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 classication 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 rened 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 proles 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 proles and adapted to the specic 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 prole extraction. The benets 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 classication 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.

Abstract: In this paper, we present a word spotting framework that follows the query-by-string paradigm where word images are represented both by textual and visual representations. The textual representation is formulated in terms of character $n$-grams while the visual one is based on the bag-of-visual-words scheme. These two representations are merged together and projected to a sub-vector space. This transform allows to, given a textual query, retrieve word instances that were only represented by the visual modality. Moreover, this statistical representation can be used together with state-of-the-art indexation structures in order to deal with large-scale scenarios. The proposed method is evaluated using a collection of historical documents outperforming state-of-the-art performances.

Abstract: More realistic and accurate models of the scene illumination and object reflectance can greatly improve the quality of many computer vision and computer graphics tasks. Using such model, a more profound knowledge about the interaction of light with object surfaces can be established which proves crucial to a variety of computer vision applications. In the current work, we investigate the various existing approaches to illumination and reflectance modeling and form an analysis on their shortcomings in capturing the complexity of real-world scenes. Based on this analysis we propose improvements to different aspects of reflectance and illumination estimation in order to more realistically model the real-world scenes in the presence of complex lighting phenomena (i.e, multiple illuminants, interreflections and shadows). Moreover, we captured our own multi-illuminant dataset which consists of complex scenes and illumination conditions both outdoor and in laboratory conditions. In addition we investigate the use of synthetic data to facilitate the construction of datasets and improve the process of obtaining ground-truth information.

Abstract: Best paper award
The performance of different feature extraction and shape description methods in trademark image recognition systems have been studied by several researchers. However, the potential improvement in classification through feature fusion by ensemble-based methods has remained unattended. In this work, we evaluate the performance of an ensemble of three classifiers, each trained on different feature sets. Three promising shape description techniques, including Zernike moments, generic Fourier descriptors, and shape signature are used to extract informative features from logo images, and each set of features is fed into an individual classifier. In order to reduce recognition error, a powerful combination strategy based on the Dempster-Shafer theory is utilized to fuse the three classifiers trained on different sources of information. This combination strategy can effectively make use of diversity of base learners generated with different set of features. The recognition results of the individual classifiers are compared with those obtained from fusing the classifiers’ output, showing significant performance improvements of the proposed methodology.

Abstract: Every day, lifelogging devices, available for recording different aspects of our daily life, increase in number, quality and functions, just like the multiple applications that we give to them. Applying wearable devices to analyse the nutritional habits of people is a challenging application based on acquiring and analyzing life records in long periods of time. However, to extract the information of interest related to the eating patterns of people, we need automatic methods to process large amount of life-logging data (e.g. recognition of food-related objects). Creating a rich set of manually labeled samples to train the algorithms is slow, tedious and subjective. To address this problem, we propose a novel method in the framework of Active Labeling for construct- ing a training set of thousands of images. Inspired by the hierarchical sampling method for active learning [6], we propose an Active forest that organizes hierarchically the data for easy and fast labeling. Moreover, introducing a classifier into the hierarchical structures, as well as transforming the feature space for better data clustering, additionally im- prove the algorithm. Our method is successfully tested to label 89.700 food-related objects and achieves significant reduction in expert time labelling.
Active labeling application applied to food-related object recognition ResearchGate. Available from: http://www.researchgate.net/publication/262252017Activelabelingapplicationappliedtofood-relatedobjectrecognition [accessed Jul 14, 2015].

Abstract: In this paper we present our image preprocessing methods as a key part of our automatic polyp localization scheme. These methods are used to assess the impact of different endoluminal scene elements when characterizing polyps. More precisely we tackle the influence of specular highlights, blood vessels and black mask surrounding the scene. Experimental results prove that the appropriate handling of these elements leads to a great improvement in polyp localization results.

Abstract: We present a method for automatic struts detection and stent shape estimation in cross-sectional intravascular ultrasound images. A stent shape is first estimated through a comprehensive interpretation of the vessel morphology, performed using a supervised context-aware multi-class classification scheme. Then, the successive strut identification exploits both local appearance and the defined stent shape. The method is tested on 589 images obtained from 80 patients, achieving a F-measure of 74.1% and an averaged distance between manual and automatic struts of 0.10 mm.