Quantitative tools for seismic stratigraphy and lithology characterization

Seismological images represent maps of the earth's structure. Apparent bandwidth limitation of seismic data prevents successful estimation of transition sharpness by the multiscale wavelet transform. We discuss the application of two recently developed techniques for (non-linear) singularity analysis designed for bandwidth limited data, such as imaged seismic reflectivity. The first method is a generalization of Mallat's modulus maxima approach to a method capable of estimating coarse-grained local scaling/sharpness/Hölder regularity of edges/transitions from data residing at essentially one single scale. The method is based on a non-linear criterion predicting the (dis)appearance of local maxima as a function of the data's fractional integrations/differentiations. The second method is an extension of an atomic decomposition technique based on the greedy Matching Pursuit Algorithm. Instead of the ordinary Spline Wavelet Packet Basis, our method uses multiple Fractional Spline Wavelet Packet Bases, especially designed for seismic reflectivity data. The first method excels in pinpointing the location of the singularities (the stratigraphy). The second method improves the singularity characterization by providing information on the transition's location, magnitude, scale, order and direction (anti-/causal/symmetric). Moreover, the atomic decomposition entails data compression, denoising and deconvolution. The output of both methods produces a map of the earth's singularity structure. These maps can be overlayed with seismic data, thus providing us with a means to more precisely characterize the seismic reflectivity's litho-stratigraphical information content.Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Industry Consorti

Wavelet-Based Registration of Medical Images.

Registration is the process of spatially aligning two objects and is normally a preprocessing step in most object recognition algorithms. Registration of images and recognition of signatures of objects in images is important for clinical and diagnostic purposes in medicine. Recognizing structure, potential targets for defense purposes and changes in the terrain, from aerial surveillance images and SAR images is the focus of extensive research and development today. Automatic Target Recognition is becoming increasingly important as the defense systems and armament technology move to use smarter munitions. Registration of images is a preprocessing step in any kind of machine vision for robots, object recognition in general, etc. Registration is also important for tuning instruments dealing with images. Most of the available methods of registration today are operator assisted. The state of registration today is more art than science and there are no standards for measuring or validating registration procedures. This dissertation provides a viable method to automatically register images of rigid bodies. It provides a method to register CT and MRI images of the brain. It uses wavelets to determine sharp edges. Wavelets are oscillatory functions with compact support. The Wavelet Modulus Maxima singularides. It also provides a mechanism to characterize the singularities in the images using Lipschitz exponents. This research provides a procedure to register images which is computationally efficient. The algorithms and techniques are general enough to be applicable to other application domains. The discussion in this dissertation includes an introduction to wavelets and time frequency analysis, results on MRI data, a discussion on the limitations, and certain requirements for the procedure to work. This dissertation also tracks the movement of edges across scales when a wavelet algorithm is used and provides a formula for this edge movement. As part of this research a registration classification schematic was developed

Glottal-synchronous speech processing

Glottal-synchronous speech processing is a field of speech science where the pseudoperiodicity of voiced speech is exploited. Traditionally, speech processing involves segmenting and processing short speech frames of predefined length; this may fail to exploit the inherent periodic structure of voiced speech which glottal-synchronous speech frames have the potential to harness. Glottal-synchronous frames are often derived from the glottal closure instants (GCIs) and glottal opening instants (GOIs). The SIGMA algorithm was developed for the detection of GCIs and GOIs from the Electroglottograph signal with a measured accuracy of up to 99.59%. For GCI and GOI detection from speech signals, the YAGA algorithm provides a measured accuracy of up to 99.84%. Multichannel speech-based approaches are shown to be more robust to reverberation than single-channel algorithms. The GCIs are applied to real-world applications including speech dereverberation, where SNR is improved by up to 5 dB, and to prosodic manipulation where the importance of voicing detection in glottal-synchronous algorithms is demonstrated by subjective testing. The GCIs are further exploited in a new area of data-driven speech modelling, providing new insights into speech production and a set of tools to aid deployment into real-world applications. The technique is shown to be applicable in areas of speech coding, identification and artificial bandwidth extension of telephone speec

Wavelet methods in speech recognition

In this thesis, novel wavelet techniques are developed to improve parametrization of speech signals prior to classification. It is shown that non-linear operations carried out in the wavelet domain improve the performance of a speech classifier and consistently outperform classical Fourier methods. This is because of the localised nature of the wavelet, which captures correspondingly well-localised time-frequency features within the speech signal. Furthermore, by taking advantage of the approximation ability of wavelets, efficient representation of the non-stationarity inherent in speech can be achieved in a relatively small number of expansion coefficients. This is an attractive option when faced with the so-called 'Curse of Dimensionality' problem of multivariate classifiers such as Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) or Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs). Conventional time-frequency analysis methods such as the Discrete Fourier Transform either miss irregular signal structures and transients due to spectral smearing or require a large number of coefficients to represent such characteristics efficiently. Wavelet theory offers an alternative insight in the representation of these types of signals. As an extension to the standard wavelet transform, adaptive libraries of wavelet and cosine packets are introduced which increase the flexibility of the transform. This approach is observed to be yet more suitable for the highly variable nature of speech signals in that it results in a time-frequency sampled grid that is well adapted to irregularities and transients. They result in a corresponding reduction in the misclassification rate of the recognition system. However, this is necessarily at the expense of added computing time. Finally, a framework based on adaptive time-frequency libraries is developed which invokes the final classifier to choose the nature of the resolution for a given classification problem. The classifier then performs dimensionaIity reduction on the transformed signal by choosing the top few features based on their discriminant power. This approach is compared and contrasted to an existing discriminant wavelet feature extractor. The overall conclusions of the thesis are that wavelets and their relatives are capable of extracting useful features for speech classification problems. The use of adaptive wavelet transforms provides the flexibility within which powerful feature extractors can be designed for these types of application

Real-time spectral modelling of audio for creative sound transformation

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Discrete Wavelet Transforms

The discrete wavelet transform (DWT) algorithms have a firm position in processing of signals in several areas of research and industry. As DWT provides both octave-scale frequency and spatial timing of the analyzed signal, it is constantly used to solve and treat more and more advanced problems. The present book: Discrete Wavelet Transforms: Algorithms and Applications reviews the recent progress in discrete wavelet transform algorithms and applications. The book covers a wide range of methods (e.g. lifting, shift invariance, multi-scale analysis) for constructing DWTs. The book chapters are organized into four major parts. Part I describes the progress in hardware implementations of the DWT algorithms. Applications include multitone modulation for ADSL and equalization techniques, a scalable architecture for FPGA-implementation, lifting based algorithm for VLSI implementation, comparison between DWT and FFT based OFDM and modified SPIHT codec. Part II addresses image processing algorithms such as multiresolution approach for edge detection, low bit rate image compression, low complexity implementation of CQF wavelets and compression of multi-component images. Part III focuses watermaking DWT algorithms. Finally, Part IV describes shift invariant DWTs, DC lossless property, DWT based analysis and estimation of colored noise and an application of the wavelet Galerkin method. The chapters of the present book consist of both tutorial and highly advanced material. Therefore, the book is intended to be a reference text for graduate students and researchers to obtain state-of-the-art knowledge on specific applications

Hidden Markov Models

Hidden Markov Models (HMMs), although known for decades, have made a big career nowadays and are still in state of development. This book presents theoretical issues and a variety of HMMs applications in speech recognition and synthesis, medicine, neurosciences, computational biology, bioinformatics, seismology, environment protection and engineering. I hope that the reader will find this book useful and helpful for their own research