Coding local and global binary visual features extracted from video sequences

Binary local features represent an effective alternative to real-valued descriptors, leading to comparable results for many visual analysis tasks, while being characterized by significantly lower computational complexity and memory requirements. When dealing with large collections, a more compact representation based on global features is often preferred, which can be obtained from local features by means of, e.g., the Bag-of-Visual-Word (BoVW) model. Several applications, including for example visual sensor networks and mobile augmented reality, require visual features to be transmitted over a bandwidth-limited network, thus calling for coding techniques that aim at reducing the required bit budget, while attaining a target level of efficiency. In this paper we investigate a coding scheme tailored to both local and global binary features, which aims at exploiting both spatial and temporal redundancy by means of intra- and inter-frame coding. In this respect, the proposed coding scheme can be conveniently adopted to support the Analyze-Then-Compress (ATC) paradigm. That is, visual features are extracted from the acquired content, encoded at remote nodes, and finally transmitted to a central controller that performs visual analysis. This is in contrast with the traditional approach, in which visual content is acquired at a node, compressed and then sent to a central unit for further processing, according to the Compress-Then-Analyze (CTA) paradigm. In this paper we experimentally compare ATC and CTA by means of rate-efficiency curves in the context of two different visual analysis tasks: homography estimation and content-based retrieval. Our results show that the novel ATC paradigm based on the proposed coding primitives can be competitive with CTA, especially in bandwidth limited scenarios.Comment: submitted to IEEE Transactions on Image Processin

Role of homeostasis in learning sparse representations

Neurons in the input layer of primary visual cortex in primates develop edge-like receptive fields. One approach to understanding the emergence of this response is to state that neural activity has to efficiently represent sensory data with respect to the statistics of natural scenes. Furthermore, it is believed that such an efficient coding is achieved using a competition across neurons so as to generate a sparse representation, that is, where a relatively small number of neurons are simultaneously active. Indeed, different models of sparse coding, coupled with Hebbian learning and homeostasis, have been proposed that successfully match the observed emergent response. However, the specific role of homeostasis in learning such sparse representations is still largely unknown. By quantitatively assessing the efficiency of the neural representation during learning, we derive a cooperative homeostasis mechanism that optimally tunes the competition between neurons within the sparse coding algorithm. We apply this homeostasis while learning small patches taken from natural images and compare its efficiency with state-of-the-art algorithms. Results show that while different sparse coding algorithms give similar coding results, the homeostasis provides an optimal balance for the representation of natural images within the population of neurons. Competition in sparse coding is optimized when it is fair. By contributing to optimizing statistical competition across neurons, homeostasis is crucial in providing a more efficient solution to the emergence of independent components

Image Compression Techniques Comparative Analysis using SVD-WDR and SVD-WDR with Principal Component Analysis

The image processing is the technique which can process the digital information stored in the form of pixels. The image compression is the technique which can reduce size of the image without compromising quality of the image. The image compression techniques can classified into lossy and loss-less. In this research work, the technique is proposed which is SVD-WDR with PCA for lossy image compression. The PCA algorithm is applied which will select the extracted pixels from the image. The simulation of proposed technique is done in MATLAB and it has been analyzed that it performs well in terms of various parameters. The proposed and existing algorithms are implemented in MATLAB and it is been analyzed that proposed technique performs well in term of PSNR, MSE, SSIM and compression rate. In proposed technique the image is firstly compressed by WDR technique and then wavelet transform is applied on it. After extracting features with wavelet transform the patches are created and patches are sorted in order to perform compression by using decision tree. Decision tree sort the patches according to NRL order that means it define root node which maximum weight, left node which has less weight than root node and right node which has minimum weight. In this way the patches are sorted in descending order in terms of its weight (information). Now we can see the leaf nodes have the least amount of information (weight). In order to achieve compression of the image the leaf nodes which have least amount of information are discarded to reconstruct the image. Then inverse wavelet transform is applied to decompress the image. When the PCA technique is applied decision tree classifier the features which are not required are removed from the image in the efficient manner and increase compression ratio