Piero Mussio

Cooperative Visual Environments for the design of Effective Visual Systems

Abstract This paper describes the architecture of cooperative visual environments (CVE). This proposal stems from the findings of several experiments which suggested overcoming the limitations of first-generation user-interface management systems (UIMS) by allowing the users to determine their own computational environment. To avoid user disorientation, as well as the possibility of creating ambiguous or contradictory systems, a novel discipline for the specification and use of the tools is adopted. A systemic approach has been proposed to identify the variables needed to use, observe and adapt a CVE. The design and implementation of tools satisfying this discipline led to the definition of network objects, generalizing composite objects, and to the introduction of typed links allowing a new technique for message passing. The paper illustrates the above points by discussing the rationale behind the design of CVEs, deriving the requirements which CVEs have to satisfy and outlining the architecture with the fundamental mechanisms which allow their use and evolution. The nature of the proposal is also clarified through an example drawn from a real case.

Metareasoning in the determination of image interpretation strategies

Abstract Flexible determination of image interpretation strategies is made possible by reasoning on the state of the interpretation process. The state is here described as a string of attributed symbols denoting images, descriptions, actions and patterns of actions. Goals of the interpretation are specified by Conditional Attributed Rewriting Systems. An interpreter exploits these systems to interpret the image, i.e., to determine the evolution of the state from the initial state to the final interpretation. An example from liver biopsy interpretation is introduced, its results constrasted with those of human interpretations and the automatic interpreter efficacy commented on.

A visual approach to HCI

The Pictorial Computing Laboratory (PCL) evolves its past experience in image processing and pattern recognition to the design of interactive systems. In the last ten years, a model for visual interactive computing has been developed based on the following abstraction: in interactive activities human beings communicate with computers through digital messages representing (part of) the state of the computation. Such a model, called Com2, is described, and an interaction with a system, developed following it, is shown as example, thus highlighting the use of visual languages for human-computer interaction.

Multimedia document management: an anthropocentric approach

The architecture of an anthropocentric Biomedical Information Management System is proposed. The system is based on a network of computational components (agents) that users-experts in the biomedical domain, but not in computer science-can define, use, and refine to serve their own communication and documentation habits and needs. The innovation of the proposal lies in the adoption of the Participatory Design methodology, which involves users in the design of tools and their implementation, organization and integration to perform the required biomedical activities.

Specification of visual languages as means for interaction

Interactive and end-user computing are the present challenges of computer science. They suggest the need for providing a specification methodology driving the development of effective interactive visual systems. In this line, we discuss a definition of visual languages which binds the interactive and communicative aspects with the computational ones, thus integrating a theory of visual languages with interaction-related aspects. By adopting this novel point of view, it becomes possible to study visual sentences and visual languages with respect to the basic principle of interaction that the users cannot cause unexpected events or become disoriented by the system behaviour. A classification of visual languages based on their capability of respecting this principle is then discussed and existing visual languages are framed in the classification.

The design of Anthropocentric Cooperative Visual Environments

An Anthropocentric Cooperative Visual Environment is designed to improve system performances by empowering the working capabilities of its human users. Its design results in the definition of a system of visual languages adequate for user-system communication. The notion of adequacy is discussed based on the concept of shape abstraction. A procedure for ACVE design is described and its use illustrated by examples from a working experience.

LiSEB: a language for modeling living systems with APL2

The paper discusses the design and implementation of LiSEB, a class-based language built on top of APL2 to respond to challenges posed by modelling living systems from a medical point of view. LiSEB capitalises on several features of APL and on some lessons learned from its history. Living systems are modelled as open systems: environments in which concurrent mobile autonomous agents interact. Modelling of these properties required extensions of traditional object-oriented paradigms and of their previous translations under APL: a) every object performs a sequence of actions dynamically modified to adapt to circumstances; b) a new policy of message management is introduced uniformly encompassing broadcast and directly addressed communication. An example of a simulation using LiSEB illustrates these concepts.

The interface of the future

The interface is gradually being recognised as the crucial component in a working computer system, perhaps cvcn its Achillcs’ heel...The global problem of communicating with and lhrough the interface with the application programs is vasl, incomplele and informal; on the other hand in order to come up with a viable interface for a community of users (perhaps working on similar tasks) a good formalisation of human-machine interaction must lx available.

Distributed Plan Construction and Execution for Medical Image Interpretation

Research in the field of medical image interpretation inspired a multi-agent planning model in which a population of agents reaches global goals pursuing local plans and producing partial results. Cooperation is achieved by collecting results, reanalysing the reached state and starting new plans; local plans are generated and executed in a distributed way. The state is composed of a directed graph, describing the currently obtained results and of an attributed string, concatenating the trace of the performed operations with the current plan. A model of agent and agent generation is presented and an example of application given in the field of liver biopsy interpretation.

A Pictorial and Textual IR Environment based on Image Description

The availability of more and more on-line mass storage has made feasable the realisation of new applications in the field of the management of image archives by means of Information Retrieval (IR) techniques. These applications can be realised by using documents that contain both formatted and unformatted information that describes the image itself. In addition, the documents contain suitable pointers that allows to have the images back from an external memory. It doesn’t matter the recording support: microfilm, magnetic or optical disks, and so on. Formatted information and descriptions are processed with IR techniques in order to retrieve the documents and obtain a reproduction of the desired images.