A laser beam is irradiated on a record medium, a speckle generated by surface scattering is measured by an image sensor, speckle information obtained is subjected to FFT transform, and a paper quality of the record medium is discriminated from a peculiar pattern due to roughness of the surface of the record medium. An image of a scene exterior of a vehicle is captured by a vehicle-based image capture device. The interface is a page or a menu. Guidance indication light sources, which can be lasers, can emit beams in different colors to provide threat level indications. The soft decision correction circuit calculates a correction factor based on the soft decision output for the burst and applies the correction factor to the burst prior to the burst entering the decoder. A computer simulation is provided that can be used to predict the resulting temperature profile produced in the prostatic tissue.