Curve Reconstruction via the Global Statistics of Natural Curves

Reconstructing the missing parts of a curve has been the subject of much computational research, with applications in image inpainting, object synthesis, etc. Different approaches for solving that problem are typically based on processes that seek visually pleasing or perceptually plausible completions. In this work we focus on reconstructing the underlying physically likely shape by utilizing the global statistics of natural curves. More specifically, we develop a reconstruction model that seeks the mean physical curve for a given inducer configuration. This simple model is both straightforward to compute and it is receptive to diverse additional information, but it requires enough samples for all curve configurations, a practical requirement that limits its effective utilization. To address this practical issue we explore and exploit statistical geometrical properties of natural curves, and in particular, we show that in many cases the mean curve is scale invariant and oftentimes it is extensible. This, in turn, allows to boost the number of examples and thus the robustness of the statistics and its applicability. The reconstruction results are not only more physically plausible but they also lead to important insights on the reconstruction problem, including an elegant explanation why certain inducer configurations are more likely to yield consistent perceptual completions than others.Comment: CVPR versio

Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationNeuroscientists are developing new imaging techniques and generating large volumes of data in an effort to understand the complex structure of the nervous system. The complexity and size of this data makes human interpretation a labor intensive task. To aid in the analysis, new segmentation techniques for identifying neurons in these feature rich datasets are required. However, the extremely anisotropic resolution of the data makes segmentation and tracking across slices difficult. Furthermore, the thickness of the slices can make the membranes of the neurons hard to identify. Similarly, structures can change significantly from one section to the next due to slice thickness which makes tracking difficult. This thesis presents a complete method for segmenting many neurons at once in two-dimensional (2D) electron microscopy images and reconstructing and visualizing them in three-dimensions (3D). First, we present an advanced method for identifying neuron membranes in 2D, necessary for whole neuron segmentation, using a machine learning approach. The method described uses a series of artificial neural networks (ANNs) in a framework combined with a feature vector that is composed of image and context; intensities sampled over a stencil neighborhood. Several ANNs are applied in series allowing each ANN to use the classification context; provided by the previous network to improve detection accuracy. To improve the membrane detection, we use information from a nonlinear alignment of sequential learned membrane images in a final ANN that improves membrane detection in each section. The final output, the detected membranes, are used to obtain 2D segmentations of all the neurons in an image. We also present a method that constructs 3D neuron representations by formulating the problem of finding paths through sets of sections as an optimal path computation, which applies a cost function to the identification of a cell from one section to the next and solves this optimization problem using Dijkstras algorithm. This basic formulation accounts for variability or inconsistencies between sections and prioritizes cells based on the evidence of their connectivity. Finally, we present a tool that combines these techniques with a visual user interface that enables users to quickly segment whole neurons in large volumes

Research on robust salient object extraction in image

制度:新 ; 文部省報告番号:甲2641号 ; 学位の種類:博士(工学) ; 授与年月日:2008/3/15 ; 早大学位記番号:新480

A probabilistic multi-scale model for contour completion based on image statistics

1 Introduction Traditionally there are two approaches to grouping: region-based methods and contour-based methods. Region-based approaches, such as the Normalized Cut framework [19], have been popular recently. Region-based methods seem to be a natural way to approachthe grouping problem, because (1) regions arise from objects, which are natural entities in grouping; (2) many important cues, such as texture and color, are region-based; (3)region properties are more robust to noise and clutter. Nevertheless, contours, even viewed as boundaries between regions, are themselvesvery important. In many cases boundary contour is the most informative cue in grouping as well as in shape analysis. The intervening contour approach [9] has provided aframework to incorporate contour cues into a region-based framework. However, how to reliably extract contour information, despite years of research, is largely an openproblem. Contour extraction is hard, mainly for the following reasons