Geometrical-based algorithm for variational segmentation and smoothing of vector-valued images

An optimisation method based on a nonlinear functional is considered for segmentation and smoothing of vector-valued images. An edge-based approach is proposed to initially segment the image using geometrical properties such as metric tensor of the linearly smoothed image. The nonlinear functional is then minimised for each segmented region to yield the smoothed image. The functional is characterised with a unique solution in contrast with the Mumford–Shah functional for vector-valued images. An operator for edge detection is introduced as a result of this unique solution. This operator is analytically calculated and its detection performance and localisation are then compared with those of the DroGoperator. The implementations are applied on colour images as examples of vector-valued images, and the results demonstrate robust performance in noisy environments

When Face Recognition Meets with Deep Learning: an Evaluation of Convolutional Neural Networks for Face Recognition

Deep learning, in particular Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), has achieved promising results in face recognition recently. However, it remains an open question: why CNNs work well and how to design a 'good' architecture. The existing works tend to focus on reporting CNN architectures that work well for face recognition rather than investigate the reason. In this work, we conduct an extensive evaluation of CNN-based face recognition systems (CNN-FRS) on a common ground to make our work easily reproducible. Specifically, we use public database LFW (Labeled Faces in the Wild) to train CNNs, unlike most existing CNNs trained on private databases. We propose three CNN architectures which are the first reported architectures trained using LFW data. This paper quantitatively compares the architectures of CNNs and evaluate the effect of different implementation choices. We identify several useful properties of CNN-FRS. For instance, the dimensionality of the learned features can be significantly reduced without adverse effect on face recognition accuracy. In addition, traditional metric learning method exploiting CNN-learned features is evaluated. Experiments show two crucial factors to good CNN-FRS performance are the fusion of multiple CNNs and metric learning. To make our work reproducible, source code and models will be made publicly available.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, 7 table

Using basic image features for texture classification

Representing texture images statistically as histograms over a discrete vocabulary of local features has proven widely effective for texture classification tasks. Images are described locally by vectors of, for example, responses to some filter bank; and a visual vocabulary is defined as a partition of this descriptor-response space, typically based on clustering. In this paper, we investigate the performance of an approach which represents textures as histograms over a visual vocabulary which is defined geometrically, based on the Basic Image Features of Griffin and Lillholm (Proc. SPIE 6492(09):1-11, 2007), rather than by clustering. BIFs provide a natural mathematical quantisation of a filter-response space into qualitatively distinct types of local image structure. We also extend our approach to deal with intra-class variations in scale. Our algorithm is simple: there is no need for a pre-training step to learn a visual dictionary, as in methods based on clustering, and no tuning of parameters is required to deal with different datasets. We have tested our implementation on three popular and challenging texture datasets and find that it produces consistently good classification results on each, including what we believe to be the best reported for the KTH-TIPS and equal best reported for the UIUCTex databases

The Current Ability to Test Theories of Gravity with Black Hole Shadows

Our Galactic Center, Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), is believed to harbour a supermassive black hole (BH), as suggested by observations tracking individual orbiting stars. Upcoming sub-millimetre very-long-baseline-interferometry (VLBI) images of Sgr A* carried out by the Event-Horizon-Telescope Collaboration (EHTC) are expected to provide critical evidence for the existence of this supermassive BH. We assess our present ability to use EHTC images to determine if they correspond to a Kerr BH as predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity (GR) or to a BH in alternative theories of gravity. To this end, we perform general-relativistic magnetohydrodynamical (GRMHD) simulations and use general-relativistic radiative transfer (GRRT) calculations to generate synthetic shadow images of a magnetised accretion flow onto a Kerr BH. In addition, and for the first time, we perform GRMHD simulations and GRRT calculations for a dilaton BH, which we take as a representative solution of an alternative theory of gravity. Adopting the VLBI configuration from the 2017 EHTC campaign, we find that it could be extremely difficult to distinguish between BHs from different theories of gravity, thus highlighting that great caution is needed when interpreting BH images as tests of GR.Comment: Published in Nature Astronomy on 16.04.18 (including supplementary information); simulations at https://blackholecam.org/telling_bhs_apart

Hierarchy-based Image Embeddings for Semantic Image Retrieval

Deep neural networks trained for classification have been found to learn powerful image representations, which are also often used for other tasks such as comparing images w.r.t. their visual similarity. However, visual similarity does not imply semantic similarity. In order to learn semantically discriminative features, we propose to map images onto class embeddings whose pair-wise dot products correspond to a measure of semantic similarity between classes. Such an embedding does not only improve image retrieval results, but could also facilitate integrating semantics for other tasks, e.g., novelty detection or few-shot learning. We introduce a deterministic algorithm for computing the class centroids directly based on prior world-knowledge encoded in a hierarchy of classes such as WordNet. Experiments on CIFAR-100, NABirds, and ImageNet show that our learned semantic image embeddings improve the semantic consistency of image retrieval results by a large margin.Comment: Accepted at WACV 2019. Source code: https://github.com/cvjena/semantic-embedding

Beyond Intra-modality: A Survey of Heterogeneous Person Re-identification

An efficient and effective person re-identification (ReID) system relieves the users from painful and boring video watching and accelerates the process of video analysis. Recently, with the explosive demands of practical applications, a lot of research efforts have been dedicated to heterogeneous person re-identification (Hetero-ReID). In this paper, we provide a comprehensive review of state-of-the-art Hetero-ReID methods that address the challenge of inter-modality discrepancies. According to the application scenario, we classify the methods into four categories -- low-resolution, infrared, sketch, and text. We begin with an introduction of ReID, and make a comparison between Homogeneous ReID (Homo-ReID) and Hetero-ReID tasks. Then, we describe and compare existing datasets for performing evaluations, and survey the models that have been widely employed in Hetero-ReID. We also summarize and compare the representative approaches from two perspectives, i.e., the application scenario and the learning pipeline. We conclude by a discussion of some future research directions. Follow-up updates are avaible at: https://github.com/lightChaserX/Awesome-Hetero-reIDComment: Accepted by IJCAI 2020. Project url: https://github.com/lightChaserX/Awesome-Hetero-reI

Copasetic analysis: a framework for the blind analysis of microarray imagery

The official published version can be found at the link below.From its conception, bioinformatics has been a multidisciplinary field which blends domain expert knowledge with new and existing processing techniques, all of which are focused on a common goal. Typically, these techniques have focused on the direct analysis of raw microarray image data. Unfortunately, this fails to utilise the image's full potential and in practice, this results in the lab technician having to guide the analysis algorithms. This paper presents a dynamic framework that aims to automate the process of microarray image analysis using a variety of techniques. An overview of the entire framework process is presented, the robustness of which is challenged throughout with a selection of real examples containing varying degrees of noise. The results show the potential of the proposed framework in its ability to determine slide layout accurately and perform analysis without prior structural knowledge. The algorithm achieves approximately, a 1 to 3 dB improved peak signal-to-noise ratio compared to conventional processing techniques like those implemented in GenePix® when used by a trained operator. As far as the authors are aware, this is the first time such a comprehensive framework concept has been directly applied to the area of microarray image analysis