2d z-string: A new spatial knowledge representation of image databases

Abstract The knowledge structure called the 2D C þ -string, proposed by Huang et al., to represent symbolic pictures allows a natural way to construct iconic indexes for images. According to the cutting mechanism of the 2D C þ -string, an object may be partitioned into several subparts. The number of partitioned subparts is bounded to Oðn 2 Þ, where n is the number of objects in the image. Hence, the string length is also bounded to Oðn 2 Þ. In this paper, we propose a new spatial knowledge representation called the 2D Z-string. Since there are no cuttings between objects in the 2D Z-string, the integrity of objects is preserved and the string length is bounded to OðnÞ. Finally, some experiments are conducted to compare the performance of both approaches

Retrieval of Spatially Similar Images using Quadtree-based Indexing

Multimedia applications involving image retrieval demand fast response, which requires efficient database indexing. Generally, a two-level indexing scheme in an image database can help to reduce the search space against a given query image. The first level is required to significantly reduce the search space for the second-stage of comparisons and must be computationally efficient. It is also required to guarantee that no new false negatives may result. In this thesis, we propose a new image signature representation for the first level of a two-level image indexing scheme that is based on hierarchical decomposition of image space into spatial arrangement of image features (quadtrees). We also formally prove that the proposed signature representation scheme not only results in fewer number of matching signatures but also does not result in any new false negative. Further, the performance of the retrieval scheme with proposed ignature representation is evaluated for various feature point detection algorithms

Digital Image Access & Retrieval

The 33th Annual Clinic on Library Applications of Data Processing, held at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in March of 1996, addressed the theme of "Digital Image Access & Retrieval." The papers from this conference cover a wide range of topics concerning digital imaging technology for visual resource collections. Papers covered three general areas: (1) systems, planning, and implementation; (2) automatic and semi-automatic indexing; and (3) preservation with the bulk of the conference focusing on indexing and retrieval.published or submitted for publicatio

Hypertext Semiotics in the Commercialized Internet

Die Hypertext Theorie verwendet die selbe Terminologie, welche seit Jahrzehnten in der semiotischen Forschung untersucht wird, wie z.B. Zeichen, Text, Kommunikation, Code, Metapher, Paradigma, Syntax, usw. Aufbauend auf jenen Ergebnissen, welche in der Anwendung semiotischer Prinzipien und Methoden auf die Informatik erfolgreich waren, wie etwa Computer Semiotics, Computational Semiotics und Semiotic Interface Engineering, legt diese Dissertation einen systematischen Ansatz für all jene Forscher dar, die bereit sind, Hypertext aus einer semiotischen Perspektive zu betrachten. Durch die Verknüpfung existierender Hypertext-Modelle mit den Resultaten aus der Semiotik auf allen Sinnesebenen der textuellen, auditiven, visuellen, taktilen und geruchlichen Wahrnehmung skizziert der Autor Prolegomena einer Hypertext-Semiotik-Theorie, anstatt ein völlig neues Hypertext-Modell zu präsentieren. Eine Einführung in die Geschichte der Hypertexte, von ihrer Vorgeschichte bis zum heutigen Entwicklungsstand und den gegenwärtigen Entwicklungen im kommerzialisierten World Wide Web bilden den Rahmen für diesen Ansatz, welcher als Fundierung des Brückenschlages zwischen Mediensemiotik und Computer-Semiotik angesehen werden darf. Während Computer-Semiotiker wissen, dass der Computer eine semiotische Maschine ist und Experten der künstlichen Intelligenz-Forschung die Rolle der Semiotik in der Entwicklung der nächsten Hypertext-Generation betonen, bedient sich diese Arbeit einer breiteren methodologischen Basis. Dementsprechend reichen die Teilgebiete von Hypertextanwendungen, -paradigmen, und -strukturen, über Navigation, Web Design und Web Augmentation zu einem interdisziplinären Spektrum detaillierter Analysen, z.B. des Zeigeinstrumentes der Web Browser, des Klammeraffen-Zeichens und der sogenannten Emoticons. Die Bezeichnung ''Icon'' wird als unpassender Name für jene Bildchen, welche von der graphischen Benutzeroberfläche her bekannt sind und in Hypertexten eingesetzt werden, zurückgewiesen und diese Bildchen durch eine neue Generation mächtiger Graphic Link Markers ersetzt. Diese Ergebnisse werden im Kontext der Kommerzialisierung des Internet betrachtet. Neben der Identifizierung der Hauptprobleme des eCommerce aus der Perspektive der Hypertext Semiotik, widmet sich der Autor den Informationsgütern und den derzeitigen Hindernissen für die New Economy, wie etwa der restriktiven Gesetzeslage in Sachen Copyright und Intellectual Property. Diese anachronistischen Beschränkungen basieren auf der problematischen Annahme, dass auch der Informationswert durch die Knappheit bestimmt wird. Eine semiotische Analyse der iMarketing Techniken, wie z.B. Banner Werbung, Keywords und Link Injektion, sowie Exkurse über den Browser Krieg und den Toywar runden die Dissertation ab

Framing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict : a case-study analysis of the Irish national 'opinion leader' press - July 2000 to July 2004

This case study analyses how four Irish "opinion leader" newspapers - The Irish Times, the Irish Independent, the Sunday Independent and the Sunday Tribune - constructed the issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during the four-year period from July 2000 to July 2004. A primary objective of this case study is to overcome some of the more prominent theoretical inadequacies that have characterised existing research in this area to date. Principally, because existing research has been mostly limited to analysing the American media context and to a lesser extent, the British and other core European contexts, very few analyses have been undertaken on the framing of foreign conflicts by media outlets that operate within entirely different national environments, such as the Irish media environment. Chapter I argues that already existing research has mostly been confined to "testing" propaganda, indexing, hegemonic and political control hypotheses regarding media roles in covering foreign conflicts. These hypotheses are based on assumptions that foreign conflict coverage is mostly influenced by extrinsic structural factors and that, therefore, the media's role is largely restricted to that of acting as conduits for government propaganda and elite perspectives. Consequently, research guided by these hypotheses neglects to investigate fully the influences exerted by the surrounding politico-cultural and media contexts on the various roles adopted by the media when reporting on different types of foreign conflicts. William A. Gamson and his colleagues' model of social constructivist media analysis was chosen as the most appropriate model for fulfilling the objectives of this research. This model analyses media coverage trends as outcomes of contested news construction processes that are potentially influenced by a range of different extrinsic environmental factors and intrinsic media, or news factors. This case study consisted of four different, yet interrelated, stages of research. The first stage consisted of a literature-based contextual analysis of the historical and political environments characterising the arena of the Israeli- Palestinian conflict, as well as the arenas of Irish-Israeli and Irish-Palestinian relations. The second research stage involved a longitudinal and descriptive analysis of a representative sampling of coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by The Irish Times, the Irish Independent, the Sunday Independent and the Sunday Tribune during the period from July 2000 to July 2004. The third stage consisted of qualitative frame analysis of news discourses. The fourth and final stage of research involved the undertaking of a series of exploratory, qualitative interviews with key media, political/diplomatic and NGO actors. Chapter 3 briefly outlines how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been historically manifested as a highly unequal, contested and multi-dimensional conflict. Chapter 4 analyses the potential contextual influences exerted by Irish political culture and foreign policy-makin(I-1t1ra ditions on the roles adopted by Irish media. It concludes that Ireland's "small state" and post-colonial status, its consequent lack of "hard power", or "vital" foreign policy interests in the Middle East, as well as its official dependency on UN and EU foreign policy perspectives, are likely to have exerted significant contextual influences on the ways in which the sampled newspapers covered the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Chapter 5 explores the ways in which the changed political environment surrounding Israeli-Palestinian relations during the period of July 2000 to July 2004 had significant constructivist implications for how international media, including the Irish media, covered the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This case study's descriptive analysis of randomly sampled coverage by The Irish Times, the Irish Independent, the Sunday Independent and the Sunday Tribune during the period of July 2000 to July 2004 generated a number of significant findings. Firstly, it was concluded that the regular patterns of attention that the sampled newspapers devoted to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were reflective of the dynamics and politics of that conflict itself, as well as its ongoing international resonance. However, this coverage was frequently of a semi- or non-prominent nature, while the sampled newspapers accorded only miniscule amounts of frontpage, analytical and editorial attention to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It was concluded that Ireland's "small state" status and its lack of appreciable national or foreign policy interests in Israel and the Palestinian territories influenced these latter trends. However, in addition to the formative influences exerted by the national politico-cultural context, media contextual factors and intrinsic news factors also had discernible constructivist implications for news outcomes. For instance, the finding that the majority of news items were sourced from foreign-based jourrialists and news agencies was related to the operation of news factors, such as editorial judgements and criteria, as well as reporting norms and values. Most significantly, the intense competition characterising the Irish media market overall, as well as the lack of historical grounding of Irish media within a "tradition" of foreign news analysis, exerted substantial influence on these news-sourcing patterns by constraining the sampled newspapers' commitment to foreign news coverage. In relation to the findings generated by this case study's topical analysis, it was also concluded that the operation of news factors, in relation to the wider politico-cultural context, influenced the ways in which the sampled newspapers topicalised the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Thus, while news values tilted editorial decisions towards covering "conflict"/"political violence" topics, these values also served to reduce newspaper coverage of "peace" and other topics. Additionally, politico-cultural factors, such as the relative isolationist and dependent nature of Irish foreign policy worldviews, supplied an important context within which the sampled newspapers neglected to appreciably cover the international diplomaticsecurity context surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Moreover, the low levels of coverage devoted to domestic Israeli and Palestinian topics reflected Ireland's lack of any "vital" interests in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its relatively weak politico-cultural and personal ties with Israel and the Palestinians. Finally, in relation to source access and representation trends, it was found that the sampled newspapers tended to be more or less contested sites (albeit unequal sites). variously featuring the assertions of competing Israeli and Palestinian politicaU"official" sources, rather than exclusively transmitting so-called consensual, hegemonic and elitist constructions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This emerged as a key finding of this research, as it challenges one of the primary theoretical assumptions of the propaganda, indexing, hegemonic and political control hypotheses - namely, that politically-powerful and economically resourceful conflict protagonists consistently have greater levels of media access than politically weaker protagonists, simply by virtue of the power disparities that pertain between them. Instead, this thesis argues that, within highly contested foreign conflict arenas, the protagonist sources' degree of access to international media attention is best viewed as a constructed and achieved outcome, which changes in line with developments in the wider political and media environments and changes in the operation of news factors. Thus, this case-study's descriptive content analysis concluded that, overall, the sampled newspapers' sourcing trends, as well as their patterns of issue-attention and issue-topicalisation, are best analysed not as the pre-determined outcomes of structural power relations and resources, but as the socially constructed outcomes of interactions between relevant politico-cultural contexts, the wider media environment and a range of news factors (such as journalistic conventions, values and norms). This case study's qualitative frame analysis of newspaper discourses also adopted this social constructivist focus. The key finding of this analysis was that divergent rates of access and representation were achieved by partisan Israeli law and order/terrorism frames and partisan Palestinian injustice/defiance frames across the sampled newspapers. Jewish injustice/national homeland frames were virtually excluded from the sampled newspapers. The Irish Times and the Sunday Independent tended to be more favourable towards including law and order/terrorism frames, while the Sunday Tribune and the Irish Independent featured Palestinian injustice/defiance frames more frequently than law and order/terrorism frames. In contrast, Palestinian injustice/defiance frames were entirely absent from the Sunday Independent sample. Another significant trend that emerged from this frame analysis was that non-partisan frames; namely, reconciliation/dual rights frames, nihilistic violence/warring tribes frames and regional stability/international security frames - were relatively under-represented within each sampled newspaper. Taken together, therefore, these frame analytic findings confirm this thesis' theoretical critique of propaganda, indexing, hegemonic and political control perspectives. These latter perspectives hypothesise that external political and structural factors, such as state propaganda, elite hegemony and/or political information controls, determine foreign news coverage in ways that reduce the media's role to that of monolithically framing foreign coverage within the confines of hegemonic and elitist ideologies. In contrast, this case study's primary theoretical argument is that a social constructivist and multi-variable perspective is inherently more appropriate for undertaking analyses of media foreign coverage roles. Principally, rather than assuming, a priori, that extrinsic factors wholly determine news, this perspective enables the researcher to explore the varying media influences exerted over time by different contexts and intrinsic news factors

A multiple-SIMD architecture for image and tracking analysis

The computational requirements for real-time image based applications are such as to warrant the use of a parallel architecture. Commonly used parallel architectures conform to the classifications of Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD), or Multiple Instruction Multiple Data (MIMD). Each class of architecture has its advantages and dis-advantages. For example, SIMD architectures can be used on data-parallel problems, such as the processing of an image. Whereas MIMD architectures are more flexible and better suited to general purpose computing. Both types of processing are typically required for the analysis of the contents of an image. This thesis describes a novel massively parallel heterogeneous architecture, implemented as the Warwick Pyramid Machine. Both SIMD and MIMD processor types are combined within this architecture. Furthermore, the SIMD array is partitioned, into smaller SIMD sub-arrays, forming a Multiple-SIMD array. Thus, local data parallel, global data parallel, and control parallel processing are supported. After describing the present options available in the design of massively parallel machines and the nature of the image analysis problem, the architecture of the Warwick Pyramid Machine is described in some detail. The performance of this architecture is then analysed, both in terms of peak available computational power and in terms of representative applications in image analysis and numerical computation. Two tracking applications are also analysed to show the performance of this architecture. In addition, they illustrate the possible partitioning of applications between the SIMD and MIMD processor arrays. Load-balancing techniques are then described which have the potential to increase the utilisation of the Warwick Pyramid Machine at run-time. These include mapping techniques for image regions across the Multiple-SIMD arrays, and for the compression of sparse data. It is envisaged that these techniques may be found useful in other parallel systems

Interactive Imaging via Hand Gesture Recognition.

With the growth of computer power, Digital Image Processing plays a more and more important role in the modern world, including the field of industry, medical, communications, spaceflight technology etc. As a sub-field, Interactive Image Processing emphasizes particularly on the communications between machine and human. The basic flowchart is definition of object, analysis and training phase, recognition and feedback. Generally speaking, the core issue is how we define the interesting object and track them more accurately in order to complete the interaction process successfully. This thesis proposes a novel dynamic simulation scheme for interactive image processing. The work consists of two main parts: Hand Motion Detection and Hand Gesture recognition. Within a hand motion detection processing, movement of hand will be identified and extracted. In a specific detection period, the current image is compared with the previous image in order to generate the difference between them. If the generated difference exceeds predefined threshold alarm, a typical hand motion movement is detected. Furthermore, in some particular situations, changes of hand gesture are also desired to be detected and classified. This task requires features extraction and feature comparison among each type of gestures. The essentials of hand gesture are including some low level features such as color, shape etc. Another important feature is orientation histogram. Each type of hand gestures has its particular representation in the domain of orientation histogram. Because Gaussian Mixture Model has great advantages to represent the object with essential feature elements and the Expectation-Maximization is the efficient procedure to compute the maximum likelihood between testing images and predefined standard sample of each different gesture, the comparability between testing image and samples of each type of gestures will be estimated by Expectation-Maximization algorithm in Gaussian Mixture Model. The performance of this approach in experiments shows the proposed method works well and accurately

Pictures in words : indexing, folksonomy and representation of subject content in historic photographs

Subject access to images is a major issue for image collections. Research is needed to understand how indexing and tagging contribute to make the subjects of historic photographs accessible. This thesis firstly investigates the evidence of cognitive dissonance between indexers and users in the way they attribute subjects to historic photographs, and, secondly, how indexers and users might work together to enhance subject description. It analyses how current indexing and social tagging represent the subject content of historic photographs. It also suggests a practical way indexers can work with taggers to deal with the classic problem of resource constraints and to enhance metadata to make photo collections more accessible. In an original application of the Shatford/Panofsky classification matrix within the applications domain of historic images, patterns of subject attribution are explored between taggers and professional indexers. The study was conducted in two stages. The first stage (Studies A to D) investigated how professional indexers and taggers represent the subject content of historic photographs and revealed differences based on Shatford/Panofsky. The indexers (Study A) demonstrated a propensity for specific and generic subjects and almost complete avoidance of abstracts. In contrast, a pilot study with users (Study B) and with baseline taggers (Studies C and D) showed their propensity for generics and equal inclination to specifics and abstracts. The evidence supports the conclusion that indexers and users approach the subject content of historic photographs differently, demonstrating cognitive dissonance, a conflict between how they appear to think about and interpret images. The second stage (Study E) demonstrated that an online training intervention affected tagging behaviour. The intervention resulted in increased tagging and fuller representation of all subject facets according to the Shatford/Panofsky classification matrix. The evidence showed that trained taggers tagged more generic and abstract facets than untrained taggers. Importantly, this suggests that training supports the annotation of the higher levels of subject content and so potentially provides enhanced intellectual access. The research demonstrated a practical way institutions can work with taggers to extend the representation of subject content in historic photographs. Improved subject description is critical for intellectual access and retrieval in the cultural heritage space. Through systematic application of the training method a richer corpus of descriptors might be created that enhances machine based information retrieval via automatic extraction

Electronic Imaging & the Visual Arts. EVA 2012 Florence

The key aim of this Event is to provide a forum for the user, supplier and scientific research communities to meet and exchange experiences, ideas and plans in the wide area of Culture & Technology. Participants receive up to date news on new EC and international arts computing & telecommunications initiatives as well as on Projects in the visual arts field, in archaeology and history. Working Groups and new Projects are promoted. Scientific and technical demonstrations are presented

Les mixtures de Dirichlet et leurs apports pour la classification et la recherche d'images par le contenu

Le développement de la médecine moderne dans le domaine des techniques de diagnostic comme la radiologie, l'histopathologie et la tomographie avait comme résultat l'explosion du nombre et de l'importance des images médicales sauvegardées par la majorité des hôpitaux. Afin d'aider les médecins à confirmer leurs diagnostics, plusieurs systèmes de recherche d'images médicales ont vu le jour. La conception de ces systèmes présente plusieurs étapes. Nous pensons que le résumé des bases de données d'images est une étape importante dans chaque système de recherche. En effet, la catégorisation d'une base de données d'images facilite énormément la recherche et permet de localiser les images voulues en un minimum de temps. Dans ce mémoire, nous étudions en un premier temps, les différents problèmes communs à tous les systèmes de recherche d'images à savoir l'indexation, l'extraction des caractéristiques, la définition des mesures de similarités et le retour de pertinence. Nous étudions aussi d'autres catégories de problèmes spécifiques à la recherche d'images. Cette étude est complétée par une analyse des systèmes existants les plus connus. Dans la deuxième partie du mémoire, nous nous intéressons aux mixtures de Dirichlet et comment on peut les exploiter pour la classification, en particulier le résumé des bases de données d'images. Contrairement aux approches classiques qui considèrent la loi normale comme densité, nous utilisons une généralisation de la Dirichlet pour l'adapter plus aux problèmes réels. Notre approche est traduite par un modèle mathématique basé sur le maximum de vraisemblance et la méthode de Fisher. Une interprétation très intéressante de notre méthode, basée sur la statistique géométrique, est donnée. Finalement, nous présentons des évaluations contextuelles et non-contextuelles, qui prouvent la validité de notre méthode