arXiv subjects

Robert Bell

Publications and source records attributed to Robert Bell.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2023

A 3D deep learning classifier and its explainability when assessing coronary artery disease

Early detection and diagnosis of coronary artery disease (CAD) could save lives and reduce healthcare costs. The current clinical practice is to perform CAD diagnosis through analysing medical images from computed tomography coronary angiography (CTCA). Most current approaches utilise deep learning methods but require centerline extraction and multi-planar reconstruction. These indirect methods are not designed in a clinician-friendly manner, and they complicate the interventional procedure. Furthermore, the current deep learning methods do not provide exact explainability and limit the usefulness of these methods to be deployed in clinical settings. In this study, we first propose a 3D Resnet-50 deep learning model to directly classify normal subjects and CAD patients on CTCA images, then we demonstrate a 2D modified U-Net model can be subsequently employed to segment the coronary arteries. Our proposed approach outperforms the state-of-the-art models by 21.43% in terms of classification accuracy. The classification model with focal loss provides a better and more focused heat map, and the segmentation model provides better explainability than the classification-only model. The proposed holistic approach not only provides a simpler and clinician-friendly solution but also good classification accuracy and exact explainability for CAD diagnosis.

eess.IV↗

arXiv2022

Investigating the Electronic Structure of Prospective Water-splitting Oxide BaCe$_{0.25}$Mn$_{0.75}$O$_{3-\delta}$ Before and After Thermal Reduction

BaCe$_{0.25}$Mn$_{0.75}$O$_{3-\delta}$ (BCM), a non-stoichiometric oxide closely resembling a perovskite crystal structure, has recently emerged as a prospective contender for application in renewable energy harvesting by solar thermochemical hydrogen generation. Using solar energy, oxygen-vacancies can be created in BCM and the reduced crystal so obtained can, in turn, produce H2 by stripping oxygen from H2O. Therefore, a first step toward understanding the working mechanism and optimizing the performance of BCM, is a thorough and comparative analysis of the electronic structure of the pristine and the reduced material. In this paper, we probe the electronic structure of BCM using the combined effort of first-principles calculations and experimental O K-edge x-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS). The computed projected density-of-states (PDOS) and orbital-plots are used to propose a simplified model for orbital-mixing between the oxygen and the ligand atoms. With the help of state-of-the-art simulations, we are able to find the origins of the XAS peaks and to categorize them on the basis of contribution from Ce and Mn. For the reduced crystal, the calculations show that, as a consequence of dielectric screening, the change in electron-density resulting from the reduction is strongly localized around the oxygen vacancy. Our experimental studies reveal a marked lowering of the first O K-edge peak in the reduced crystal which is shown to result from a diminished O-2p contribution to the frontier unoccupied orbitals, in accordance with the tight-binding scheme. Our study paves the way for investigation of the working-mechanism of BCM and for computational and experimental efforts aimed at design and discovery of efficient water-splitting oxides.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2021

A Pedagogical Introduction to Holographic Hadrons

String theory's holographic QCD duality makes predictions for hadron physics by building models that live in five-dimensional (5D) curved space. In this pedagogical note, we explain how finding the hadron mass spectrum in these models amounts to finding the eigenvalues of a time-independent, one-dimensional Schroedinger equation. Changing the structure of the 5D curved space is equivalent to altering the potential in the Schroedinger equation, which in turn alters the hadron spectrum. We illustrate this concept with three holographic QCD models possessing exact analogs in basic quantum mechanics: the free particle, the infinite square well, and the harmonic oscillator. In addition to making aspects of holographic QCD accessible to undergraduates, this formulation can provide students with intuition for the meaning of curved space. This paper is intended primarily as a tool for researchers interested in involving early-stage undergraduates in research, but is also a suitable introduction to elements of holographic QCD for advanced undergraduate- and beginning graduate students with some knowledge of general relativity and classical field theory.

hep-th↗

arXiv2010

Chemical Influences on Ice Crystal Growth from Vapor

We present an investigation of chemical influences on the growth of ice crystals from water vapor. In one set of experiments, we grew ice crystals in a vapor diffusion chamber, observing crystal morphologies at temperatures from 0 C to -25 C in different background gases and with a variety of gaseous chemical additives. In a second set of experiments, we measured ice crystal growth rates at -5 C and -15 C in a free-fall flow chamber, using normal laboratory air and ultra-clean nitrogen gas, both with and without chemical additives. Conclusions from these experiments include:\ 1) In nitrogen gas at a pressure of one atmosphere, no tested chemical additives at concentrations below 10 ppm produced any observable changes in ice crystal growth morphologies; 2) Growth in ultra-clean nitrogen gas was not significantly different from growth in ordinary laboratory air; 3) Chemical additives affected plate-like dendritic growth at -15 C more readily than growth at higher temperatures; 4) Chemical additives tended to promote the growth of columnar crystals over plate-like crystals; 5) Ice growth in air, nitrogen, helium, argon, hydrogen, and methane gases at a pressure of one atmosphere yielded essentially the same temperature-dependent crystal morphologies.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗