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Eduard Vazquez. (2011). Unsupervised image segmentation based on material reflectance description and saliency (Ramon Baldrich, Ed.). Ph.D. thesis, , .
Abstract: Image segmentations aims to partition an image into a set of non-overlapped regions, called segments. Despite the simplicity of the definition, image segmentation raises as a very complex problem in all its stages. The definition of segment is still unclear. When asking to a human to perform a segmentation, this person segments at different levels of abstraction. Some segments might be a single, well-defined texture whereas some others correspond with an object in the scene which might including multiple textures and colors. For this reason, segmentation is divided in bottom-up segmentation and top-down segmentation. Bottom up-segmentation is problem independent, that is, focused on general properties of the images such as textures or illumination. Top-down segmentation is a problem-dependent approach which looks for specific entities in the scene, such as known objects. This work is focused on bottom-up segmentation. Beginning from the analysis of the lacks of current methods, we propose an approach called RAD. Our approach overcomes the main shortcomings of those methods which use the physics of the light to perform the segmentation. RAD is a topological approach which describes a single-material reflectance. Afterwards, we cope with one of the main problems in image segmentation: non supervised adaptability to image content. To yield a non-supervised method, we use a model of saliency yet presented in this thesis. It computes the saliency of the chromatic transitions of an image by means of a statistical analysis of the images derivatives. This method of saliency is used to build our final approach of segmentation: spRAD. This method is a non-supervised segmentation approach. Our saliency approach has been validated with a psychophysical experiment as well as computationally, overcoming a state-of-the-art saliency method. spRAD also outperforms state-of-the-art segmentation techniques as results obtained with a widely-used segmentation dataset show
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Santiago Segui. (2011). Contributions to the Diagnosis of Intestinal Motility by Automatic Image Analysis (Jordi Vitria, Ed.). Ph.D. thesis, Ediciones Graficas Rey, .
Abstract: In the early twenty first century Given Imaging Ltd. presented wireless capsule endoscopy (WCE) as a new technological breakthrough that allowed the visualization of
the intestine by using a small, swallowed camera. This small size device was received
with a high enthusiasm within the medical community, and until now, it is still one
of the medical devices with the highest use growth rate. WCE can be used as a novel
diagnostic tool that presents several clinical advantages, since it is non-invasive and
at the same time it provides, for the first time, a full picture of the small bowel morphology, contents and dynamics. Since its appearance, the WCE has been used to
detect several intestinal dysfunctions such as: polyps, ulcers and bleeding. However,
the visual analysis of WCE videos presents an important drawback: the long time
required by the physicians for proper video visualization. In this sense and regarding
to this limitation, the development of computer aided systems is required for the extensive use of WCE in the medical community.
The work presented in this thesis is a set of contributions for the automatic image
analysis and computer-aided diagnosis of intestinal motility disorders using WCE.
Until now, the diagnosis of small bowel motility dysfunctions was basically performed
by invasive techniques such as the manometry test, which can only be conducted at
some referral centers around the world owing to the complexity of the procedure and
the medial expertise required in the interpretation of the results.
Our contributions are divided in three main blocks:
1. Image analysis by computer vision techniques to detect events in the endoluminal WCE scene. Several methods have been proposed to detect visual events
such as: intestinal contractions, intestinal content, tunnel and wrinkles;
2. Machine learning techniques for the analysis and the manipulation of the data
from WCE. These methods have been proposed in order to overcome the problems that the analysis of WCE presents such as: video acquisition cost, unlabeled data and large number of data;
3. Two different systems for the computer-aided diagnosis of intestinal motility
disorders using WCE. The first system presents a fully automatic method that
aids at discriminating healthy subjects from patients with severe intestinal motor disorders like pseudo-obstruction or food intolerance. The second system presents another automatic method that models healthy subjects and discriminate them from mild intestinal motility patients.
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Pierluigi Casale. (2011). Approximate Ensemble Methods for Physical Activity Recognition Applications (Oriol Pujol, & Petia Radeva, Eds.). Ph.D. thesis, Ediciones Graficas Rey, .
Abstract: The main interest of this thesis focuses on computational methodologies able to
reduce the degree of complexity of learning algorithms and its application to physical
activity recognition.
Random Projections will be used to reduce the computational complexity in Multiple Classifier Systems. A new boosting algorithm and a new one-class classification
methodology have been developed. In both cases, random projections are used for
reducing the dimensionality of the problem and for generating diversity, exploiting in
this way the benefits that ensembles of classifiers provide in terms of performances
and stability. Moreover, the new one-class classification methodology, based on an ensemble strategy able to approximate a multidimensional convex-hull, has been proved
to over-perform state-of-the-art one-class classification methodologies.
The practical focus of the thesis is towards Physical Activity Recognition. A new
hardware platform for wearable computing application has been developed and used
for collecting data of activities of daily living allowing to study the optimal features
set able to successful classify activities.
Based on the classification methodologies developed and the study conducted on
physical activity classification, a machine learning architecture capable to provide a
continuous authentication mechanism for mobile-devices users has been worked out,
as last part of the thesis. The system, based on a personalized classifier, states on
the analysis of the characteristic gait patterns typical of each individual ensuring an
unobtrusive and continuous authentication mechanism
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Fahad Shahbaz Khan. (2011). Coloring bag-of-words based image representations (Joost Van de Weijer, & Maria Vanrell, Eds.). Ph.D. thesis, , .
Abstract: Put succinctly, the bag-of-words based image representation is the most successful approach for object and scene recognition. Within the bag-of-words framework the optimal fusion of multiple cues, such as shape, texture and color, still remains an active research domain. There exist two main approaches to combine color and shape information within the bag-of-words framework. The first approach called, early fusion, fuses color and shape at the feature level as a result of which a joint colorshape vocabulary is produced. The second approach, called late fusion, concatenates histogram representation of both color and shape, obtained independently. In the first part of this thesis, we analyze the theoretical implications of both early and late feature fusion. We demonstrate that both these approaches are suboptimal for a subset of object categories. Consequently, we propose a novel method for recognizing object categories when using multiple cues by separately processing the shape and color cues and combining them by modulating the shape features by category specific color attention. Color is used to compute bottom-up and top-down attention maps. Subsequently, the color attention maps are used to modulate the weights of the shape features. Shape features are given more weight in regions with higher attention and vice versa. The approach is tested on several benchmark object recognition data sets and the results clearly demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed method. In the second part of the thesis, we investigate the problem of obtaining compact spatial pyramid representations for object and scene recognition. Spatial pyramids have been successfully applied to incorporate spatial information into bag-of-words based image representation. However, a major drawback of spatial pyramids is that it leads to high dimensional image representations. We present a novel framework for obtaining compact pyramid representation. The approach reduces the size of a high dimensional pyramid representation upto an order of magnitude without any significant reduction in accuracy. Moreover, we also investigate the optimal combination of multiple features such as color and shape within the context of our compact pyramid representation. Finally, we describe a novel technique to build discriminative visual words from multiple cues learned independently from training images. To this end, we use an information theoretic vocabulary compression technique to find discriminative combinations of visual cues and the resulting visual vocabulary is compact, has the cue binding property, and supports individual weighting of cues in the final image representation. The approach is tested on standard object recognition data sets. The results obtained clearly demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach.
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Michal Drozdzal, Petia Radeva, Santiago Segui, Laura Igual, Carolina Malagelada, Fernando Azpiroz, et al. (2012). System and Method for Improving a Discriminative Model.
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Antonio Hernandez, Nadezhda Zlateva, Alexander Marinov, Miguel Reyes, Petia Radeva, Dimo Dimov, et al. (2012). Graph Cuts Optimization for Multi-Limb Human Segmentation in Depth Maps. In 25th IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (pp. 726–732). IEEE Xplore.
Abstract: We present a generic framework for object segmentation using depth maps based on Random Forest and Graph-cuts theory, and apply it to the segmentation of human limbs in depth maps. First, from a set of random depth features, Random Forest is used to infer a set of label probabilities for each data sample. This vector of probabilities is used as unary term in α-β swap Graph-cuts algorithm. Moreover, depth of spatio-temporal neighboring data points are used as boundary potentials. Results on a new multi-label human depth data set show high performance in terms of segmentation overlapping of the novel methodology compared to classical approaches.
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Jürgen Brauer, Wenjuan Gong, Jordi Gonzalez, & Michael Arens. (2011). On the Effect of Temporal Information on Monocular 3D Human Pose Estimation. In 2nd IEEE International Workshop on Analysis and Retrieval of Tracked Events and Motion in Imagery Streams (pp. 906–913).
Abstract: We address the task of estimating 3D human poses from monocular camera sequences. Many works make use of multiple consecutive frames for the estimation of a 3D pose in a frame. Although such an approach should ease the pose estimation task substantially since multiple consecutive frames allow to solve for 2D projection ambiguities in principle, it has not yet been investigated systematically how much we can improve the 3D pose estimates when using multiple consecutive frames opposed to single frame information. In this paper we analyze the difference in quality of 3D pose estimates based on different numbers of consecutive frames from which 2D pose estimates are available. We validate the use of temporal information on two major different approaches for human pose estimation – modeling and learning approaches. The results of our experiments show that both learning and modeling approaches benefit from using multiple frames opposed to single frame input but that the benefit is small when the 2D pose estimates show a high quality in terms of precision.
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David Roche, Debora Gil, & Jesus Giraldo. (2012). Assessing agonist efficacy in an uncertain Em world. In A. Christopoulus and M. Bouvier (Ed.), 40th Keystone Symposia on mollecular and celular biology (79). Keystone Symposia.
Abstract: The operational model of agonism has been widely used for the analysis of agonist action since its formulation in 1983. The model includes the Em parameter, which is defined as the maximum response of the system. The methods for Em estimation provide Em values not significantly higher than the maximum responses achieved by full agonists. However, it has been found that that some classes of compounds as, for instance, superagonists and positive allosteric modulators can increase the full agonist maximum response, implying upper limits for Em and thereby posing doubts on the validity of Em estimates. Because of the correlation between Em and operational efficacy, τ, wrong Em estimates will yield wrong τ estimates.
In this presentation, the operational model of agonism and various methods for the simulation of allosteric modulation will be analyzed. Alternatives for curve fitting will be presented and discussed.
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Naveen Onkarappa, Sujay M. Veerabhadrappa, & Angel Sappa. (2012). Optical Flow in Onboard Applications: A Study on the Relationship Between Accuracy and Scene Texture. In 4th International Conference on Signal and Image Processing (Vol. 221, pp. 257–267).
Abstract: Optical flow has got a major role in making advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) a reality. ADAS applications are expected to perform efficiently in all kinds of environments, those are highly probable, that one can drive the vehicle in different kinds of roads, times and seasons. In this work, we study the relationship of optical flow with different roads, that is by analyzing optical flow accuracy on different road textures. Texture measures such as TeX , TeX and TeX are evaluated for this purpose. Further, the relation of regularization weight to the flow accuracy in the presence of different textures is also analyzed. Additionally, we present a framework to generate synthetic sequences of different textures in ADAS scenarios with ground-truth optical flow.
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S.Grau, Ana Puig, Sergio Escalera, & Maria Salamo. (2013). Intelligent Interactive Volume Classification. In Pacific Graphics (Vol. 32, pp. 23–28).
Abstract: This paper defines an intelligent and interactive framework to classify multiple regions of interest from the original data on demand, without requiring any preprocessing or previous segmentation. The proposed intelligent and interactive approach is divided in three stages: visualize, training and testing. First, users visualize and label some samples directly on slices of the volume. Training and testing are based on a framework of Error Correcting Output Codes and Adaboost classifiers that learn to classify each region the user has painted. Later, at the testing stage, each classifier is directly applied on the rest of samples and combined to perform multi-class labeling, being used in the final rendering. We also parallelized the training stage using a GPU-based implementation for
obtaining a rapid interaction and classification.
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Mohammad Rouhani, & Angel Sappa. (2012). Implicit Polynomial Representation through a Fast Fitting Error Estimation. TIP - IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, 21(4), 2089–2098.
Abstract: Impact Factor
This paper presents a simple distance estimation for implicit polynomial fitting. It is computed as the height of a simplex built between the point and the surface (i.e., a triangle in 2-D or a tetrahedron in 3-D), which is used as a coarse but reliable estimation of the orthogonal distance. The proposed distance can be described as a function of the coefficients of the implicit polynomial. Moreover, it is differentiable and has a smooth behavior . Hence, it can be used in any gradient-based optimization. In this paper, its use in a Levenberg-Marquardt framework is shown, which is particularly devoted for nonlinear least squares problems. The proposed estimation is a generalization of the gradient-based distance estimation, which is widely used in the literature. Experimental results, both in 2-D and 3-D data sets, are provided. Comparisons with state-of-the-art techniques are presented, showing the advantages of the proposed approach.
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Hamdi Dibeklioglu, M.O. Hortas, I. Kosunen, P. Zuzánek, Albert Ali Salah, & Theo Gevers. (2011). Design and implementation of an affect-responsive interactive photo frame. JMUI - Journal on Multimodal User Interfaces, 81–95.
Abstract: This paper describes an affect-responsive interactive photo-frame application that offers its user a different experience with every use. It relies on visual analysis of activity levels and facial expressions of its users to select responses from a database of short video segments. This ever-growing database is automatically prepared by an offline analysis of user-uploaded videos. The resulting system matches its user’s affect along dimensions of valence and arousal, and gradually adapts its response to each specific user. In an extended mode, two such systems are coupled and feed each other with visual content. The strengths and weaknesses of the system are assessed through a usability study, where a Wizard-of-Oz response logic is contrasted with the fully automatic system that uses affective and activity-based features, either alone, or in tandem.
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A. Toet, M. Henselmans, M.P. Lucassen, & Theo Gevers. (2011). Emotional effects of dynamic textures. iPER - i-Perception, 969 – 991.
Abstract: This study explores the effects of various spatiotemporal dynamic texture characteristics on human emotions. The emotional experience of auditory (eg, music) and haptic repetitive patterns has been studied extensively. In contrast, the emotional experience of visual dynamic textures is still largely unknown, despite their natural ubiquity and increasing use in digital media. Participants watched a set of dynamic textures, representing either water or various different media, and self-reported their emotional experience. Motion complexity was found to have mildly relaxing and nondominant effects. In contrast, motion change complexity was found to be arousing and dominant. The speed of dynamics had arousing, dominant, and unpleasant effects. The amplitude of dynamics was also regarded as unpleasant. The regularity of the dynamics over the textures’ area was found to be uninteresting, nondominant, mildly relaxing, and mildly pleasant. The spatial scale of the dynamics had an unpleasant, arousing, and dominant effect, which was larger for textures with diverse content than for water textures. For water textures, the effects of spatial contrast were arousing, dominant, interesting, and mildly unpleasant. None of these effects were observed for textures of diverse content. The current findings are relevant for the design and synthesis of affective multimedia content and for affective scene indexing and retrieval.
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K.E.A. van de Sande, Theo Gevers, & C.G.M. Snoek. (2010). Evaluating Color Descriptors for Object and Scene Recognition. TPAMI - IEEE Transaction on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 32(9), 1582–1596.
Abstract: Impact factor: 5.308
Image category recognition is important to access visual information on the level of objects and scene types. So far, intensity-based descriptors have been widely used for feature extraction at salient points. To increase illumination invariance and discriminative power, color descriptors have been proposed. Because many different descriptors exist, a structured overview is required of color invariant descriptors in the context of image category recognition. Therefore, this paper studies the invariance properties and the distinctiveness of color descriptors (software to compute the color descriptors from this paper is available from http://www.colordescriptors.com) in a structured way. The analytical invariance properties of color descriptors are explored, using a taxonomy based on invariance properties with respect to photometric transformations, and tested experimentally using a data set with known illumination conditions. In addition, the distinctiveness of color descriptors is assessed experimentally using two benchmarks, one from the image domain and one from the video domain. From the theoretical and experimental results, it can be derived that invariance to light intensity changes and light color changes affects category recognition. The results further reveal that, for light intensity shifts, the usefulness of invariance is category-specific. Overall, when choosing a single descriptor and no prior knowledge about the data set and object and scene categories is available, the OpponentSIFT is recommended. Furthermore, a combined set of color descriptors outperforms intensity-based SIFT and improves category recognition by 8 percent on the PASCAL VOC 2007 and by 7 percent on the Mediamill Challenge.
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J. Stöttinger, A. Hanbury, N. Sebe, & Theo Gevers. (2012). Spars Color Interest Points for Image Retrieval and Object Categorization. TIP - IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, 21(5), 2681–2692.
Abstract: Impact factor 2010: 2.92
IF 2011/2012?: 3.32
Interest point detection is an important research area in the field of image processing and computer vision. In particular, image retrieval and object categorization heavily rely on interest point detection from which local image descriptors are computed for image matching. In general, interest points are based on luminance, and color has been largely ignored. However, the use of color increases the distinctiveness of interest points. The use of color may therefore provide selective search reducing the total number of interest points used for image matching. This paper proposes color interest points for sparse image representation. To reduce the sensitivity to varying imaging conditions, light-invariant interest points are introduced. Color statistics based on occurrence probability lead to color boosted points, which are obtained through saliency-based feature selection. Furthermore, a principal component analysis-based scale selection method is proposed, which gives a robust scale estimation per interest point. From large-scale experiments, it is shown that the proposed color interest point detector has higher repeatability than a luminance-based one. Furthermore, in the context of image retrieval, a reduced and predictable number of color features show an increase in performance compared to state-of-the-art interest points. Finally, in the context of object recognition, for the Pascal VOC 2007 challenge, our method gives comparable performance to state-of-the-art methods using only a small fraction of the features, reducing the computing time considerably.
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