This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Dissertations and Theses at ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has

RECHERCHES Elastographie par ondes de cisaillement

m]]l]]s¶D]]¿÷mB]iv]b]oD]m¶¨]iv]§]iv]r]j]t¿rv]]irj]]t]]m] / | ap]]r¿]ÎNy]s¶D]]mb¶r]ix} Û]Ix]]rd]mb]} p—N]t]o%ism] in]ty]m] / || Û]Is]¡uÎc]rN]]riv]nd]p]*N]m]st¶ I always bow to Śri ̄ Śāradāmbā, the limitless ocean of the nectar of compassion, who bears a rosary, a vessel of nectar, the symbol of knowledge and a book in Her lotus hands. Dedicated to the Lotus Feet of the revered Sadguru. This thesis presents a new active mask (AM) framework and an algorithm for segmenta-tion of digital images, particularly those of punctate patterns from fluorescence microscopy. Fluorescence microscopy has greatly facilitated the task of understanding complex sys-tems at cellular and molecular levels in recent years. Segmentation, an important yet dif-ficult problem, is often the first processing step following acquisition. Our team previously demonstrated that a stochastic active contour based algorithm together with the concept of

Abstract: Online learning initia-tives over the past decade have become increasingly comprehen-sive in their selection of courses and sophisticated in their presen-tation, culminating in the recent announcement of a number of consortium and startup activities that promise to make a university education on the internet, free of charge, a real possibility. At this pivotal moment it is appropriate to explore the potential for obtaining comprehensive bioinformatics training with currently existing free video resources. This article pre-sents such a bioinformatics curric-ulum in the form of a virtual course catalog, together with editorial commentary, and an assessment of strengths, weaknesses, and likely future directions for open online learning in this field. Online Learning Comes of Age Online academic ‘‘courseware’ ’ at the university level has now been available to the public for a decade, the earliest concerted effort having originated in 2002 with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and their OpenCour-seWare initiative

encouraged me to be motivated and to keep working on the thesis. I would like to thank him for all his time that he has spent on reading my thesis, on giving me direct comments, and further motivation. I had times when I felt lost in my own thesis, and I was ready to give up, but Dr. Aldewereld always