10,196 research outputs found
From 3D Point Clouds to Pose-Normalised Depth Maps
We consider the problem of generating either pairwise-aligned or pose-normalised depth maps from noisy 3D point clouds in a relatively unrestricted poses. Our system is deployed in a 3D face alignment application and consists of the following four stages: (i) data filtering, (ii) nose tip identification and sub-vertex localisation, (iii) computation of the (relative) face orientation, (iv) generation of either a pose aligned or a pose normalised depth map. We generate an implicit radial basis function (RBF) model of the facial surface and this is employed within all four stages of the process. For example, in stage (ii), construction of novel invariant features is based on sampling this RBF over a set of concentric spheres to give a spherically-sampled RBF (SSR) shape histogram. In stage (iii), a second novel descriptor, called an isoradius contour curvature signal, is defined, which allows rotational alignment to be determined using a simple process of 1D correlation. We test our system on both the University of York (UoY) 3D face dataset and the Face Recognition Grand Challenge (FRGC) 3D data. For the more challenging UoY data, our SSR descriptors significantly outperform three variants of spin images, successfully identifying nose vertices at a rate of 99.6%. Nose localisation performance on the higher quality FRGC data, which has only small pose variations, is 99.9%. Our best system successfully normalises the pose of 3D faces at rates of 99.1% (UoY data) and 99.6% (FRGC data)
Dense 3D Face Correspondence
We present an algorithm that automatically establishes dense correspondences
between a large number of 3D faces. Starting from automatically detected sparse
correspondences on the outer boundary of 3D faces, the algorithm triangulates
existing correspondences and expands them iteratively by matching points of
distinctive surface curvature along the triangle edges. After exhausting
keypoint matches, further correspondences are established by generating evenly
distributed points within triangles by evolving level set geodesic curves from
the centroids of large triangles. A deformable model (K3DM) is constructed from
the dense corresponded faces and an algorithm is proposed for morphing the K3DM
to fit unseen faces. This algorithm iterates between rigid alignment of an
unseen face followed by regularized morphing of the deformable model. We have
extensively evaluated the proposed algorithms on synthetic data and real 3D
faces from the FRGCv2, Bosphorus, BU3DFE and UND Ear databases using
quantitative and qualitative benchmarks. Our algorithm achieved dense
correspondences with a mean localisation error of 1.28mm on synthetic faces and
detected anthropometric landmarks on unseen real faces from the FRGCv2
database with 3mm precision. Furthermore, our deformable model fitting
algorithm achieved 98.5% face recognition accuracy on the FRGCv2 and 98.6% on
Bosphorus database. Our dense model is also able to generalize to unseen
datasets.Comment: 24 Pages, 12 Figures, 6 Tables and 3 Algorithm
Facial emotion recognition using min-max similarity classifier
Recognition of human emotions from the imaging templates is useful in a wide
variety of human-computer interaction and intelligent systems applications.
However, the automatic recognition of facial expressions using image template
matching techniques suffer from the natural variability with facial features
and recording conditions. In spite of the progress achieved in facial emotion
recognition in recent years, the effective and computationally simple feature
selection and classification technique for emotion recognition is still an open
problem. In this paper, we propose an efficient and straightforward facial
emotion recognition algorithm to reduce the problem of inter-class pixel
mismatch during classification. The proposed method includes the application of
pixel normalization to remove intensity offsets followed-up with a Min-Max
metric in a nearest neighbor classifier that is capable of suppressing feature
outliers. The results indicate an improvement of recognition performance from
92.85% to 98.57% for the proposed Min-Max classification method when tested on
JAFFE database. The proposed emotion recognition technique outperforms the
existing template matching methods
Feasibility of automated 3-dimensional magnetic resonance imaging pancreas segmentation.
PurposeWith the advent of MR guided radiotherapy, internal organ motion can be imaged simultaneously during treatment. In this study, we evaluate the feasibility of pancreas MRI segmentation using state-of-the-art segmentation methods.Methods and materialT2 weighted HASTE and T1 weighted VIBE images were acquired on 3 patients and 2 healthy volunteers for a total of 12 imaging volumes. A novel dictionary learning (DL) method was used to segment the pancreas and compared to t mean-shift merging (MSM), distance regularized level set (DRLS), graph cuts (GC) and the segmentation results were compared to manual contours using Dice's index (DI), Hausdorff distance and shift of the-center-of-the-organ (SHIFT).ResultsAll VIBE images were successfully segmented by at least one of the auto-segmentation method with DI >0.83 and SHIFT ≤2 mm using the best automated segmentation method. The automated segmentation error of HASTE images was significantly greater. DL is statistically superior to the other methods in Dice's overlapping index. For the Hausdorff distance and SHIFT measurement, DRLS and DL performed slightly superior to the GC method, and substantially superior to MSM. DL required least human supervision and was faster to compute.ConclusionOur study demonstrated potential feasibility of automated segmentation of the pancreas on MRI images with minimal human supervision at the beginning of imaging acquisition. The achieved accuracy is promising for organ localization
3D Facial landmark detection under large yaw and expression variations
A 3D landmark detection method for 3D facial scans is presented and thoroughly evaluated. The main contribution of the presented method is the automatic and pose-invariant detection of landmarks on 3D facial scans under large yaw variations (that often result in missing facial data), and its robustness against large facial expressions. Three-dimensional information is exploited by using 3D local shape descriptors to extract candidate landmark points. The shape descriptors include the shape index, a continuous map of principal curvature values of a 3D object’s surface, and spin images, local descriptors of the object’s 3D point distribution. The candidate landmarks are identified and labeled by matching them with a Facial Landmark Model (FLM) of facial anatomical landmarks. The presented method is extensively evaluated against a variety of 3D facial databases and achieves state-of-the-art accuracy (4.5-6.3 mm mean landmark localization error), considerably outperforming previous methods, even when tested with the most challenging data
Fully Automatic Expression-Invariant Face Correspondence
We consider the problem of computing accurate point-to-point correspondences
among a set of human face scans with varying expressions. Our fully automatic
approach does not require any manually placed markers on the scan. Instead, the
approach learns the locations of a set of landmarks present in a database and
uses this knowledge to automatically predict the locations of these landmarks
on a newly available scan. The predicted landmarks are then used to compute
point-to-point correspondences between a template model and the newly available
scan. To accurately fit the expression of the template to the expression of the
scan, we use as template a blendshape model. Our algorithm was tested on a
database of human faces of different ethnic groups with strongly varying
expressions. Experimental results show that the obtained point-to-point
correspondence is both highly accurate and consistent for most of the tested 3D
face models
Data-Driven Shape Analysis and Processing
Data-driven methods play an increasingly important role in discovering
geometric, structural, and semantic relationships between 3D shapes in
collections, and applying this analysis to support intelligent modeling,
editing, and visualization of geometric data. In contrast to traditional
approaches, a key feature of data-driven approaches is that they aggregate
information from a collection of shapes to improve the analysis and processing
of individual shapes. In addition, they are able to learn models that reason
about properties and relationships of shapes without relying on hard-coded
rules or explicitly programmed instructions. We provide an overview of the main
concepts and components of these techniques, and discuss their application to
shape classification, segmentation, matching, reconstruction, modeling and
exploration, as well as scene analysis and synthesis, through reviewing the
literature and relating the existing works with both qualitative and numerical
comparisons. We conclude our report with ideas that can inspire future research
in data-driven shape analysis and processing.Comment: 10 pages, 19 figure
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