Jose Carlos Rubio, Joan Serrat, & Antonio Lopez. (2012). Unsupervised co-segmentation through region matching. In 25th IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (pp. 749–756). IEEE Xplore.
Abstract: Co-segmentation is defined as jointly partitioning multiple images depicting the same or similar object, into foreground and background. Our method consists of a multiple-scale multiple-image generative model, which jointly estimates the foreground and background appearance distributions from several images, in a non-supervised manner. In contrast to other co-segmentation methods, our approach does not require the images to have similar foregrounds and different backgrounds to function properly. Region matching is applied to exploit inter-image information by establishing correspondences between the common objects that appear in the scene. Moreover, computing many-to-many associations of regions allow further applications, like recognition of object parts across images. We report results on iCoseg, a challenging dataset that presents extreme variability in camera viewpoint, illumination and object deformations and poses. We also show that our method is robust against large intra-class variability in the MSRC database.
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Laura Igual, Joan Carles Soliva, Antonio Hernandez, Sergio Escalera, Oscar Vilarroya, & Petia Radeva. (2012). Supervised Brain Segmentation and Classification in Diagnostic of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. In High Performance Computing and Simulation, International Conference on (pp. 182–187). IEEE Xplore.
Abstract: This paper presents an automatic method for external and internal segmentation of the caudate nucleus in Magnetic Resonance Images (MRI) based on statistical and structural machine learning approaches. This method is applied in Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) diagnosis. The external segmentation method adapts the Graph Cut energy-minimization model to make it suitable for segmenting small, low-contrast structures, such as the caudate nucleus. In particular, new energy function data and boundary potentials are defined and a supervised energy term based on contextual brain structures is added. Furthermore, the internal segmentation method learns a classifier based on shape features of the Region of Interest (ROI) in MRI slices. The results show accurate external and internal caudate segmentation in a real data set and similar performance of ADHD diagnostic test to manual annotation.
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Mohammad Ali Bagheri, Qigang Gao, & Sergio Escalera. (2012). Error Correcting Output Codes for multiclass classification: Application to two image vision problems. In 16th symposium on Artificial Intelligence & Signal Processing (pp. 508–513). IEEE Xplore.
Abstract: Error-correcting output codes (ECOC) represents a powerful framework to deal with multiclass classification problems based on combining binary classifiers. The key factor affecting the performance of ECOC methods is the independence of binary classifiers, without which the ECOC method would be ineffective. In spite of its ability on classification of problems with relatively large number of classes, it has been applied in few real world problems. In this paper, we investigate the behavior of the ECOC approach on two image vision problems: logo recognition and shape classification using Decision Tree and AdaBoost as the base learners. The results show that the ECOC method can be used to improve the classification performance in comparison with the classical multiclass approaches.
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Albert Gordo, Jose Antonio Rodriguez, Florent Perronnin, & Ernest Valveny. (2012). Leveraging category-level labels for instance-level image retrieval. In 25th IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (pp. 3045–3052). IEEE Xplore.
Abstract: In this article, we focus on the problem of large-scale instance-level image retrieval. For efficiency reasons, it is common to represent an image by a fixed-length descriptor which is subsequently encoded into a small number of bits. We note that most encoding techniques include an unsupervised dimensionality reduction step. Our goal in this work is to learn a better subspace in a supervised manner. We especially raise the following question: “can category-level labels be used to learn such a subspace?” To answer this question, we experiment with four learning techniques: the first one is based on a metric learning framework, the second one on attribute representations, the third one on Canonical Correlation Analysis (CCA) and the fourth one on Joint Subspace and Classifier Learning (JSCL). While the first three approaches have been applied in the past to the image retrieval problem, we believe we are the first to show the usefulness of JSCL in this context. In our experiments, we use ImageNet as a source of category-level labels and report retrieval results on two standard dataseis: INRIA Holidays and the University of Kentucky benchmark. Our experimental study shows that metric learning and attributes do not lead to any significant improvement in retrieval accuracy, as opposed to CCA and JSCL. As an example, we report on Holidays an increase in accuracy from 39.3% to 48.6% with 32-dimensional representations. Overall JSCL is shown to yield the best results.
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Albert Gordo, Florent Perronnin, & Ernest Valveny. (2012). Document classification using multiple views. In 10th IAPR International Workshop on Document Analysis Systems (pp. 33–37). IEEE Computer Society Washington.
Abstract: The combination of multiple features or views when representing documents or other kinds of objects usually leads to improved results in classification (and retrieval) tasks. Most systems assume that those views will be available both at training and test time. However, some views may be too `expensive' to be available at test time. In this paper, we consider the use of Canonical Correlation Analysis to leverage `expensive' views that are available only at training time. Experimental results show that this information may significantly improve the results in a classification task.
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Petia Radeva, A.Amini, J.Huang, & Enric Marti. (1996). Deformable B-Solids and Implicit Snakes for Localization and Tracking of SPAMM MRI-Data. In Workshop on Mathematical Methods in Biomedical Image Analysis (pp. 192–201). IEEE Computer Society.
Abstract: To date, MRI-SPAMM data from different image slices have been analyzed independently. In this paper, we propose an approach for 3D tag localization and tracking of SPAMM data by a novel deformable B-solid. The solid is defined in terms of a 3D tensor product B-spline. The isoparametric curves of the B-spline solid have special importance. These are termed implicit snakes as they deform under image forces from tag lines in different image slices. The localization and tracking of tag lines is performed under constraints of continuity and smoothness of the B-solid. The framework unifies the problems of localization, and displacement fitting and interpolation into the same procedure utilizing B-spline bases for interpolation. To track motion from boundaries and restrict image forces to the myocardium, a volumetric model is employed as a pair of coupled endocardial and epicardial B-spline surfaces. To recover deformations in the LV an energy-minimization problem is posed where both tag and ...
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Eduard Vazquez, Ramon Baldrich, Joost Van de Weijer, & Maria Vanrell. (2011). Describing Reflectances for Colour Segmentation Robust to Shadows, Highlights and Textures. TPAMI - IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 33(5), 917–930.
Abstract: The segmentation of a single material reflectance is a challenging problem due to the considerable variation in image measurements caused by the geometry of the object, shadows, and specularities. The combination of these effects has been modeled by the dichromatic reflection model. However, the application of the model to real-world images is limited due to unknown acquisition parameters and compression artifacts. In this paper, we present a robust model for the shape of a single material reflectance in histogram space. The method is based on a multilocal creaseness analysis of the histogram which results in a set of ridges representing the material reflectances. The segmentation method derived from these ridges is robust to both shadow, shading and specularities, and texture in real-world images. We further complete the method by incorporating prior knowledge from image statistics, and incorporate spatial coherence by using multiscale color contrast information. Results obtained show that our method clearly outperforms state-of-the-art segmentation methods on a widely used segmentation benchmark, having as a main characteristic its excellent performance in the presence of shadows and highlights at low computational cost.
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Angel Sappa, Fadi Dornaika, Daniel Ponsa, David Geronimo, & Antonio Lopez. (2008). An Efficient Approach to Onboard Stereo Vision System Pose Estimation. TITS - IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, 9(3), 476–490.
Abstract: This paper presents an efficient technique for estimating the pose of an onboard stereo vision system relative to the environment’s dominant surface area, which is supposed to be the road surface. Unlike previous approaches, it can be used either for urban or highway scenarios since it is not based on a specific visual traffic feature extraction but on 3-D raw data points. The whole process is performed in the Euclidean space and consists of two stages. Initially, a compact 2-D representation of the original 3-D data points is computed. Then, a RANdom SAmple Consensus (RANSAC) based least-squares approach is used to fit a plane to the road. Fast RANSAC fitting is obtained by selecting points according to a probability function that takes into account the density of points at a given depth. Finally, stereo camera height and pitch angle are computed related to the fitted road plane. The proposed technique is intended to be used in driverassistance systems for applications such as vehicle or pedestrian detection. Experimental results on urban environments, which are the most challenging scenarios (i.e., flat/uphill/downhill driving, speed bumps, and car’s accelerations), are presented. These results are validated with manually annotated ground truth. Additionally, comparisons with previous works are presented to show the improvements in the central processing unit processing time, as well as in the accuracy of the obtained results.
Keywords: Camera extrinsic parameter estimation, ground plane estimation, onboard stereo vision system
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Aura Hernandez-Sabate, Monica Mitiko, Sergio Shiguemi, & Debora Gil. (2010). A validation protocol for assessing cardiac phase retrieval in IntraVascular UltraSound. In Computing in Cardiology (Vol. 37, pp. 899–902). IEEE.
Abstract: A good reliable approach to cardiac triggering is of utmost importance in obtaining accurate quantitative results of atherosclerotic plaque burden from the analysis of IntraVascular UltraSound. Although, in the last years, there has been an increase in research of methods for retrospective gating, there is no general consensus in a validation protocol. Many methods are based on quality assessment of longitudinal cuts appearance and those reporting quantitative numbers do not follow a standard protocol. Such heterogeneity in validation protocols makes faithful comparison across methods a difficult task. We propose a validation protocol based on the variability of the retrieved cardiac phase and explore the capability of several quality measures for quantifying such variability. An ideal detector, suitable for its application in clinical practice, should produce stable phases. That is, it should always sample the same cardiac cycle fraction. In this context, one should measure the variability (variance) of a candidate sampling with respect a ground truth (reference) sampling, since the variance would indicate how spread we are aiming a target. In order to quantify the deviation between the sampling and the ground truth, we have considered two quality scores reported in the literature: signed distance to the closest reference sample and distance to the right of each reference sample. We have also considered the residuals of the regression line of reference against candidate sampling. The performance of the measures has been explored on a set of synthetic samplings covering different cardiac cycle fractions and variabilities. From our simulations, we conclude that the metrics related to distances are sensitive to the shift considered while the residuals are robust against fraction and variabilities as far as one can establish a pair-wise correspondence between candidate and reference. We will further investigate the impact of false positive and negative detections in experimental data.
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Patricia Marquez, Debora Gil, & Aura Hernandez-Sabate. (2011). A Confidence Measure for Assessing Optical Flow Accuracy in the Absence of Ground Truth. In IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision – Workshops (pp. 2042–2049). Barcelona (Spain): IEEE.
Abstract: Optical flow is a valuable tool for motion analysis in autonomous navigation systems. A reliable application requires determining the accuracy of the computed optical flow. This is a main challenge given the absence of ground truth in real world sequences. This paper introduces a measure of optical flow accuracy for Lucas-Kanade based flows in terms of the numerical stability of the data-term. We call this measure optical flow condition number. A statistical analysis over ground-truth data show a good statistical correlation between the condition number and optical flow error. Experiments on driving sequences illustrate its potential for autonomous navigation systems.
Keywords: IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision – Workshops
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Maria Salamo, & Sergio Escalera. (2011). Increasing Retrieval Quality in Conversational Recommenders. TKDE - IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, 99, 1.
Abstract: IF JCR CCIA 2.286 2009 24/103
JCR Impact Factor 2010: 1.851
A major task of research in conversational recommender systems is personalization. Critiquing is a common and powerful form of feedback, where a user can express her feature preferences by applying a series of directional critiques over the recommendations instead of providing specific preference values. Incremental Critiquing is a conversational recommender system that uses critiquing as a feedback to efficiently personalize products. The expectation is that in each cycle the system retrieves the products that best satisfy the user’s soft product preferences from a minimal information input. In this paper, we present a novel technique that increases retrieval quality based on a combination of compatibility and similarity scores. Under the hypothesis that a user learns Turing the recommendation process, we propose two novel exponential reinforcement learning approaches for compatibility that take into account both the instant at which the user makes a critique and the number of satisfied critiques. Moreover, we consider that the impact of features on the similarity differs according to the preferences manifested by the user. We propose a global weighting approach that uses a common weight for nearest cases in order to focus on groups of relevant products. We show that our methodology significantly improves recommendation efficiency in four data sets of different sizes in terms of session length in comparison with state-of-the-art approaches. Moreover, our recommender shows higher robustness against noisy user data when compared to classical approaches
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Albert Andaluz, Francesc Carreras, Cristina Santa Marta, & Debora Gil. (2012). Myocardial torsion estimation with Tagged-MRI in the OsiriX platform. In Wiro Niessen(Erasmus MC) and Marc Modat(UCL) (Ed.), ISBI Workshop on Open Source Medical Image Analysis software. IEEE.
Abstract: Myocardial torsion (MT) plays a crucial role in the assessment of the functionality of the
left ventricle. For this purpose, the IAM group at the CVC has developed the Harmonic Phase Flow (HPF) plugin for the Osirix DICOM platform . We have validated its funcionalty on sequences acquired using different protocols and including healthy and pathological cases. Results show similar torsion trends for SPAMM acquisitions, with pathological cases introducing expected deviations from the ground truth. Finally, we provide the plugin free of charge at http://iam.cvc.uab.es
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Javier Marin, David Vazquez, Antonio Lopez, Jaume Amores, & Bastian Leibe. (2013). Random Forests of Local Experts for Pedestrian Detection. In 15th IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision (pp. 2592–2599). IEEE.
Abstract: Pedestrian detection is one of the most challenging tasks in computer vision, and has received a lot of attention in the last years. Recently, some authors have shown the advantages of using combinations of part/patch-based detectors in order to cope with the large variability of poses and the existence of partial occlusions. In this paper, we propose a pedestrian detection method that efficiently combines multiple local experts by means of a Random Forest ensemble. The proposed method works with rich block-based representations such as HOG and LBP, in such a way that the same features are reused by the multiple local experts, so that no extra computational cost is needed with respect to a holistic method. Furthermore, we demonstrate how to integrate the proposed approach with a cascaded architecture in order to achieve not only high accuracy but also an acceptable efficiency. In particular, the resulting detector operates at five frames per second using a laptop machine. We tested the proposed method with well-known challenging datasets such as Caltech, ETH, Daimler, and INRIA. The method proposed in this work consistently ranks among the top performers in all the datasets, being either the best method or having a small difference with the best one.
Keywords: ADAS; Random Forest; Pedestrian Detection
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David Vazquez, Antonio Lopez, & Daniel Ponsa. (2012). Unsupervised Domain Adaptation of Virtual and Real Worlds for Pedestrian Detection. In 21st International Conference on Pattern Recognition (pp. 3492–3495). Tsukuba Science City, JAPAN: IEEE.
Abstract: Vision-based object detectors are crucial for different applications. They rely on learnt object models. Ideally, we would like to deploy our vision system in the scenario where it must operate, and lead it to self-learn how to distinguish the objects of interest, i.e., without human intervention. However, the learning of each object model requires labelled samples collected through a tiresome manual process. For instance, we are interested in exploring the self-training of a pedestrian detector for driver assistance systems. Our first approach to avoid manual labelling consisted in the use of samples coming from realistic computer graphics, so that their labels are automatically available [12]. This would make possible the desired self-training of our pedestrian detector. However, as we showed in [14], between virtual and real worlds it may be a dataset shift. In order to overcome it, we propose the use of unsupervised domain adaptation techniques that avoid human intervention during the adaptation process. In particular, this paper explores the use of the transductive SVM (T-SVM) learning algorithm in order to adapt virtual and real worlds for pedestrian detection (Fig. 1).
Keywords: Pedestrian Detection; Domain Adaptation; Virtual worlds
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Sergio Vera, Miguel Angel Gonzalez Ballester, & Debora Gil. (2012). A medial map capturing the essential geometry of organs. In ISBI Workshop on Open Source Medical Image Analysis software (1691 - 1694). IEEE.
Abstract: Medial representations are powerful tools for describing and parameterizing the volumetric shape of anatomical structures. Accurate computation of one pixel wide medial surfaces is mandatory. Those surfaces must represent faithfully the geometry of the volume. Although morphological methods produce excellent results in 2D, their complexity and quality drops across dimensions, due to a more complex description of pixel neighborhoods. This paper introduces a continuous operator for accurate and efficient computation of medial structures of arbitrary dimension. Our experiments show its higher performance for medical imaging applications in terms of simplicity of medial structures and capability for reconstructing the anatomical volume
Keywords: Medial Surface Representation, Volume Reconstruction,Geometry , Image reconstruction , Liver , Manifolds , Shape , Surface morphology , Surface reconstruction
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