Abstract: This paper describes an approach to human action recognition based on a probabilistic optimization model of body parts using hidden Markov model (HMM). Our method is able to distinguish between similar actions by only considering the body parts having major contribution to the actions, for example, legs for walking, jogging and running; arms for boxing, waving and clapping. We apply HMMs to model the stochastic movement of the body parts for action recognition. The HMM construction uses an ensemble of body-part detectors, followed by grouping of part detections, to perform human identification. Three example-based body-part detectors are trained to detect three components of the human body: the head, legs and arms. These detectors cope with viewpoint changes and self-occlusions through the use of ten sub-classifiers that detect body parts over a specific range of viewpoints. Each sub-classifier is a support vector machine trained on features selected for the discriminative power for each particular part/viewpoint combination. Grouping of these detections is performed using a simple geometric constraint model that yields a viewpoint-invariant human detector. We test our approach on three publicly available action datasets: the KTH dataset, Weizmann dataset and HumanEva dataset. Our results illustrate that with a simple and compact representation we can achieve robust recognition of human actions comparable to the most complex, state-of-the-art methods.

Abstract: The problem of training classifiers only with target data arises in many applications where non-target data are too costly, difficult to obtain, or not available at all. Several one-class classification methods have been presented to solve this problem, but most of the methods are highly sensitive to the presence of outliers in the target class. Ensemble methods have therefore been proposed as a powerful way to improve the classification performance of binary/multi-class learning algorithms by introducing diversity into classifiers.
However, their application to one-class classification has been rather limited. In
this paper, we present a new ensemble method based on a non-parametric weighted bagging strategy for one-class classification, to improve accuracy in the presence of outliers. While the standard bagging strategy assumes a uniform data distribution, the method we propose here estimates a probability density based on a forest structure of the data. This assumption allows the estimation of data distribution from the computation of simple univariate and bivariate kernel densities. Experiments using original and noisy versions of 20 different datasets show that bagging ensemble methods applied to different one-class classifiers outperform base one-class classification methods. Moreover, we show that, in noisy versions of the datasets, the non-parametric weighted bagging strategy we propose outperforms the classical bagging strategy in a statistically significant way.

Abstract: This paper addresses the static and dynamic recognition of basic facial expressions. It has two main contributions. First, we introduce a view- and texture-independent scheme that exploits facial action parameters estimated by an appearance-based 3D face tracker. We represent the learned facial actions associated with different facial expressions by time series. Second, we compare this dynamic scheme with a static one based on analyzing individual snapshots and show that the former performs better than the latter. We provide evaluations of performance using three subspace learning techniques: linear discriminant analysis, non-parametric discriminant analysis and support vector machines.

Abstract: In general, discretization in the motion vector domain yields an intractable number of labels. In this paper we propose an approach that can reduce general optical flow to the constrained matching problem by pre-estimating a 2D disparity labeling map of the desired discrete motion vector function. One of the goals of the proposed paper is estimating coarse distribution of motion vectors and then utilizing this distribution as global constraints for discrete optical flow estimation. This pre-estimation is done with a simple frame-to-frame correlation technique also known as the digital symmetric-phase-only-filter (SPOF). We discover a strong correlation between the output of the SPOF and the motion vector distribution of the related optical flow. The two step matching paradigm for optical flow estimation is applied: pixel accuracy (integer flow), and subpixel accuracy estimation. The matching problem is solved by global optimization. Experiments on the Middlebury optical flow datasets confirm our intuitive assumptions about strong correlation between motion vector distribution of optical flow and maximal peaks of SPOF outputs. The overall performance of the proposed method is promising and achieves state-of-the-art results on the Middlebury benchmark.

Abstract: The operational model of agonism assumes that the maximum effect a particular receptor system can achieve (the Em parameter) is fixed. Em estimates are above but close to the asymptotic maximum effects of endogenous agonists. The concept of Em is contradicted by superagonists and those positive allosteric modulators that significantly increase the maximum effect of endogenous agonists. An extension of the operational model is proposed that assumes that the Em parameter does not necessarily have a single value for a receptor system but has multiple values associated to multiple active receptor conformations. The model provides a mechanistic link between active receptor conformation and agonist efficacy, which can be useful for the analysis of agonist response under different receptor scenarios.

Abstract: Vision-based road detection is important for different applications in transportation, such as autonomous driving, vehicle collision warning, and pedestrian crossing detection. Common approaches to road detection are based on low-level road appearance (e.g., color or texture) and neglect of the scene geometry and context. Hence, using only low-level features makes these algorithms highly depend on structured roads, road homogeneity, and lighting conditions. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to classify road geometries for road detection through the analysis of scene composition and temporal coherence. Road geometry classification is proposed by building corresponding models from training images containing prototypical road geometries. We propose adaptive shape models where spatial pyramids are steered by the inherent spatial structure of road images. To reduce the influence of lighting variations, invariant features are used. Large-scale experiments show that the proposed road geometry classifier yields a high recognition rate of 73.57% ± 13.1, clearly outperforming other state-of-the-art methods. Including road shape information improves road detection results over existing appearance-based methods. Finally, it is shown that invariant features and temporal information provide robustness against disturbing imaging conditions.

Abstract: Aggregates of misfolded proteins are a hallmark of many age-related diseases. Recently, they have been linked to aging of Escherichia coli (E. coli) where protein aggregates accumulate at the old pole region of the aging bacterium. Because of the potential of E. coli as a model organism, elucidating aging and protein aggregation in this bacterium may pave the way to significant advances in our global understanding of aging. A first obstacle along this path is to decipher the mechanisms by which protein aggregates are targeted to specific intercellular locations. Here, using an integrated approach based on individual-based modeling, time-lapse fluorescence microscopy and automated image analysis, we show that the movement of aging-related protein aggregates in E. coli is purely diffusive (Brownian). Using single-particle tracking of protein aggregates in live E. coli cells, we estimated the average size and diffusion constant of the aggregates. Our results provide evidence that the aggregates passively diffuse within the cell, with diffusion constants that depend on their size in agreement with the Stokes-Einstein law. However, the aggregate displacements along the cell long axis are confined to a region that roughly corresponds to the nucleoid-free space in the cell pole, thus confirming the importance of increased macromolecular crowding in the nucleoids. We thus used 3D individual-based modeling to show that these three ingredients (diffusion, aggregation and diffusion hindrance in the nucleoids) are sufficient and necessary to reproduce the available experimental data on aggregate localization in the cells. Taken together, our results strongly support the hypothesis that the localization of aging-related protein aggregates in the poles of E. coli results from the coupling of passive diffusion-aggregation with spatially non-homogeneous macromolecular crowding. They further support the importance of “soft” intracellular structuring (based on macromolecular crowding) in diffusion-based protein localization in E. coli.