Un histogramme compact pour l'analyse d'images multi-composantes

Nous présentons l'algorithme de calcul d'un histogramme compact permettant de réduire de manière considérable et sans perte d'information, l'espace mémoire nécessaire au codage des histogrammes d'images multi-composantes. En résultats, nous vérifions sur des exemples les performances de l'algorithme à la fois en gain de mémoire et en rapidité de calcul

TM-NET: Deep Generative Networks for Textured Meshes

We introduce TM-NET, a novel deep generative model for synthesizing textured meshes in a part-aware manner. Once trained, the network can generate novel textured meshes from scratch or predict textures for a given 3D mesh, without image guidance. Plausible and diverse textures can be generated for the same mesh part, while texture compatibility between parts in the same shape is achieved via conditional generation. Specifically, our method produces texture maps for individual shape parts, each as a deformable box, leading to a natural UV map with minimal distortion. The network separately embeds part geometry (via a PartVAE) and part texture (via a TextureVAE) into their respective latent spaces, so as to facilitate learning texture probability distributions conditioned on geometry. We introduce a conditional autoregressive model for texture generation, which can be conditioned on both part geometry and textures already generated for other parts to achieve texture compatibility. To produce high-frequency texture details, our TextureVAE operates in a high-dimensional latent space via dictionary-based vector quantization. We also exploit transparencies in the texture as an effective means to model complex shape structures including topological details. Extensive experiments demonstrate the plausibility, quality, and diversity of the textures and geometries generated by our network, while avoiding inconsistency issues that are common to novel view synthesis methods

Investigation of the effects of image compression on the geometric quality of digital protogrammetric imagery

We are living in a decade, where the use of digital images is becoming increasingly important. Photographs are now converted into digital form, and direct acquisition of digital images is becoming increasing important as sensors and associated electronics. Unlike images in analogue form, digital representation of images allows visual information to· be easily manipulated in useful ways. One practical problem of the digital image representation is that, it requires a very large number of bits and hence one encounters a fairly large volume of data in a digital production environment if they are stored uncompressed on the disk. With the rapid advances in sensor technology and digital electronics, the number of bits grow larger in softcopy photogrammetry, remote sensing and multimedia GIS. As a result, it is desirable to find efficient representation for digital images in order to reduce the memory required for storage, improve the data access rate from storage devices, and reduce the time required for transfer across communication channels. The component of digital image processing that deals with this problem is called image compression. Image compression is a necessity for the utilisation of large digital images in softcopy photogrammetry, remote sensing, and multimedia GIS. Numerous image Compression standards exist today with the common goal of reducing the number of bits needed to store images, and to facilitate the interchange of compressed image data between various devices and applications. JPEG image compression standard is one alternative for carrying out the image compression task. This standard was formed under the auspices ISO and CCITT for the purpose of developing an international standard for the compression and decompression of continuous-tone, still-frame, monochrome and colour images. The JPEG standard algorithm &Us into three general categories: the baseline sequential process that provides a simple and efficient algorithm for most image coding applications, the extended DCT-based process that allows the baseline system to satisfy a broader range of applications, and an independent lossless process for application demanding that type of compression. This thesis experimentally investigates the geometric degradations resulting from lossy JPEG compression on photogrammetric imagery at various levels of quality factors. The effects and the suitability of JPEG lossy image compression on industrial photogrammetric imagery are investigated. Examples are drawn from the extraction of targets in close-range photogrammetric imagery. In the experiments, the JPEG was used to compress and decompress a set of test images. The algorithm has been tested on digital images containing various levels of entropy (a measure of information content of an image) with different image capture capabilities. Residual data was obtained by taking the pixel-by-pixel difference between the original data and the reconstructed data. The image quality measure, root mean square (rms) error of the residual was used as a quality measure to judge the quality of images produced by JPEG(DCT-based) image compression technique. Two techniques, TIFF (IZW) compression and JPEG(DCT-based) compression are compared with respect to compression ratios achieved. JPEG(DCT-based) yields better compression ratios, and it seems to be a good choice for image compression. Further in the investigation, it is found out that, for grey-scale images, the best compression ratios were obtained when the quality factors between 60 and 90 were used (i.e., at a compression ratio of 1:10 to 1:20). At these quality factors the reconstructed data has virtually no degradation in the visual and geometric quality for the application at hand. Recently, many fast and efficient image file formats have also been developed to store, organise and display images in an efficient way. Almost every image file format incorporates some kind of compression method to manage data within common place networks and storage devices. The current major file formats used in softcopy photogrammetry, remote sensing and · multimedia GIS. were also investigated. It was also found out that the choice of a particular image file format for a given application generally involves several interdependent considerations including quality; flexibility; computation; storage, or transmission. The suitability of a file format for a given purpose is · best determined by knowing its original purpose. Some of these are widely used (e.g., TIFF, JPEG) and serve as exchange formats. Others are adapted to the needs of particular applications or particular operating systems

A neural network-based vision system for automated separation of onion from clod using mechanical harvester

A neural network classifier for separating clods from onions during harvesting has been developed. The separator consists of a multi-layer feedforward network that maps textural features computed from gray-scale images of onions and clods into the correct object. Texture features were computed from co-occurrence matrices that specify the spatial relationship of pixel values in an image. The textural features selected for this application consist of homogeneity, contrast, variance, and energy. The network was trained using the back-propagation algorithm. Based on the textural features classification, the effect of changing the network configuration on separation effectiveness was investigated. Factors including network topology and combination of textural feature measures forming the inputs of the network were systematically analyzed. Thirty three different network configurations were evaluated. The best separation effectiveness was obtained with three-layer (3-2-1) network with input set consisting of energy, contrast, and homogeneity feature measures. The separation effectiveness for 3-2-1 network topology was 96 percent. An analysis of integration of the neural network-based vision system with a mechanical separator is presented

Revealing the Invisible: On the Extraction of Latent Information from Generalized Image Data

The desire to reveal the invisible in order to explain the world around us has been a source of impetus for technological and scientific progress throughout human history. Many of the phenomena that directly affect us cannot be sufficiently explained based on the observations using our primary senses alone. Often this is because their originating cause is either too small, too far away, or in other ways obstructed. To put it in other words: it is invisible to us. Without careful observation and experimentation, our models of the world remain inaccurate and research has to be conducted in order to improve our understanding of even the most basic effects. In this thesis, we1 are going to present our solutions to three challenging problems in visual computing, where a surprising amount of information is hidden in generalized image data and cannot easily be extracted by human observation or existing methods. We are able to extract the latent information using non-linear and discrete optimization methods based on physically motivated models and computer graphics methodology, such as ray tracing, real-time transient rendering, and image-based rendering

Technology 2003: The Fourth National Technology Transfer Conference and Exposition, volume 2

Proceedings from symposia of the Technology 2003 Conference and Exposition, Dec. 7-9, 1993, Anaheim, CA, are presented. Volume 2 features papers on artificial intelligence, CAD&E, computer hardware, computer software, information management, photonics, robotics, test and measurement, video and imaging, and virtual reality/simulation

Using the Microsoft Kinect to assess human bimanual coordination

Optical marker-based systems are the gold-standard for capturing three-dimensional (3D) human kinematics. However, these systems have various drawbacks including time consuming marker placement, soft tissue movement artifact, and are prohibitively expensive and non-portable. The Microsoft Kinect is an inexpensive, portable, depth camera that can be used to capture 3D human movement kinematics. Numerous investigations have assessed the Kinect\u27s ability to capture postural control and gait, but to date, no study has evaluated it\u27s capabilities for measuring spatiotemporal coordination. In order to investigate human coordination and coordination stability with the Kinect, a well-studied bimanual coordination paradigm (Kelso, 1984, Kelso; Scholz, & Schöner, 1986) was adapted. ^ Nineteen participants performed ten trials of coordinated hand movements in either in-phase or anti-phase patterns of coordination to the beat of a metronome which was incrementally sped up and slowed down. Continuous relative phase (CRP) and the standard deviation of CRP were used to assess coordination and coordination stability, respectively.^ Data from the Kinect were compared to a Vicon motion capture system using a mixed-model, repeated measures analysis of variance and intraclass correlation coefficients (2,1) (ICC(2,1)).^ Kinect significantly underestimated CRP for the the anti-phase coordination pattern (p \u3c.0001) and overestimated the in-phase pattern (p\u3c.0001). However, a high ICC value (r=.097) was found between the systems. For the standard deviation of CRP, the Kinect exhibited significantly higher variability than the Vicon (p \u3c .0001) but was able to distinguish significant differences between patterns of coordination with anti-phase variability being higher than in-phase (p \u3c .0001). Additionally, the Kinect was unable to accurately capture the structure of coordination stability for the anti-phase pattern. Finally, agreement was found between systems using the ICC (r=.37).^ In conclusion, the Kinect was unable to accurately capture mean CRP. However, the high ICC between the two systems is promising and the Kinect was able to distinguish between the coordination stability of in-phase and anti-phase coordination. However, the structure of variability as movement speed increased was dissimilar to the Vicon, particularly for the anti-phase pattern. Some aspects of coordination are nicely captured by the Kinect while others are not. Detecting differences between bimanual coordination patterns and the stability of those patterns can be achieved using the Kinect. However, researchers interested in the structure of coordination stability should exercise caution since poor agreement was found between systems

Towards gestural understanding for intelligent robots

Fritsch JN. Towards gestural understanding for intelligent robots. Bielefeld: Universität Bielefeld; 2012.A strong driving force of scientific progress in the technical sciences is the quest for systems that assist humans in their daily life and make their life easier and more enjoyable. Nowadays smartphones are probably the most typical instances of such systems. Another class of systems that is getting increasing attention are intelligent robots. Instead of offering a smartphone touch screen to select actions, these systems are intended to offer a more natural human-machine interface to their users. Out of the large range of actions performed by humans, gestures performed with the hands play a very important role especially when humans interact with their direct surrounding like, e.g., pointing to an object or manipulating it. Consequently, a robot has to understand such gestures to offer an intuitive interface. Gestural understanding is, therefore, a key capability on the way to intelligent robots. This book deals with vision-based approaches for gestural understanding. Over the past two decades, this has been an intensive field of research which has resulted in a variety of algorithms to analyze human hand motions. Following a categorization of different gesture types and a review of other sensing techniques, the design of vision systems that achieve hand gesture understanding for intelligent robots is analyzed. For each of the individual algorithmic steps – hand detection, hand tracking, and trajectory-based gesture recognition – a separate Chapter introduces common techniques and algorithms and provides example methods. The resulting recognition algorithms are considering gestures in isolation and are often not sufficient for interacting with a robot who can only understand such gestures when incorporating the context like, e.g., what object was pointed at or manipulated. Going beyond a purely trajectory-based gesture recognition by incorporating context is an important prerequisite to achieve gesture understanding and is addressed explicitly in a separate Chapter of this book. Two types of context, user-provided context and situational context, are reviewed and existing approaches to incorporate context for gestural understanding are reviewed. Example approaches for both context types provide a deeper algorithmic insight into this field of research. An overview of recent robots capable of gesture recognition and understanding summarizes the currently realized human-robot interaction quality. The approaches for gesture understanding covered in this book are manually designed while humans learn to recognize gestures automatically during growing up. Promising research targeted at analyzing developmental learning in children in order to mimic this capability in technical systems is highlighted in the last Chapter completing this book as this research direction may be highly influential for creating future gesture understanding systems

Automatic human face detection in color images

Automatic human face detection in digital image has been an active area of research over the past decade. Among its numerous applications, face detection plays a key role in face recognition system for biometric personal identification, face tracking for intelligent human computer interface (HCI), and face segmentation for object-based video coding. Despite significant progress in the field in recent years, detecting human faces in unconstrained and complex images remains a challenging problem in computer vision. An automatic system that possesses a similar capability as the human vision system in detecting faces is still a far-reaching goal. This thesis focuses on the problem of detecting human laces in color images. Although many early face detection algorithms were designed to work on gray-scale Images, strong evidence exists to suggest face detection can be done more efficiently by taking into account color characteristics of the human face. In this thesis, we present a complete and systematic face detection algorithm that combines the strengths of both analytic and holistic approaches to face detection. The algorithm is developed to detect quasi-frontal faces in complex color Images. This face class, which represents typical detection scenarios in most practical applications of face detection, covers a wide range of face poses Including all in-plane rotations and some out-of-plane rotations. The algorithm is organized into a number of cascading stages including skin region segmentation, face candidate selection, and face verification. In each of these stages, various visual cues are utilized to narrow the search space for faces. In this thesis, we present a comprehensive analysis of skin detection using color pixel classification, and the effects of factors such as the color space, color classification algorithm on segmentation performance. We also propose a novel and efficient face candidate selection technique that is based on color-based eye region detection and a geometric face model. This candidate selection technique eliminates the computation-intensive step of window scanning often employed In holistic face detection, and simplifies the task of detecting rotated faces. Besides various heuristic techniques for face candidate verification, we developface/nonface classifiers based on the naive Bayesian model, and investigate three feature extraction schemes, namely intensity, projection on face subspace and edge-based. Techniques for improving face/nonface classification are also proposed, including bootstrapping, classifier combination and using contextual information. On a test set of face and nonface patterns, the combination of three Bayesian classifiers has a correct detection rate of 98.6% at a false positive rate of 10%. Extensive testing results have shown that the proposed face detector achieves good performance in terms of both detection rate and alignment between the detected faces and the true faces. On a test set of 200 images containing 231 faces taken from the ECU face detection database, the proposed face detector has a correct detection rate of 90.04% and makes 10 false detections. We have found that the proposed face detector is more robust In detecting in-plane rotated laces, compared to existing face detectors. +D2