Seppo Kalli

Proposed Model of a Digital Video-Based Home Telecare System

The purpose of our study was to develop a generic reference model for home telecare in a digital television environment and to suggest how it might be deployed at a test village. We describe here an architecture based on digital video broadcast standards, its components, services, and required additional technical solutions to provide a unified home telecare solution. We also suggest different user groups within the village context and possible service scenarios for them. We conclude that, in general, digital television provides a potentially flexible and promising platform for home telecare services.

Health-related services on the internet.

The primary objective of this study is to evaluate a sample of health-related services available on the internet. In addition, types of new services and service qualities that may be required in the future were estimated. A registered nurse using a questionnaire containing items about usability, quality, and other characteristics related to the subject carried out an evaluation of 100 health-related internet sites, and the results were processed to determine average qualities and graphical presentations for the studied parameters. The services studied differed greatly from each other both in terms of content and quality. A general observation was that sites of larger organizations were, typically, both in terms of presentation and content, more sophisticated than sites of smaller producers. A typical characteristic was the superficiality of the information presented. In conclusion, the internet is an emerging medium for health-related information, and standards for the production and presentation of health content for the internet are still in development. However, even at this early stage, the internet represents a valuable source of information for those in need of health-related information for both health care professionals and consumers.

Face customization in a real-time digiTV stream

The challenge in digital, interactive TV (digiTV) is to move the consumer from the refiguration state to the configuration state, where he can influence the story flow, the choice of characters and other narrative elements. Besides restructuring narrative and interactivity methodologies, one major task is content manipulation to provide the auditorium the ability to predefine actors that it wants to have in its virtual story universe. Current solutions in broadcasting video provide content as monolithic structure, composed of graphics, narration, special effects, etc. compressed into one high bit rate MPEG-2 stream. More personalized and interactive TV requires a contemporary approach to segment video data in real-time to customize contents. Our research work emphasizes techniques for interchanging faces/bodies against virtual anchors in real-time constrained broadcasted video streams. The aim of our research paper is to show and point out solutions for realizing real-time face and avatar customization. The major task for the broadcaster is metadata extraction by applying face detection/tracking/recognition algorithms, and transmission of the information to the client side. At the client side, our system shall provide the facility to pre-select virtual avatars stored in a local database, and synchronize movements and expressions with the current digiTV contents.

MPEG-21 in broadcasting: the novel digital broadcast item model

The MPEG experts are currently developing the MPEG-21 set of standards and this includes a framework and specifications for digital rights management (DRM), delivery of quality of services (QoS) over heterogeneous networks and terminals, packaging of multimedia content and other things essential for the infrastructural aspects of multimedia content distribution. Considerable research effort is being applied to these new developments and the capabilities of MPEG-21 technologies to address specific application areas are being investigated. One such application area is broadcasting, in particular the development of digital TV and its services. In more practical terms, digital TV addresses networking, events, channels, services, programs, signaling, encoding, bandwidth, conditional access, subscription, advertisements and interactivity. MPEG-21 provides an excellent framework of standards to be applied in digital TV applications. Within the scope of this research work we describe a new model based on MPEG-21 and its relevance to digital TV: the digital broadcast item model (DBIM). The goal of the DBIM is to elaborate the potential of MPEG-21 for digital TV applications. Within this paper we focus on a general description of the DBIM, quality of service (QoS) management and metadata filtering, digital rights management and also present use-cases and scenarios where the DBIM’s role is explored in detail.

A cost study of new media supported near oral anticoagulant treatment follow-up

OBJECTIVE In this study we sought to develop a comparative cost evaluation between conventional and new media, e.g. web, mobile communication technology and digital television, and near patient testing supported anticoagulant (ac) treatment follow-up in a primary health care setting. METHOD The comparison was done for two patient groups, self-care and home-care patients, on oral ac treatment in the primary health care centre of the rural and sparsely populated municipality of Ikaalinen. In practise case analysis was used to develop cost functions from collected economic data, which were analysed to determine the break-even point in total cost between conventional and new media supported follow-up for the two patient groups. RESULTS In the home-care setting the break-even point is 14 patients; in the self-care setting new media supported follow-up is always more cost-effective. CONCLUSION The results illustrate that the use of new media and near patient testing in ac treatment follow-up brings about an economic benefit even with a small number of patients in the Ikaalinen setting. However, the sensitivity of break-even to perturbations in the individual costs of the used economic models remains high. Still, when the economic benefits are considered together with the clinical and practical benefits shown to result from self-testing, self-management and use of new media technologies the new service models can be said to provide noticeable benefits both in terms of quality of care and economics in our specific setting.

Experimenting with Digital Television Learning Environments

Digital media environment has been changed significantly during the last few years. The huge progress in communication technology and the launch of digital television have open up new opportunities for distance learning. Interactive digital television is providing a new and flexible learning environment. The Industrial IT Laboratory of Helsinki University of Technology has made research in utilising digital TV as a learning environment for University courses and the students have had a chance to study using digital TV since September 2002.

Synchronization of MPEG-7 metadata with a broadband MPEG-2 digiTV stream by utilizing a digital broadcast item approach

Digital, Interaction Television will be deployed in the next few years, where the key-standard for Europe is DVB/MHP4. Initial experiences are already reported, but for advanced use scenarios, and application areas basic research issues, such as synchronization of MPEG-7 metadata, retrieved either from the broadcast stream, or the feedback channel are still to be done. In this research work we consider, that metadata will be available from multiple sources, especially commercial emerging MPEG-7 extractors, and streamed to a digiTV client over the broadcast- or feedback network. MPEG-71 provides asynchronous or synchronous delivery at transport layer, and DVB/MHP standards provide synchronization via a trigger mechanism. As an example we show a simple hyperlinked television show, where we segmented each frame into elements of interest, to which a hyperlink can be added. The key aspects of this paper are as follows: Description and introduction of a Digital Broadcast Item (DBI) for structuring hyperlinked TV to one entity, that is exchanged between several parties in the broadcast chain based on MPEG-21 standards; MPEG-7 metdata extraction models and image segmentation authoring tools for obtaining information about the hyperlinks within a video segment, and within a still frame; Metadata transmission and synchronization models; MPEG-7 Systems compliant software architecture at client side;

Manipulating premarked rectangular areas in a real-time digiTV stream utilizing MPEG-7 metadata descriptors

One of the major challenges in digital, interactive television is to provide facilities for an intelligent multimedia presentation at the consumer terminal. The end-user shall benefit from a web-page like structure, whose content is browsable, rather than one monolithic broadcast stream without either any interaction facilities or content adaptation models. Therefore we introduce a Digital Broadcast Item (DBI) that structures the broadcast content into an interactable intelligent multimedia presentation: along the push content (broadcast stream) consisting of a video/audio stream adaptive content elements are streamed by the help of binarized metadata streaming solutions and synchronized to the audio/video stream. As far broadcasting only provided content as monolithic structure, composed of an image flow, graphics, special effects, sound effects, single path story flow, etc. The transport medium utilized is a high-bit rate MPEG-2 Transport Stream (MPEG-2 TS) carrying audio/video and some low level metadata, such as an Electronic Programme Guide (EPG).The aim of this research paper is to show and prove the concept of realizing adaptive content customisation for white pre-marked rectangular areas in multiple orientations.

A Digital Broadcast Item (DBI) enabling metadata repository for digital, interactive television (digiTV) feedback channel networks

Digital television (digiTV) is an additional multimedia environment, where metadata is one key element for the description of arbitrary content. This implies adequate structures for content description, which is provided by XML metadata schemes (e.g. MPEG-7, MPEG-21). Content and metadata management is the task of a multimedia repository, from which digiTV clients - equipped with an Internet connection - can access rich additional multimedia types over an “All-HTTP” protocol layer. Within this research work, we focus on conceptual design issues of a metadata repository for the storage of metadata, accessible from the feedback channel of a local set-top box. Our concept describes the whole heterogeneous life-cycle chain of XML metadata from the service provider to the digiTV equipment, device independent representation of content, accessing and querying the metadata repository, management of metadata related to digiTV, and interconnection of basic system components (http front-end, relational database system, and servlet container). We present our conceptual test configuration of a metadata repository that is aimed at a real-world deployment, done within the scope of the future interaction (fiTV) project at the Digital Media Institute (DMI) Tampere (www.futureinteraction.tv).

Road Ahead in Broadcast Multimedia

To better understand the tremendous changes in broadcast multimedia that are lying ahead, we look a bit into the history of broadcast television. These observations enable us to conceptualize the overall trends in television and to map the future of broadcast multimedia.