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.

Abstract: Edges are caused by several imaging cues such as shadow, material and illumination transitions. Classification methods have been proposed which are solely based on photometric information, ignoring geometry to classify the physical nature of edges in images. In this paper, the aim is to present a novel strategy to handle both photometric and geometric information for edge classification. Photometric information is obtained through the use of quasi-invariants while geometric information is derived from the orientation and contrast of edges. Different combination frameworks are compared with a new principled approach that captures both information into the same descriptor. From large scale experiments on different datasets, it is shown that, in addition to photometric information, the geometry of edges is an important visual cue to distinguish between different edge types. It is concluded that by combining both cues the performance improves by more than 7% for shadows and highlights.

Abstract: In this paper we propose an unsupervised segmentation-free method for word spotting in document images.
Documents are represented with a grid of HOG descriptors, and a sliding window approach is used to locate the document regions that are most similar to the query. We use the exemplar SVM framework to produce a better representation of the query in an unsupervised way. Finally, the document descriptors are precomputed and compressed with Product Quantization. This offers two advantages: first, a large number of documents can be kept in RAM memory at the same time. Second, the sliding window becomes significantly faster since distances between quantized HOG descriptors can be precomputed. Our results significantly outperform other segmentation-free methods in the literature, both in accuracy and in speed and memory usage.

Abstract: This thesis is devoted to moving shadows detection and suppression. Shadows could be defined as the parts of the scene that are not directly illuminated by a light source due to obstructing object or objects. Often, moving shadows in images sequences are undesirable since they could cause degradation of the expected results during processing of images for object detection, segmentation, scene surveillance or similar purposes. In this thesis first moving shadow detection methods are exhaustively overviewed. Beside the mentioned methods from literature and to compensate their limitations a new moving shadow detection method is proposed. It requires no prior knowledge about the scene, nor is it restricted to assumptions about specific scene structures. Furthermore, the technique can detect both achromatic and chromatic shadows even in the presence of camouflage that occurs when foreground regions are very similar in color to shadowed regions. The method exploits local color constancy properties due to reflectance suppression over shadowed regions. To detect shadowed regions in a scene the values of the background image are divided by values of the current frame in the RGB color space. In the thesis how this luminance ratio can be used to identify segments with low gradient constancy is shown, which in turn distinguish shadows from foreground. Experimental results on a collection of publicly available datasets illustrate the superior performance of the proposed method compared with the most sophisticated state-of-the-art shadow detection algorithms. These results show that the proposed approach is robust and accurate over a broad range of shadow types and challenging video conditions.

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.

Abstract: This paper presents an evaluation framework for multimodal stereo matching, which allows to compare the performance of four similarity functions. Additionally, it presents details of a multimodal stereo head that supply thermal infrared and color images, as well as, aspects of its calibration and rectification. The pipeline includes a novel method for the disparity selection, which is suitable for evaluating the similarity functions. Finally, a benchmark for comparing different initializations of the proposed framework is presented. Similarity functions are based on mutual information, gradient orientation and scale space representations. Their evaluation is performed using two metrics: i) disparity error, and ii) number of correct matches on planar regions. In addition to the proposed evaluation, the current paper also shows that 3D sparse representations can be recovered from such a multimodal stereo head.

Abstract: Deep understanding of myocardial structure linking morphology and func- tion of the heart would unravel crucial knowledge for medical and surgical clinical procedures and studies. Diffusion tensor MRI provides a discrete measurement of the 3D arrangement of myocardial fibres by the observation of local anisotropic
diffusion of water molecules in biological tissues. In this work, we present a multi- scale visualisation technique based on DT-MRI streamlining capable of uncovering additional properties of the architectural organisation of the heart. Methods and Materials: We selected the John Hopkins University (JHU) Canine Heart Dataset, where the long axis cardiac plane is aligned with the scanner’s Z- axis. Their equipment included a 4-element passed array coil emitting a 1.5 T. For DTI acquisition, a 3D-FSE sequence is apply. We used 200 seeds for full-scale tractography, while we applied a MIP mapping technique for simplified tractographic reconstruction. In this case, we reduced each DTI 3D volume dimensions by order- two magnitude before streamlining.
Our simplified tractographic reconstruction method keeps the main geometric features of fibres, allowing for an easier identification of their global morphological disposition, including the ventricular basal ring. Moreover, we noticed a clearly visible helical disposition of the myocardial fibres, in line with the helical myocardial band ventricular structure described by Torrent-Guasp. Finally, our simplified visualisation with single tracts identifies the main segments of the helical ventricular architecture.
DT-MRI makes possible the identification of a continuous helical architecture of the myocardial fibres, which validates Torrent-Guasp’s helical myocardial band ventricular anatomical model.