Edwin Salcedo

Guillermo Auza Banegas, Diego Calvimontes Vera, Sergio Castro Sandoval et al.

Robust license plate recognition in unconstrained environments remains a significant challenge, particularly in underrepresented regions with limited data availability and unique visual characteristics, such as Bolivia. Recognition accuracy in real-world conditions is often degraded by factors such as illumination changes and viewpoint distortion. To address these challenges, we introduce BLPR, a novel deep learning-based License Plate Detection and Recognition (LPDR) framework specifically designed for Bolivian license plates. The proposed system follows a two-stage pipeline where a YOLO-based detector is pretrained on synthetic data generated in Blender to simulate extreme perspectives and lighting conditions, and subsequently fine-tuned on street-level data collected in La Paz, Bolivia. Detected plates are geometrically rectified and passed to a character recognition model. To improve robustness under ambiguous scenarios, a lightweight vision-language model (Gemma3 4B) is selectively triggered as a confidence-based fallback mechanism. The proposed framework further leverages synthetic-to-real domain adaptation to improve robustness under diverse real-world conditions. We also introduce the first publicly available Bolivian LPDR dataset, enabling evaluation under diverse viewpoint and illumination conditions. The system achieves a character-level recognition accuracy of 89.6% on real-world data, demonstrating its effectiveness for deployment in challenging urban environments. Our project is publicly available at https://github.com/EdwinTSalcedo/BLPR.

Edwin Salcedo, Patricia Peñaloza

Assessing the condition and visibility of veins is a crucial step before obtaining intravenous access in the antecubital fossa, which is a common procedure to draw blood or administer intravenous therapies (IV therapies). Even though medical practitioners are highly skilled at intravenous cannulation, they usually struggle to perform the procedure in patients with low visible veins due to fluid retention, age, overweight, dark skin tone, or diabetes. Recently, several investigations proposed combining Near Infrared (NIR) imaging and deep learning (DL) techniques for forearm vein segmentation. Although they have demonstrated compelling results, their use has been rather limited owing to the portability and precision requirements to perform venipuncture. In this paper, we aim to contribute to bridging this gap using three strategies. First, we introduce a new NIR-based forearm vein segmentation dataset of 2,016 labelled images collected from 1,008 subjects with low visible veins. Second, we propose a modified U-Net architecture that locates veins specifically in the antecubital fossa region of the examined patient. Finally, a compressed version of the proposed architecture was deployed inside a bespoke, portable vein finder device after testing four common embedded microcomputers and four common quantization modalities. Experimental results showed that the model compressed with Dynamic Range Quantization and deployed on a Raspberry Pi 4B card produced the best execution time and precision balance, with 5.14 FPS and 0.957 of latency and Intersection over Union (IoU), respectively. These results show promising performance inside a resource-restricted low-cost device.

Carolina Vargas-Ecos, Edwin Salcedo

According to the Pan American Health Organization, the number of cancer cases in Latin America was estimated at 4.2 million in 2022 and is projected to rise to 6.7 million by 2045. Osteosarcoma, one of the most common and deadly bone cancers affecting young people, is difficult to detect due to its unique texture and intensity. Surgical removal of osteosarcoma requires precise safety margins to ensure complete resection while preserving healthy tissue. Therefore, this study proposes a method for estimating the confidence interval of surgical safety margins in osteosarcoma surgery around the knee. The proposed approach uses MRI and X-ray data from open-source repositories, digital processing techniques, and unsupervised learning algorithms (such as k-means clustering) to define tumor boundaries. Experimental results highlight the potential for automated, patient-specific determination of safety margins.

Kenneth Bonilla-Ormachea, Horacio Cuizaga, Edwin Salcedo et al.

Early detection of forest fires is crucial to minimizing the environmental and socioeconomic damage they cause. Indeed, a fire's duration directly correlates with the difficulty and cost of extinguishing it. For instance, a fire burning for 1 minute might require 1 liter of water to extinguish, while a 2-minute fire could demand 100 liters, and a 10-minute fire might necessitate 1,000 liters. On the other hand, existing fire detection systems based on novel technologies (e.g., remote sensing, PTZ cameras, UAVs) are often expensive and require human intervention, making continuous monitoring of large areas impractical. To address this challenge, this work proposes a low-cost forest fire detection system that utilizes a central gateway device with computer vision capabilities to monitor a 360° field of view for smoke at long distances. A deep reinforcement learning agent enhances surveillance by dynamically controlling the camera's orientation, leveraging real-time sensor data (smoke levels, ambient temperature, and humidity) from distributed IoT devices. This approach enables automated wildfire monitoring across expansive areas while reducing false positives.

Edwin Salcedo

Accurate and timely prediction of heavy rainfall events is crucial for effective flood risk management and disaster preparedness. By monitoring, analysing, and evaluating rainfall data at a local level, it is not only possible to take effective actions to prevent any severe climate variation but also to improve the planning of surface and underground hydrological resources. However, developing countries often lack the weather stations to collect data continuously due to the high cost of installation and maintenance. In light of this, the contribution of the present paper is twofold: first, we propose a low-cost IoT system for automatic recording, monitoring, and prediction of rainfall in rural regions. Second, we propose a novel approach to regional heavy rainfall prediction by implementing graph neural networks (GNNs), which are particularly well-suited for capturing the complex spatial dependencies inherent in rainfall patterns. The proposed approach was tested using a historical dataset spanning 72 months, with daily measurements, and experimental results demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed method in predicting heavy rainfall events, making this approach particularly attractive for regions with limited resources or where traditional weather radar or station coverage is sparse.

Sergio Fernandez-Testa, Edwin Salcedo

Low employment rates in Latin America have contributed to a substantial rise in crime, prompting the emergence of new criminal tactics. For instance, "express robbery" has become a common crime committed by armed thieves, in which they drive motorcycles and assault people in public in a matter of seconds. Recent research has approached the problem by embedding weapon detectors in surveillance cameras; however, these systems are prone to false positives if no counterpart confirms the event. In light of this, we present a distributed IoT system that integrates a computer vision pipeline and object detection capabilities into multiple end-devices, constantly monitoring for the presence of firearms and sharp weapons. Once a weapon is detected, the end-device sends a series of frames to a cloud server that implements a 3DCNN to classify the scene as either a robbery or a normal situation, thus minimizing false positives. The deep learning process to train and deploy weapon detection models uses a custom dataset with 16,799 images of firearms and sharp weapons. The best-performing model, YOLOv5s, optimized using TensorRT, achieved a final mAP of 0.87 running at 4.43 FPS. Additionally, the 3DCNN demonstrated 0.88 accuracy in detecting abnormal situations. Extensive experiments validate that the proposed system significantly reduces false positives while autonomously monitoring multiple locations in real-time.

Davy Rojas Yana, Edwin Salcedo

This paper presents the design, development, and evaluation of a dynamic grain classification system for green lentils (Lens Culinaris), which leverages computer vision and pneumatic ejection. The system integrates a YOLOv8-based detection model that identifies and locates grains on a conveyor belt, together with a second YOLOv8-based classification model that categorises grains into six classes: Good, Yellow, Broken, Peeled, Dotted, and Reject. This two-stage YOLOv8 pipeline enables accurate, real-time, multi-class categorisation of lentils, implemented on a low-cost, modular hardware platform. The pneumatic ejection mechanism separates defective grains, while an Arduino-based control system coordinates real-time interaction between the vision system and mechanical components. The system operates effectively at a conveyor speed of 59 mm/s, achieving a grain separation accuracy of 87.2%. Despite a limited processing rate of 8 grams per minute, the prototype demonstrates the potential of machine vision for grain sorting and provides a modular foundation for future enhancements.