Maria Vanrell, Naila Murray, Robert Benavente, C. Alejandro Parraga, Xavier Otazu, & Ramon Baldrich. (2011). Perception Based Representations for Computational Colour. In Alain Trémeau S. T. Raimondo Schettini (Ed.), 3rd International Workshop on Computational Color Imaging (Vol. 6626, pp. 16–30). LNCS. Springer-Verlag.
Abstract: The perceived colour of a stimulus is dependent on multiple factors stemming out either from the context of the stimulus or idiosyncrasies of the observer. The complexity involved in combining these multiple effects is the main reason for the gap between classical calibrated colour spaces from colour science and colour representations used in computer vision, where colour is just one more visual cue immersed in a digital image where surfaces, shadows and illuminants interact seemingly out of control. With the aim to advance a few steps towards bridging this gap we present some results on computational representations of colour for computer vision. They have been developed by introducing perceptual considerations derived from the interaction of the colour of a point with its context. We show some techniques to represent the colour of a point influenced by assimilation and contrast effects due to the image surround and we show some results on how colour saliency can be derived in real images. We outline a model for automatic assignment of colour names to image points directly trained on psychophysical data. We show how colour segments can be perceptually grouped in the image by imposing shading coherence in the colour space.
Keywords: colour perception, induction, naming, psychophysical data, saliency, segmentation
|
|
Maria Vanrell, Ramon Baldrich, Anna Salvatella, Robert Benavente, & Francesc Tous. (2004). Induction operators for a computational colour-texture representation. Computer Vision and Image Understanding, 94(1–3):92–114, ISSN: 1077–3142 (IF: 0.651).
|
Mariano Vazquez, Ruth Aris, Guillaume Hozeaux, R.Aubry, P.Villar, Jaume Garcia, et al. (2011). A massively parallel computational electrophysiology model of the heart. IJNMBE - International Journal for Numerical Methods in Biomedical Engineering, 27, 1911–1929.
Abstract: This paper presents a patient-sensitive simulation strategy capable of using the most efficient way the high-performance computational resources. The proposed strategy directly involves three different players: Computational Mechanics Scientists (CMS), Image Processing Scientists and Cardiologists, each one mastering its own expertise area within the project. This paper describes the general integrative scheme but focusing on the CMS side presents a massively parallel implementation of computational electrophysiology applied to cardiac tissue simulation. The paper covers different angles of the computational problem: equations, numerical issues, the algorithm and parallel implementation. The proposed methodology is illustrated with numerical simulations testing all the different possibilities, ranging from small domains up to very large ones. A key issue is the almost ideal scalability not only for large and complex problems but also for medium-size meshes. The explicit formulation is particularly well suited for solving this highly transient problems, with very short time-scale.
Keywords: computational electrophysiology; parallelization; finite element methods
|
Mariella Dimiccoli. (2016). Figure-ground segregation: A fully nonlocal approach. VR - Vision Research, 126, 308–317.
Abstract: We present a computational model that computes and integrates in a nonlocal fashion several configural cues for automatic figure-ground segregation. Our working hypothesis is that the figural status of each pixel is a nonlocal function of several geometric shape properties and it can be estimated without explicitly relying on object boundaries. The methodology is grounded on two elements: multi-directional linear voting and nonlinear diffusion. A first estimation of the figural status of each pixel is obtained as a result of a voting process, in which several differently oriented line-shaped neighborhoods vote to express their belief about the figural status of the pixel. A nonlinear diffusion process is then applied to enforce the coherence of figural status estimates among perceptually homogeneous regions. Computer simulations fit human perception and match the experimental evidence that several cues cooperate in defining figure-ground segregation. The results of this work suggest that figure-ground segregation involves feedback from cells with larger receptive fields in higher visual cortical areas.
Keywords: Figure-ground segregation; Nonlocal approach; Directional linear voting; Nonlinear diffusion
|
Mariella Dimiccoli. (2016). Fundamentals of cone regression. Journal of Statistics Surveys, 53–99.
Abstract: Cone regression is a particular case of quadratic programming that minimizes a weighted sum of squared residuals under a set of linear inequality constraints. Several important statistical problems such as isotonic, concave regression or ANOVA under partial orderings, just to name a few, can be considered as particular instances of the cone regression problem. Given its relevance in Statistics, this paper aims to address the fundamentals of cone regression from a theoretical and practical point of view. Several formulations of the cone regression problem are considered and, focusing on the particular case of concave regression as an example, several algorithms are analyzed and compared both qualitatively and quantitatively through numerical simulations. Several improvements to enhance numerical stability and bound the computational cost are proposed. For each analyzed algorithm, the pseudo-code and its corresponding code in Matlab are provided. The results from this study demonstrate that the choice of the optimization approach strongly impacts the numerical performances. It is also shown that methods are not currently available to solve efficiently cone regression problems with large dimension (more than many thousands of points). We suggest further research to fill this gap by exploiting and adapting classical multi-scale strategy to compute an approximate solution.
Keywords: cone regression; linear complementarity problems; proximal operators.
|
Mariella Dimiccoli, Benoît Girard, Alain Berthoz, & Daniel Bennequin. (2013). Striola Magica: a functional explanation of otolith organs. JCN - Journal of Computational Neuroscience, 35(2), 125–154.
Abstract: Otolith end organs of vertebrates sense linear accelerations of the head and gravitation. The hair cells on their epithelia are responsible for transduction. In mammals, the striola, parallel to the line where hair cells reverse their polarization, is a narrow region centered on a curve with curvature and torsion. It has been shown that the striolar region is functionally different from the rest, being involved in a phasic vestibular pathway. We propose a mathematical and computational model that explains the necessity of this amazing geometry for the striola to be able to carry out its function. Our hypothesis, related to the biophysics of the hair cells and to the physiology of their afferent neurons, is that striolar afferents collect information from several type I hair cells to detect the jerk in a large domain of acceleration directions. This predicts a mean number of two calyces for afferent neurons, as measured in rodents. The domain of acceleration directions sensed by our striolar model is compatible with the experimental results obtained on monkeys considering all afferents. Therefore, the main result of our study is that phasic and tonic vestibular afferents cover the same geometrical fields, but at different dynamical and frequency domains.
Keywords: Otolith organs ;Striola; Vestibular pathway
|
|
Mariella Dimiccoli, Cathal Gurrin, David J. Crandall, Xavier Giro, & Petia Radeva. (2018). Introduction to the special issue: Egocentric Vision and Lifelogging. JVCIR - Journal of Visual Communication and Image Representation, 55, 352–353.
|
Mariella Dimiccoli, Jean-Pascal Jacob, & Lionel Moisan. (2016). Particle detection and tracking in fluorescence time-lapse imaging: a contrario approach. MVAP - Journal of Machine Vision and Applications, 27, 511–527.
Abstract: In this work, we propose a probabilistic approach for the detection and the
tracking of particles on biological images. In presence of very noised and poor
quality data, particles and trajectories can be characterized by an a-contrario
model, that estimates the probability of observing the structures of interest
in random data. This approach, first introduced in the modeling of human visual
perception and then successfully applied in many image processing tasks, leads
to algorithms that do not require a previous learning stage, nor a tedious
parameter tuning and are very robust to noise. Comparative evaluations against
a well established baseline show that the proposed approach outperforms the
state of the art.
Keywords: particle detection; particle tracking; a-contrario approach; time-lapse fluorescence imaging
|
Mariella Dimiccoli, Marc Bolaños, Estefania Talavera, Maedeh Aghaei, Stavri G. Nikolov, & Petia Radeva. (2017). SR-Clustering: Semantic Regularized Clustering for Egocentric Photo Streams Segmentation. CVIU - Computer Vision and Image Understanding, 155, 55–69.
Abstract: While wearable cameras are becoming increasingly popular, locating relevant information in large unstructured collections of egocentric images is still a tedious and time consuming processes. This paper addresses the problem of organizing egocentric photo streams acquired by a wearable camera into semantically meaningful segments. First, contextual and semantic information is extracted for each image by employing a Convolutional Neural Networks approach. Later, by integrating language processing, a vocabulary of concepts is defined in a semantic space. Finally, by exploiting the temporal coherence in photo streams, images which share contextual and semantic attributes are grouped together. The resulting temporal segmentation is particularly suited for further analysis, ranging from activity and event recognition to semantic indexing and summarization. Experiments over egocentric sets of nearly 17,000 images, show that the proposed approach outperforms state-of-the-art methods.
|
Mariella Dimiccoli, & Petia Radeva. (2015). Lifelogging in the era of outstanding digitization. In International Conference on Digital Presentation and Preservation of Cultural and Scientific Heritage.
Abstract: In this paper, we give an overview on the emerging trend of the digitized self, focusing on visual lifelogging through wearable cameras. This is about continuously recording our life from a first-person view by wearing a camera that passively captures images. On one hand, visual lifelogging has opened the door to a large number of applications, including health. On the other, it has also boosted new challenges in the field of data analysis as well as new ethical concerns. While currently increasing efforts are being devoted to exploit lifelogging data for the improvement of personal well-being, we believe there are still many interesting applications to explore, ranging from tourism to the digitization of human behavior.
|
Marina Alberti. (2013). Detection and Alignment of Vascular Structures in Intravascular Ultrasound using Pattern Recognition Techniques (Simone Balocco, & Petia Radeva, Eds.). Ph.D. thesis, Ediciones Graficas Rey, .
Abstract: In this thesis, several methods for the automatic analysis of Intravascular Ultrasound
(IVUS) sequences are presented, aimed at assisting physicians in the diagnosis, the assessment of the intervention and the monitoring of the patients with coronary disease.
The basis for the developed frameworks are machine learning, pattern recognition and
image processing techniques.
First, a novel approach for the automatic detection of vascular bifurcations in
IVUS is presented. The task is addressed as a binary classi cation problem (identifying bifurcation and non-bifurcation angular sectors in the sequence images). The
multiscale stacked sequential learning algorithm is applied, to take into account the
spatial and temporal context in IVUS sequences, and the results are re ned using
a-priori information about branching dimensions and geometry. The achieved performance is comparable to intra- and inter-observer variability.
Then, we propose a novel method for the automatic non-rigid alignment of IVUS
sequences of the same patient, acquired at dierent moments (before and after percutaneous coronary intervention, or at baseline and follow-up examinations). The
method is based on the description of the morphological content of the vessel, obtained by extracting temporal morphological pro les from the IVUS acquisitions, by
means of methods for segmentation, characterization and detection in IVUS. A technique for non-rigid sequence alignment – the Dynamic Time Warping algorithm -
is applied to the pro les and adapted to the speci c clinical problem. Two dierent robust strategies are proposed to address the partial overlapping between frames
of corresponding sequences, and a regularization term is introduced to compensate
for possible errors in the pro le extraction. The bene ts of the proposed strategy
are demonstrated by extensive validation on synthetic and in-vivo data. The results
show the interest of the proposed non-linear alignment and the clinical value of the
method.
Finally, a novel automatic approach for the extraction of the luminal border in
IVUS images is presented. The method applies the multiscale stacked sequential
learning algorithm and extends it to 2-D+T, in a rst classi cation phase (the identi-
cation of lumen and non-lumen regions of the images), while an active contour model
is used in a second phase, to identify the lumen contour. The method is extended
to the longitudinal dimension of the sequences and it is validated on a challenging
data-set.
|
Marina Alberti, Carlo Gatta, Simone Balocco, Francesco Ciompi, Oriol Pujol, Joana Silva, et al. (2011). Automatic Branching Detection in IVUS Sequences. In Jordi Vitria, Joao Miguel Raposo, & Mario Hernandez (Eds.), 5th Iberian Conference on Pattern Recognition and Image Analysis (Vol. 6669, pp. 126–133). LNCS. Berlin: Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
Abstract: Atherosclerosis is a vascular pathology affecting the arterial walls, generally located in specific vessel sites, such as bifurcations. In this paper, for the first time, a fully automatic approach for the detection of bifurcations in IVUS pullback sequences is presented. The method identifies the frames and the angular sectors in which a bifurcation is visible. This goal is achieved by applying a classifier to a set of textural features extracted from each image of an IVUS pullback. A comparison between two state-of-the-art classifiers is performed, AdaBoost and Random Forest. A cross-validation scheme is applied in order to evaluate the performances of the approaches. The obtained results are encouraging, showing a sensitivity of 75% and an accuracy of 94% by using the AdaBoost algorithm.
|
Marina Alberti, Simone Balocco, Carlo Gatta, Francesco Ciompi, Oriol Pujol, Joana Silva, et al. (2012). Automatic Bifurcation Detection in Coronary IVUS Sequences. TBME - IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, 59(4), 1022–2031.
Abstract: In this paper, we present a fully automatic method which identifies every bifurcation in an intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) sequence, the corresponding frames, the angular orientation with respect to the IVUS acquisition, and the extension. This goal is reached using a two-level classification scheme: first, a classifier is applied to a set of textural features extracted from each image of a sequence. A comparison among three state-of-the-art discriminative classifiers (AdaBoost, random forest, and support vector machine) is performed to identify the most suitable method for the branching detection task. Second, the results are improved by exploiting contextual information using a multiscale stacked sequential learning scheme. The results are then successively refined using a-priori information about branching dimensions and geometry. The proposed approach provides a robust tool for the quick review of pullback sequences, facilitating the evaluation of the lesion at bifurcation sites. The proposed method reaches an F-Measure score of 86.35%, while the F-Measure scores for inter- and intraobserver variability are 71.63% and 76.18%, respectively. The obtained results are positive. Especially, considering the branching detection task is very challenging, due to high variability in bifurcation dimensions and appearance.
|
Marina Alberti, Simone Balocco, Xavier Carrillo, J. Mauri, & Petia Radeva. (2013). Automatic non-rigid temporal alignment of IVUS sequences: method and quantitative validation. UMB - Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology, 39(9), 1698–712.
Abstract: Clinical studies on atherosclerosis regression/progression performed by intravascular ultrasound analysis would benefit from accurate alignment of sequences of the same patient before and after clinical interventions and at follow-up. In this article, a methodology for automatic alignment of intravascular ultrasound sequences based on the dynamic time warping technique is proposed. The non-rigid alignment is adapted to the specific task by applying it to multidimensional signals describing the morphologic content of the vessel. Moreover, dynamic time warping is embedded into a framework comprising a strategy to address partial overlapping between acquisitions and a term that regularizes non-physiologic temporal compression/expansion of the sequences. Extensive validation is performed on both synthetic and in vivo data. The proposed method reaches alignment errors of approximately 0.43 mm for pairs of sequences acquired during the same intervention phase and 0.77 mm for pairs of sequences acquired at successive intervention stages.
Keywords: Intravascular ultrasound; Dynamic time warping; Non-rigid alignment; Sequence matching; Partial overlapping strategy
|
Marina Alberti, Simone Balocco, Xavier Carrillo, J. Mauri, & Petia Radeva. (2012). Automatic Non-Rigid Temporal Alignment of IVUS Sequences. In 15th International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (Vol. 1, pp. 642–650). Springer-Verlag Berlin, Heidelberg.
Abstract: Clinical studies on atherosclerosis regression/progression performed by Intravascular Ultrasound analysis require the alignment of pullbacks of the same patient before and after clinical interventions. In this paper, a methodology for the automatic alignment of IVUS sequences based on the Dynamic Time Warping technique is proposed. The method is adapted to the specific IVUS alignment task by applying the non-rigid alignment technique to multidimensional morphological signals, and by introducing a sliding window approach together with a regularization term. To show the effectiveness of our method, an extensive validation is performed both on synthetic data and in-vivo IVUS sequences. The proposed method is robust to stent deployment and post dilation surgery and reaches an alignment error of approximately 0.7 mm for in-vivo data, which is comparable to the inter-observer variability.
|
