Marçal Rusiñol, & Josep Llados. (2014). Boosting the Handwritten Word Spotting Experience by Including the User in the Loop. PR - Pattern Recognition, 47(3), 1063–1072.
Abstract: In this paper, we study the effect of taking the user into account in a query-by-example handwritten word spotting framework. Several off-the-shelf query fusion and relevance feedback strategies have been tested in the handwritten word spotting context. The increase in terms of precision when the user is included in the loop is assessed using two datasets of historical handwritten documents and two baseline word spotting approaches both based on the bag-of-visual-words model. We finally present two alternative ways of presenting the results to the user that might be more attractive and suitable to the user's needs than the classic ranked list.
Keywords: Handwritten word spotting; Query by example; Relevance feedback; Query fusion; Multidimensional scaling
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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 Geronimo, & Antonio Lopez. (2014). Vision-based Pedestrian Protection Systems for Intelligent Vehicles. Springer Briefs in Computer Vision.
Abstract: Pedestrian Protection Systems (PPSs) are on-board systems aimed at detecting and tracking people in the surroundings of a vehicle in order to avoid potentially dangerous situations. These systems, together with other Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) such as lane departure warning or adaptive cruise control, are one of the most promising ways to improve traffic safety. By the use of computer vision, cameras working either in the visible or infra-red spectra have been demonstrated as a reliable sensor to perform this task. Nevertheless, the variability of human’s appearance, not only in terms of clothing and sizes but also as a result of their dynamic shape, makes pedestrians one of the most complex classes even for computer vision. Moreover, the unstructured changing and unpredictable environment in which such on-board systems must work makes detection a difficult task to be carried out with the demanded robustness. In this brief, the state of the art in PPSs is introduced through the review of the most relevant papers of the last decade. A common computational architecture is presented as a framework to organize each method according to its main contribution. More than 300 papers are referenced, most of them addressing pedestrian detection and others corresponding to the descriptors (features), pedestrian models, and learning machines used. In addition, an overview of topics such as real-time aspects, systems benchmarking and future challenges of this research area are presented.
Keywords: Computer Vision; Driver Assistance Systems; Intelligent Vehicles; Pedestrian Detection; Vulnerable Road Users
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Juan Ramon Terven Salinas, Joaquin Salas, & Bogdan Raducanu. (2014). New Opportunities for Computer Vision-Based Assistive Technology Systems for the Visually Impaired. COMP - Computer, 47(4), 52–58.
Abstract: Computing advances and increased smartphone use gives technology system designers greater flexibility in exploiting computer vision to support visually impaired users. Understanding these users' needs will certainly provide insight for the development of improved usability of computing devices.
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Bogdan Raducanu, & Fadi Dornaika. (2014). Embedding new observations via sparse-coding for non-linear manifold learning. PR - Pattern Recognition, 47(1), 480–492.
Abstract: Non-linear dimensionality reduction techniques are affected by two critical aspects: (i) the design of the adjacency graphs, and (ii) the embedding of new test data-the out-of-sample problem. For the first aspect, the proposed solutions, in general, were heuristically driven. For the second aspect, the difficulty resides in finding an accurate mapping that transfers unseen data samples into an existing manifold. Past works addressing these two aspects were heavily parametric in the sense that the optimal performance is only achieved for a suitable parameter choice that should be known in advance. In this paper, we demonstrate that the sparse representation theory not only serves for automatic graph construction as shown in recent works, but also represents an accurate alternative for out-of-sample embedding. Considering for a case study the Laplacian Eigenmaps, we applied our method to the face recognition problem. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed out-of-sample embedding, experiments are conducted using the K-nearest neighbor (KNN) and Kernel Support Vector Machines (KSVM) classifiers on six public face datasets. The experimental results show that the proposed model is able to achieve high categorization effectiveness as well as high consistency with non-linear embeddings/manifolds obtained in batch modes.
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Volkmar Frinken, Andreas Fischer, Markus Baumgartner, & Horst Bunke. (2014). Keyword spotting for self-training of BLSTM NN based handwriting recognition systems. PR - Pattern Recognition, 47(3), 1073–1082.
Abstract: The automatic transcription of unconstrained continuous handwritten text requires well trained recognition systems. The semi-supervised paradigm introduces the concept of not only using labeled data but also unlabeled data in the learning process. Unlabeled data can be gathered at little or not cost. Hence it has the potential to reduce the need for labeling training data, a tedious and costly process. Given a weak initial recognizer trained on labeled data, self-training can be used to recognize unlabeled data and add words that were recognized with high confidence to the training set for re-training. This process is not trivial and requires great care as far as selecting the elements that are to be added to the training set is concerned. In this paper, we propose to use a bidirectional long short-term memory neural network handwritten recognition system for keyword spotting in order to select new elements. A set of experiments shows the high potential of self-training for bootstrapping handwriting recognition systems, both for modern and historical handwritings, and demonstrate the benefits of using keyword spotting over previously published self-training schemes.
Keywords: Document retrieval; Keyword spotting; Handwriting recognition; Neural networks; Semi-supervised learning
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Miguel Angel Bautista, Sergio Escalera, & Oriol Pujol. (2014). On the Design of an ECOC-Compliant Genetic Algorithm. PR - Pattern Recognition, 47(2), 865–884.
Abstract: Genetic Algorithms (GA) have been previously applied to Error-Correcting Output Codes (ECOC) in state-of-the-art works in order to find a suitable coding matrix. Nevertheless, none of the presented techniques directly take into account the properties of the ECOC matrix. As a result the considered search space is unnecessarily large. In this paper, a novel Genetic strategy to optimize the ECOC coding step is presented. This novel strategy redefines the usual crossover and mutation operators in order to take into account the theoretical properties of the ECOC framework. Thus, it reduces the search space and lets the algorithm to converge faster. In addition, a novel operator that is able to enlarge the code in a smart way is introduced. The novel methodology is tested on several UCI datasets and four challenging computer vision problems. Furthermore, the analysis of the results done in terms of performance, code length and number of Support Vectors shows that the optimization process is able to find very efficient codes, in terms of the trade-off between classification performance and the number of classifiers. Finally, classification performance per dichotomizer results shows that the novel proposal is able to obtain similar or even better results while defining a more compact number of dichotomies and SVs compared to state-of-the-art approaches.
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Naveen Onkarappa, & Angel Sappa. (2014). Speed and Texture: An Empirical Study on Optical-Flow Accuracy in ADAS Scenarios. TITS - IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, 15(1), 136–147.
Abstract: IF: 3.064
Increasing mobility in everyday life has led to the concern for the safety of automotives and human life. Computer vision has become a valuable tool for developing driver assistance applications that target such a concern. Many such vision-based assisting systems rely on motion estimation, where optical flow has shown its potential. A variational formulation of optical flow that achieves a dense flow field involves a data term and regularization terms. Depending on the image sequence, the regularization has to appropriately be weighted for better accuracy of the flow field. Because a vehicle can be driven in different kinds of environments, roads, and speeds, optical-flow estimation has to be accurately computed in all such scenarios. In this paper, we first present the polar representation of optical flow, which is quite suitable for driving scenarios due to the possibility that it offers to independently update regularization factors in different directional components. Then, we study the influence of vehicle speed and scene texture on optical-flow accuracy. Furthermore, we analyze the relationships of these specific characteristics on a driving scenario (vehicle speed and road texture) with the regularization weights in optical flow for better accuracy. As required by the work in this paper, we have generated several synthetic sequences along with ground-truth flow fields.
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Simone Balocco, Carlo Gatta, Francesco Ciompi, A. Wahle, Petia Radeva, S. Carlier, et al. (2014). Standardized evaluation methodology and reference database for evaluating IVUS image segmentation. CMIG - Computerized Medical Imaging and Graphics, 38(2), 70–90.
Abstract: This paper describes an evaluation framework that allows a standardized and quantitative comparison of IVUS lumen and media segmentation algorithms. This framework has been introduced at the MICCAI 2011 Computing and Visualization for (Intra)Vascular Imaging (CVII) workshop, comparing the results of eight teams that participated.
We describe the available data-base comprising of multi-center, multi-vendor and multi-frequency IVUS datasets, their acquisition, the creation of the reference standard and the evaluation measures. The approaches address segmentation of the lumen, the media, or both borders; semi- or fully-automatic operation; and 2-D vs. 3-D methodology. Three performance measures for quantitative analysis have
been proposed. The results of the evaluation indicate that segmentation of the vessel lumen and media is possible with an accuracy that is comparable to manual annotation when semi-automatic methods are used, as well as encouraging results can be obtained also in case of fully-automatic segmentation. The analysis performed in this paper also highlights the challenges in IVUS segmentation that remains to be
solved.
Keywords: IVUS (intravascular ultrasound); Evaluation framework; Algorithm comparison; Image segmentation
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Cesar Isaza, Joaquin Salas, & Bogdan Raducanu. (2014). Rendering ground truth data sets to detect shadows cast by static objects in outdoors. MTAP - Multimedia Tools and Applications, 70(1), 557–571.
Abstract: In our work, we are particularly interested in studying the shadows cast by static objects in outdoor environments, during daytime. To assess the accuracy of a shadow detection algorithm, we need ground truth information. The collection of such information is a very tedious task because it is a process that requires manual annotation. To overcome this severe limitation, we propose in this paper a methodology to automatically render ground truth using a virtual environment. To increase the degree of realism and usefulness of the simulated environment, we incorporate in the scenario the precise longitude, latitude and elevation of the actual location of the object, as well as the sun’s position for a given time and day. To evaluate our method, we consider a qualitative and a quantitative comparison. In the quantitative one, we analyze the shadow cast by a real object in a particular geographical location and its corresponding rendered model. To evaluate qualitatively the methodology, we use some ground truth images obtained both manually and automatically.
Keywords: Synthetic ground truth data set; Sun position; Shadow detection; Static objects shadow detection
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Ariel Amato, Ivan Huerta, Mikhail Mozerov, Xavier Roca, & Jordi Gonzalez. (2014). Moving Cast Shadows Detection Methods for Video Surveillance Applications. In Augmented Vision and Reality (Vol. 6, pp. 23–47). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
Abstract: Moving cast shadows are a major concern in today’s performance from broad range of many vision-based surveillance applications because they highly difficult the object classification task. Several shadow detection methods have been reported in the literature during the last years. They are mainly divided into two domains. One usually works with static images, whereas the second one uses image sequences, namely video content. In spite of the fact that both cases can be analogously analyzed, there is a difference in the application field. The first case, shadow detection methods can be exploited in order to obtain additional geometric and semantic cues about shape and position of its casting object (‘shape from shadows’) as well as the localization of the light source. While in the second one, the main purpose is usually change detection, scene matching or surveillance (usually in a background subtraction context). Shadows can in fact modify in a negative way the shape and color of the target object and therefore affect the performance of scene analysis and interpretation in many applications. This chapter wills mainly reviews shadow detection methods as well as their taxonomies related with the second case, thus aiming at those shadows which are associated with moving objects (moving shadows).
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David Roche, Debora Gil, & Jesus Giraldo. (2014). Mathematical modeling of G protein-coupled receptor function: What can we learn from empirical and mechanistic models? In G Protein-Coupled Receptors – Modeling and Simulation Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology (Vol. 796, pp. 159–181). Springer Netherlands.
Abstract: Empirical and mechanistic models differ in their approaches to the analysis of pharmacological effect. Whereas the parameters of the former are not physical constants those of the latter embody the nature, often complex, of biology. Empirical models are exclusively used for curve fitting, merely to characterize the shape of the E/[A] curves. Mechanistic models, on the contrary, enable the examination of mechanistic hypotheses by parameter simulation. Regretfully, the many parameters that mechanistic models may include can represent a great difficulty for curve fitting, representing, thus, a challenge for computational method development. In the present study some empirical and mechanistic models are shown and the connections, which may appear in a number of cases between them, are analyzed from the curves they yield. It may be concluded that systematic and careful curve shape analysis can be extremely useful for the understanding of receptor function, ligand classification and drug discovery, thus providing a common language for the communication between pharmacologists and medicinal chemists.
Keywords: β-arrestin; biased agonism; curve fitting; empirical modeling; evolutionary algorithm; functional selectivity; G protein; GPCR; Hill coefficient; intrinsic efficacy; inverse agonism; mathematical modeling; mechanistic modeling; operational model; parameter optimization; receptor dimer; receptor oligomerization; receptor constitutive activity; signal transduction; two-state model
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Javier Marin, David Vazquez, Antonio Lopez, Jaume Amores, & Ludmila I. Kuncheva. (2014). Occlusion handling via random subspace classifiers for human detection. TSMCB - IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (Part B), 44(3), 342–354.
Abstract: This paper describes a general method to address partial occlusions for human detection in still images. The Random Subspace Method (RSM) is chosen for building a classifier ensemble robust against partial occlusions. The component classifiers are chosen on the basis of their individual and combined performance. The main contribution of this work lies in our approach’s capability to improve the detection rate when partial occlusions are present without compromising the detection performance on non occluded data. In contrast to many recent approaches, we propose a method which does not require manual labelling of body parts, defining any semantic spatial components, or using additional data coming from motion or stereo. Moreover, the method can be easily extended to other object classes. The experiments are performed on three large datasets: the INRIA person dataset, the Daimler Multicue dataset, and a new challenging dataset, called PobleSec, in which a considerable number of targets are partially occluded. The different approaches are evaluated at the classification and detection levels for both partially occluded and non-occluded data. The experimental results show that our detector outperforms state-of-the-art approaches in the presence of partial occlusions, while offering performance and reliability similar to those of the holistic approach on non-occluded data. The datasets used in our experiments have been made publicly available for benchmarking purposes
Keywords: Pedestriand Detection; occlusion handling
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Thierry Brouard, Jordi Gonzalez, Caifeng Shan, Massimo Piccardi, & Larry S. Davis. (2014). Special issue on background modeling for foreground detection in real-world dynamic scenes. MVAP - Machine Vision and Applications, 25(5), 1101–1103.
Abstract: Although background modeling and foreground detection are not mandatory steps for computer vision applications, they may prove useful as they separate the primal objects usually called “foreground” from the remaining part of the scene called “background”, and permits different algorithmic treatment in the video processing field such as video surveillance, optical motion capture, multimedia applications, teleconferencing and human–computer interfaces. Conventional background modeling methods exploit the temporal variation of each pixel to model the background, and the foreground detection is made using change detection. The last decade witnessed very significant publications on background modeling but recently new applications in which background is not static, such as recordings taken from mobile devices or Internet videos, need new developments to detect robustly moving objects in challenging environments. Thus, effective methods for robustness to deal both with dynamic backgrounds, i
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A. Ruiz, Joost Van de Weijer, & Xavier Binefa. (2014). Regularized Multi-Concept MIL for weakly-supervised facial behavior categorization. In 25th British Machine Vision Conference.
Abstract: We address the problem of estimating high-level semantic labels for videos of recorded people by means of analysing their facial expressions. This problem, to which we refer as facial behavior categorization, is a weakly-supervised learning problem where we do not have access to frame-by-frame facial gesture annotations but only weak-labels at the video level are available. Therefore, the goal is to learn a set of discriminative expressions and how they determine the video weak-labels. Facial behavior categorization can be posed as a Multi-Instance-Learning (MIL) problem and we propose a novel MIL method called Regularized Multi-Concept MIL to solve it. In contrast to previous approaches applied in facial behavior analysis, RMC-MIL follows a Multi-Concept assumption which allows different facial expressions (concepts) to contribute differently to the video-label. Moreover, to handle with the high-dimensional nature of facial-descriptors, RMC-MIL uses a discriminative approach to model the concepts and structured sparsity regularization to discard non-informative features. RMC-MIL is posed as a convex-constrained optimization problem where all the parameters are jointly learned using the Projected-Quasi-Newton method. In our experiments, we use two public data-sets to show the advantages of the Regularized Multi-Concept approach and its improvement compared to existing MIL methods. RMC-MIL outperforms state-of-the-art results in the UNBC data-set for pain detection.
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