Abstract
Biometrics represents a return to a natural way of identification: testing someone by what (s) he is, instead of relying on something (s) he owns or knows seems likely to be the way forward. Biometric systems that include multiple sources of information are known as multimodal. Such systems are generally regarded as an alternative to fight a variety of problems all unimodal systems stumble upon. One of the main challenges found in the development of biometric recognition systems is the shortage of publicly available databases acquired under real unconstrained working conditions. Motivated by such need the MobBIO database was created using an Asus EeePad Transformer tablet, with mobile biometric systems in mind. The proposed database is composed by three modalities: iris, face and voice.

Abstract
In order to assess the atherosclerotic plaque disruption risk from B-mode ultrasound images of the carotid, an appropriate normalization of the plaque regions is required. This is usually achieved through the manual selection of two sample regions in the image containing blood and adventitia tissues, which are used as reference. In this work, we propose a new plaque region normalization method that takes advantage of multiple blood and adventitia reference samples per image, and a method for the automatic selection of these reference samples. Several preliminary results are provided in order to demonstrate the possible capabilities of the proposed methods.

Abstract
The main motivation of this work was to provide a valid contribution for the assessment of the cardiovascular condition by the analysis of several Arterial Pressure Waveform (APW) parameters collected by a new non-invasive device. Three sets of recordings for the carotid pressure waveform at left and right carotid arteries were performed, under standardized conditions, in 20 volunteers by three trained operators. The mean of the inter-operator differences were higher for the right artery, comparatively to the left artery. In this case, an Augmentation Index (AIx) value of -2.31 ± 7.29 % and a Systolic Wave Transit Time (SWTT) value of -12.94 ± 31.46 ms were observed, which are higher than the left measurements, 0.94 ± 7.52 % and -2.96 ± 22.67 ms, respectively. Intra-operator differences were calculated for each of the three sets of measurements and showed good reproducibility. The pulse-by-pulse variability analysis gives very good markers for the Left Ventricular Ejection Time (LVET), Dicrotic Wave Amplitude (DWA), Reflection Wave Amplitude (RWA), Coefficient of Variation (CV) < 10 %, and satisfactory values for the AIx (CV< 30 %). The SWTT and Reflected Wave Transit Time (RWTT) also presented satisfactory results (10 %

Abstract
A gas pressure sensor based on an all-fiber Fabry-Perot interferometer (FFPI) is reported. The sensing head consists of a small section of silica rod spliced with a large offset between two single-mode fibers. The silica rod is used only as mechanical support so that an air cavity can be formed between both SMF. It is shown that the FFPI sensor is sensitive to gas pressure variation and when submitted to different gaseous environments, namely carbon dioxide, nitrogen and oxygen - sensitivities of 6.2, 4.1 and 3.6 nm/MPa, respectively, were attained. The refractive index change on nitrogen environment by means of gas pressure variation was also determined and a sensitivity of 1526 nm/RIU was obtained. The response of the sensing device to temperature variations in air was also studied and a sensitivity of -14 pm/degrees C was attained.

Abstract
Doppler self-mixing laser probing techniques are often used for vibration measurement with very high accuracy. A novel optoelectronic probe solution is proposed, based on off-the-shelf components, with a direct reflection optical scheme for contactless characterization of the target’s movement. This probe was tested with two test bench apparatus that enhance its precision performance, with a linear actuator at low frequency (35?µm, 5–60?Hz), and its dynamics, with disc shaped transducers for small amplitude and high frequency (0.6?µm, 100–2500?Hz). The results, obtained from well-established signal processing methods for self-mixing Doppler signals, allowed the evaluation of vibration velocity and amplitudes with an average error of less than 10%. The impedance spectrum of piezoelectric (PZ) disc target revealed a maximum of impedance (around 1?kHz) for minimal Doppler shift. A bidimensional scan over the PZ disc surface allowed the categorization of the vibration mode (0,?1) and explained its deflection directions. The feasibility of a laser vibrometer based on self-mixing principles and supported by tailored electronics able to accurately measure submicron displacements was, thus, successfully demonstrated.

Abstract
In this paper, an optic disk (OD) localization method is proposed for the retinal images based on a novel patch filtering approach. The patch filtering has been performed sequentially based on clustering in two stages. In the first stage, the patches are selected exploiting an 'isotropic' measure based on the ratio of maximum and minimum eigenvalues of the moment matrix representing the structure tensor. In the second stage, the patch filtering is based on the saliency measure. Finally, the optic disk is located from the centroids of the selected patches. Promising results are obtained for the low-contrast pathological retinal images using STARE database providing high localization accuracy.