Browse-to-search

This demonstration presents a novel interactive online shopping application based on visual search technologies. When users want to buy something on a shopping site, they usually have the requirement of looking for related information from other web sites. Therefore users need to switch between the web page being browsed and other websites that provide search results. The proposed application enables users to naturally search products of interest when they browse a web page, and make their even causal purchase intent easily satisfied. The interactive shopping experience is characterized by: 1) in session - it allows users to specify the purchase intent in the browsing session, instead of leaving the current page and navigating to other websites; 2) in context - -the browsed web page provides implicit context information which helps infer user purchase preferences; 3) in focus - users easily specify their search interest using gesture on touch devices and do not need to formulate queries in search box; 4) natural-gesture inputs and visual-based search provides users a natural shopping experience. The system is evaluated against a data set consisting of several millions commercial product images. © 2012 Authors

Large-scale interactive exploratory visual search

Large scale visual search has been one of the challenging issues in the era of big data. It demands techniques that are not only highly effective and efficient but also allow users conveniently express their information needs and refine their intents. In this thesis, we focus on developing an exploratory framework for large scale visual search. We also develop a number of enabling techniques in this thesis, including compact visual content representation for scalable search, near duplicate video shot detection, and action based event detection. We propose a novel scheme for extremely low bit rate visual search, which sends compressed visual words consisting of vocabulary tree histogram and descriptor orientations rather than descriptors. Compact representation of video data is achieved through identifying keyframes of a video which can also help users comprehend visual content efficiently. We propose a novel Bag-of-Importance model for static video summarization. Near duplicate detection is one of the key issues for large scale visual search, since there exist a large number nearly identical images and videos. We propose an improved near-duplicate video shot detection approach for more effective shot representation. Event detection has been one of the solutions for bridging the semantic gap in visual search. We particular focus on human action centred event detection. We propose an enhanced sparse coding scheme to model human actions. Our proposed approach is able to significantly reduce computational cost while achieving recognition accuracy highly comparable to the state-of-the-art methods. At last, we propose an integrated solution for addressing the prime challenges raised from large-scale interactive visual search. The proposed system is also one of the first attempts for exploratory visual search. It provides users more robust results to satisfy their exploring experiences

Digital information support for concept design

This paper outlines the issues in effective utilisation of digital resources in conceptual design. Access to appropriate information acts as stimuli and can lead to better substantiated concepts. This paper addresses the issues of presenting such information in a digital form for effective use, exploring digital libraries and groupware as relevant literature areas, and argues that improved integration of these two technologies is necessary to better support the concept generation task. The development of the LauLima learning environment and digital library is consequently outlined. Despite its attempts to integrate the designers' working space and digital resources, continuing issues in library utilisation and migration of information to design concepts are highlighted through a class study. In light of this, new models of interaction to increase information use are explored

Milner Matters Fall 2012

Newsletter for library science alums, librarians who are Illinois State graduates, retirees, and friends of Milner Libraryhttps://ir.library.illinoisstate.edu/mlbmm/1010/thumbnail.jp

Detection of prostate cancer using multi-parametric magnetic resonance

Thesis (M.Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2002.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 26-28).A multi-channel statistical classifier to detect prostate cancer was developed by combining information from 3 different MR methodologies: T2-weighted, T2-mapping, and Line Scan Diffusion lmaging(LSDI). From these MR sequences, 4 sets of image intensities were obtained: T2-weighted(T2W) from T2-weighted imaging, Apparent Diffusion Coefficient(ADC) from LSDI, and Proton Density (PD) and T2 (T2Map) from T2-mapping imaging. Manually- segmented tumor labels from a radiologist were validated by biopsy results to serve as tumor "ground truth." Textural features were derived from the images using co-occurrence matrix and discrete cosine transform. Anatomical location of voxels was described by a cylindrical coordinate system. Statistical jack-knife approach was used to evaluate our classifiers. Single-channel maximum likelihood(ML) classifiers were based on 1 of the 4 basic image intensities. Our multi-channel classifiers: support vector machine (SVM) and fisher linear discriminant(FLD), utilized 5 different sets of derived features. Each classifer generated a summary statistical map that indicated tumor likelihood in the peripheral zone(PZ) of the gland. To assess classifier accuracy, the average areas under the receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curves were compared. Our best FLD classifier achieved an average ROC area of 0.839 (±0.064) and our best SVM classifier achieved an average ROC area of 0.761 (±0.043). The T2W intensity maximum likelihood classifier, our best single-channel classifier, only achieved an average ROC area of 0.599 (± 0.146). Compared to the best single-channel ML classifier, our best multi-channel FLD and SVM classifiers have statistically superior ROC performance with P-values of 0.0003 and 0.0017 respectively from pairwise 2-sided t-test. By integrating information from the multiple images and capturing the textural and anatomical features in tumor areas, the statistical summary maps can potentially improve the accuracy of image-guided prostate biopsy and enable the delivery of localized therapy under image guidance.by Ian Chan.M.Eng

Plagiarism Detection Application

The purpose of this abstract is to give a complete idea of the project being undertaken. Part 1 of this project deals mainly with the research value of the project. The project name is plagiarism Detection system or application. Methodologies and procedure of reaching this goal are included in the report as well. The motive behind the development of this application is to diminish plagiarism in University Technology Petronas (UTP). After reading this report a clear understanding of scope of study should be fully comprehended. The scope of study is researching about functionality of components needed to be integrated to complete a full plagiarism detection system. Behaviors of these components will also be studied to enable the student to make modification were possible to suit UTP while making it easy to use. ll

Information fusion in content based image retrieval: A comprehensive overview

An ever increasing part of communication between persons involve the use of pictures, due to the cheap availability of powerful cameras on smartphones, and the cheap availability of storage space. The rising popularity of social networking applications such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and of instant messaging applications, such as WhatsApp, WeChat, is the clear evidence of this phenomenon, due to the opportunity of sharing in real-time a pictorial representation of the context each individual is living in. The media rapidly exploited this phenomenon, using the same channel, either to publish their reports, or to gather additional information on an event through the community of users. While the real-time use of images is managed through metadata associated with the image (i.e., the timestamp, the geolocation, tags, etc.), their retrieval from an archive might be far from trivial, as an image bears a rich semantic content that goes beyond the description provided by its metadata. It turns out that after more than 20 years of research on Content-Based Image Retrieval (CBIR), the giant increase in the number and variety of images available in digital format is challenging the research community. It is quite easy to see that any approach aiming at facing such challenges must rely on different image representations that need to be conveniently fused in order to adapt to the subjectivity of image semantics. This paper offers a journey through the main information fusion ingredients that a recipe for the design of a CBIR system should include to meet the demanding needs of users