Abstract: Image retrieval can be dealt by combining standard descriptors, such as those of MPEG-7, which are defined independently for each visual cue (e.g. SCD or CLD for Color, HTD for texture or EHD for edges).
A common problem is to combine similarities coming from descriptors representing different concepts in different spaces. In this paper we propose a color texture description that bypasses this problem from its inherent definition. It is based on a low dimensional space with 6 perceptual axes. Texture is described in a 3D space derived from a direct implementation of the original Julesz’s Texton theory and color is described in a 3D perceptual space. This early fusion through the blob concept in these two bounded spaces avoids the problem and allows us to derive a sparse color-texture descriptor that achieves similar performance compared to MPEG-7 in image retrieval. Moreover, our descriptor presents comprehensive qualities since it can also be applied either in segmentation or browsing: (a) a dense image representation is defined from the descriptor showing a reasonable performance in locating texture patterns included in complex images; and (b) a vocabulary of basic terms is derived to build an intermediate level descriptor in natural language improving browsing by bridging semantic gap

Abstract: With the rise of the digital camera, people nowadays typically take several near-identical photos of the same scene to maximize the chances of a good shot. This paper proposes a user-friendly tool for exploring a personal photo gallery for selecting or even creating the best shot of a scene between its multiple alternatives. This functionality is realized through a graphical user interface where the best viewpoint can be selected from a generated panorama of the scene. Once the viewpoint is selected, the user is able to go explore possible alternatives coming from the other images. Using this tool, one can explore a photo gallery efficiently. Moreover, additional compositions from other images are also possible. With such additional compositions, one can go from a burst of photographs to the single best one. Even funny compositions of images, where you can duplicate a person in the same image, are possible with our proposed tool.

Abstract: This paper is concerned with recognizing realistic human actions in videos based on spatio-temporal interest points (STIPs). Existing STIP-based action recognition approaches operate on intensity representations of the image data. Because of this, these approaches are sensitive to disturbing photometric phenomena such as highlights and shadows. Moreover, valuable information is neglected by discarding chromaticity from the photometric representation. These issues are addressed by Color STIPs. Color STIPs are multi-channel reformulations of existing intensity-based STIP detectors and descriptors, for which we consider a number of chromatic representations derived from the opponent color space. This enhanced modeling of appearance improves the quality of subsequent STIP detection and description. Color STIPs are shown to substantially outperform their intensity-based counterparts on the challenging UCF~sports, UCF11 and UCF50 action recognition benchmarks. Moreover, the results show that color STIPs are currently the single best low-level feature choice for STIP-based approaches to human action recognition.

Abstract: Kinship verification from facial appearance is a difficult problem. This paper explores the possibility of employing facial expression dynamics in this problem. By using features that describe facial dynamics and spatio-temporal appearance over smile expressions, we show that it is possible to improve the state of the art in this problem, and verify that it is indeed possible to recognize kinship by resemblance of facial expressions. The proposed method is tested on different kin relationships. On the average, 72.89% verification accuracy is achieved on spontaneous smiles.

Abstract: Joint attention, which is the ability of coordination of a common point of reference with the communicating party, emerges as a key factor in various interaction scenarios. This paper presents an image-based method for establishing joint attention between an experimenter and a robot. The precise analysis of the experimenter's eye region requires stability and high-resolution image acquisition, which is not always available. We investigate regression-based interpolation of the gaze direction from the head pose of the experimenter, which is easier to track. Gaussian process regression and neural networks are contrasted to interpolate the gaze direction. Then, we combine gaze interpolation with image-based saliency to improve the target point estimates and test three different saliency schemes. We demonstrate the proposed method on a human-robot interaction scenario. Cross-subject evaluations, as well as experiments under adverse conditions (such as dimmed or artificial illumination or motion blur), show that our method generalizes well and achieves rapid gaze estimation for establishing joint attention.

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.

Abstract: The trend to use large amounts of simple sensors as opposed to a few complex sensors to monitor places and systems creates a need for temporal pattern mining algorithms to work on such data. The methods that try to discover re-usable and interpretable patterns in temporal event data have several shortcomings. We contrast several recent approaches to the problem, and extend the T-Pattern algorithm, which was previously applied for detection of sequential patterns in behavioural sciences. The temporal complexity of the T-pattern approach is prohibitive in the scenarios we consider. We remedy this with a statistical model to obtain a fast and robust algorithm to find patterns in temporal data. We test our algorithm on a recent database collected with passive infrared sensors with millions of events.