5,507 research outputs found
Rate-Distortion Analysis of Multiview Coding in a DIBR Framework
Depth image based rendering techniques for multiview applications have been
recently introduced for efficient view generation at arbitrary camera
positions. Encoding rate control has thus to consider both texture and depth
data. Due to different structures of depth and texture images and their
different roles on the rendered views, distributing the available bit budget
between them however requires a careful analysis. Information loss due to
texture coding affects the value of pixels in synthesized views while errors in
depth information lead to shift in objects or unexpected patterns at their
boundaries. In this paper, we address the problem of efficient bit allocation
between textures and depth data of multiview video sequences. We adopt a
rate-distortion framework based on a simplified model of depth and texture
images. Our model preserves the main features of depth and texture images.
Unlike most recent solutions, our method permits to avoid rendering at encoding
time for distortion estimation so that the encoding complexity is not
augmented. In addition to this, our model is independent of the underlying
inpainting method that is used at decoder. Experiments confirm our theoretical
results and the efficiency of our rate allocation strategy
Distributed Representation of Geometrically Correlated Images with Compressed Linear Measurements
This paper addresses the problem of distributed coding of images whose
correlation is driven by the motion of objects or positioning of the vision
sensors. It concentrates on the problem where images are encoded with
compressed linear measurements. We propose a geometry-based correlation model
in order to describe the common information in pairs of images. We assume that
the constitutive components of natural images can be captured by visual
features that undergo local transformations (e.g., translation) in different
images. We first identify prominent visual features by computing a sparse
approximation of a reference image with a dictionary of geometric basis
functions. We then pose a regularized optimization problem to estimate the
corresponding features in correlated images given by quantized linear
measurements. The estimated features have to comply with the compressed
information and to represent consistent transformation between images. The
correlation model is given by the relative geometric transformations between
corresponding features. We then propose an efficient joint decoding algorithm
that estimates the compressed images such that they stay consistent with both
the quantized measurements and the correlation model. Experimental results show
that the proposed algorithm effectively estimates the correlation between
images in multi-view datasets. In addition, the proposed algorithm provides
effective decoding performance that compares advantageously to independent
coding solutions as well as state-of-the-art distributed coding schemes based
on disparity learning
Linear MMSE-Optimal Turbo Equalization Using Context Trees
Formulations of the turbo equalization approach to iterative equalization and
decoding vary greatly when channel knowledge is either partially or completely
unknown. Maximum aposteriori probability (MAP) and minimum mean square error
(MMSE) approaches leverage channel knowledge to make explicit use of soft
information (priors over the transmitted data bits) in a manner that is
distinctly nonlinear, appearing either in a trellis formulation (MAP) or inside
an inverted matrix (MMSE). To date, nearly all adaptive turbo equalization
methods either estimate the channel or use a direct adaptation equalizer in
which estimates of the transmitted data are formed from an expressly linear
function of the received data and soft information, with this latter
formulation being most common. We study a class of direct adaptation turbo
equalizers that are both adaptive and nonlinear functions of the soft
information from the decoder. We introduce piecewise linear models based on
context trees that can adaptively approximate the nonlinear dependence of the
equalizer on the soft information such that it can choose both the partition
regions as well as the locally linear equalizer coefficients in each region
independently, with computational complexity that remains of the order of a
traditional direct adaptive linear equalizer. This approach is guaranteed to
asymptotically achieve the performance of the best piecewise linear equalizer
and we quantify the MSE performance of the resulting algorithm and the
convergence of its MSE to that of the linear minimum MSE estimator as the depth
of the context tree and the data length increase.Comment: Submitted to the IEEE Transactions on Signal Processin
REGION-BASED ADAPTIVE DISTRIBUTED VIDEO CODING CODEC
The recently developed Distributed Video Coding (DVC) is typically suitable for the
applications where the conventional video coding is not feasible because of its
inherent high-complexity encoding. Examples include video surveillance usmg
wireless/wired video sensor network and applications using mobile cameras etc. With
DVC, the complexity is shifted from the encoder to the decoder.
The practical application of DVC is referred to as Wyner-Ziv video coding (WZ)
where an estimate of the original frame called "side information" is generated using
motion compensation at the decoder. The compression is achieved by sending only
that extra information that is needed to correct this estimation. An error-correcting
code is used with the assumption that the estimate is a noisy version of the original
frame and the rate needed is certain amount of the parity bits. The side information is
assumed to have become available at the decoder through a virtual channel. Due to
the limitation of compensation method, the predicted frame, or the side information, is
expected to have varying degrees of success. These limitations stem from locationspecific
non-stationary estimation noise. In order to avoid these, the conventional
video coders, like MPEG, make use of frame partitioning to allocate optimum coder
for each partition and hence achieve better rate-distortion performance. The same,
however, has not been used in DVC as it increases the encoder complexity.
This work proposes partitioning the considered frame into many coding units
(region) where each unit is encoded differently. This partitioning is, however, done at
the decoder while generating the side-information and the region map is sent over to
encoder at very little rate penalty. The partitioning allows allocation of appropriate
DVC coding parameters (virtual channel, rate, and quantizer) to each region. The
resulting regions map is compressed by employing quadtree algorithm and
communicated to the encoder via the feedback channel. The rate control in DVC is
performed by channel coding techniques (turbo codes, LDPC, etc.). The performance
of the channel code depends heavily on the accuracy of virtual channel model that models estimation error for each region. In this work, a turbo code has been used and
an adaptive WZ DVC is designed both in transform domain and in pixel domain. The
transform domain WZ video coding (TDWZ) has distinct superior performance as
compared to the normal Pixel Domain Wyner-Ziv (PDWZ), since it exploits the
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spatial redundancy during the encoding. The performance evaluations show that the
proposed system is superior to the existing distributed video coding solutions.
Although the, proposed system requires extra bits representing the "regions map" to be
transmitted, fuut still the rate gain is noticeable and it outperforms the state-of-the-art
frame based DVC by 0.6-1.9 dB.
The feedback channel (FC) has the role to adapt the bit rate to the changing
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statistics between the side infonmation and the frame to be encoded. In the
unidirectional scenario, the encoder must perform the rate control. To correctly
estimate the rate, the encoder must calculate typical side information. However, the
rate cannot be exactly calculated at the encoder, instead it can only be estimated. This
work also prbposes a feedback-free region-based adaptive DVC solution in pixel
domain based on machine learning approach to estimate the side information.
Although the performance evaluations show rate-penalty but it is acceptable
considering the simplicity of the proposed algorithm.
vii
Steered mixture-of-experts for light field images and video : representation and coding
Research in light field (LF) processing has heavily increased over the last decade. This is largely driven by the desire to achieve the same level of immersion and navigational freedom for camera-captured scenes as it is currently available for CGI content. Standardization organizations such as MPEG and JPEG continue to follow conventional coding paradigms in which viewpoints are discretely represented on 2-D regular grids. These grids are then further decorrelated through hybrid DPCM/transform techniques. However, these 2-D regular grids are less suited for high-dimensional data, such as LFs. We propose a novel coding framework for higher-dimensional image modalities, called Steered Mixture-of-Experts (SMoE). Coherent areas in the higher-dimensional space are represented by single higher-dimensional entities, called kernels. These kernels hold spatially localized information about light rays at any angle arriving at a certain region. The global model consists thus of a set of kernels which define a continuous approximation of the underlying plenoptic function. We introduce the theory of SMoE and illustrate its application for 2-D images, 4-D LF images, and 5-D LF video. We also propose an efficient coding strategy to convert the model parameters into a bitstream. Even without provisions for high-frequency information, the proposed method performs comparable to the state of the art for low-to-mid range bitrates with respect to subjective visual quality of 4-D LF images. In case of 5-D LF video, we observe superior decorrelation and coding performance with coding gains of a factor of 4x in bitrate for the same quality. At least equally important is the fact that our method inherently has desired functionality for LF rendering which is lacking in other state-of-the-art techniques: (1) full zero-delay random access, (2) light-weight pixel-parallel view reconstruction, and (3) intrinsic view interpolation and super-resolution
Graph Spectral Image Processing
Recent advent of graph signal processing (GSP) has spurred intensive studies
of signals that live naturally on irregular data kernels described by graphs
(e.g., social networks, wireless sensor networks). Though a digital image
contains pixels that reside on a regularly sampled 2D grid, if one can design
an appropriate underlying graph connecting pixels with weights that reflect the
image structure, then one can interpret the image (or image patch) as a signal
on a graph, and apply GSP tools for processing and analysis of the signal in
graph spectral domain. In this article, we overview recent graph spectral
techniques in GSP specifically for image / video processing. The topics covered
include image compression, image restoration, image filtering and image
segmentation
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