Abstract: This paper presents a computational model to recover the most likely interpretation
of the 3D scene structure from a planar image, where some objects may occlude others. The estimated scene interpretation is obtained by integrating some global and local cues and provides both the complete disoccluded objects that form the scene and their ordering according to depth.
Our method first computes several distal scenes which are compatible with the proximal planar image. To compute these different hypothesized scenes, we propose a perceptually inspired object disocclusion method, which works by minimizing the Euler's elastica as well as by incorporating the relatability of partially occluded contours and the convexity of the disoccluded objects. Then, to estimate the preferred scene we rely on a Bayesian model and define probabilities taking into account the global complexity of the objects in the hypothesized scenes as well as the effort of bringing these objects in their relative position in the planar image, which is also measured by an Euler's elastica-based quantity. The model is illustrated with numerical experiments on, both, synthetic and real images showing the ability of our model to reconstruct the occluded objects and the preferred perceptual order among them. We also present results on images of the Berkeley dataset with provided figure-ground ground-truth labeling.

Abstract: By definition, local image features provide a compact representation of the image in which most of the image information is preserved. This capability offered by local features has been overlooked, despite being relevant in many application scenarios. In this paper, we analyze and discuss the performance of feature-driven Maximally Stable Extremal Regions (MSER) in terms of the coverage of informative image parts (completeness). This type of features results from an MSER extraction on saliency maps in which features related to objects boundaries or even symmetry axes are highlighted. These maps are intended to be suitable domains for MSER detection, allowing this detector to provide a better coverage of informative image parts. Our experimental results, which were based on a large-scale evaluation, show that feature-driven MSER have relatively high completeness values and provide more complete sets than a traditional MSER detection even when sets of similar cardinality are considered.

Abstract: This paper introduces a new automatic technique for garment retexturing using a single static image along with the depth and infrared information obtained using the Microsoft Kinect II as the RGB-D acquisition device. First, the garment is segmented out from the image using either the Breadth-First Search algorithm or the semi-automatic procedure provided by the GrabCut method. Then texture domain coordinates are computed for each pixel belonging to the garment using normalised 3D information. Afterwards, shading is applied to the new colours from the texture image. As the main contribution of the proposed method, the latter information is obtained based on extracting a linear map transforming the colour present on the infrared image to that of the RGB colour channels. One of the most important impacts of this strategy is that the resulting retexturing algorithm is colour-, pattern- and lighting-invariant. The experimental results show that it can be used to produce realistic representations, which is substantiated through implementing it under various experimentation scenarios, involving varying lighting intensities and directions. Successful results are accomplished also on video sequences, as well as on images of subjects taking different poses. Based on the Mean Opinion Score analysis conducted on many randomly chosen users, it has been shown to produce more realistic-looking results compared to the existing state-of-the-art methods suggested in the literature. From a wide perspective, the proposed method can be used for retexturing all sorts of segmented surfaces, although the focus of this study is on garment retexturing, and the investigation of the configurations is steered accordingly, since the experiments target an application in the context of virtual fitting rooms.

Abstract: This paper surveys the state of the art on multimodal gesture recognition and introduces the JMLR special topic on gesture recognition 2011-2015. We began right at the start of the KinectTMrevolution when inexpensive infrared cameras providing image depth recordings became available. We published papers using this technology and other more conventional methods, including regular video cameras, to record data, thus providing a good overview of uses of machine learning and computer vision using multimodal data in this area of application. Notably, we organized a series of challenges and made available several datasets we recorded for that purpose, including tens of thousands
of videos, which are available to conduct further research. We also overview recent state of the art works on gesture recognition based on a proposed taxonomy for gesture recognition, discussing challenges and future lines of research.

Abstract: This work addresses the problem of human body segmentation from multi-modal visual cues as a first stage of automatic human behavior analysis. We propose a novel RGB–depth–thermal dataset along with a multi-modal segmentation baseline. The several modalities are registered using a calibration device and a registration algorithm. Our baseline extracts regions of interest using background subtraction, defines a partitioning of the foreground regions into cells, computes a set of image features on those cells using different state-of-the-art feature extractions, and models the distribution of the descriptors per cell using probabilistic models. A supervised learning algorithm then fuses the output likelihoods over cells in a stacked feature vector representation. The baseline, using Gaussian mixture models for the probabilistic modeling and Random Forest for the stacked learning, is superior to other state-of-the-art methods, obtaining an overlap above 75 % on the novel dataset when compared to the manually annotated ground-truth of human segmentations.

Abstract: Dense, robust and real-time computation of depth information from stereo-camera systems is a computationally demanding requirement for robotics, advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous vehicles. Semi-Global Matching (SGM) is a widely used algorithm that propagates consistency constraints along several paths across the image. This work presents a real-time system producing reliable disparity estimation results on the new embedded energy efficient GPU devices. Our design runs on a Tegra X1 at 42 frames per second (fps) for an image size of 640x480, 128 disparity levels, and using 4 path directions for the SGM method.

Abstract: Purpose: An intraluminal coronary stent is a metal mesh tube deployed in a stenotic artery during Percutaneous Coronary Intervention (PCI), in order to prevent acute vessel occlusion. The identication of struts location and the denition of the stent shape are relevant for PCI planning 15 and for patient follow-up. We present a fully-automatic framework for Computer-Aided Detection
(CAD) of intra-coronary stents in Intravascular Ultrasound (IVUS) image sequences. The CAD system is able to detect stent struts and estimate the stent shape.
Methods: The proposed CAD uses machine learning to provide a comprehensive interpretation of the local structure of the vessel by means of semantic classication. The output of the classication 20 stage is then used to detect struts and to estimate the stent shape. The proposed approach is validated using a multi-centric data-set of 1,015 images from 107 IVUS sequences containing both metallic and bio-absorbable stents.
Results: The method was able to detect structs in both metallic stents with an overall F-measure of 77.7% and a mean distance of 0.15 mm from manually annotated struts, and in bio-absorbable 25 stents with an overall F-measure of 77.4% and a mean distance of 0.09 mm from manually annotated struts.
Conclusions: The results are close to the inter-observer variability and suggest that the system has the potential of being used as method for aiding percutaneous interventions.

Abstract: When an autonomous vehicle is traveling through some scenario it receives a continuous stream of sensor data. This sensor data arrives in an asynchronous fashion and often contains overlapping or redundant information. Thus, it is not trivial how a representation of the environment observed by the vehicle can be created and updated over time. This paper presents a novel methodology to compute an incremental 3D representation of a scenario from 3D range measurements. We propose to use macro scale polygonal primitives to model the scenario. This means that the representation of the scene is given as a list of large scale polygons that describe the geometric structure of the environment. Furthermore, we propose mechanisms designed to update the geometric polygonal primitives over time whenever fresh sensor data is collected. Results show that the approach is capable of producing accurate descriptions of the scene, and that it is computationally very efficient when compared to other reconstruction techniques.