DEFORM'06 - Proceedings of the Workshop on Image Registration in Deformable Environments

Preface These are the proceedings of DEFORM'06, the Workshop on Image Registration in Deformable Environments, associated to BMVC'06, the 17th British Machine Vision Conference, held in Edinburgh, UK, in September 2006. The goal of DEFORM'06 was to bring together people from different domains having interests in deformable image registration. In response to our Call for Papers, we received 17 submissions and selected 8 for oral presentation at the workshop. In addition to the regular papers, Andrew Fitzgibbon from Microsoft Research Cambridge gave an invited talk at the workshop. The conference website including online proceedings remains open, see http://comsee.univ-bpclermont.fr/events/DEFORM06. We would like to thank the BMVC'06 co-chairs, Mike Chantler, Manuel Trucco and especially Bob Fisher for is great help in the local arrangements, Andrew Fitzgibbon, and the Programme Committee members who provided insightful reviews of the submitted papers. Special thanks go to Marc Richetin, head of the CNRS Research Federation TIMS, which sponsored the workshop. August 2006 Adrien Bartoli Nassir Navab Vincent Lepeti

Artificial Intelligence in the Creative Industries: A Review

This paper reviews the current state of the art in Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies and applications in the context of the creative industries. A brief background of AI, and specifically Machine Learning (ML) algorithms, is provided including Convolutional Neural Network (CNNs), Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) and Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL). We categorise creative applications into five groups related to how AI technologies are used: i) content creation, ii) information analysis, iii) content enhancement and post production workflows, iv) information extraction and enhancement, and v) data compression. We critically examine the successes and limitations of this rapidly advancing technology in each of these areas. We further differentiate between the use of AI as a creative tool and its potential as a creator in its own right. We foresee that, in the near future, machine learning-based AI will be adopted widely as a tool or collaborative assistant for creativity. In contrast, we observe that the successes of machine learning in domains with fewer constraints, where AI is the `creator', remain modest. The potential of AI (or its developers) to win awards for its original creations in competition with human creatives is also limited, based on contemporary technologies. We therefore conclude that, in the context of creative industries, maximum benefit from AI will be derived where its focus is human centric -- where it is designed to augment, rather than replace, human creativity

Deep integrative information extraction from scientific literature

Doctor of PhilosophyDepartment of Computer ScienceWilliam H HsuThis dissertation presents deep integrative methods from both visual and textual perspectives to address the challenges of extracting information from documents, particularly scientific literature. The number of publications in the academic literature has soared. Published literature includes large amounts of valuable information that can help scientists and researchers develop new directions in their fields of interest. Moreover, this information can be used in many applications, among them scholar search engines, relevant paper recommendations, and citation analysis. However, the increased production of scientific literature makes the process of literature review laborious and time-consuming, especially when large amounts of data are stored in heterogeneous unstructured formats, both numerical and image-based text, both of which are challenging to read and analyze. Thus, the ability to automatically extract information from the scientific literature is necessary. In this dissertation, we present integrative information extraction from scientific literature using deep learning approaches. We first investigated a vision-based approach for understanding layout and extracting metadata from scanned scientific literature images. We tried convolutional neural network and transformer-based approaches to document layout. Furthermore, for vision-based metadata information extraction, we proposed a trainable recurrent convolutional neural network that integrated scientific document layout detection and character recognition to extract metadata information from the scientific literature. In doing so, we addressed the problem of existing methods that cannot combine the techniques of layout extraction and text recognition efficiently because different publishers use different formats to present information. This framework requires no additional text features added into the network during the training process and will generate text content and appropriate labels of major sections of scientific documents. We then extracted key-information from unstructured texts in the scientific literature using technologies based on Natural Language Processing (NLP). Key-information could include the named entity and the relationship between pairs of entities in the scientific literature. This information can help provide researchers with key insights into the scientific literature. We proposed the attention-based deep learning method to extract key-information with limited annotated data sets. This method enhances contextualized word representations using pre-trained language models like a Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) that, unlike conventional machine learning approaches, does not require hand-crafted features or training with massive data. The dissertation concludes by identifying additional challenges and future work in extracting information from the scientific literature

Advanced document data extraction techniques to improve supply chain performance

In this thesis, a novel machine learning technique to extract text-based information from scanned images has been developed. This information extraction is performed in the context of scanned invoices and bills used in financial transactions. These financial transactions contain a considerable amount of data that must be extracted, refined, and stored digitally before it can be used for analysis. Converting this data into a digital format is often a time-consuming process. Automation and data optimisation show promise as methods for reducing the time required and the cost of Supply Chain Management (SCM) processes, especially Supplier Invoice Management (SIM), Financial Supply Chain Management (FSCM) and Supply Chain procurement processes. This thesis uses a cross-disciplinary approach involving Computer Science and Operational Management to explore the benefit of automated invoice data extraction in business and its impact on SCM. The study adopts a multimethod approach based on empirical research, surveys, and interviews performed on selected companies.The expert system developed in this thesis focuses on two distinct areas of research: Text/Object Detection and Text Extraction. For Text/Object Detection, the Faster R-CNN model was analysed. While this model yields outstanding results in terms of object detection, it is limited by poor performance when image quality is low. The Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) model is proposed in response to this limitation. The GAN model is a generator network that is implemented with the help of the Faster R-CNN model and a discriminator that relies on PatchGAN. The output of the GAN model is text data with bonding boxes. For text extraction from the bounding box, a novel data extraction framework consisting of various processes including XML processing in case of existing OCR engine, bounding box pre-processing, text clean up, OCR error correction, spell check, type check, pattern-based matching, and finally, a learning mechanism for automatizing future data extraction was designed. Whichever fields the system can extract successfully are provided in key-value format.The efficiency of the proposed system was validated using existing datasets such as SROIE and VATI. Real-time data was validated using invoices that were collected by two companies that provide invoice automation services in various countries. Currently, these scanned invoices are sent to an OCR system such as OmniPage, Tesseract, or ABBYY FRE to extract text blocks and later, a rule-based engine is used to extract relevant data. While the system’s methodology is robust, the companies surveyed were not satisfied with its accuracy. Thus, they sought out new, optimized solutions. To confirm the results, the engines were used to return XML-based files with text and metadata identified. The output XML data was then fed into this new system for information extraction. This system uses the existing OCR engine and a novel, self-adaptive, learning-based OCR engine. This new engine is based on the GAN model for better text identification. Experiments were conducted on various invoice formats to further test and refine its extraction capabilities. For cost optimisation and the analysis of spend classification, additional data were provided by another company in London that holds expertise in reducing their clients' procurement costs. This data was fed into our system to get a deeper level of spend classification and categorisation. This helped the company to reduce its reliance on human effort and allowed for greater efficiency in comparison with the process of performing similar tasks manually using excel sheets and Business Intelligence (BI) tools.The intention behind the development of this novel methodology was twofold. First, to test and develop a novel solution that does not depend on any specific OCR technology. Second, to increase the information extraction accuracy factor over that of existing methodologies. Finally, it evaluates the real-world need for the system and the impact it would have on SCM. This newly developed method is generic and can extract text from any given invoice, making it a valuable tool for optimizing SCM. In addition, the system uses a template-matching approach to ensure the quality of the extracted information

Text Detection and Recognition in the Wild

Text detection and recognition (TDR) in highly structured environments with a clean background and consistent fonts (e.g., office documents, postal addresses and bank cheque) is a well understood problem (i.e., OCR), however this is not the case for unstructured environments. The main objective for scene text detection is to locate text within images captured in the wild. For scene text recognition, the techniques map each detected or cropped word image into string. Nowadays, convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and Recurrent Neural Networks (RNN) deep learning architectures dominate most of the recent state-of-the-art (SOTA) scene TDR methods. Most of the reported respective accuracies of current SOTA TDR methods are in the range of 80% to 90% on benchmark datasets with regular and clear text instances. However, those detecting and/or recognizing results drastically deteriorate 10% and 30% - in terms of F-measure detection and word recognition accuracy performances with irregular or occluded text images. Transformers and their variations are new deep learning architectures that mitigate the above-mentioned issues for CNN and RNN-based pipelines.Unlike Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs), transformers are models that learn how to encode and decode data by looking not only backward but also forward in order to extract relevant information from a whole sequence. This thesis utilizes the transformer architecture to address the irregular (multi-oriented and arbitrarily shaped) and occluded text challenges in the wild images. Our main contributions are as follows: (1) We first targeted solving the irregular TDR in two separate architectures as follows: In Chapter 4, unlike the SOTA text detection frameworks that have complex pipelines and use many hand-designed components and post-processing stages, we design a conceptually more straightforward and trainable end-to-end architecture of transformer-based detector for multi-oriented scene text detection, which can directly predict the set of detections (i.e., text and box regions) of the input image. A central contribution to our work is introducing a loss function tailored to the rotated text detection problem that leverages a rotated version of a generalized intersection over union score to capture the rotated text instances adequately. In Chapter 5, we extend our previous architecture to arbitrary shaped scene text detection. We design a new text detection technique that aims to better infer n-vertices of a polygon or the degree of a Bezier curve to represent irregular-text instances. We also propose a loss function that combines a generalized-split-intersection-over union loss defined over the piece-wise polygons. In Chapter 6, we show that our transformer-based architecture without rectifying the input curved text instances is more suitable than SOTA RNN-based frameworks equipped with rectification modules for irregular text recognition in the wild images. Our main contribution to this chapter is leveraging a 2D Learnable Sinusoidal frequencies Positional Encoding (2LSPE) with a modified feed-forward neural network to better encode the 2D spatial dependencies of characters in the irregular text instances. (2) Since TDR tasks encounter the same challenging problems (e.g., irregular text, illumination variations, low-resolution text, etc.), we present a new transformer model that can detect and recognize individual characters of text instances in an end-to-end manner. Reading individual characters later makes a robust occlusion and arbitrarily shaped text spotting model without needing polygon annotation or multiple stages of detection and recognition modules used in SOTA text spotting architectures. In Chapter 7, unlike SOTA methods that combine two different pipelines of detection and recognition modules for a complete text reading, we utilize our text detection framework by leveraging a recent transformer-based technique, namely Deformable Patch-based Transformer (DPT), as a feature extracting backbone, to robustly read the class and box coordinates of irregular characters in the wild images. (3) Finally, we address the occlusion problem by using a multi-task end-to-end scene text spotting framework. In Chapter 8, we leverage a recent transformer-based framework in deep learning, namely Masked Auto Encoder (MAE), as a backbone for scene text recognition and end-to-end scene text spotting pipelines to overcome the partial occlusion limitation. We design a new multitask End-to-End transformer network that directly outputs characters, word instances, and their bounding box representations, saving the computational overhead as it eliminates multiple processing steps. The unified proposed framework can also detect and recognize arbitrarily shaped text instances without using polygon annotations

Advances in Character Recognition

This book presents advances in character recognition, and it consists of 12 chapters that cover wide range of topics on different aspects of character recognition. Hopefully, this book will serve as a reference source for academic research, for professionals working in the character recognition field and for all interested in the subject

Exploiting Spatio-Temporal Coherence for Video Object Detection in Robotics

This paper proposes a method to enhance video object detection for indoor environments in robotics. Concretely, it exploits knowledge about the camera motion between frames to propagate previously detected objects to successive frames. The proposal is rooted in the concepts of planar homography to propose regions of interest where to find objects, and recursive Bayesian filtering to integrate observations over time. The proposal is evaluated on six virtual, indoor environments, accounting for the detection of nine object classes over a total of ∼ 7k frames. Results show that our proposal improves the recall and the F1-score by a factor of 1.41 and 1.27, respectively, as well as it achieves a significant reduction of the object categorization entropy (58.8%) when compared to a two-stage video object detection method used as baseline, at the cost of small time overheads (120 ms) and precision loss (0.92).</p

Analysis of Children's Sketches to Improve Recognition Accuracy in Sketch-Based Applications

The current education systems in elementary schools are usually using traditional teaching methods such as paper and pencil or drawing on the board. The benefit of paper and pencil is their ease of use. Researchers have tried to bring this ease of use to computer-based educational systems through the use of sketch-recognition. Sketch-recognition allows students to draw naturally while at the same time receiving automated assistance and feedback from the computer. There are many sketch-based educational systems for children. However, current sketch-based educational systems use the same sketch recognizer for both adults and children. The problem of this approach is that the recognizers are trained by using sample data drawn by adults, even though the drawing patterns of children and adults are markedly different. We propose that if we make a separate recognizer for children, we can increase the recognition accuracy of shapes drawn by children. By creating a separate recognizer for children, we improved the recognition accuracy of children’s drawings from 81.25% (using the adults’ threshold) to 83.75% (using adjusted threshold for children). Additionally, we were able to automatically distinguish children’s drawings from adults’ drawings. We correctly identified the drawer’s age (age 3, 4, 7, or adult) with 78.3%. When distinguishing toddlers (age 3 and 4) from matures (age 7 and adult), we got a precision of 95.2% using 10-fold cross validation. When we removed adults and distinguished between toddlers and 7 year olds, we got a precision of 90.2%. Distinguishing between 3, 4, and 7 year olds, we got a precision of 86.8%. Furthermore, we revealed that there is a potential gender difference since our recognizer was more accurately able to recognize the drawings of female children (91.4%) than the male children (85.4%). Finally, this paper introduces a sketch-based teaching assistant tool for children, EasySketch, which teaches children how to draw digits and characters. Children can learn how to draw digits and characters by instructions and feedback