|
Mohammad Ali Bagheri, Qigang Gao, & Sergio Escalera. (2015). Combining Local and Global Learners in the Pairwise Multiclass Classification. PAA - Pattern Analysis and Applications, 18(4), 845–860.
Abstract: Pairwise classification is a well-known class binarization technique that converts a multiclass problem into a number of two-class problems, one problem for each pair of classes. However, in the pairwise technique, nuisance votes of many irrelevant classifiers may result in a wrong class prediction. To overcome this problem, a simple, but efficient method is proposed and evaluated in this paper. The proposed method is based on excluding some classes and focusing on the most probable classes in the neighborhood space, named Local Crossing Off (LCO). This procedure is performed by employing a modified version of standard K-nearest neighbor and large margin nearest neighbor algorithms. The LCO method takes advantage of nearest neighbor classification algorithm because of its local learning behavior as well as the global behavior of powerful binary classifiers to discriminate between two classes. Combining these two properties in the proposed LCO technique will avoid the weaknesses of each method and will increase the efficiency of the whole classification system. On several benchmark datasets of varying size and difficulty, we found that the LCO approach leads to significant improvements using different base learners. The experimental results show that the proposed technique not only achieves better classification accuracy in comparison to other standard approaches, but also is computationally more efficient for tackling classification problems which have a relatively large number of target classes.
Keywords: Multiclass classification; Pairwise approach; One-versus-one
|
|
|
Naveen Onkarappa, & Angel Sappa. (2015). Synthetic sequences and ground-truth flow field generation for algorithm validation. MTAP - Multimedia Tools and Applications, 74(9), 3121–3135.
Abstract: Research in computer vision is advancing by the availability of good datasets that help to improve algorithms, validate results and obtain comparative analysis. The datasets can be real or synthetic. For some of the computer vision problems such as optical flow it is not possible to obtain ground-truth optical flow with high accuracy in natural outdoor real scenarios directly by any sensor, although it is possible to obtain ground-truth data of real scenarios in a laboratory setup with limited motion. In this difficult situation computer graphics offers a viable option for creating realistic virtual scenarios. In the current work we present a framework to design virtual scenes and generate sequences as well as ground-truth flow fields. Particularly, we generate a dataset containing sequences of driving scenarios. The sequences in the dataset vary in different speeds of the on-board vision system, different road textures, complex motion of vehicle and independent moving vehicles in the scene. This dataset enables analyzing and adaptation of existing optical flow methods, and leads to invention of new approaches particularly for driver assistance systems.
Keywords: Ground-truth optical flow; Synthetic sequence; Algorithm validation
|
|
|
Monica Piñol, Angel Sappa, & Ricardo Toledo. (2015). Adaptive Feature Descriptor Selection based on a Multi-Table Reinforcement Learning Strategy. NEUCOM - Neurocomputing, 150(A), 106–115.
Abstract: This paper presents and evaluates a framework to improve the performance of visual object classification methods, which are based on the usage of image feature descriptors as inputs. The goal of the proposed framework is to learn the best descriptor for each image in a given database. This goal is reached by means of a reinforcement learning process using the minimum information. The visual classification system used to demonstrate the proposed framework is based on a bag of features scheme, and the reinforcement learning technique is implemented through the Q-learning approach. The behavior of the reinforcement learning with different state definitions is evaluated. Additionally, a method that combines all these states is formulated in order to select the optimal state. Finally, the chosen actions are obtained from the best set of image descriptors in the literature: PHOW, SIFT, C-SIFT, SURF and Spin. Experimental results using two public databases (ETH and COIL) are provided showing both the validity of the proposed approach and comparisons with state of the art. In all the cases the best results are obtained with the proposed approach.
Keywords: Reinforcement learning; Q-learning; Bag of features; Descriptors
|
|
|
Victor Ponce, Sergio Escalera, Marc Perez, Oriol Janes, & Xavier Baro. (2015). Non-Verbal Communication Analysis in Victim-Offender Mediations. PRL - Pattern Recognition Letters, 67(1), 19–27.
Abstract: We present a non-invasive ambient intelligence framework for the semi-automatic analysis of non-verbal communication applied to the restorative justice field. We propose the use of computer vision and social signal processing technologies in real scenarios of Victim–Offender Mediations, applying feature extraction techniques to multi-modal audio-RGB-depth data. We compute a set of behavioral indicators that define communicative cues from the fields of psychology and observational methodology. We test our methodology on data captured in real Victim–Offender Mediation sessions in Catalonia. We define the ground truth based on expert opinions when annotating the observed social responses. Using different state of the art binary classification approaches, our system achieves recognition accuracies of 86% when predicting satisfaction, and 79% when predicting both agreement and receptivity. Applying a regression strategy, we obtain a mean deviation for the predictions between 0.5 and 0.7 in the range [1–5] for the computed social signals.
Keywords: Victim–Offender Mediation; Multi-modal human behavior analysis; Face and gesture recognition; Social signal processing; Computer vision; Machine learning
|
|
|
Frederic Sampedro, Sergio Escalera, Anna Domenech, & Ignasi Carrio. (2015). Automatic Tumor Volume Segmentation in Whole-Body PET/CT Scans: A Supervised Learning Approach Source. JMIHI - Journal of Medical Imaging and Health Informatics, 5(2), 192–201.
Abstract: Whole-body 3D PET/CT tumoral volume segmentation provides relevant diagnostic and prognostic information in clinical oncology and nuclear medicine. Carrying out this procedure manually by a medical expert is time consuming and suffers from inter- and intra-observer variabilities. In this paper, a completely automatic approach to this task is presented. First, the problem is stated and described both in clinical and technological terms. Then, a novel supervised learning segmentation framework is introduced. The segmentation by learning approach is defined within a Cascade of Adaboost classifiers and a 3D contextual proposal of Multiscale Stacked Sequential Learning. Segmentation accuracy results on 200 Breast Cancer whole body PET/CT volumes show mean 49% sensitivity, 99.993% specificity and 39% Jaccard overlap Index, which represent good performance results both at the clinical and technological level.
Keywords: CONTEXTUAL CLASSIFICATION; PET/CT; SUPERVISED LEARNING; TUMOR SEGMENTATION; WHOLE BODY
|
|
|
Francisco Alvaro, Francisco Cruz, Joan Andreu Sanchez, Oriol Ramos Terrades, & Jose Miguel Benedi. (2015). Structure Detection and Segmentation of Documents Using 2D Stochastic Context-Free Grammars. NEUCOM - Neurocomputing, 150(A), 147–154.
Abstract: In this paper we dene a bidimensional extension of Stochastic Context-Free Grammars for structure detection and segmentation of images of documents.
Two sets of text classication features are used to perform an initial classication of each zone of the page. Then, the document segmentation is obtained as the most likely hypothesis according to a stochastic grammar. We used a dataset of historical marriage license books to validate this approach. We also tested several inference algorithms for Probabilistic Graphical Models
and the results showed that the proposed grammatical model outperformed
the other methods. Furthermore, grammars also provide the document structure
along with its segmentation.
Keywords: document image analysis; stochastic context-free grammars; text classication features
|
|
|
Miguel Oliveira, Victor Santos, & Angel Sappa. (2015). Multimodal Inverse Perspective Mapping. IF - Information Fusion, 24, 108–121.
Abstract: Over the past years, inverse perspective mapping has been successfully applied to several problems in the field of Intelligent Transportation Systems. In brief, the method consists of mapping images to a new coordinate system where perspective effects are removed. The removal of perspective associated effects facilitates road and obstacle detection and also assists in free space estimation. There is, however, a significant limitation in the inverse perspective mapping: the presence of obstacles on the road disrupts the effectiveness of the mapping. The current paper proposes a robust solution based on the use of multimodal sensor fusion. Data from a laser range finder is fused with images from the cameras, so that the mapping is not computed in the regions where obstacles are present. As shown in the results, this considerably improves the effectiveness of the algorithm and reduces computation time when compared with the classical inverse perspective mapping. Furthermore, the proposed approach is also able to cope with several cameras with different lenses or image resolutions, as well as dynamic viewpoints.
Keywords: Inverse perspective mapping; Multimodal sensor fusion; Intelligent vehicles
|
|
|
T. Mouats, N. Aouf, Angel Sappa, Cristhian A. Aguilera-Carrasco, & Ricardo Toledo. (2015). Multi-Spectral Stereo Odometry. TITS - IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, 16(3), 1210–1224.
Abstract: In this paper, we investigate the problem of visual odometry for ground vehicles based on the simultaneous utilization of multispectral cameras. It encompasses a stereo rig composed of an optical (visible) and thermal sensors. The novelty resides in the localization of the cameras as a stereo setup rather
than two monocular cameras of different spectrums. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time such task is attempted. Log-Gabor wavelets at different orientations and scales are used to extract interest points from both images. These are then described using a combination of frequency and spatial information within the local neighborhood. Matches between the pairs of multimodal images are computed using the cosine similarity function based
on the descriptors. Pyramidal Lucas–Kanade tracker is also introduced to tackle temporal feature matching within challenging sequences of the data sets. The vehicle egomotion is computed from the triangulated 3-D points corresponding to the matched features. A windowed version of bundle adjustment incorporating
Gauss–Newton optimization is utilized for motion estimation. An outlier removal scheme is also included within the framework to deal with outliers. Multispectral data sets were generated and used as test bed. They correspond to real outdoor scenarios captured using our multimodal setup. Finally, detailed results validating the proposed strategy are illustrated.
Keywords: Egomotion estimation; feature matching; multispectral odometry (MO); optical flow; stereo odometry; thermal imagery
|
|
|
Mohammad Rouhani, Angel Sappa, & E. Boyer. (2015). Implicit B-Spline Surface Reconstruction. TIP - IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, 24(1), 22–32.
Abstract: This paper presents a fast and flexible curve, and surface reconstruction technique based on implicit B-spline. This representation does not require any parameterization and it is locally supported. This fact has been exploited in this paper to propose a reconstruction technique through solving a sparse system of equations. This method is further accelerated to reduce the dimension to the active control lattice. Moreover, the surface smoothness and user interaction are allowed for controlling the surface. Finally, a novel weighting technique has been introduced in order to blend small patches and smooth them in the overlapping regions. The whole framework is very fast and efficient and can handle large cloud of points with very low computational cost. The experimental results show the flexibility and accuracy of the proposed algorithm to describe objects with complex topologies. Comparisons with other fitting methods highlight the superiority of the proposed approach in the presence of noise and missing data.
|
|
|
Marçal Rusiñol, David Aldavert, Ricardo Toledo, & Josep Llados. (2015). Efficient segmentation-free keyword spotting in historical document collections. PR - Pattern Recognition, 48(2), 545–555.
Abstract: In this paper we present an efficient segmentation-free word spotting method, applied in the context of historical document collections, that follows the query-by-example paradigm. We use a patch-based framework where local patches are described by a bag-of-visual-words model powered by SIFT descriptors. By projecting the patch descriptors to a topic space with the latent semantic analysis technique and compressing the descriptors with the product quantization method, we are able to efficiently index the document information both in terms of memory and time. The proposed method is evaluated using four different collections of historical documents achieving good performances on both handwritten and typewritten scenarios. The yielded performances outperform the recent state-of-the-art keyword spotting approaches.
Keywords: Historical documents; Keyword spotting; Segmentation-free; Dense SIFT features; Latent semantic analysis; Product quantization
|
|
|
Katerine Diaz, Francesc J. Ferri, & W. Diaz. (2015). Incremental Generalized Discriminative Common Vectors for Image Classification. TNNLS - IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems, 26(8), 1761–1775.
Abstract: Subspace-based methods have become popular due to their ability to appropriately represent complex data in such a way that both dimensionality is reduced and discriminativeness is enhanced. Several recent works have concentrated on the discriminative common vector (DCV) method and other closely related algorithms also based on the concept of null space. In this paper, we present a generalized incremental formulation of the DCV methods, which allows the update of a given model by considering the addition of new examples even from unseen classes. Having efficient incremental formulations of well-behaved batch algorithms allows us to conveniently adapt previously trained classifiers without the need of recomputing them from scratch. The proposed generalized incremental method has been empirically validated in different case studies from different application domains (faces, objects, and handwritten digits) considering several different scenarios in which new data are continuously added at different rates starting from an initial model.
|
|
|
Alvaro Cepero, Albert Clapes, & Sergio Escalera. (2015). Automatic non-verbal communication skills analysis: a quantitative evaluation. AIC - AI Communications, 28(1), 87–101.
Abstract: The oral communication competence is defined on the top of the most relevant skills for one's professional and personal life. Because of the importance of communication in our activities of daily living, it is crucial to study methods to evaluate and provide the necessary feedback that can be used in order to improve these communication capabilities and, therefore, learn how to express ourselves better. In this work, we propose a system capable of evaluating quantitatively the quality of oral presentations in an automatic fashion. The system is based on a multi-modal RGB, depth, and audio data description and a fusion approach in order to recognize behavioral cues and train classifiers able to eventually predict communication quality levels. The performance of the proposed system is tested on a novel dataset containing Bachelor thesis' real defenses, presentations from an 8th semester Bachelor courses, and Master courses' presentations at Universitat de Barcelona. Using as groundtruth the marks assigned by actual instructors, our system achieves high performance categorizing and ranking presentations by their quality, and also making real-valued mark predictions.
Keywords: Social signal processing; human behavior analysis; multi-modal data description; multi-modal data fusion; non-verbal communication analysis; e-Learning
|
|
|
Frederic Sampedro, & Sergio Escalera. (2015). Spatial codification of label predictions in Multi-scale Stacked Sequential Learning: A case study on multi-class medical volume segmentation. IETCV - IET Computer Vision, 9(3), 439–446.
Abstract: In this study, the authors propose the spatial codification of label predictions within the multi-scale stacked sequential learning (MSSL) framework, a successful learning scheme to deal with non-independent identically distributed data entries. After providing a motivation for this objective, they describe its theoretical framework based on the introduction of the blurred shape model as a smart descriptor to codify the spatial distribution of the predicted labels and define the new extended feature set for the second stacked classifier. They then particularise this scheme to be applied in volume segmentation applications. Finally, they test the implementation of the proposed framework in two medical volume segmentation datasets, obtaining significant performance improvements (with a 95% of confidence) in comparison to standard Adaboost classifier and classical MSSL approaches.
|
|
|
Daniel Sanchez, Miguel Angel Bautista, & Sergio Escalera. (2015). HuPBA 8k+: Dataset and ECOC-GraphCut based Segmentation of Human Limbs. NEUCOM - Neurocomputing, 150(A), 173–188.
Abstract: Human multi-limb segmentation in RGB images has attracted a lot of interest in the research community because of the huge amount of possible applications in fields like Human-Computer Interaction, Surveillance, eHealth, or Gaming. Nevertheless, human multi-limb segmentation is a very hard task because of the changes in appearance produced by different points of view, clothing, lighting conditions, occlusions, and number of articulations of the human body. Furthermore, this huge pose variability makes the availability of large annotated datasets difficult. In this paper, we introduce the HuPBA8k+ dataset. The dataset contains more than 8000 labeled frames at pixel precision, including more than 120000 manually labeled samples of 14 different limbs. For completeness, the dataset is also labeled at frame-level with action annotations drawn from an 11 action dictionary which includes both single person actions and person-person interactive actions. Furthermore, we also propose a two-stage approach for the segmentation of human limbs. In a first stage, human limbs are trained using cascades of classifiers to be split in a tree-structure way, which is included in an Error-Correcting Output Codes (ECOC) framework to define a body-like probability map. This map is used to obtain a binary mask of the subject by means of GMM color modelling and GraphCuts theory. In a second stage, we embed a similar tree-structure in an ECOC framework to build a more accurate set of limb-like probability maps within the segmented user mask, that are fed to a multi-label GraphCut procedure to obtain final multi-limb segmentation. The methodology is tested on the novel HuPBA8k+ dataset, showing performance improvements in comparison to state-of-the-art approaches. In addition, a baseline of standard action recognition methods for the 11 actions categories of the novel dataset is also provided.
Keywords: Human limb segmentation; ECOC; Graph-Cuts
|
|
|
Miguel Oliveira, Angel Sappa, & Victor Santos. (2015). A probabilistic approach for color correction in image mosaicking applications. TIP - IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, 14(2), 508–523.
Abstract: Image mosaicking applications require both geometrical and photometrical registrations between the images that compose the mosaic. This paper proposes a probabilistic color correction algorithm for correcting the photometrical disparities. First, the image to be color corrected is segmented into several regions using mean shift. Then, connected regions are extracted using a region fusion algorithm. Local joint image histograms of each region are modeled as collections of truncated Gaussians using a maximum likelihood estimation procedure. Then, local color palette mapping functions are computed using these sets of Gaussians. The color correction is performed by applying those functions to all the regions of the image. An extensive comparison with ten other state of the art color correction algorithms is presented, using two different image pair data sets. Results show that the proposed approach obtains the best average scores in both data sets and evaluation metrics and is also the most robust to failures.
Keywords: Color correction; image mosaicking; color transfer; color palette mapping functions
|
|