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Author (down) Olivier Penacchio; Laura Dempere-Marco; Xavier Otazu edit   pdf
openurl 
Title A Neurodynamical Model Of Brightness Induction In V1 Following Static And Dynamic Contextual Influences Type Abstract
Year 2012 Publication 8th Federation of European Neurosciences Abbreviated Journal  
Volume 6 Issue Pages 63-64  
Keywords  
Abstract Brightness induction is the modulation of the perceived intensity of an area by the luminance of surrounding areas. Although striate cortex is traditionally regarded as an area mostly responsive to ensory (i.e. retinal) information,
neurophysiological evidence suggests that perceived brightness information mightbe explicitly represented in V1.
Such evidence has been observed both in anesthetised cats where neuronal response modulations have been found to follow luminance changes outside the receptive felds and in human fMRI measurements. In this work, possible neural mechanisms that ofer a plausible explanation for such phenomenon are investigated. To this end, we consider the model proposed by Z.Li (Li, Network:Comput. Neural Syst., 10 (1999)) which is based on neurophysiological evidence and focuses on the part of V1 responsible for contextual infuences, i.e. layer 2-3 pyramidal cells, interneurons, and horizontal intracortical connections. This model has reproduced other phenomena such as contour detection and preattentive segmentation, which share with brightness induction the relevant efect of contextual infuences. We have extended the original model such that the input to the network is obtained from a complete multiscale and multiorientation wavelet decomposition, thereby allowing the recovery of an image refecting the perceived intensity. The proposed model successfully accounts for well known psychophysical efects for static contexts (among them: the White's and modifed White's efects, the Todorovic, Chevreul, achromatic ring patterns, and grating induction efects) and also for brigthness induction in dynamic contexts defned by modulating the luminance of surrounding areas (e.g. the brightness of a static central area is perceived to vary in antiphase to the sinusoidal luminance changes of its surroundings). This work thus suggests that intra-cortical interactions in V1 could partially explain perceptual brightness induction efects and reveals how a common general architecture may account for several different fundamental processes emerging early in the visual processing pathway.		  
Address  
Corporate Author Thesis  
Publisher Place of Publication Editor  
Language Summary Language Original Title  
Series Editor Series Title Abbreviated Series Title  
Series Volume Series Issue Edition  
ISSN ISBN Medium  
Area Expedition Conference FENS  
Notes CIC Approved no  
Call Number Admin @ si @ PDO2012b Serial 2181  
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Author (down) Olivier Penacchio; C. Alejandro Parraga; Maria Vanrell edit  openurl
Title Natural Scene Statistics account for Human Cones Ratios Type Journal Article
Year 2010 Publication Perception. ECVP Abstract Supplement Abbreviated Journal PER  
Volume 39 Issue Pages 101  
Keywords  
Abstract In two previous experiments [Parraga et al, 2009 J. of Im. Sci. and Tech 53(3) 031106; Benavente et al,2009 Perception 38 ECVP Supplement, 36] the boundaries of basic colour categories were measured.
In the first experiment, samples were presented in isolation (ie on a dark background) and boundaries were measured using a yes/no paradigm. In the second, subjects adjusted the chromaticity of a sample presented on a random Mondrian background to find the boundary between pairs of adjacent colours.
Results from these experiments showed significant di erences but it was not possible to conclude whether this discrepancy was due to the absence/presence of a colourful background or to the di erences in the paradigms used. In this work, we settle this question by repeating the first experiment (ie samples presented on a dark background) using the second paradigm. A comparison of results shows that
although boundary locations are very similar, boundaries measured in context are significantly di erent(more di use) than those measured in isolation (confirmed by a Student’s t-test analysis on the subject’s answers statistical distributions). In addition, we completed the mapping of colour name space by measuring the boundaries between chromatic colours and the achromatic centre. With these results we completed our parametric fuzzy-sets model of colour naming space.		  
Address  
Corporate Author Thesis  
Publisher Place of Publication Editor  
Language Summary Language Original Title  
Series Editor Series Title Abbreviated Series Title  
Series Volume Series Issue Edition  
ISSN ISBN Medium  
Area Expedition Conference  
Notes CIC Approved no  
Call Number CAT @ cat @ PPV2010 Serial 1357  
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Author (down) Olivier Penacchio; C. Alejandro Parraga edit  url
openurl 
Title What is the best criterion for an efficient design of retinal photoreceptor mosaics? Type Journal Article
Year 2011 Publication Perception Abbreviated Journal PER  
Volume 40 Issue Pages 197  
Keywords  
Abstract The proportions of L, M and S photoreceptors in the primate retina are arguably determined by evolutionary pressure and the statistics of the visual environment. Two information theory-based approaches have been recently proposed for explaining the asymmetrical spatial densities of photoreceptors in humans. In the first approach Garrigan et al (2010 PLoS ONE 6 e1000677), a model for computing the information transmitted by cone arrays which considers the differential blurring produced by the long-wavelength accommodation of the eye’s lens is proposed. Their results explain the sparsity of S-cones but the optimum depends weakly on the L:M cone ratio. In the second approach (Penacchio et al, 2010 Perception 39 ECVP Supplement, 101), we show that human cone arrays make the visual representation scale-invariant, allowing the total entropy of the signal to be preserved while decreasing individual neurons’ entropy in further retinotopic representations. This criterion provides a thorough description of the distribution of L:M cone ratios and does not depend on differential blurring of the signal by the lens. Here, we investigate the similarities and differences of both approaches when applied to the same database. Our results support a 2-criteria optimization in the space of cone ratios whose components are arguably important and mostly unrelated.
[This work was partially funded by projects TIN2010-21771-C02-1 and Consolider-Ingenio 2010-CSD2007-00018 from the Spanish MICINN. CAP was funded by grant RYC-2007-00484]		  
Address  
Corporate Author Thesis  
Publisher Place of Publication Editor  
Language Summary Language Original Title  
Series Editor Series Title Abbreviated Series Title  
Series Volume Series Issue Edition  
ISSN ISBN Medium  
Area Expedition Conference  
Notes CIC Approved no  
Call Number Admin @ si @ PeP2011a Serial 1719  
Permanent link to this record
 
 
Author (down) Olivier Penacchio edit   pdf
url  doi
openurl 
Title Mixed Hodge Structures and Equivariant Sheaves on the Projective Plane Type Journal Article
Year 2011 Publication Mathematische Nachrichten Abbreviated Journal MN  
Volume 284 Issue 4 Pages 526-542  
Keywords Mixed Hodge structures, equivariant sheaves, MSC (2010) Primary: 14C30, Secondary: 14F05, 14M25  
Abstract We describe an equivalence of categories between the category of mixed Hodge structures and a category of equivariant vector bundles on a toric model of the complex projective plane which verify some semistability condition. We then apply this correspondence to define an invariant which generalizes the notion of R-split mixed Hodge structure and give calculations for the first group of cohomology of possibly non smooth or non-complete curves of genus 0 and 1. Finally, we describe some extension groups of mixed Hodge structures in terms of equivariant extensions of coherent sheaves. © 2011 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim  
Address  
Corporate Author Thesis  
Publisher WILEY-VCH Verlag Place of Publication Editor R. Mennicken  
Language Summary Language Original Title  
Series Editor Series Title Abbreviated Series Title  
Series Volume Series Issue Edition  
ISSN 1522-2616 ISBN Medium  
Area Expedition Conference  
Notes CIC Approved no  
Call Number Admin @ si @ Pen2011 Serial 1721  
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Author (down) Olivier Penacchio edit  openurl
Title Relative Density of L, M, S photoreceptors in the Human Retina Type Report
Year 2009 Publication CVC Technical Report Abbreviated Journal  
Volume 135 Issue Pages  
Keywords  
Abstract  
Address  
Corporate Author Computer Vision Center Thesis Master's thesis  
Publisher Place of Publication Bellaterra, Barcelona Editor  
Language Summary Language Original Title  
Series Editor Series Title Abbreviated Series Title  
Series Volume Series Issue Edition  
ISSN ISBN Medium  
Area Expedition Conference  
Notes CIC Approved no  
Call Number Admin @ si @ Pen2009 Serial 2394  
Permanent link to this record
 
 
Author (down) O. Fors; Xavier Otazu; J. Nuñez edit  openurl
Title Fusion Mediante Wavelets de Imagenes Spot-pan y del Satelite Tailandes TMSAT. Type Miscellaneous
Year 2001 Publication Teledeteccion, Medio Ambiente y Cambio Global, IX Congreso Nacional de Teledeteccion, 546–550. Abbreviated Journal  
Volume Issue Pages  
Keywords  
Abstract  
Address Lleida  
Corporate Author Thesis  
Publisher Place of Publication Editor  
Language Summary Language Original Title  
Series Editor Series Title Abbreviated Series Title  
Series Volume Series Issue Edition  
ISSN ISBN Medium  
Area Expedition Conference  
Notes CIC Approved no  
Call Number CAT @ cat @ FON2001 Serial 94  
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Author (down) O. Fors; J. Nuñez; Xavier Otazu; A. Prades; Robert D. Cardinal edit  doi
openurl 
Title Improving the Ability of Image Sensors to Detect Faint Stars and Moving Objects Using Image Deconvolution Techniques Type Journal Article
Year 2010 Publication Sensors Abbreviated Journal SENS  
Volume 10 Issue 3 Pages 1743–1752  
Keywords image processing; image deconvolution; faint stars; space debris; wavelet transform  
Abstract Abstract: In this paper we show how the techniques of image deconvolution can increase the ability of image sensors as, for example, CCD imagers, to detect faint stars or faint orbital objects (small satellites and space debris). In the case of faint stars, we show that this benefit is equivalent to double the quantum efficiency of the used image sensor or to increase the effective telescope aperture by more than 30% without decreasing the astrometric precision or introducing artificial bias. In the case of orbital objects, the deconvolution technique can double the signal-to-noise ratio of the image, which helps to discover and control dangerous objects as space debris or lost satellites. The benefits obtained using CCD detectors can be extrapolated to any kind of image sensors.  
Address  
Corporate Author Thesis  
Publisher Place of Publication Editor  
Language Summary Language Original Title  
Series Editor Series Title Abbreviated Series Title  
Series Volume Series Issue Edition  
ISSN ISBN Medium  
Area Expedition Conference  
Notes CIC Approved no  
Call Number CAT @ cat @ FNO2010 Serial 1285  
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Author (down) O. Fors; A. Richichi; Xavier Otazu; J. Nuñez edit  openurl
Title A new wavelet-based approach for the automated treatment of large sets of lunar occultation data Type Journal
Year 2008 Publication Astronomy and Astrohysics Abbreviated Journal  
Volume 480 Issue Pages 297–304  
Keywords  
Abstract  
Address  
Corporate Author Thesis  
Publisher Place of Publication Editor  
Language Summary Language Original Title  
Series Editor Series Title Abbreviated Series Title  
Series Volume Series Issue Edition  
ISSN ISBN Medium  
Area Expedition Conference  
Notes CIC Approved no  
Call Number CAT @ cat @ FRO2008 Serial 934  
Permanent link to this record
 
 
Author (down) Noha Elfiky; Fahad Shahbaz Khan; Joost Van de Weijer; Jordi Gonzalez edit   pdf
url  doi
openurl 
Title Discriminative Compact Pyramids for Object and Scene Recognition Type Journal Article
Year 2012 Publication Pattern Recognition Abbreviated Journal PR  
Volume 45 Issue 4 Pages 1627-1636  
Keywords  
Abstract Spatial pyramids have been successfully applied to incorporating spatial information into bag-of-words based image representation. However, a major drawback is that it leads to high dimensional image representations. In this paper, we present a novel framework for obtaining compact pyramid representation. First, we investigate the usage of the divisive information theoretic feature clustering (DITC) algorithm in creating a compact pyramid representation. In many cases this method allows us to reduce the size of a high dimensional pyramid representation up to an order of magnitude with little or no loss in accuracy. Furthermore, comparison to clustering based on agglomerative information bottleneck (AIB) shows that our method obtains superior results at significantly lower computational costs. Moreover, we investigate the optimal combination of multiple features in the context of our compact pyramid representation. Finally, experiments show that the method can obtain state-of-the-art results on several challenging data sets.  
Address  
Corporate Author Thesis  
Publisher Place of Publication Editor  
Language Summary Language Original Title  
Series Editor Series Title Abbreviated Series Title  
Series Volume Series Issue Edition  
ISSN 0031-3203 ISBN Medium  
Area Expedition Conference  
Notes ISE; CAT;CIC Approved no  
Call Number Admin @ si @ EKW2012 Serial 1807  
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Author (down) Naila Murray; Sandra Skaff; Luca Marchesotti; Florent Perronnin edit   pdf
url  doi
isbn  openurl
Title Towards Automatic Concept Transfer Type Conference Article
Year 2011 Publication Proceedings of the ACM SIGGRAPH/Eurographics Symposium on Non-Photorealistic Animation and Rendering Abbreviated Journal  
Volume Issue Pages 167.176  
Keywords chromatic modeling, color concepts, color transfer, concept transfer  
Abstract This paper introduces a novel approach to automatic concept transfer; examples of concepts are “romantic”, “earthy”, and “luscious”. The approach modifies the color content of an input image given only a concept specified by a user in natural language, thereby requiring minimal user input. This approach is particularly useful for users who are aware of the message they wish to convey in the transferred image while being unsure of the color combination needed to achieve the corresponding transfer. The user may adjust the intensity level of the concept transfer to his/her liking with a single parameter. The proposed approach uses a convex clustering algorithm, with a novel pruning mechanism, to automatically set the complexity of models of chromatic content. It also uses the Earth-Mover's Distance to compute a mapping between the models of the input image and the target chromatic concept. Results show that our approach yields transferred images which effectively represent concepts, as confirmed by a user study.  
Address  
Corporate Author Thesis  
Publisher ACM Press Place of Publication Editor  
Language Summary Language Original Title  
Series Editor Series Title Abbreviated Series Title  
Series Volume Series Issue Edition  
ISSN ISBN 978-1-4503-0907-3 Medium  
Area Expedition Conference NPAR  
Notes CIC Approved no  
Call Number Admin @ si @ MSM2011 Serial 1866  
Permanent link to this record
 
 
Author (down) Naila Murray; Sandra Skaff; Luca Marchesotti; Florent Perronnin edit  url
openurl 
Title Towards automatic and flexible concept transfer Type Journal Article
Year 2012 Publication Computers and Graphics Abbreviated Journal CG  
Volume 36 Issue 6 Pages 622–634  
Keywords  
Abstract This paper introduces a novel approach to automatic, yet flexible, image concepttransfer; examples of concepts are “romantic”, “earthy”, and “luscious”. The presented method modifies the color content of an input image given only a concept specified by a user in natural language, thereby requiring minimal user input. This method is particularly useful for users who are aware of the message they wish to convey in the transferred image while being unsure of the color combination needed to achieve the corresponding transfer. Our framework is flexible for two reasons. First, the user may select one of two modalities to map input image chromaticities to target concept chromaticities depending on the level of photo-realism required. Second, the user may adjust the intensity level of the concepttransfer to his/her liking with a single parameter. The proposed method uses a convex clustering algorithm, with a novel pruning mechanism, to automatically set the complexity of models of chromatic content. Results show that our approach yields transferred images which effectively represent concepts as confirmed by a user study.  
Address  
Corporate Author Thesis  
Publisher Place of Publication Editor  
Language Summary Language Original Title  
Series Editor Series Title Abbreviated Series Title  
Series Volume Series Issue Edition  
ISSN 0097-8493 ISBN Medium  
Area Expedition Conference  
Notes CIC Approved no  
Call Number Admin @ si @ MSM2012 Serial 2002  
Permanent link to this record
 
 
Author (down) Naila Murray; Maria Vanrell; Xavier Otazu; C. Alejandro Parraga edit   pdf
url  doi
isbn  openurl
Title Saliency Estimation Using a Non-Parametric Low-Level Vision Model Type Conference Article
Year 2011 Publication IEEE conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Abbreviated Journal  
Volume Issue Pages 433-440  
Keywords Gaussian mixture model;ad hoc parameter selection;center-surround inhibition windows;center-surround mechanism;color appearance model;convolution;eye-fixation data;human vision;innate spatial pooling mechanism;inverse wavelet transform;low-level visual front-end;nonparametric low-level vision model;saliency estimation;saliency map;scale integration;scale-weighted center-surround response;scale-weighting function;visual task;Gaussian processes;biology;biology computing;colour vision;computer vision;visual perception;wavelet transforms  
Abstract Many successful models for predicting attention in a scene involve three main steps: convolution with a set of filters, a center-surround mechanism and spatial pooling to construct a saliency map. However, integrating spatial information and justifying the choice of various parameter values remain open problems. In this paper we show that an efficient model of color appearance in human vision, which contains a principled selection of parameters as well as an innate spatial pooling mechanism, can be generalized to obtain a saliency model that outperforms state-of-the-art models. Scale integration is achieved by an inverse wavelet transform over the set of scale-weighted center-surround responses. The scale-weighting function (termed ECSF) has been optimized to better replicate psychophysical data on color appearance, and the appropriate sizes of the center-surround inhibition windows have been determined by training a Gaussian Mixture Model on eye-fixation data, thus avoiding ad-hoc parameter selection. Additionally, we conclude that the extension of a color appearance model to saliency estimation adds to the evidence for a common low-level visual front-end for different visual tasks.  
Address Colorado Springs  
Corporate Author Thesis  
Publisher Place of Publication Editor  
Language Summary Language Original Title  
Series Editor Series Title Abbreviated Series Title  
Series Volume Series Issue Edition  
ISSN 1063-6919 ISBN 978-1-4577-0394-2 Medium  
Area Expedition Conference CVPR  
Notes CIC Approved no  
Call Number Admin @ si @ MVO2011 Serial 1757  
Permanent link to this record
 
 
Author (down) Naila Murray; Maria Vanrell; Xavier Otazu; C. Alejandro Parraga edit   pdf
doi  openurl
Title Low-level SpatioChromatic Grouping for Saliency Estimation Type Journal Article
Year 2013 Publication IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence Abbreviated Journal TPAMI  
Volume 35 Issue 11 Pages 2810-2816  
Keywords  
Abstract We propose a saliency model termed SIM (saliency by induction mechanisms), which is based on a low-level spatiochromatic model that has successfully predicted chromatic induction phenomena. In so doing, we hypothesize that the low-level visual mechanisms that enhance or suppress image detail are also responsible for making some image regions more salient. Moreover, SIM adds geometrical grouplets to enhance complex low-level features such as corners, and suppress relatively simpler features such as edges. Since our model has been fitted on psychophysical chromatic induction data, it is largely nonparametric. SIM outperforms state-of-the-art methods in predicting eye fixations on two datasets and using two metrics.  
Address  
Corporate Author Thesis  
Publisher Place of Publication Editor  
Language Summary Language Original Title  
Series Editor Series Title Abbreviated Series Title  
Series Volume Series Issue Edition  
ISSN 0162-8828 ISBN Medium  
Area Expedition Conference  
Notes CIC; 600.051; 600.052; 605.203 Approved no  
Call Number Admin @ si @ MVO2013 Serial 2289  
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Author (down) Naila Murray; Luca Marchesotti; Florent Perronnin edit   pdf
url  doi
isbn  openurl
Title AVA: A Large-Scale Database for Aesthetic Visual Analysis Type Conference Article
Year 2012 Publication 25th IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Abbreviated Journal  
Volume Issue Pages 2408-2415  
Keywords  
Abstract With the ever-expanding volume of visual content available, the ability to organize and navigate such content by aesthetic preference is becoming increasingly important. While still in its nascent stage, research into computational models of aesthetic preference already shows great potential. However, to advance research, realistic, diverse and challenging databases are needed. To this end, we introduce a new large-scale database for conducting Aesthetic Visual Analysis: AVA. It contains over 250,000 images along with a rich variety of meta-data including a large number of aesthetic scores for each image, semantic labels for over 60 categories as well as labels related to photographic style. We show the advantages of AVA with respect to existing databases in terms of scale, diversity, and heterogeneity of annotations. We then describe several key insights into aesthetic preference afforded by AVA. Finally, we demonstrate, through three applications, how the large scale of AVA can be leveraged to improve performance on existing preference tasks  
Address Providence, Rhode Islan  
Corporate Author Thesis  
Publisher IEEE Xplore Place of Publication Editor  
Language Summary Language Original Title  
Series Editor Series Title Abbreviated Series Title  
Series Volume Series Issue Edition  
ISSN 1063-6919 ISBN 978-1-4673-1226-4 Medium  
Area Expedition Conference CVPR  
Notes CIC Approved no  
Call Number Admin @ si @ MMP2012a Serial 2025  
Permanent link to this record
 
 
Author (down) Naila Murray; Luca Marchesotti; Florent Perronnin edit   pdf
url  doi
isbn  openurl
Title Learning to Rank Images using Semantic and Aesthetic Labels Type Conference Article
Year 2012 Publication 23rd British Machine Vision Conference Abbreviated Journal  
Volume Issue Pages 110.1-110.10  
Keywords  
Abstract Most works on image retrieval from text queries have addressed the problem of retrieving semantically relevant images. However, the ability to assess the aesthetic quality of an image is an increasingly important differentiating factor for search engines. In this work, given a semantic query, we are interested in retrieving images which are semantically relevant and score highly in terms of aesthetics/visual quality. We use large-margin classifiers and rankers to learn statistical models capable of ordering images based on the aesthetic and semantic information. In particular, we compare two families of approaches: while the first one attempts to learn a single ranker which takes into account both semantic and aesthetic information, the second one learns separate semantic and aesthetic models. We carry out a quantitative and qualitative evaluation on a recently-published large-scale dataset and we show that the second family of techniques significantly outperforms the first one.  
Address Guildford, London  
Corporate Author Thesis  
Publisher Place of Publication Editor  
Language Summary Language Original Title  
Series Editor Series Title Abbreviated Series Title  
Series Volume Series Issue Edition  
ISSN ISBN 1-901725-46-4 Medium  
Area Expedition Conference BMVC  
Notes CIC Approved no  
Call Number Admin @ si @ MMP2012b Serial 2027  
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Author (down) Naila Murray; Eduard Vazquez edit   pdf
openurl 
Title Lacuna Restoration: How to choose a neutral colour? Type Conference Article
Year 2010 Publication Proceedings of The CREATE 2010 Conference Abbreviated Journal  
Volume Issue Pages 248–252  
Keywords  
Abstract Painting restoration which involves filling in material loss (called lacuna) is a complex process. Several standard techniques exist to tackle lacuna restoration,
and this article focuses on those techniques that employ a “neutral” colour to mask the defect. Restoration experts often disagree on the choice of such a colour and in fact, the concept of a neutral colour is controversial. We posit that a neutral colour is one that attracts relatively little visual attention for a specific lacuna. We conducted an eye tracking experiment to compare two common neutral
colour selection methods, specifically the most common local colour and the mean local colour. Results obtained demonstrate that the most common local colour triggers less visual attention in general. Notwithstanding, we have observed instances in which the most common colour triggers a significant amount of attention when subjects spent time resolving their confusion about whether or not a lacuna was part of the painting.		  
Address Gjovik, Norway  
Corporate Author Thesis  
Publisher Place of Publication Editor  
Language Summary Language Original Title  
Series Editor Series Title Abbreviated Series Title  
Series Volume Series Issue Edition  
ISSN ISBN Medium  
Area Expedition Conference CREATE  
Notes CIC Approved no  
Call Number Admin @ si @ MuV2010 Serial 1297  
Permanent link to this record
 
 
Author (down) Naila Murray edit  openurl
Title Perceptual Feature Detection Type Report
Year 2009 Publication CVC Technical Report Abbreviated Journal  
Volume 131 Issue Pages  
Keywords  
Abstract  
Address  
Corporate Author Computer Vision Center Thesis Master's thesis  
Publisher Place of Publication Bellaterra, Barcelona Editor  
Language Summary Language Original Title  
Series Editor Series Title Abbreviated Series Title  
Series Volume Series Issue Edition  
ISSN ISBN Medium  
Area Expedition Conference  
Notes CIC Approved no  
Call Number Admin @ si @ Mur2009 Serial 2390  
Permanent link to this record
 
 
Author (down) Naila Murray edit  openurl
Title Predicting Saliency and Aesthetics in Images: A Bottom-up Perspective Type Book Whole
Year 2012 Publication PhD Thesis, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona-CVC Abbreviated Journal  
Volume Issue Pages  
Keywords  
Abstract In Part 1 of the thesis, we hypothesize that salient and non-salient image regions can be estimated to be the regions which are enhanced or assimilated in standard low-level color image representations. We prove this hypothesis by adapting a low-level model of color perception into a saliency estimation model. This model shares the three main steps found in many successful models for predicting attention in a scene: convolution with a set of filters, a center-surround mechanism and spatial pooling to construct a saliency map. For such models, integrating spatial information and justifying the choice of various parameter values remain open problems. Our saliency model inherits a principled selection of parameters as well as an innate spatial pooling mechanism from the perception model on which it is based. This pooling mechanism has been fitted using psychophysical data acquired in color-luminance setting experiments. The proposed model outperforms the state-of-the-art at the task of predicting eye-fixations from two datasets. After demonstrating the effectiveness of our basic saliency model, we introduce an improved image representation, based on geometrical grouplets, that enhances complex low-level visual features such as corners and terminations, and suppresses relatively simpler features such as edges. With this improved image representation, the performance of our saliency model in predicting eye-fixations increases for both datasets.

In Part 2 of the thesis, we investigate the problem of aesthetic visual analysis. While a great deal of research has been conducted on hand-crafting image descriptors for aesthetics, little attention so far has been dedicated to the collection, annotation and distribution of ground truth data. Because image aesthetics is complex and subjective, existing datasets, which have few images and few annotations, have significant limitations. To address these limitations, we have introduced a new large-scale database for conducting Aesthetic Visual Analysis, which we call AVA. AVA contains more than 250,000 images, along with a rich variety of annotations. We investigate how the wealth of data in AVA can be used to tackle the challenge of understanding and assessing visual aesthetics by looking into several problems relevant for aesthetic analysis. We demonstrate that by leveraging the data in AVA, and using generic low-level features such as SIFT and color histograms, we can exceed state-of-the-art performance in aesthetic quality prediction tasks.

Finally, we entertain the hypothesis that low-level visual information in our saliency model can also be used to predict visual aesthetics by capturing local image characteristics such as feature contrast, grouping and isolation, characteristics thought to be related to universal aesthetic laws. We use the weighted center-surround responses that form the basis of our saliency model to create a feature vector that describes aesthetics. We also introduce a novel color space for fine-grained color representation. We then demonstrate that the resultant features achieve state-of-the-art performance on aesthetic quality classification.

As such, a promising contribution of this thesis is to show that several vision experiences – low-level color perception, visual saliency and visual aesthetics estimation – may be successfully modeled using a unified framework. This suggests a similar architecture in area V1 for both color perception and saliency and adds evidence to the hypothesis that visual aesthetics appreciation is driven in part by low-level cues.		  
Address  
Corporate Author Thesis Ph.D. thesis  
Publisher Ediciones Graficas Rey Place of Publication Editor Xavier Otazu;Maria Vanrell  
Language Summary Language Original Title  
Series Editor Series Title Abbreviated Series Title  
Series Volume Series Issue Edition  
ISSN ISBN Medium  
Area Expedition Conference  
Notes CIC Approved no  
Call Number Admin @ si @ Mur2012 Serial 2212  
Permanent link to this record