Abstract: The pairwise classification approach tends to perform better than other well-known approaches when dealing with multiclass classification problems. In the pairwise approach, however, the nuisance votes of many irrelevant classifiers may result in a wrong prediction class. To overcome this problem, a novel method, Local Crossing Off (LCO), is presented and evaluated in this paper. The proposed LCO system takes advantage of nearest neighbor classification algorithm because of its simplicity and speed, as well as the strength of other two powerful binary classifiers to discriminate between two classes. This paper provides a set of experimental results on 20 datasets using two base learners: Neural Networks and Support Vector Machines. The results show that the proposed technique not only achieves better classification accuracy, but also is computationally more efficient for tackling classification problems which have a relatively large number of target classes.

Abstract: Graph representation of graphical documents often suffers from noise such as spurious nodes and edges, and their discontinuity. In general these errors occur during the low-level image processing viz. binarization, skeletonization, vectorization etc. Hierarchical graph representation is a nice and efficient way to solve this kind of problem by hierarchically merging node-node and node-edge depending on the distance. But the creation of hierarchical graph representing the graphical information often uses hard thresholds on the distance to create the hierarchical nodes (next state) of the lower nodes (or states) of a graph. As a result, the representation often loses useful information. This paper introduces plausibilities to the nodes of hierarchical graph as a function of distance and proposes a modified algorithm for matching subgraphs of the hierarchical graphs. The plausibility-annotated nodes help to improve the performance of the matching algorithm on two hierarchical structures. To show the potential of this approach, we conduct an experiment with the SESYD dataset.

Abstract: Multimodal image fusion allows the combination of information from different modalities, which is useful for tasks such as object detection, edge detection, and tracking, to name a few. Using the fused representation for applications results in better task performance. There are several image fusion approaches, which have been summarized in surveys. However, the existing surveys focus on image fusion approaches where the application on the loop of multimodal image fusion is not considered. On the contrary, this study summarizes deep learning-based multimodal image fusion for computer vision (e.g., object detection) and image processing applications (e.g., semantic segmentation), that is, approaches where the application module leverages the multimodal fusion process to enhance the final result. Firstly, we introduce image fusion and the existing general frameworks for image fusion tasks such as multifocus, multiexposure and multimodal. Then, we describe the multimodal image fusion approaches. Next, we review the state-of-the-art deep learning multimodal image fusion approaches for vision applications. Finally, we conclude our survey with the trends of task-driven multimodal image fusion.

Abstract: Face anti-spoofing is critical to prevent face recognition systems from a security breach. The biometrics community has %possessed achieved impressive progress recently due the excellent performance of deep neural networks and the availability of large datasets. Although ethnic bias has been verified to severely affect the performance of face recognition systems, it still remains an open research problem in face anti-spoofing. Recently, a multi-ethnic face anti-spoofing dataset, CASIA-SURF CeFA, has been released with the goal of measuring the ethnic bias. It is the largest up to date cross-ethnicity face anti-spoofing dataset covering 3 ethnicities, 3 modalities, 1,607 subjects, 2D plus 3D attack types, and the first dataset including explicit ethnic labels among the recently released datasets for face anti-spoofing. We organized the Chalearn Face Anti-spoofing Attack Detection Challenge which consists of single-modal (e.g., RGB) and multi-modal (e.g., RGB, Depth, Infrared (IR)) tracks around this novel resource to boost research aiming to alleviate the ethnic bias. Both tracks have attracted 340 teams in the development stage, and finally 11 and 8 teams have submitted their codes in the single-modal and multi-modal face anti-spoofing recognition challenges, respectively. All the results were verified and re-ran by the organizing team, and the results were used for the final ranking. This paper presents an overview of the challenge, including its design, evaluation protocol and a summary of results. We analyze the top ranked solutions and draw conclusions derived from the competition. In addition we outline future work directions.

Abstract: Due to noise, overlapped text/signature and multi-oriented nature, seal (stamp) object detection involves a difficult challenge. This paper deals with automatic detection of seal from documents with cluttered background. Here, a seal object is characterized by scale and rotation invariant spatial feature descriptors (distance and angular position) computed from recognition result of individual connected components (characters). Recognition of multi-scale and multi-oriented component is done using Support Vector Machine classifier. Generalized Hough Transform (GHT) is used to detect the seal and a voting is casted for finding possible location of the seal object in a document based on these spatial feature descriptor of components pairs. The peak of votes in GHT accumulator validates the hypothesis to locate the seal object in a document. Experimental results show that, the method is efficient to locate seal instance of arbitrary shape and orientation in documents.

Abstract: Different methodologies of uniform sampling over the rotation group, SO(3), for building unbiased 2D shape models from 3D objects are introduced and reviewed in this chapter. State-of-the-art non uniform sampling approaches are discussed, and uniform sampling methods using Euler angles and quaternions are introduced. Moreover, since presented work is oriented to model building applications, it is not limited to general discrete methods to obtain uniform 3D rotations, but also from a continuous point of view in the case of Procrustes Analysis.

Abstract: Environmental perception represents, because of its complexity, a challenge for Intelligent Transport Systems due to the great variety of situations and different elements that can happen in road environments and that must be faced by these systems. In connection with this, so far there are a variety of solutions as regards sensors and methods, so the results of precision, complexity, cost, or computational load obtained by these works are different. In this chapter some systems based on computer vision and laser techniques are presented. Fusion methods are also introduced in order to provide advanced and reliable perception systems.

Abstract: Dealing with incomplete information is a well studied problem in the context of machine learning and computational intelligence. However, in the context of computer vision, the problem has only been studied in specific scenarios (e.g., certain types of occlusions in specific types of images), although it is common to have incomplete information in visual data. This chapter describes the design of an academic competition focusing on inpainting of images and video sequences that was part of the competition program of WCCI2018 and had a satellite event collocated with ECCV2018. The ChaLearn Looking at People Inpainting Challenge aimed at advancing the state of the art on visual inpainting by promoting the development of methods for recovering missing and occluded information from images and video. Three tracks were proposed in which visual inpainting might be helpful but still challenging: human body pose estimation, text overlays removal and fingerprint denoising. This chapter describes the design of the challenge, which includes the release of three novel datasets, and the description of evaluation metrics, baselines and evaluation protocol. The results of the challenge are analyzed and discussed in detail and conclusions derived from this event are outlined.