Joan M. Nuñez, Jorge Bernal, F. Javier Sanchez, & Fernando Vilariño. (2015). Growing Algorithm for Intersection Detection (GRAID) in branching patterns. MVAP - Machine Vision and Applications, 26(2), 387–400.
Abstract: Analysis of branching structures represents a very important task in fields such as medical diagnosis, road detection or biometrics. Detecting intersection landmarks Becomes crucial when capturing the structure of a branching pattern. We present a very simple geometrical model to describe intersections in branching structures based on two conditions: Bounded Tangency condition (BT) and Shortest Branch (SB) condition. The proposed model precisely sets a geometrical characterization of intersections and allows us to introduce a new unsupervised operator for intersection extraction. We propose an implementation that handles the consequences of digital domain operation that,unlike existing approaches, is not restricted to a particular scale and does not require the computation of the thinned pattern. The new proposal, as well as other existing approaches in the bibliography, are evaluated in a common framework for the first time. The performance analysis is based on two manually segmented image data sets: DRIVE retinal image database and COLON-VESSEL data set, a newly created data set of vascular content in colonoscopy frames. We have created an intersection landmark ground truth for each data set besides comparing our method in the only existing ground truth. Quantitative results confirm that we are able to outperform state-of-the-art performancelevels with the advantage that neither training nor parameter tuning is needed.
Keywords: Bifurcation ; Crossroad; Intersection ;Retina ; Vessel
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G.Blasco, Simone Balocco, J.Puig, J.Sanchez-Gonzalez, W.Ricart, J.Daunis-I-Estadella, et al. (2015). Carotid pulse wave velocity by magnetic resonance imaging is increased in middle-aged subjects with the metabolic syndrome. ICJI - International Journal of Cardiovascular Imaging, 31(3), 603–612.
Abstract: Arterial pulse wave velocity (PWV), an independent predictor of cardiovascular disease, physiologically increases with age; however, growing evidence suggests metabolic syndrome (MetS) accelerates this increase. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) enables reliable noninvasive assessment of arterial stiffness by measuring arterial PWV in specific vascular segments. We investigated the association between the presence of MetS and its components with carotid PWV (cPWV) in asymptomatic subjects without diabetes. We assessed cPWV by MRI in 61 individuals (mean age, 55.3 ± 14.1 years; median age, 55 years): 30 with MetS and 31 controls with similar age, sex, body mass index, and LDL-cholesterol levels. The study population was dichotomized by the median age. To remove the physiological association between PWV and age, unpaired t tests and multiple regression analyses were performed using the residuals of the regression between PWV and age. cPWV was higher in middle-aged subjects with MetS than in those without (p = 0.001), but no differences were found in elder subjects (p = 0.313). cPWV was associated with diastolic blood pressure (r = 0.276, p = 0.033) and waist circumference (r = 0.268, p = 0.038). The presence of MetS was associated with increased cPWV regardless of age, sex, blood pressure, and waist (p = 0.007). The MetS components contributing independently to an increased cPWV were hypertension (p = 0.018) and hypertriglyceridemia (p = 0.002). The presence of MetS is associated with an increased cPWV in middle-aged subjects. In particular, hypertension and hypertriglyceridemia may contribute to early progression of carotid stiffness.
Keywords: Metabolic syndrome; Arterial stiffness; Pulse wave velocity; Carotid artery; Magnetic resonance
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David Roche. (2015). A Statistical Framework for Terminating Evolutionary Algorithms at their Steady State (Debora Gil, & Jesus Giraldo, Eds.). Ph.D. thesis, Ediciones Graficas Rey, .
Abstract: As any iterative technique, it is a necessary condition a stop criterion for terminating Evolutionary Algorithms (EA). In the case of optimization methods, the algorithm should stop at the time it has reached a steady state so it can not improve results anymore. Assessing the reliability of termination conditions for EAs is of prime importance. A wrong or weak stop criterion can negatively a ect both the computational e ort and the nal result.
In this Thesis, we introduce a statistical framework for assessing whether a termination condition is able to stop EA at its steady state. In one hand a numeric approximation to steady states to detect the point in which EA population has lost its diversity has been presented for EA termination. This approximation has been applied to di erent EA paradigms based on diversity and a selection of functions covering the properties most relevant for EA convergence. Experiments show that our condition works regardless of the search space dimension and function landscape and Di erential Evolution (DE) arises as the best paradigm. On the other hand, we use a regression model in order to determine the requirements ensuring that a measure derived from EA evolving population is related to the distance to the optimum in xspace.
Our theoretical framework is analyzed across several benchmark test functions
and two standard termination criteria based on function improvement in f-space and EA population x-space distribution for the DE paradigm. Results validate our statistical framework as a powerful tool for determining the capability of a measure for terminating EA and select the x-space distribution as the best-suited for accurately stopping DE in real-world applications.
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Debora Gil, David Roche, Agnes Borras, & Jesus Giraldo. (2015). Terminating Evolutionary Algorithms at their Steady State. COA - Computational Optimization and Applications, 61(2), 489–515.
Abstract: Assessing the reliability of termination conditions for evolutionary algorithms (EAs) is of prime importance. An erroneous or weak stop criterion can negatively affect both the computational effort and the final result. We introduce a statistical framework for assessing whether a termination condition is able to stop an EA at its steady state, so that its results can not be improved anymore. We use a regression model in order to determine the requirements ensuring that a measure derived from EA evolving population is related to the distance to the optimum in decision variable space. Our framework is analyzed across 24 benchmark test functions and two standard termination criteria based on function fitness value in objective function space and EA population decision variable space distribution for the differential evolution (DE) paradigm. Results validate our framework as a powerful tool for determining the capability of a measure for terminating EA and the results also identify the decision variable space distribution as the best-suited for accurately terminating DE in real-world applications.
Keywords: Evolutionary algorithms; Termination condition; Steady state; Differential evolution
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German Ros, Sebastian Ramos, Manuel Granados, Amir Bakhtiary, David Vazquez, & Antonio Lopez. (2015). Vision-based Offline-Online Perception Paradigm for Autonomous Driving. In IEEE Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision (pp. 231–238).
Abstract: Autonomous driving is a key factor for future mobility. Properly perceiving the environment of the vehicles is essential for a safe driving, which requires computing accurate geometric and semantic information in real-time. In this paper, we challenge state-of-the-art computer vision algorithms for building a perception system for autonomous driving. An inherent drawback in the computation of visual semantics is the trade-off between accuracy and computational cost. We propose to circumvent this problem by following an offline-online strategy. During the offline stage dense 3D semantic maps are created. In the online stage the current driving area is recognized in the maps via a re-localization process, which allows to retrieve the pre-computed accurate semantics and 3D geometry in realtime. Then, detecting the dynamic obstacles we obtain a rich understanding of the current scene. We evaluate quantitatively our proposal in the KITTI dataset and discuss the related open challenges for the computer vision community.
Keywords: Autonomous Driving; Scene Understanding; SLAM; Semantic Segmentation
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Dan Norton, Fernando Vilariño, & Onur Ferhat. (2015). Memory Field – Creative Engagement in Digital Collections. In Internet Librarian International Conference.
Abstract: “Memory Fields” is a trans-disciplinary project aiming at the (re)valorisation of digital collections.Its main deliverable is an interface for a dual screen installation, used to access and mix the public library digital collections. The collections being used in this case are a collection of digitised posters from the Spanish Civil War, belonging to the Arxiu General de Catalunya, and a collection of field recordings made by Dan Norton. The system generates visualisations, and the images and sounds are mixed together using narrative primitives of video dj. Users contribute to the digital collections by adding personal memories and observations. The comments and recollections appear as flowers growing in a “memory field” and memories remain public in a Twitter feed (@Memoryfields).
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R.A.Bendezu, E.Barba, E.Burri, D.Cisternas, Carolina Malagelada, Santiago Segui, et al. (2015). Intestinal gas content and distribution in health and in patients with functional gut symptoms. NEUMOT - Neurogastroenterology & Motility, 27(9), 1249–1257.
Abstract: BACKGROUND:
The precise relation of intestinal gas to symptoms, particularly abdominal bloating and distension remains incompletely elucidated. Our aim was to define the normal values of intestinal gas volume and distribution and to identify abnormalities in relation to functional-type symptoms.
METHODS:
Abdominal computed tomography scans were evaluated in healthy subjects (n = 37) and in patients in three conditions: basal (when they were feeling well; n = 88), during an episode of abdominal distension (n = 82) and after a challenge diet (n = 24). Intestinal gas content and distribution were measured by an original analysis program. Identification of patients outside the normal range was performed by machine learning techniques (one-class classifier). Results are expressed as median (IQR) or mean ± SE, as appropriate.
KEY RESULTS:
In healthy subjects the gut contained 95 (71, 141) mL gas distributed along the entire lumen. No differences were detected between patients studied under asymptomatic basal conditions and healthy subjects. However, either during a spontaneous bloating episode or once challenged with a flatulogenic diet, luminal gas was found to be increased and/or abnormally distributed in about one-fourth of the patients. These patients detected outside the normal range by the classifier exhibited a significantly greater number of abnormal features than those within the normal range (3.7 ± 0.4 vs 0.4 ± 0.1; p < 0.001).
CONCLUSIONS & INFERENCES:
The analysis of a large cohort of subjects using original techniques provides unique and heretofore unavailable information on the volume and distribution of intestinal gas in normal conditions and in relation to functional gastrointestinal symptoms.
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Wenjuan Gong, W.Zhang, Jordi Gonzalez, Y.Ren, & Z.Li. (2015). Enhanced Asymmetric Bilinear Model for Face Recognition. IJDSN - International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks, , Article ID 218514.
Abstract: Bilinear models have been successfully applied to separate two factors, for example, pose variances and different identities in face recognition problems. Asymmetric model is a type of bilinear model which models a system in the most concise way. But seldom there are works exploring the applications of asymmetric bilinear model on face recognition problem with illumination changes. In this work, we propose enhanced asymmetric model for illumination-robust face recognition. Instead of initializing the factor probabilities randomly, we initialize them with nearest neighbor method and optimize them for the test data. Above that, we update the factor model to be identified. We validate the proposed method on a designed data sample and extended Yale B dataset. The experiment results show that the enhanced asymmetric models give promising results and good recognition accuracies.
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Jordina Torrents-Barrena, Aida Valls, Petia Radeva, Meritxell Arenas, & Domenec Puig. (2015). Automatic Recognition of Molecular Subtypes of Breast Cancer in X-Ray images using Segmentation-based Fractal Texture Analysis. In Artificial Intelligence Research and Development (Vol. 277, pp. 247–256). Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications. IOS Press.
Abstract: Breast cancer disease has recently been classified into four subtypes regarding the molecular properties of the affected tumor region. For each patient, an accurate diagnosis of the specific type is vital to decide the most appropriate therapy in order to enhance life prospects. Nowadays, advanced therapeutic diagnosis research is focused on gene selection methods, which are not robust enough. Hence, we hypothesize that computer vision algorithms can offer benefits to address the problem of discriminating among them through X-Ray images. In this paper, we propose a novel approach driven by texture feature descriptors and machine learning techniques. First, we segment the tumour part through an active contour technique and then, we perform a complete fractal analysis to collect qualitative information of the region of interest in the feature extraction stage. Finally, several supervised and unsupervised classifiers are used to perform multiclass classification of the aforementioned data. The experimental results presented in this paper support that it is possible to establish a relation between each tumor subtype and the extracted features of the patterns revealed on mammograms.
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Marc Bolaños, R. Mestre, Estefania Talavera, Xavier Giro, & Petia Radeva. (2015). Visual Summary of Egocentric Photostreams by Representative Keyframes. In IEEE International Conference on Multimedia and Expo ICMEW2015 (pp. 1–6).
Abstract: Building a visual summary from an egocentric photostream captured by a lifelogging wearable camera is of high interest for different applications (e.g. memory reinforcement). In this paper, we propose a new summarization method based on keyframes selection that uses visual features extracted bymeans of a convolutional neural network. Our method applies an unsupervised clustering for dividing the photostreams into events, and finally extracts the most relevant keyframe for each event. We assess the results by applying a blind-taste test on a group of 20 people who assessed the quality of the
summaries.
Keywords: egocentric; lifelogging; summarization; keyframes
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Hanne Kause, Aura Hernandez-Sabate, Patricia Marquez, Andrea Fuster, Luc Florack, Hans van Assen, et al. (2015). Confidence Measures for Assessing the HARP Algorithm in Tagged Magnetic Resonance Imaging. In Statistical Atlases and Computational Models of the Heart. Revised selected papers of Imaging and Modelling Challenges 6th International Workshop, STACOM 2015, Held in Conjunction with MICCAI 2015 (Vol. 9534, pp. 69–79). LNCS. Springer International Publishing.
Abstract: Cardiac deformation and changes therein have been linked to pathologies. Both can be extracted in detail from tagged Magnetic Resonance Imaging (tMRI) using harmonic phase (HARP) images. Although point tracking algorithms have shown to have high accuracies on HARP images, these vary with position. Detecting and discarding areas with unreliable results is crucial for use in clinical support systems. This paper assesses the capability of two confidence measures (CMs), based on energy and image structure, for detecting locations with reduced accuracy in motion tracking results. These CMs were tested on a database of simulated tMRI images containing the most common artifacts that may affect tracking accuracy. CM performance is assessed based on its capability for HARP tracking error bounding and compared in terms of significant differences detected using a multi comparison analysis of variance that takes into account the most influential factors on HARP tracking performance. Results showed that the CM based on image structure was better suited to detect unreliable optical flow vectors. In addition, it was shown that CMs can be used to detect optical flow vectors with large errors in order to improve the optical flow obtained with the HARP tracking algorithm.
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Isabelle Guyon, Kristin Bennett, Gavin Cawley, Hugo Jair Escalante, Sergio Escalera, Tin Kam Ho, et al. (2015). Design of the 2015 ChaLearn AutoML Challenge. In IEEE International Joint Conference on Neural Networks IJCNN2015.
Abstract: ChaLearn is organizing for IJCNN 2015 an Automatic Machine Learning challenge (AutoML) to solve classification and regression problems from given feature representations, without any human intervention. This is a challenge with code
submission: the code submitted can be executed automatically on the challenge servers to train and test learning machines on new datasets. However, there is no obligation to submit code. Half of the prizes can be won by just submitting prediction results.
There are six rounds (Prep, Novice, Intermediate, Advanced, Expert, and Master) in which datasets of progressive difficulty are introduced (5 per round). There is no requirement to participate in previous rounds to enter a new round. The rounds alternate AutoML phases in which submitted code is “blind tested” on
datasets the participants have never seen before, and Tweakathon phases giving time (' 1 month) to the participants to improve their methods by tweaking their code on those datasets. This challenge will push the state-of-the-art in fully automatic machine learning on a wide range of problems taken from real world
applications. The platform will remain available beyond the termination of the challenge: http://codalab.org/AutoML
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Isabelle Guyon, Kristin Bennett, Gavin Cawley, Hugo Jair Escalante, Sergio Escalera, Tin Kam Ho, et al. (2015). AutoML Challenge 2015: Design and First Results. In 32nd International Conference on Machine Learning, ICML workshop, JMLR proceedings ICML15 (pp. 1–8).
Abstract: ChaLearn is organizing the Automatic Machine Learning (AutoML) contest 2015, which challenges participants to solve classi cation and regression problems without any human intervention. Participants' code is automatically run on the contest servers to train and test learning machines. However, there is no obligation to submit code; half of the prizes can be won by submitting prediction results only. Datasets of progressively increasing diculty are introduced throughout the six rounds of the challenge. (Participants can
enter the competition in any round.) The rounds alternate phases in which learners are tested on datasets participants have not seen (AutoML), and phases in which participants have limited time to tweak their algorithms on those datasets to improve performance (Tweakathon). This challenge will push the state of the art in fully automatic machine learning on a wide range of real-world problems. The platform will remain available beyond the termination of the challenge: http://codalab.org/AutoML.
Keywords: AutoML Challenge; machine learning; model selection; meta-learning; repre- sentation learning; active learning
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Ivan Huerta, Marco Pedersoli, Jordi Gonzalez, & Alberto Sanfeliu. (2015). Combining where and what in change detection for unsupervised foreground learning in surveillance. PR - Pattern Recognition, 48(3), 709–719.
Abstract: Change detection is the most important task for video surveillance analytics such as foreground and anomaly detection. Current foreground detectors learn models from annotated images since the goal is to generate a robust foreground model able to detect changes in all possible scenarios. Unfortunately, manual labelling is very expensive. Most advanced supervised learning techniques based on generic object detection datasets currently exhibit very poor performance when applied to surveillance datasets because of the unconstrained nature of such environments in terms of types and appearances of objects. In this paper, we take advantage of change detection for training multiple foreground detectors in an unsupervised manner. We use statistical learning techniques which exploit the use of latent parameters for selecting the best foreground model parameters for a given scenario. In essence, the main novelty of our proposed approach is to combine the where (motion segmentation) and what (learning procedure) in change detection in an unsupervised way for improving the specificity and generalization power of foreground detectors at the same time. We propose a framework based on latent support vector machines that, given a noisy initialization based on motion cues, learns the correct position, aspect ratio, and appearance of all moving objects in a particular scene. Specificity is achieved by learning the particular change detections of a given scenario, and generalization is guaranteed since our method can be applied to any possible scene and foreground object, as demonstrated in the experimental results outperforming the state-of-the-art.
Keywords: Object detection; Unsupervised learning; Motion segmentation; Latent variables; Support vector machine; Multiple appearance models; Video surveillance
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Joan M. Nuñez. (2015). Vascular Pattern Characterization in Colonoscopy Images (Fernando Vilariño, Ed.). Ph.D. thesis, Ediciones Graficas Rey, .
Abstract: Colorectal cancer is the third most common cancer worldwide and the second most common malignant tumor in Europe. Screening tests have shown to be very e ective in increasing the survival rates since they allow an early detection of polyps. Among the di erent screening techniques, colonoscopy is considered the gold standard although clinical studies mention several problems that have an impact in the quality of the procedure. The navigation through the rectum and colon track can be challenging for the physicians which can increase polyp miss rates. The thorough visualization of the colon track must be ensured so that
the chances of missing lesions are minimized. The visual analysis of colonoscopy images can provide important information to the physicians and support their navigation during the procedure.
Blood vessels and their branching patterns can provide descriptive power to potentially develop biometric markers. Anatomical markers based on blood vessel patterns could be used to identify a particular scene in colonoscopy videos and to support endoscope navigation by generating a sequence of ordered scenes through the di erent colon sections. By verifying the presence of vascular content in the endoluminal scene it is also possible to certify a proper
inspection of the colon mucosa and to improve polyp localization. Considering the potential uses of blood vessel description, this contribution studies the characterization of the vascular content and the analysis of the descriptive power of its branching patterns.
Blood vessel characterization in colonoscopy images is shown to be a challenging task. The endoluminal scene is conformed by several elements whose similar characteristics hinder the development of particular models for each of them. To overcome such diculties we propose the use of the blood vessel branching characteristics as key features for pattern description. We present a model to characterize junctions in binary patterns. The implementation
of the junction model allows us to develop a junction localization method. We
created two data sets including manually labeled vessel information as well as manual ground truths of two types of keypoint landmarks: junctions and endpoints. The proposed method outperforms the available algorithms in the literature in experiments in both, our newly created colon vessel data set, and in DRIVE retinal fundus image data set. In the latter case, we created a manual ground truth of junction coordinates. Since we want to explore the descriptive potential of junctions and vessels, we propose a graph-based approach to
create anatomical markers. In the context of polyp localization, we present a new method to inhibit the in uence of blood vessels in the extraction valley-pro le information. The results show that our methodology decreases vessel in
uence, increases polyp information and leads to an improvement in state-of-the-art polyp localization performance. We also propose a polyp-speci c segmentation method that outperforms other general and speci c approaches.
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