Application software

About: Application software is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 12185 publications have been published within this topic receiving 219822 citations. The topic is also known as: software application & application software.

The ultrasonix 500RP: A commercial ultrasound research interface

Abstract: Unlike researchers in magnetic resonance imaging who have considerable access to high level tools and to data at a very basic level on their scanners, those involved with ultrasound have found little in the way of meaningful and widespread access to even the most basic echo signals in their clinical systems. Interest has emerged, however, in ultrasound research interfaces on commercial scanners to provide access to raw ultrasound data and control of basic research functions. This paper describes initial experience gained on one such ultrasound system. The Ultrasonix 500RP system provides research access to the data at multiple points in the signal processing chain and allows control over most imaging parameters. The Ultrasonix system allows for three methods of research control. One is implemented along with the standard clinical imaging software using "mouseover" screens on the periphery of the application window. These screens are configured by the user to display various signal processing variables, which can be modified in real time. Second, the system can be controlled via a user-written remote control client application interacting through the clinical exam software. Lastly, the user can write a complete application which initializes the basic ultrasound module but need not use the Ultrasonix clinical exam software. All of the modes can be done locally on the scanner itself or via a network, and are based on software developed in C++ with libraries supplied with the scanner. Two examples are presented in this paper from the evaluation of the system in "real world" applications. Measurements of absolute backscatter coefficients and attenuation coefficients versus frequency are shown and elastograms utilizing spatial compounding are described

Reuse-driven interprocedural slicing

Abstract: To manage the evolution of software systems effectively, software developers must understand software systems, identify and evaluate alternative modification strategies, implement appropriate modifications, and validate the correctness of the modifications. One analysis technique that assists in many of these activities is program slicing. To facilitate the application of slicing to large software systems, we adapted a control flow-based interprocedural slicing algorithm so that it accounts for interprocedural control dependencies not recognized by other slicing algorithms, and reuses slicing information for improved efficiency. Our initial studies suggest that additional slice accuracy and slicing efficiency may be achieved with our algorithm.

Modeling and Refining Heterogeneous Systems With SystemC-AMS: Application to WSN

Abstract: The paper presents a system-level approach for the modeling and simulation of a paradigmatic wireless sensor network composed of two nodes using SystemC-AMS, an open-source C++ extension to the OSCI SystemC standard dedicated to the description of heterogeneous systems containing digital, analog, RF hardware IPs as well as embedded software. The paper is composed of three parts. The first part details the modeled WSN (physical sensor, sigma-delta ADC, ATMEGA128 8- bit microcontroller running the embedded application, QPSK-based 2.4 GHz RF transceiver), presents the corresponding implementation in SystemC-AMS, and gives an insight on how multi-frequency simulation is handled in SystemC-AMS. The second part shows how to introduce several RF designer specifications (noise figure, IIP3, ...) into models and how to express them in SystemC-AMS. The third part proves that the combination of C++ and RF baseband equivalent dramatically reduces simulation time while keeping excellent accuracy and code readability. The paper concludes on the possibilities offered by this approach in terms of validation and optimization of heteregeneous systems through open-source simulation.

Abstractions for user interface design

Abstract: There is a consensus among designers on the need for a rigorous separation of the functionality of a computer system from its user interface. The principle remains sterile unless some way is provided to put it into practice. It is argued that designers of the interface between users and computer systems need a toolkit of abstractions that embody human factors knowledge while automatically executing the low-level details of the interaction. We believe that the notion of a user interface toolkit constitutes a reasonable way to enforce this separation. Given this approach, the next goal is the definition of a toolkit that is useful. The author points at some general benefits resulting from the toolkit abstractions. In particular, the user can avoid "communication deadlocks" by running several applications simultaneously; or he can obtain distinct views of an object through the external view mechanism; or, as a last example, he can interact by means of the dialog socket with the various applications on the workstation in a consistent way through a unique (refinable) dialog-handler (or a dialog-handler of his choice). Therefore, the proposed abstractions improve the quality of user interfaces when viewed in the large. Conversely, when viewed in the small, these abstractions cannot be guaranteed 100% "user-friendly": each class of users and each class of tasks have specific requirements that are to be satisfied on a case-by-case basis.

A cross-layer approach for power-performance optimization in distributed mobile systems

Abstract: The next generation of mobile systems with multimedia processing capabilities and wireless connectivity will be increasingly deployed in highly dynamic and distributed environments for multimedia playback and delivery (e.g. video streaming, multimedia conferencing). The challenge is to meet the heavy resource demands of multimedia applications under the stringent energy, computational, and bandwidth constraints of mobile systems, while constantly adapting to the global state changes of the distributed environment. In this paper, we present our initiatives under the FORGE framework to address the issue of delivering high quality multimedia content in mobile environments. In order to cope with the resource intensive nature of multimedia applications and dynamically changing global state (e.g. node mobility, network congestion), an end-to-end approach to QoS aware power optimization is required. We present a framework for coordinating energy optimizing strategies across various layers of system implementation and functionality and discuss techniques that can be employed to achieve energy gains for mobile multimedia systems.