Article Database

Application of the generalized contrast-to-noise ratio to assess photoacoustic image quality

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The generalized contrast-to-noise ratio (gCNR) is a relatively new image quality metric designed to assess the probability of lesion detectability in ultrasound images. Although gCNR was initially demonstrated with ultrasound images, the metric is theoretically applicable to multiple types of medical images. In this paper, the applicability of gCNR to photoacoustic images is investigated. The gCNR was computed for both simulated and experimental photoacoustic images generated by amplitude-based (i.e., delay-and-sum) and coherence-based (i.e., short-lag spatial coherence) beamformers. These gCNR measurements were compared to three more traditional image quality metrics (i.e., contrast, contrast-to-noise ratio, and signal-to-noise ratio) applied to the same datasets. An increase in qualitative target visibility generally corresponded with increased gCNR. In addition, gCNR magnitude was more directly related to the separability of photoacoustic signals from their background, which degraded with the presence of limited bandwidth artifacts and increased levels of channel noise. At high gCNR values (i.e., 0.95-1), contrast, contrast-to-noise ratio, and signal-to-noise ratio varied by up to 23.7-56.2 dB, 2.0-3.4, and 26.5-7.6×1020, respectively, for simulated, experimental phantom, and in vivo data. Therefore, these traditional metrics can experience large variations when a target is fully detectable, and additional increases in these values would have no impact on photoacoustic target detectability. In addition, gCNR is robust to changes in traditional metrics introduced by applying a minimum threshold to image amplitudes. In tandem with other photoacoustic image quality metrics and with a defined range of 0 to 1, gCNR has promising potential to provide additional insight, particularly when designing new beamformers and image formation techniques and when reporting quantitative performance without an opportunity to qualitatively assess corresponding images (e.g., in text-only abstracts).

Deep learning to obtain simultaneous image and segmentation outputs from a single input of raw ultrasound channel data.

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African Women do not Look Good in Wigs: Gender, Beauty Rituals and Cultural Identity in Anglophone Cameroon, 1961-1972.

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“Nebuchadnezzar lived in the bush and his nails became so long that they looked like claws of cats, following a punishment from God for his disobedience,” runs a May 1964 letter to ‘Women’s Special,’ a dedicated women’s advice column for the English-language newspaper, the Cameroon Times (Isuk, 1964:4). The letter writer, Augustine Isuk, denounces women’s beauty habits by drawing on the biblical story of God’s punishment of King Nebuchadnezzar for worshipping false gods. He connects long nails to poor housekeeping, arguing that “women with long nails keep painting them thus hiding the dirt underneath and in preparing food, the dirt is washed into the food, and no wonder they complain of belly aches.” Isuk further associates long, painted nails with British women, and insists that men in Cameroon prefer “natural beauty.” He writes: “The nature of man is the work of God and no excessive decorations will change you from what you are…You can sandpaper the face, powder your nose, paint the lips, and look wonderful under electric lights, yet you can’t beat natural beauty which is always there… Women, cut short your nails please!” (Isuk, 1964:4).

Housewives at Husbands’ Throats: Recalcitrant Wives and Gender Norms in a West African Nation

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Drawing on interviews conducted in 2011–12 and 2015, as well as archival records, this article argues that changes in education, economics and politics created new concerns about gender behaviour and marriage in urban Anglophone Cameroon from 1961 to 1972. During this period, women increasingly attained formal education and entered the workforce. This sparked widespread angst among the urban Anglophone Cameroonian elites. Educated married women’s behaviour became suspect because some of them manifested attitudes of superiority and authoritarianism; moreover, critics believed that financial empowerment disturbed marital stability. Thus, while urbanite elites generally embraced formal educational opportunities for women, they also policed women’s behaviour within their marriages, homes and community spaces. These efforts to enforce cultural mores regarding gender behaviour became bound up in initiatives to protect Anglophone Cameroonian sociopolitical identity and autonomy within a Francophone dominated federal republic. Anglophone Cameroonian elites in the federate state of West Cameroon perceived the Francophone government in the East Cameroon State as having an annexationist and hegemonic agenda. Enforcing traditional gender roles for married women became a way to enact the distinction between West and East Cameroonian national identity and cultural values.

Intellectual Housewives, Journalism, and Anglophone Nationalism in Cameroon, 1961–1972

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This article argues that female journalists used their advice columns in the West Cameroon State to maintain Anglophone Cameroonian cultural identity and unity from 1961 to 1972. As public intellectuals, they sought to regulate women’s behaviors in order to preserve and redefine ideas of Anglophone Cameroonian political identity as well as concepts about gender norms and cultural values. From this position, they urged women to follow what they deemed suitable African cultural values and to join women’s organizations. At the same time, they endeavored to protect what they imagined as a unified Anglophone cultural identity within a hegemonic Francophone republic. By applauding the activities of female political elites, they directly advocated for Anglophone Cameroonian political identity and autonomy. Yet through all of this they emphasized they were mere housewives, strategically suppressing their roles as public intellectuals and thereby making themselves less politically threatening to their readers, communities, and the patriarchal state.

Gender and (Militarized) Secessionist Movements in Africa: An African Feminist’s Reflections

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Utilizing interdisciplinary and multimethodological approaches, this essay explores women’s roles in buttressing the political cohesion of secessionist movements in postcolonial Africa. It argues that African women have supported the actions of male-dominated secessionist movements in order to garner their own social and political power. Using case studies from Anglophone Cameroon, Western Sahara, Cabinda Province (Angola), and Biafra (Nigeria), the essay historicizes and outlines a new analytical framework that explores women’s multifaceted participation in secessionist movements in modern-day Africa.

Over-Making Nyanga: Mastering ‘Natural’ Beauty and Disciplining Excessive Bodily Practices in Metropolitan Cameroon.”

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This study examines how Anglophone urban elites in 1960s metropolitan Cameroon negotiated local and global ideas about culturally constructed forms of “natural” black beauty. Formally-educated Christian urbanites, such as freelance female journalists, who often worked as civil servants, sought to discipline women’s bodily practices and emotional expressivity in order to regulate the boundaries of perceived feminine respectability and to define a woman’s “natural” beauty, a descriptor with both internal and external implications. The language they used included both local terms such as nyanga, a Cameroonian Pidgin English word for varied ideas about beauty and stylishness, and standard English terms. This specific use of language illustrates the hybridity of understandings of natural beauty and bodily comportment, painting a distinct African imagery denoting the social progression of black Cameroonian elite subcultures.

Teacher-Based Racial Discrimination: The Role of Racial Pride and Religiosity Among African American and Caribbean Black Adolescents

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This study explored the extent to which private regard and religiosity beliefs serve as protective factors for school bonding among African American and Caribbean black adolescents who experience racial discrimination in school. Findings are drawn from a nationally representative sample of (n = 810) African American and (n = 360) Caribbean black adolescents (52% girls) aged 13–17 (M_age = 15, SD = 1.42) years. Results suggest that perceiving racial discrimination from teachers was associated with lower levels of school bonding for African American and Caribbean black adolescents. For African American adolescents, perceiving more racial discrimination from teachers and reporting lower private regard beliefs was associated with less school bonding. The findings for Caribbean black adolescents revealed that endorsing moderate levels of religiosity and perceiving higher rates of teacher discrimination was associated with less school bonding. The developmental significance and implications for future research are discussed.

Hollywood Goes Oriental: CaucAsian Performance in American Film

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In the “classical” Hollywood studio era of the 1930s to the 1960s, many iconic Asian roles were filled by non-Asian actors and some-like Fu Manchu or Charlie Chan-are still familiar today. In Hollywood Goes Oriental: CaucAsian Performance in American Film, Karla Rae Fuller tracks specific cosmetic devices, physical gestures, dramatic cues, and narrative conventions to argue that representations of Oriental identity by Caucasian actors in the studio era offer an archetypal standard. Through this standard, Fuller shed light on the artificial foundations of Hollywood’s depictions of race and larger issues of ethnicity and performance.

Fuller begins by investigating a range of Hollywood productions, including animated images, B films, and blockbusters, to identify the elaborate make-up practices and distinct performance styles that characterize Hollywood’s Oriental. In chapter 2, Fuller focuses on the most well known Oriental archetype, the detective, who incorporates both heroic qualities and darker elements into a complex persona. Moving into the World War II era, Fuller examines the Oriental character as political enemy and cultural outsider in chapter 3, drawing a distinction between the “good” Chinese and the “sinister” Japanese character. In chapter 4, she traces a shift back to a seemingly more benign, erotic, and often comedic depiction of Oriental characters after the war.

While Hollywood Goes Oriental primarily focuses on representations of Oriental characters by Caucasian actors, Fuller includes examples of performances by non-Caucasian actors as well. She also delves into the origination, connotations, and repercussions of the loaded term “yellowface,” which has been appropriated for many causes. Students, scholars of film, and anyone interested in Asian and cultural studies will appreciate this insightful study.

Urban Nightlife: Entertaining Race, Class, and Culture in Public Space

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Sociologists have long been curious about the ways in which city dwellers negotiate urban public space. How do they manage myriad interactions in the shared spaces of the city? In Urban Nightlife, sociologist Reuben May undertakes a nuanced examination of urban nightlife, drawing on ethnographic data gathered in a Deep South college town to explore the question of how nighttime revelers negotiate urban public spaces as they go about meeting, socializing, and entertaining themselves.

May’s work reveals how diverse partiers define these spaces, in particular the ongoing social conflict on the streets, in bars and nightclubs, and in the various public spaces of downtown. To explore this conflict, May develops the concept of “integrated segregation”—the idea that diverse groups are physically close to one another yet rarely have meaningful interactions—rather, they are socially bound to those of similar race, class, and cultural backgrounds. May’s in-depth research leads him to conclude that social tension is stubbornly persistent in part because many participants fail to make the connection between contemporary relations among different groups and the historical and institutional forces that perpetuate those very tensions; structural racism remains obscured by a superficial appearance of racial harmony.

Through May’s observations, Urban Nightlife clarifies the complexities of race, class, and culture in contemporary America, illustrating the direct influence of local government and nightclub management decision-making on interpersonal interaction among groups.