Abstract: The emergence of transformer models like BERT, GPT-2, GPT-3, RoBERTa, T5 for natural language understanding tasks has opened the floodgates towards solving a wide array of machine learning tasks in other modalities like images, audio, music, sketches and so on. These language models are domain-agnostic and as a result could be applied to 1-D sequences of any kind. However, the key challenge lies in bridging the modality gap so that they could generate strong features beneficial for out-of-domain tasks. This work focuses on leveraging the power of such pre-trained language models and discusses the challenges in predicting challenging handwritten symbols and alphabets.

Abstract: Vision-based road detection is important in different areas of computer vision such as autonomous driving, car collision warning and pedestrian crossing detection. However, current vision-based road detection methods are usually based on low-level features and they assume structured roads, road homogeneity, and uniform lighting conditions. Therefore, in this paper, contextual 3D information is used in addition to low-level cues. Low-level photometric invariant cues are derived from the appearance of roads. Contextual cues used include horizon lines, vanishing points, 3D scene layout and 3D road stages. Moreover, temporal road cues are included. All these cues are sensitive to different imaging conditions and hence are considered as weak cues. Therefore, they are combined to improve the overall performance of the algorithm. To this end, the low-level, contextual and temporal cues are combined in a Bayesian framework to classify road sequences. Large scale experiments on road sequences show that the road detection method is robust to varying imaging conditions, road types, and scenarios (tunnels, urban and highway). Further, using the combined cues outperforms all other individual cues. Finally, the proposed method provides highest road detection accuracy when compared to state-of-the-art methods.

Abstract: Detecting pedestrians in images is a key functionality to avoid vehicle-to-pedestrian collisions. The most promising detectors rely on appearance-based pedestrian classifiers trained with labelled samples. This paper addresses the following question: can a pedestrian appearance model learnt in virtual scenarios work successfully for pedestrian detection in real images? (Fig. 1). Our experiments suggest a positive answer, which is a new and relevant conclusion for research in pedestrian detection. More specifically, we record training sequences in virtual scenarios and then appearance-based pedestrian classifiers are learnt using HOG and linear SVM. We test such classifiers in a publicly available dataset provided by Daimler AG for pedestrian detection benchmarking. This dataset contains real world images acquired from a moving car. The obtained result is compared with the one given by a classifier learnt using samples coming from real images. The comparison reveals that, although virtual samples were not specially selected, both virtual and real based training give rise to classifiers of similar performance.

Abstract: We propose an efficient method, built on the popular Bag of Features approach, that obtains robust multiclass pixel-level object segmentation of an image in less than 500ms, with results comparable or better than most state of the art methods. We introduce the Integral Linear Classifier (ILC), that can readily obtain the classification score for any image sub-window with only 6 additions and 1 product by fusing the accumulation and classification steps in a single operation. In order to design a method as efficient as possible, our building blocks are carefully selected from the quickest in the state of the art. More precisely, we evaluate the performance of three popular local descriptors, that can be very efficiently computed using integral images, and two fast quantization methods: the Hierarchical K-Means, and the Extremely Randomized Forest. Finally, we explore the utility of adding spatial bins to the Bag of Features histograms and that of cascade classifiers to improve the obtained segmentation. Our method is compared to the state of the art in the difficult Graz-02 and PASCAL 2007 Segmentation Challenge datasets.

Abstract: In this paper, we present a full-automatic Spatio-Temporal GrabCut human segmentation methodology. GrabCut initialization is performed by a HOG-based subject detection, face detection, and skin color model for seed initialization. Spatial information is included by means of Mean Shift clustering whereas temporal coherence is considered by the historical of Gaussian Mixture Models. Moreover, human segmentation is combined with Shape and Active Appearance Models to perform full face and pose recovery. Results over public data sets as well as proper human action base show a robust segmentation and recovery of both face and pose using the presented methodology.

Abstract: Normalization of signals coming from linear sensors is an ubiquitous mechanism of neural adaptation.1 Local interaction between sensors tuned to a particular feature at certain spatial position and neighbor sensors explains a wide range of psychophysical facts including (1) masking of spatial patterns, (2) non-linearities of motion sensors, (3) adaptation of color perception, (4) brightness and chromatic induction, and (5) image quality assessment. Although the above models have formal and qualitative similarities, it does not necessarily mean that the mechanisms involved are pursuing the same statistical goal. For instance, in the case of chromatic mechanisms (disregarding spatial information), different parameters in the normalization give rise to optimal discrimination or adaptation, and different non-linearities may give rise to error minimization or component independence. In the case of spatial sensors (disregarding color information), a number of studies have pointed out the benefits of masking in statistical independence terms. However, such statistical analysis has not been performed for spatio-chromatic induction models where chromatic perception depends on spatial configuration. In this work we investigate whether successful spatio-chromatic induction models,6 increase component independence similarly as previously reported for masking models. Mutual information analysis suggests that seeking an efficient chromatic representation may explain the prevalence of induction effects in spatially simple images. © (2013) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.

Abstract: Humans constantly evaluate the personalities of other people using their faces. Facial trait judgments have been studied in the psychological field, and have been determined to influence important social outcomes of our lives, such as elections outcomes and social relationships. Recent work on textual descriptions of faces has shown that trait judgments are highly correlated. Further, behavioral studies suggest that two orthogonal dimensions, valence and dominance, can describe the basis of the human judgments from faces. In this paper, we used a corpus of behavioral data of judgments on different trait dimensions to automatically learn a trait predictor from facial pixel images. We study whether trait evaluations performed by humans can be learned using machine learning classifiers, and used later in automatic evaluations of new facial images. The experiments performed using local point-based descriptors show promising results in the evaluation of the main traits.

Abstract: To date, MRI-SPAMM data from different image slices have been analyzed independently. In this paper, we propose an approach for 3D tag localization and tracking of SPAMM data by a novel deformable B-solid. The solid is defined in terms of a 3D tensor product B-spline. The isoparametric curves of the B-spline solid have special importance. These are termed implicit snakes as they deform under image forces from tag lines in different image slices. The localization and tracking of tag lines is performed under constraints of continuity and smoothness of the B-solid. The framework unifies the problems of localization, and displacement fitting and interpolation into the same procedure utilizing B-spline bases for interpolation. To track motion from boundaries and restrict image forces to the myocardium, a volumetric model is employed as a pair of coupled endocardial and epicardial B-spline surfaces. To recover deformations in the LV an energy-minimization problem is posed where both tag and ...