Abstract: In this paper we propose an approach for multi-modal image retrieval in multi-labelled images. A multi-modal deep network architecture is formulated to jointly model sketches and text as input query modalities into a common embedding space, which is then further aligned with the image feature space. Our architecture also relies on a salient object detection through a supervised LSTM-based visual attention model learned from convolutional features. Both the alignment between the queries and the image and the supervision of the attention on the images are obtained by generalizing the Hungarian Algorithm using different loss functions. This permits encoding the object-based features and its alignment with the query irrespective of the availability of the co-occurrence of different objects in the training set. We validate the performance of our approach on standard single/multi-object datasets, showing state-of-the art performance in every dataset.

Abstract: In this paper, we present a sparse-based denoising algorithm for scanned documents. This method can be applied to any kind of scanned documents with satisfactory results. Unlike other approaches, the proposed approach encodes noise documents through sparse representation and visual dictionary learning techniques without any prior noise model. Moreover, we propose a precision parameter estimator. Experiments on several datasets demonstrate the robustness of the proposed approach compared to the state-of-the-art methods on document denoising.

Abstract: The extraction of relevant information from historical handwritten document collections is one of the key steps in order to make these manuscripts available for access and searches. In this competition, the goal is to detect the named entities and assign each of them a semantic category, and therefore, to simulate the filling in of a knowledge database. This paper describes the dataset, the tasks, the evaluation metrics, the participants methods and the results.

Abstract: Graph-based representations are effective tools to capture structural information from visual elements. However, retrieving a query graph from a large database of graphs implies a high computational complexity. Moreover, these representations are very sensitive to noise or small changes. In this work, a novel hierarchical graph representation is designed. Using graph clustering techniques adapted from graph-based social media analysis, we propose to generate a hierarchy able to deal with different levels of abstraction while keeping information about the topology. For the proposed representations, a coarse-to-fine matching method is defined. These approaches are validated using real scenarios such as classification of colour images and handwritten word spotting.

Abstract: Document pattern classification methods using graphs have received a lot of attention because of its robust representation paradigm and rich theoretical background. However, the way of preserving and the process for delineating documents with graphs introduce noise in the rendition of underlying data, which creates instability in the graph representation. To deal with such unreliability in representation, in this paper, we propose Pyramidal Stochastic Graphlet Embedding (PSGE).
Given a graph representing a document pattern, our method first computes a graph pyramid by successively reducing the base graph. Once the graph pyramid is computed, we apply Stochastic Graphlet Embedding (SGE) for each level of the pyramid and combine their embedded representation to obtain a global delineation of the original graph. The consideration of pyramid of graphs rather than just a base graph extends the representational power of the graph embedding, which reduces the instability caused due to noise and distortion. When plugged with support
vector machine, our proposed PSGE has outperformed the state-of-the-art results in recognition of handwritten words as well as graphical symbols