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Patricia Suarez, Angel Sappa, & Boris X. Vintimilla. (2018). Vegetation Index Estimation from Monospectral Images. In 15th International Conference on Images Analysis and Recognition (Vol. 10882, pp. 353–362). LNCS.
Abstract: This paper proposes a novel approach to estimate Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) from just the red channel of a RGB image. The NDVI index is defined as the ratio of the difference of the red and infrared radiances over their sum. In other words, information from the red channel of a RGB image and the corresponding infrared spectral band are required for its computation. In the current work the NDVI index is estimated just from the red channel by training a Conditional Generative Adversarial Network (CGAN). The architecture proposed for the generative network consists of a single level structure, which combines at the final layer results from convolutional operations together with the given red channel with Gaussian noise to enhance
details, resulting in a sharp NDVI image. Then, the discriminative model
estimates the probability that the NDVI generated index came from the training dataset, rather than the index automatically generated. Experimental results with a large set of real images are provided showing that a Conditional GAN single level model represents an acceptable approach to estimate NDVI index.
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Patricia Suarez, Angel Sappa, Boris X. Vintimilla, & Riad I. Hammoud. (2018). Deep Learning based Single Image Dehazing. In 31st IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Workhsop (pp. 1250–12507).
Abstract: This paper proposes a novel approach to remove haze degradations in RGB images using a stacked conditional Generative Adversarial Network (GAN). It employs a triplet of GAN to remove the haze on each color channel independently.
A multiple loss functions scheme, applied over a conditional probabilistic model, is proposed. The proposed GAN architecture learns to remove the haze, using as conditioned entrance, the images with haze from which the clear
images will be obtained. Such formulation ensures a fast model training convergence and a homogeneous model generalization. Experiments showed that the proposed method generates high-quality clear images.
Keywords: Gallium nitride; Atmospheric modeling; Generators; Generative adversarial networks; Convergence; Image color analysis
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Gemma Rotger, Francesc Moreno-Noguer, Felipe Lumbreras, & Antonio Agudo. (2019). Single view facial hair 3D reconstruction. In 9th Iberian Conference on Pattern Recognition and Image Analysis (Vol. 11867, pp. 423–436). LNCS.
Abstract: n this work, we introduce a novel energy-based framework that addresses the challenging problem of 3D reconstruction of facial hair from a single RGB image. To this end, we identify hair pixels over the image via texture analysis and then determine individual hair fibers that are modeled by means of a parametric hair model based on 3D helixes. We propose to minimize an energy composed of several terms, in order to adapt the hair parameters that better fit the image detections. The final hairs respond to the resulting fibers after a post-processing step where we encourage further realism. The resulting approach generates realistic facial hair fibers from solely an RGB image without assuming any training data nor user interaction. We provide an experimental evaluation on real-world pictures where several facial hair styles and image conditions are observed, showing consistent results and establishing a comparison with respect to competing approaches.
Keywords: 3D Vision; Shape Reconstruction; Facial Hair Modeling
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Gemma Rotger, Francesc Moreno-Noguer, Felipe Lumbreras, & Antonio Agudo. (2019). Detailed 3D face reconstruction from a single RGB image. JWSCG - Journal of WSCG, 103–112.
Abstract: This paper introduces a method to obtain a detailed 3D reconstruction of facial skin from a single RGB image.
To this end, we propose the exclusive use of an input image without requiring any information about the observed material nor training data to model the wrinkle properties. They are detected and characterized directly from the image via a simple and effective parametric model, determining several features such as location, orientation, width, and height. With these ingredients, we propose to minimize a photometric error to retrieve the final detailed 3D map, which is initialized by current techniques based on deep learning. In contrast with other approaches, we only require estimating a depth parameter, making our approach fast and intuitive. Extensive experimental evaluation is presented in a wide variety of synthetic and real images, including different skin properties and facial
expressions. In all cases, our method outperforms the current approaches regarding 3D reconstruction accuracy, providing striking results for both large and fine wrinkles.
Keywords: 3D Wrinkle Reconstruction; Face Analysis, Optimization.
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Gemma Rotger, Felipe Lumbreras, Francesc Moreno-Noguer, & Antonio Agudo. (2018). 2D-to-3D Facial Expression Transfer. In 24th International Conference on Pattern Recognition (pp. 2008–2013).
Abstract: Automatically changing the expression and physical features of a face from an input image is a topic that has been traditionally tackled in a 2D domain. In this paper, we bring this problem to 3D and propose a framework that given an
input RGB video of a human face under a neutral expression, initially computes his/her 3D shape and then performs a transfer to a new and potentially non-observed expression. For this purpose, we parameterize the rest shape –obtained from standard factorization approaches over the input video– using a triangular
mesh which is further clustered into larger macro-segments. The expression transfer problem is then posed as a direct mapping between this shape and a source shape, such as the blend shapes of an off-the-shelf 3D dataset of human facial expressions. The mapping is resolved to be geometrically consistent between 3D models by requiring points in specific regions to map on semantic
equivalent regions. We validate the approach on several synthetic and real examples of input faces that largely differ from the source shapes, yielding very realistic expression transfers even in cases with topology changes, such as a synthetic video sequence of a single-eyed cyclops.
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Oscar Argudo, Marc Comino, Antonio Chica, Carlos Andujar, & Felipe Lumbreras. (2018). Segmentation of aerial images for plausible detail synthesis. CG - Computers & Graphics, 71, 23–34.
Abstract: The visual enrichment of digital terrain models with plausible synthetic detail requires the segmentation of aerial images into a suitable collection of categories. In this paper we present a complete pipeline for segmenting high-resolution aerial images into a user-defined set of categories distinguishing e.g. terrain, sand, snow, water, and different types of vegetation. This segmentation-for-synthesis problem implies that per-pixel categories must be established according to the algorithms chosen for rendering the synthetic detail. This precludes the definition of a universal set of labels and hinders the construction of large training sets. Since artists might choose to add new categories on the fly, the whole pipeline must be robust against unbalanced datasets, and fast on both training and inference. Under these constraints, we analyze the contribution of common per-pixel descriptors, and compare the performance of state-of-the-art supervised learning algorithms. We report the findings of two user studies. The first one was conducted to analyze human accuracy when manually labeling aerial images. The second user study compares detailed terrains built using different segmentation strategies, including official land cover maps. These studies demonstrate that our approach can be used to turn digital elevation models into fully-featured, detailed terrains with minimal authoring efforts.
Keywords: Terrain editing; Detail synthesis; Vegetation synthesis; Terrain rendering; Image segmentation
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Rafael E. Rivadeneira, Angel Sappa, Boris X. Vintimilla, & Riad I. Hammoud. (2022). A Novel Domain Transfer-Based Approach for Unsupervised Thermal Image Super-Resolution. SENS - Sensors, 22(6), 2254.
Abstract: This paper presents a transfer domain strategy to tackle the limitations of low-resolution thermal sensors and generate higher-resolution images of reasonable quality. The proposed technique employs a CycleGAN architecture and uses a ResNet as an encoder in the generator along with an attention module and a novel loss function. The network is trained on a multi-resolution thermal image dataset acquired with three different thermal sensors. Results report better performance benchmarking results on the 2nd CVPR-PBVS-2021 thermal image super-resolution challenge than state-of-the-art methods. The code of this work is available online.
Keywords: Thermal image super-resolution; unsupervised super-resolution; thermal images; attention module; semiregistered thermal images
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Edgar Riba. (2021). Geometric Computer Vision Techniques for Scene Reconstruction (Daniel Ponsa, Ed.). Ph.D. thesis, , .
Abstract: From the early stages of Computer Vision, scene reconstruction has been one of the most studied topics leading to a wide variety of new discoveries and applications. Object grasping and manipulation, localization and mapping, or even visual effect generation are different examples of applications in which scene reconstruction has taken an important role for industries such as robotics, factory automation, or audio visual production. However, scene reconstruction is an extensive topic that can be approached in many different ways with already existing solutions that effectively work in controlled environments. Formally, the problem of scene reconstruction can be formulated as a sequence of independent processes which compose a pipeline. In this thesis, we analyse some parts of the reconstruction pipeline from which we contribute with novel methods using Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) proposing innovative solutions that consider the optimisation of the methods in an end-to-end fashion. First, we review the state of the art of classical local features detectors and descriptors and contribute with two novel methods that inherently improve pre-existing solutions in the scene reconstruction pipeline.
It is a fact that computer science and software engineering are two fields that usually go hand in hand and evolve according to mutual needs making easier the design of complex and efficient algorithms. For this reason, we contribute with Kornia, a library specifically designed to work with classical computer vision techniques along with deep neural networks. In essence, we created a framework that eases the design of complex pipelines for computer vision algorithms so that can be included within neural networks and be used to backpropagate gradients throw a common optimisation framework. Finally, in the last chapter of this thesis we develop the aforementioned concept of designing end-to-end systems with classical projective geometry. Thus, we contribute with a solution to the problem of synthetic view generation by hallucinating novel views from high deformable cloths objects using a geometry aware end-to-end system. To summarize, in this thesis we demonstrate that with a proper design that combine classical geometric computer vision methods with deep learning techniques can lead to improve pre-existing solutions for the problem of scene reconstruction.
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Michael Teutsch, Angel Sappa, & Riad I. Hammoud. (2021). Computer Vision in the Infrared Spectrum: Challenges and Approaches (Vol. 10).
Abstract: Human visual perception is limited to the visual-optical spectrum. Machine vision is not. Cameras sensitive to the different infrared spectra can enhance the abilities of autonomous systems and visually perceive the environment in a holistic way. Relevant scene content can be made visible especially in situations, where sensors of other modalities face issues like a visual-optical camera that needs a source of illumination. As a consequence, not only human mistakes can be avoided by increasing the level of automation, but also machine-induced errors can be reduced that, for example, could make a self-driving car crash into a pedestrian under difficult illumination conditions. Furthermore, multi-spectral sensor systems with infrared imagery as one modality are a rich source of information and can provably increase the robustness of many autonomous systems. Applications that can benefit from utilizing infrared imagery range from robotics to automotive and from biometrics to surveillance. In this book, we provide a brief yet concise introduction to the current state-of-the-art of computer vision and machine learning in the infrared spectrum. Based on various popular computer vision tasks such as image enhancement, object detection, or object tracking, we first motivate each task starting from established literature in the visual-optical spectrum. Then, we discuss the differences between processing images and videos in the visual-optical spectrum and the various infrared spectra. An overview of the current literature is provided together with an outlook for each task. Furthermore, available and annotated public datasets and common evaluation methods and metrics are presented. In a separate chapter, popular applications that can greatly benefit from the use of infrared imagery as a data source are presented and discussed. Among them are automatic target recognition, video surveillance, or biometrics including face recognition. Finally, we conclude with recommendations for well-fitting sensor setups and data processing algorithms for certain computer vision tasks. We address this book to prospective researchers and engineers new to the field but also to anyone who wants to get introduced to the challenges and the approaches of computer vision using infrared images or videos. Readers will be able to start their work directly after reading the book supported by a highly comprehensive backlog of recent and relevant literature as well as related infrared datasets including existing evaluation frameworks. Together with consistently decreasing costs for infrared cameras, new fields of application appear and make computer vision in the infrared spectrum a great opportunity to face nowadays scientific and engineering challenges.
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Henry Velesaca, Patricia Suarez, Dario Carpio, & Angel Sappa. (2021). Synthesized Image Datasets: Towards an Annotation-Free Instance Segmentation Strategy. In 16th International Symposium on Visual Computing (Vol. 13017, 131–143). LNCS.
Abstract: This paper presents a complete pipeline to perform deep learning-based instance segmentation of different types of grains (e.g., corn, sunflower, soybeans, lentils, chickpeas, mote, and beans). The proposed approach consists of using synthesized image datasets for the training process, which are easily generated according to the category of the instance to be segmented. The synthesized imaging process allows generating a large set of well-annotated grain samples with high variability—as large and high as the user requires. Instance segmentation is performed through a popular deep learning based approach, the Mask R-CNN architecture, but any learning-based instance segmentation approach can be considered. Results obtained by the proposed pipeline show that the strategy of using synthesized image datasets for training instance segmentation helps to avoid the time-consuming image annotation stage, as well as to achieve higher intersection over union and average precision performances. Results obtained with different varieties of grains are shown, as well as comparisons with manually annotated images, showing both the simplicity of the process and the improvements in the performance.
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Patricia Suarez, Dario Carpio, & Angel Sappa. (2021). Non-homogeneous Haze Removal Through a Multiple Attention Module Architecture. In 16th International Symposium on Visual Computing (Vol. 13018, 178–190). LNCS.
Abstract: This paper presents a novel attention based architecture to remove non-homogeneous haze. The proposed model is focused on obtaining the most representative characteristics of the image, at each learning cycle, by means of adaptive attention modules coupled with a residual learning convolutional network. The latter is based on the Res2Net model. The proposed architecture is trained with just a few set of images. Its performance is evaluated on a public benchmark—images from the non-homogeneous haze NTIRE 2021 challenge—and compared with state of the art approaches reaching the best result.
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Patricia Suarez, & Angel Sappa. (2024). A Generative Model for Guided Thermal Image Super-Resolution. In 19th International Joint Conference on Computer Vision, Imaging and Computer Graphics Theory and Applications.
Abstract: This paper presents a novel approach for thermal super-resolution based on a fusion prior, low-resolution thermal image and H brightness channel of the corresponding visible spectrum image. The method combines bicubic interpolation of the ×8 scale target image with the brightness component. To enhance the guidance process, the original RGB image is converted to HSV, and the brightness channel is extracted. Bicubic interpolation is then applied to the low-resolution thermal image, resulting in a Bicubic-Brightness channel blend. This luminance-bicubic fusion is used as an input image to help the training process. With this fused image, the cyclic adversarial generative network obtains high-resolution thermal image results. Experimental evaluations show that the proposed approach significantly improves spatial resolution and pixel intensity levels compared to other state-of-the-art techniques, making it a promising method to obtain high-resolution thermal.
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Spencer Low, Oliver Nina, Angel Sappa, Erik Blasch, & Nathan Inkawhich. (2022). Multi-Modal Aerial View Object Classification Challenge Results – PBVS 2022. In IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Workshops (CVPRW) (pp. 350–358).
Abstract: This paper details the results and main findings of the second iteration of the Multi-modal Aerial View Object Classification (MAVOC) challenge. The primary goal of both MAVOC challenges is to inspire research into methods for building recognition models that utilize both synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and electro-optical (EO) imagery. Teams are encouraged to develop multi-modal approaches that incorporate complementary information from both domains. While the 2021 challenge showed a proof of concept that both modalities could be used together, the 2022 challenge focuses on the detailed multi-modal methods. The 2022 challenge uses the same UNIfied Coincident Optical and Radar for recognitioN (UNICORN) dataset and competition format that was used in 2021. Specifically, the challenge focuses on two tasks, (1) SAR classification and (2) SAR + EO classification. The bulk of this document is dedicated to discussing the top performing methods and describing their performance on our blind test set. Notably, all of the top ten teams outperform a Resnet-18 baseline. For SAR classification, the top team showed a 129% improvement over baseline and an 8% average improvement from the 2021 winner. The top team for SAR + EO classification shows a 165% improvement with a 32% average improvement over 2021.
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Patricia Suarez, Dario Carpio, & Angel Sappa. (2023). A Deep Learning Based Approach for Synthesizing Realistic Depth Maps. In 22nd International Conference on Image Analysis and Processing (Vol. 14234, 369–380). LNCS.
Abstract: This paper presents a novel cycle generative adversarial network (CycleGAN) architecture for synthesizing high-quality depth maps from a given monocular image. The proposed architecture uses multiple loss functions, including cycle consistency, contrastive, identity, and least square losses, to enable the generation of realistic and high-fidelity depth maps. The proposed approach addresses this challenge by synthesizing depth maps from RGB images without requiring paired training data. Comparisons with several state-of-the-art approaches are provided showing the proposed approach overcome other approaches both in terms of quantitative metrics and visual quality.
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Armin Mehri, Parichehr Behjati, & Angel Sappa. (2023). TnTViT-G: Transformer in Transformer Network for Guidance Super Resolution. ACCESS - IEEE Access, 11, 11529–11540.
Abstract: Image Super Resolution is a potential approach that can improve the image quality of low-resolution optical sensors, leading to improved performance in various industrial applications. It is important to emphasize that most state-of-the-art super resolution algorithms often use a single channel of input data for training and inference. However, this practice ignores the fact that the cost of acquiring high-resolution images in various spectral domains can differ a lot from one another. In this paper, we attempt to exploit complementary information from a low-cost channel (visible image) to increase the image quality of an expensive channel (infrared image). We propose a dual stream Transformer-based super resolution approach that uses the visible image as a guide to super-resolve another spectral band image. To this end, we introduce Transformer in Transformer network for Guidance super resolution, named TnTViT-G, an efficient and effective method that extracts the features of input images via different streams and fuses them together at various stages. In addition, unlike other guidance super resolution approaches, TnTViT-G is not limited to a fixed upsample size and it can generate super-resolved images of any size. Extensive experiments on various datasets show that the proposed model outperforms other state-of-the-art super resolution approaches. TnTViT-G surpasses state-of-the-art methods by up to 0.19∼2.3dB , while it is memory efficient.
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