Pierluigi Casale, Oriol Pujol, & Petia Radeva. (2012). Personalization and User Verification in Wearable Systems using Biometric Walking Patterns. PUC - Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 16(5), 563–580.
Abstract: In this article, a novel technique for user’s authentication and verification using gait as a biometric unobtrusive pattern is proposed. The method is based on a two stages pipeline. First, a general activity recognition classifier is personalized for an specific user using a small sample of her/his walking pattern. As a result, the system is much more selective with respect to the new walking pattern. A second stage verifies whether the user is an authorized one or not. This stage is defined as a one-class classification problem. In order to solve this problem, a four-layer architecture is built around the geometric concept of convex hull. This architecture allows to improve robustness to outliers, modeling non-convex shapes, and to take into account temporal coherence information. Two different scenarios are proposed as validation with two different wearable systems. First, a custom high-performance wearable system is built and used in a free environment. A second dataset is acquired from an Android-based commercial device in a ‘wild’ scenario with rough terrains, adversarial conditions, crowded places and obstacles. Results on both systems and datasets are very promising, reducing the verification error rates by an order of magnitude with respect to the state-of-the-art technologies.
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Francesco Ciompi, Oriol Pujol, Carlo Gatta, Marina Alberti, Simone Balocco, Xavier Carrillo, et al. (2012). HoliMab: A Holistic Approach for Media-Adventitia Border Detection in Intravascular Ultrasound. MIA - Medical Image Analysis, 16(6), 1085–1100.
Abstract: We present a fully automatic methodology for the detection of the Media-Adventitia border (MAb) in human coronary artery in Intravascular Ultrasound (IVUS) images. A robust border detection is achieved by means of a holistic interpretation of the detection problem where the target object, i.e. the media layer, is considered as part of the whole vessel in the image and all the relationships between tissues are learnt. A fairly general framework exploiting multi-class tissue characterization as well as contextual information on the morphology and the appearance of the tissues is presented. The methodology is (i) validated through an exhaustive comparison with both Inter-observer variability on two challenging databases and (ii) compared with state-of-the-art methods for the detection of the MAb in IVUS. The obtained averaged values for the mean radial distance and the percentage of area difference are 0.211 mm and 10.1%, respectively. The applicability of the proposed methodology to clinical practice is also discussed.
Keywords: Media–Adventitia border detection; Intravascular ultrasound; Multi-Scale Stacked Sequential Learning; Error-correcting output codes; Holistic segmentation
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Santiago Segui, Michal Drozdzal, Fernando Vilariño, Carolina Malagelada, Fernando Azpiroz, Petia Radeva, et al. (2012). Categorization and Segmentation of Intestinal Content Frames for Wireless Capsule Endoscopy. TITB - IEEE Transactions on Information Technology in Biomedicine, 16(6), 1341–1352.
Abstract: Wireless capsule endoscopy (WCE) is a device that allows the direct visualization of gastrointestinal tract with minimal discomfort for the patient, but at the price of a large amount of time for screening. In order to reduce this time, several works have proposed to automatically remove all the frames showing intestinal content. These methods label frames as {intestinal content – clear} without discriminating between types of content (with different physiological meaning) or the portion of image covered. In addition, since the presence of intestinal content has been identified as an indicator of intestinal motility, its accurate quantification can show a potential clinical relevance. In this paper, we present a method for the robust detection and segmentation of intestinal content in WCE images, together with its further discrimination between turbid liquid and bubbles. Our proposal is based on a twofold system. First, frames presenting intestinal content are detected by a support vector machine classifier using color and textural information. Second, intestinal content frames are segmented into {turbid, bubbles, and clear} regions. We show a detailed validation using a large dataset. Our system outperforms previous methods and, for the first time, discriminates between turbid from bubbles media.
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Antonio Hernandez, Carlo Gatta, Sergio Escalera, Laura Igual, Victoria Martin-Yuste, Manel Sabate, et al. (2012). Accurate coronary centerline extraction, caliber estimation and catheter detection in angiographies. TITB - IEEE Transactions on Information Technology in Biomedicine, 16(6), 1332–1340.
Abstract: Segmentation of coronary arteries in X-Ray angiography is a fundamental tool to evaluate arterial diseases and choose proper coronary treatment. The accurate segmentation of coronary arteries has become an important topic for the registration of different modalities which allows physicians rapid access to different medical imaging information from Computed Tomography (CT) scans or Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). In this paper, we propose an accurate fully automatic algorithm based on Graph-cuts for vessel centerline extraction, caliber estimation, and catheter detection. Vesselness, geodesic paths, and a new multi-scale edgeness map are combined to customize the Graph-cuts approach to the segmentation of tubular structures, by means of a global optimization of the Graph-cuts energy function. Moreover, a novel supervised learning methodology that integrates local and contextual information is proposed for automatic catheter detection. We evaluate the method performance on three datasets coming from different imaging systems. The method performs as good as the expert observer w.r.t. centerline detection and caliber estimation. Moreover, the method discriminates between arteries and catheter with an accuracy of 96.5%, sensitivity of 72%, and precision of 97.4%.
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T. Mouats, N. Aouf, Angel Sappa, Cristhian A. Aguilera-Carrasco, & Ricardo Toledo. (2015). Multi-Spectral Stereo Odometry. TITS - IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, 16(3), 1210–1224.
Abstract: In this paper, we investigate the problem of visual odometry for ground vehicles based on the simultaneous utilization of multispectral cameras. It encompasses a stereo rig composed of an optical (visible) and thermal sensors. The novelty resides in the localization of the cameras as a stereo setup rather
than two monocular cameras of different spectrums. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time such task is attempted. Log-Gabor wavelets at different orientations and scales are used to extract interest points from both images. These are then described using a combination of frequency and spatial information within the local neighborhood. Matches between the pairs of multimodal images are computed using the cosine similarity function based
on the descriptors. Pyramidal Lucas–Kanade tracker is also introduced to tackle temporal feature matching within challenging sequences of the data sets. The vehicle egomotion is computed from the triangulated 3-D points corresponding to the matched features. A windowed version of bundle adjustment incorporating
Gauss–Newton optimization is utilized for motion estimation. An outlier removal scheme is also included within the framework to deal with outliers. Multispectral data sets were generated and used as test bed. They correspond to real outdoor scenarios captured using our multimodal setup. Finally, detailed results validating the proposed strategy are illustrated.
Keywords: Egomotion estimation; feature matching; multispectral odometry (MO); optical flow; stereo odometry; thermal imagery
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Alejandro Gonzalez Alzate, Zhijie Fang, Yainuvis Socarras, Joan Serrat, David Vazquez, Jiaolong Xu, et al. (2016). Pedestrian Detection at Day/Night Time with Visible and FIR Cameras: A Comparison. SENS - Sensors, 16(6), 820.
Abstract: Despite all the significant advances in pedestrian detection brought by computer vision for driving assistance, it is still a challenging problem. One reason is the extremely varying lighting conditions under which such a detector should operate, namely day and night time. Recent research has shown that the combination of visible and non-visible imaging modalities may increase detection accuracy, where the infrared spectrum plays a critical role. The goal of this paper is to assess the accuracy gain of different pedestrian models (holistic, part-based, patch-based) when training with images in the far infrared spectrum. Specifically, we want to compare detection accuracy on test images recorded at day and nighttime if trained (and tested) using (a) plain color images, (b) just infrared images and (c) both of them. In order to obtain results for the last item we propose an early fusion approach to combine features from both modalities. We base the evaluation on a new dataset we have built for this purpose as well as on the publicly available KAIST multispectral dataset.
Keywords: Pedestrian Detection; FIR
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Angel Sappa, P. Carvajal, Cristhian A. Aguilera-Carrasco, Miguel Oliveira, Dennis Romero, & Boris X. Vintimilla. (2016). Wavelet based visible and infrared image fusion: a comparative study. SENS - Sensors, 16(6), 1–15.
Abstract: This paper evaluates different wavelet-based cross-spectral image fusion strategies adopted to merge visible and infrared images. The objective is to find the best setup independently of the evaluation metric used to measure the performance. Quantitative performance results are obtained with state of the art approaches together with adaptations proposed in the current work. The options evaluated in the current work result from the combination of different setups in the wavelet image decomposition stage together with different fusion strategies for the final merging stage that generates the resulting representation. Most of the approaches evaluate results according to the application for which they are intended for. Sometimes a human observer is selected to judge the quality of the obtained results. In the current work, quantitative values are considered in order to find correlations between setups and performance of obtained results; these correlations can be used to define a criteria for selecting the best fusion strategy for a given pair of cross-spectral images. The whole procedure is evaluated with a large set of correctly registered visible and infrared image pairs, including both Near InfraRed (NIR) and Long Wave InfraRed (LWIR).
Keywords: Image fusion; fusion evaluation metrics; visible and infrared imaging; discrete wavelet transform
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Wenjuan Gong, Xuena Zhang, Jordi Gonzalez, Andrews Sobral, Thierry Bouwmans, Changhe Tu, et al. (2016). Human Pose Estimation from Monocular Images: A Comprehensive Survey. SENS - Sensors, 16(12), 1966.
Abstract: Human pose estimation refers to the estimation of the location of body parts and how they are connected in an image. Human pose estimation from monocular images has wide applications (e.g., image indexing). Several surveys on human pose estimation can be found in the literature, but they focus on a certain category; for example, model-based approaches or human motion analysis, etc. As far as we know, an overall review of this problem domain has yet to be provided. Furthermore, recent advancements based on deep learning have brought novel algorithms for this problem. In this paper, a comprehensive survey of human pose estimation from monocular images is carried out including milestone works and recent advancements. Based on one standard pipeline for the solution of computer vision problems, this survey splits the problem into several modules: feature extraction and description, human body models, and modeling
methods. Problem modeling methods are approached based on two means of categorization in this survey. One way to categorize includes top-down and bottom-up methods, and another way includes generative and discriminative methods. Considering the fact that one direct application of human pose estimation is to provide initialization for automatic video surveillance, there are additional sections for motion-related methods in all modules: motion features, motion models, and motion-based methods. Finally, the paper also collects 26 publicly available data sets for validation and provides error measurement methods that are frequently used.
Keywords: human pose estimation; human bodymodels; generativemethods; discriminativemethods; top-down methods; bottom-up methods
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Meysam Madadi, Sergio Escalera, Xavier Baro, & Jordi Gonzalez. (2022). End-to-end Global to Local CNN Learning for Hand Pose Recovery in Depth data. IETCV - IET Computer Vision, 16(1), 50–66.
Abstract: Despite recent advances in 3D pose estimation of human hands, especially thanks to the advent of CNNs and depth cameras, this task is still far from being solved. This is mainly due to the highly non-linear dynamics of fingers, which make hand model training a challenging task. In this paper, we exploit a novel hierarchical tree-like structured CNN, in which branches are trained to become specialized in predefined subsets of hand joints, called local poses. We further fuse local pose features, extracted from hierarchical CNN branches, to learn higher order dependencies among joints in the final pose by end-to-end training. Lastly, the loss function used is also defined to incorporate appearance and physical constraints about doable hand motion and deformation. Finally, we introduce a non-rigid data augmentation approach to increase the amount of training depth data. Experimental results suggest that feeding a tree-shaped CNN, specialized in local poses, into a fusion network for modeling joints correlations and dependencies, helps to increase the precision of final estimations, outperforming state-of-the-art results on NYU and SyntheticHand datasets.
Keywords: Computer vision; data acquisition; human computer interaction; learning (artificial intelligence); pose estimation
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Lluis Pere de las Heras, Ahmed Sheraz, Marcus Liwicki, Ernest Valveny, & Gemma Sanchez. (2014). Statistical Segmentation and Structural Recognition for Floor Plan Interpretation. IJDAR - International Journal on Document Analysis and Recognition, 17(3), 221–237.
Abstract: A generic method for floor plan analysis and interpretation is presented in this article. The method, which is mainly inspired by the way engineers draw and interpret floor plans, applies two recognition steps in a bottom-up manner. First, basic building blocks, i.e., walls, doors, and windows are detected using a statistical patch-based segmentation approach. Second, a graph is generated, and structural pattern recognition techniques are applied to further locate the main entities, i.e., rooms of the building. The proposed approach is able to analyze any type of floor plan regardless of the notation used. We have evaluated our method on different publicly available datasets of real architectural floor plans with different notations. The overall detection and recognition accuracy is about 95 %, which is significantly better than any other state-of-the-art method. Our approach is generic enough such that it could be easily adopted to the recognition and interpretation of any other printed machine-generated structured documents.
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Marçal Rusiñol, Lluis Pere de las Heras, & Oriol Ramos Terrades. (2014). Flowchart Recognition for Non-Textual Information Retrieval in Patent Search. IR - Information Retrieval, 17(5-6), 545–562.
Abstract: Relatively little research has been done on the topic of patent image retrieval and in general in most of the approaches the retrieval is performed in terms of a similarity measure between the query image and the images in the corpus. However, systems aimed at overcoming the semantic gap between the visual description of patent images and their conveyed concepts would be very helpful for patent professionals. In this paper we present a flowchart recognition method aimed at achieving a structured representation of flowchart images that can be further queried semantically. The proposed method was submitted to the CLEF-IP 2012 flowchart recognition task. We report the obtained results on this dataset.
Keywords: Flowchart recognition; Patent documents; Text/graphics separation; Raster-to-vector conversion; Symbol recognition
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David Fernandez, Josep Llados, & Alicia Fornes. (2014). A graph-based approach for segmenting touching lines in historical handwritten documents. IJDAR - International Journal on Document Analysis and Recognition, 17(3), 293–312.
Abstract: Text line segmentation in handwritten documents is an important task in the recognition of historical documents. Handwritten document images contain text lines with multiple orientations, touching and overlapping characters between consecutive text lines and different document structures, making line segmentation a difficult task. In this paper, we present a new approach for handwritten text line segmentation solving the problems of touching components, curvilinear text lines and horizontally overlapping components. The proposed algorithm formulates line segmentation as finding the central path in the area between two consecutive lines. This is solved as a graph traversal problem. A graph is constructed using the skeleton of the image. Then, a path-finding algorithm is used to find the optimum path between text lines. The proposed algorithm has been evaluated on a comprehensive dataset consisting of five databases: ICDAR2009, ICDAR2013, UMD, the George Washington and the Barcelona Marriages Database. The proposed method outperforms the state-of-the-art considering the different types and difficulties of the benchmarking data.
Keywords: Text line segmentation; Handwritten documents; Document image processing; Historical document analysis
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Marçal Rusiñol, Volkmar Frinken, Dimosthenis Karatzas, Andrew Bagdanov, & Josep Llados. (2014). Multimodal page classification in administrative document image streams. IJDAR - International Journal on Document Analysis and Recognition, 17(4), 331–341.
Abstract: In this paper, we present a page classification application in a banking workflow. The proposed architecture represents administrative document images by merging visual and textual descriptions. The visual description is based on a hierarchical representation of the pixel intensity distribution. The textual description uses latent semantic analysis to represent document content as a mixture of topics. Several off-the-shelf classifiers and different strategies for combining visual and textual cues have been evaluated. A final step uses an n-gram model of the page stream allowing a finer-grained classification of pages. The proposed method has been tested in a real large-scale environment and we report results on a dataset of 70,000 pages.
Keywords: Digital mail room; Multimodal page classification; Visual and textual document description
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Sergio Escalera, Vassilis Athitsos, & Isabelle Guyon. (2016). Challenges in multimodal gesture recognition. JMLR - Journal of Machine Learning Research, 17, 1–54.
Abstract: This paper surveys the state of the art on multimodal gesture recognition and introduces the JMLR special topic on gesture recognition 2011-2015. We began right at the start of the KinectTMrevolution when inexpensive infrared cameras providing image depth recordings became available. We published papers using this technology and other more conventional methods, including regular video cameras, to record data, thus providing a good overview of uses of machine learning and computer vision using multimodal data in this area of application. Notably, we organized a series of challenges and made available several datasets we recorded for that purpose, including tens of thousands
of videos, which are available to conduct further research. We also overview recent state of the art works on gesture recognition based on a proposed taxonomy for gesture recognition, discussing challenges and future lines of research.
Keywords: Gesture Recognition; Time Series Analysis; Multimodal Data Analysis; Computer Vision; Pattern Recognition; Wearable sensors; Infrared Cameras; KinectTM
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Arash Akbarinia, & Karl R. Gegenfurtner. (2017). Metameric Mismatching in Natural and Artificial Reflectances. JV - Journal of Vision, 17(10), 390.
Abstract: The human visual system and most digital cameras sample the continuous spectral power distribution through three classes of receptors. This implies that two distinct spectral reflectances can result in identical tristimulus values under one illuminant and differ under another – the problem of metamer mismatching. It is still debated how frequent this issue arises in the real world, using naturally occurring reflectance functions and common illuminants.
We gathered more than ten thousand spectral reflectance samples from various sources, covering a wide range of environments (e.g., flowers, plants, Munsell chips) and evaluated their responses under a number of natural and artificial source of lights. For each pair of reflectance functions, we estimated the perceived difference using the CIE-defined distance ΔE2000 metric in Lab color space.
The degree of metamer mismatching depended on the lower threshold value l when two samples would be considered to lead to equal sensor excitations (ΔE < l), and on the higher threshold value h when they would be considered different. For example, for l=h=1, we found that 43.129 comparisons out of a total of 6×107 pairs would be considered metameric (1 in 104). For l=1 and h=5, this number reduced to 705 metameric pairs (2 in 106). Extreme metamers, for instance l=1 and h=10, were rare (22 pairs or 6 in 108), as were instances where the two members of a metameric pair would be assigned to different color categories. Not unexpectedly, we observed variations among different reflectance databases and illuminant spectra with more frequency under artificial illuminants than natural ones.
Overall, our numbers are not very different from those obtained earlier (Foster et al, JOSA A, 2006). However, our results also show that the degree of metamerism is typically not very strong and that category switches hardly ever occur.
Keywords: Metamer; colour perception; spectral discrimination; photoreceptors
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