical skin lesion images. In addition, performance of five classifiers, KNN, Naïve Bayes, multi-layer perceptron, random forest and SVM are compared based on color and texture features for discriminating melanoma from benign nevus. The results show that a sensitivity of 82.6% and specificity of 83% can be achieved using a single SVM classifier. However, a better classification performance was achieved using a proposed cascade classifier with the sensitivity of 83.06% and specificity of 90.05% when performing ten-fold cross validation.

Minimum enclosing balls are used extensively to speed up multidimensional data processing in, e.g., machine learning, spatial databases, and computer graphics. We present a case study of several acceleration techniques that are applicable in enclosing ball algorithms based on repeated farthest-point queries. Parallel GPU solutions using CUDA are developed for both low- and high-dimensional cases. Furthermore, two different distance filtering heuristics are proposed aiming at reducing the cost of the farthest-point queries as much as possible by exploiting lower and upper distance bounds. Empirical tests show encouraging results. Compared to a sequential CPU version of the algorithm, the GPU parallelization runs up to 11 times faster. When applying the distance filtering techniques, further speedups are observed.

Minimum enclosing ball algorithms are studied extensively as a tool in approximation and classification of multidimensional data. We present pruning techniques that can accelerate several existing algorithms by continuously removing interior points from the input. By recognizing a key property shared by these algorithms, we derive tighter bounds than have previously been presented, resulting in twice the effect on performance. Furthermore, only minor modifications are required to incorporate the pruning procedure. The presented bounds are independent of the dimension, and empirical evidence shows that the pruning procedure remains effective in dimensions up to at least 200. In some cases, performance improvements of two orders of magnitude are observed for large data sets. © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

In this paper, an algorithm is introduced that computes an arbitrarily fine approximation of the smallest enclosing ball of a point set in any dimension. This operation is important in, for example, classification, clustering, and data mining. The algorithm is very simple to implement, gives reliable results, and gracefully handles large problem instances in low and high dimensions, as confirmed by both theoretical arguments and empirical evaluation. For example, using a CPU with eight cores, it takes less than two seconds to compute a 1.001-approximation of the smallest enclosing ball of one million points uniformly distributed in a hypercube in dimension 200. Furthermore, the presented approach extends to a more general class of input objects, such as ball sets.