The rapid development of the camera technology has affected the amount of photo captured. This development has contributed to camera sizes being integrated into many devices such as mobile phones, tablets, computers and more. Memory capacity for such devices has advanced as well allowing people to take lots of photos without limitations. However, as the size of the photo collections grows bigger, it becomes hard to retrieve a particular photo, unless they are organized, and are browsed, to allow users to identify them visually. Image retrieval has gain attention since 1970's. However, most of the available systems, to retrieve images, require users to manually annotate photos, which take a lot of time and effort. This paper presents a new method to annotate photos based on places automatically. Image matching technique is used to find similar photos related to the place from a geotagged database. Once a match is found from the geotagged database, a reverse geocoding technique is used to get the place information and save it to the photo of the user. The reverse geocoding technique is also used to find suggested keywords relevant to the place. Text-based image retrieval is used to retrieve the desired photo taken in a specific place.

Toner melting process in the fuser nip was simulated using the MPS (Moving Particle Semi-implicit) method which is one of particle methods. The particle method without calculation grids can make large deformation of an elastic body and a free surface flow to be easily calculated, and can simulate the state that toners change in phase from elastic body to flows as fluid. By this method, the fixing process in the fuser nip can be understood, and it was attempted to simulate an adhesion state of the melting toner to the heat roller surface by implementing surface tension model and contact angle model. This time, MPS simulation method and analysis cases will be reported.

We focused on uniformly fixing electrophotographic toner particles on paper by microwave heating. The advantage of this method is that it provides non-contact direct heating of toners on paper. We propose uniform toner fixing equipment with an evaporation heat recovery mechanism in which the water molecules contained in paper are evaporated by microwave radiation. As a result, the fixing speed doubled. The fixed state of toner particles on paper was also evaluated. Toner particles were uniformly fixed by the microwave fuser and adhered strongly to paper. In contrast, the outer region for toner particles pressed by rollers became flat. Moreover, in the depths of paper, toner particles maintained the form of a particle.

In last article,¹⁾ we focused on the change of diffuse transmitted light from direct light source which irradiates light perpendicularly to surface of watermark paper and inclined light source which irradiates light inclinedly. In the experiment, we discovered the range where linearity in output ratio is produced as irradiation angle is widened when transmitted light volume of direct light source is regarded as reference. In this article, we confirmed the limiting angle of linearity by increasing transmitted light volume which is incident on receiving section with wider viewing angle of lens. We also confirmed the limiting angle by irradiating light on thinnest area of watermark paper (white part), because the increase of transmitted light volume can be expected in this way, too. As a result, we confirmed that the linearity is extended within signal-to-noise ratio (SN ratio) where light/dark discrimination level is secured. In other words, the range of linearity was already confirmed to approximately 60° of irradiation angle but it is secured up to 70°. Therefore, it is possible to extract the image change of light which is transmitted through fluorescent pattern or polarization surface of watermark part as precise image data by using the irradiation angle in the range with linearity and processing image of watermark pattern which meets transmitted light volume of direct light source.

Konica Minolta's bizhub PRESS C1070, launched in 2014, was developed with the emphasis on image quality, stability and reliability of EP (Electro Photography) process for users to meet their various printing business models. For image quality, improvement of the counter rotated two-component developing system and optimization of material property in intermediate transfer belt were achieved. Especially, graininess, character quality and color gamut was improved by adopting newly designed chemical toner. For stability, a strengthened auto calibration system and optimally controlled image stabilizing system increased RGB color reproduction and color stability in continuous operation. For reliability, the auto refining developing system was adopted to suppress image degradation in duration print. Further, a swinging mechanism adopted in sheet registration system vastly improved its print position precision. In this review, several achievements in EP process were introduced employed in bizhub PRESS C1070 for image quality, stability and reliability.

Prolonging the lifespan of the image-forming drum unit is important in achieving high environmental performance (i. e., contributing to global warming prevention and low-carbon societies). To ensure prolonged life and high reliability in the drum unit, it is necessary to lengthen the lifespans of its comprising parts : the photoreceptor, cleaning blade, and charge roll. Should any of these fail, the entire unit must be replaced, and thus the lifespan is limited to that of the shortest part. Of the three, the photoreceptor has the shortest lifespan, wearing quickly through contact with the cleaning blade in the cleaning process. It is thus vital to clarify the physical interactions between parts in this process to enable us to judge when a drum unit requires replacing. This paper describes two key technologies for improving longevity in the xerographic drum unit : a two-layered cleaning blade and measurement technology for determining the thickness of photoreceptor layers.

FUJIFILM released “Jet Press 720” as a B2 size sheet-fed single path inkjet printer to the commercial printing market in 2011. Since 2014, the successor “Jet Press 720S” has been providing more reliable performance than the predecessor by reducing the machine downtime and stabilizing print image quality. Since then, FUJIFILM has been satisfying customer demands like full variable printing or the support for the thicker paper coverage.

In this paper, the technical summary on how to use SAMBA head which has been developed by FUJIFILM Dimatix for ink jet heads is revealed focusing on the machine stability and reliability which was obtained through the development activities.

A number of companies have introduced IOT platform which captures various kind of customer's information regarding their product use. However, there are not so many companies who can gain business benefit with utilizing the information. @Remote, the remote managing system by Ricoh corp., has accumulated big-data regarding MFP usage by the customers. With the big-data, we conduct two types of analytical projects for achieving good business result. For the purpose of customer retention, marketing analytics provides effective marketing proposal and suitable visit timing optimized for each customer. To decrease in MFP failure, predictive maintenance analytics yielded failure sign and the suitable maintenance measure to each customer engineer.

For business success, analytical results are improved again and again with evaluation by sales and service personnel who use the data on customer's site.

A4 color ECOSYS M5526cdw series released by Kyocera Document Solutions in October 2016 achieved the longest life of 100,000 pages and it also achieved the top class compact design. Many devices of it were redesigned for compact and long life and we introduce its technology, especially we focus on the photoconductor and developing system. In the drum system, the abrasion resistance of the Organic photoconductor (OPC) drum was improved by reducing the linear pressure of the cleaning blade with improvement of the OPC drum. In addition, we changed from interactive touchdown development system that we have been adopting for many years to two component development system, we developed the stress reduction of developer regulating portion and new developing powder.

This paper introduces MICCAI which is one of the highest-level international conference in medical imaging research field. MICCAI is a large-scale international conference gathered by nearly 1000 researchers every year, and all oral sessions are organized as single track. The total acceptance rate is about 30%, and the acceptance rate of the oral session is only 5%. From MICCAI 2016 held in Athens, Greece in 2016, I introduce two papers from the segmentation session, and three papers from the computer aided interventions session. In addition, MICCAI organizes many related workshops. I introduce two papers from the workshop on computer-assisted and robotics endoscopy.