Toward Large Scale Semantic Image Understanding and Retrieval

Semantic image retrieval is a multifaceted, highly complex problem. Not only does the solution to this problem require advanced image processing and computer vision techniques, but it also requires knowledge beyond what can be inferred from the image content alone. In contrast, traditional image retrieval systems are based upon keyword searches on filenames or metadata tags, e.g. Google image search, Flickr search, etc. These conventional systems do not analyze the image content and their keywords are not guaranteed to represent the image. Thus, there is significant need for a semantic image retrieval system that can analyze and retrieve images based upon the content and relationships that exist in the real world.In this thesis, I present a framework that moves towards advancing semantic image retrieval in large scale datasets. At a conceptual level, semantic image retrieval requires the following steps: viewing an image, understanding the content of the image, indexing the important aspects of the image, connecting the image concepts to the real world, and finally retrieving the images based upon the index concepts or related concepts. My proposed framework addresses each of these components in my ultimate goal of improving image retrieval. The first task is the essential task of understanding the content of an image. Unfortunately, typically the only data used by a computer algorithm when analyzing images is the low-level pixel data. But, to achieve human level comprehension, a machine must overcome the semantic gap, or disparity that exists between the image data and human understanding. This translation of the low-level information into a high-level representation is an extremely difficult problem that requires more than the image pixel information. I describe my solution to this problem through the use of an online knowledge acquisition and storage system. This system utilizes the extensible, visual, and interactable properties of Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) combined with online crowd sourcing tools to collect high level knowledge about visual content.I further describe the utilization of knowledge and semantic data for image understanding. Specifically, I seek to incorporate knowledge in various algorithms that cannot be inferred from the image pixels alone. This information comes from related images or structured data (in the form of hierarchies and ontologies) to improve the performance of object detection and image segmentation tasks. These understanding tasks are crucial intermediate steps towards retrieval and semantic understanding. However, the typical object detection and segmentation tasks requires an abundance of training data for machine learning algorithms. The prior training information provides information on what patterns and visual features the algorithm should be looking for when processing an image. In contrast, my algorithm utilizes related semantic images to extract the visual properties of an object and also to decrease the search space of my detection algorithm. Furthermore, I demonstrate the use of related images in the image segmentation process. Again, without the use of prior training data, I present a method for foreground object segmentation by finding the shared area that exists in a set of images. I demonstrate the effectiveness of my method on structured image datasets that have defined relationships between classes i.e. parent-child, or sibling classes.Finally, I introduce my framework for semantic image retrieval. I enhance the proposed knowledge acquisition and image understanding techniques with semantic knowledge through linked data and web semantic languages. This is an essential step in semantic image retrieval. For example, a car class classified by an image processing algorithm not enhanced by external knowledge would have no idea that a car is a type of vehicle which would also be highly related to a truck and less related to other transportation methods like a train . However, a query for modes of human transportation should return all of the mentioned classes. Thus, I demonstrate how to integrate information from both image processing algorithms and semantic knowledge bases to perform interesting queries that would otherwise be impossible. The key component of this system is a novel property reasoner that is able to translate low level image features into semantically relevant object properties. I use a combination of XML based languages such as SVG, RDF, and OWL in order to link to existing ontologies available on the web. My experiments demonstrate an efficient data collection framework and novel utilization of semantic data for image analysis and retrieval on datasets of people and landmarks collected from sources such as IMDB and Flickr. Ultimately, my thesis presents improvements to the state of the art in visual knowledge representation/acquisition and computer vision algorithms such as detection and segmentation toward the goal of enhanced semantic image retrieval

Artificial Intelligence Based Classification for Urban Surface Water Modelling

Estimations and predictions of surface water runoff can provide very useful insights, regarding flood risks in urban areas. To automatically predict the flow behaviour of the rainfall-runoff water, in real-world satellite images, it is important to precisely identify permeable and impermeable areas. This identification indicates and helps to calculate the amount of surface water, by taking into account the amount of water being absorbed in a permeable area and what remains on the impermeable area. In this research, a model of surface water has been established, to predict the behavioural flow of rainfall-runoff water. This study employs a combination of image processing, artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques, for automatic segmentation and classification of permeable and impermeable areas, in satellite images. These techniques investigate the image classification approaches for classifying three land-use categories (roofs, roads, and pervious areas), commonly found in satellite images of the earth’s surface. Three different classification scenarios are investigated, to select the best classification model. The first scenario involves pixel by pixel classification of images, using Classification Tree and Random Forest classification techniques, in 2 different settings of sequential and parallel execution of algorithms. In the second classification scenario, the image is divided into objects, by using Superpixels (SLIC) segmentation method, while three kinds of feature sets are extracted from the segmented objects. The performance of eight different supervised machine learning classifiers is probed, using 5-fold cross-validation, for multiple SLIC values, while detailed performance comparisons lead to conclusions about the classification into different classes, regarding Object-based and Pixel-based classification schemes. Pareto analysis and Knee point selection are used to select SLIC value and the suitable type of classification, among the aforementioned two. Furthermore, a new diversity and weighted sum-based ensemble classification model, called ParetoEnsemble, is proposed, in this classification scenario. The weights are applied to selected component classifiers of an ensemble, creating a strong classifier, where classification is done based on multiple votes from candidate classifiers of the ensemble, as opposed to individual classifiers, where classification is done based on a single vote, from only one classifier. Unbalanced and balanced data-based classification results are also evaluated, to determine the most suitable mode, for satellite image classifications, in this study. Convolutional Neural Networks, based on semantic segmentation, are also employed in the classification phase, as a third scenario, to evaluate the strength of deep learning model SegNet, in the classification of satellite imaging. The best results, from the three classification scenarios, are compared and the best classification method, among the three scenarios, is used in the next phase of water modelling, with the InfoWorks ICM software, to explore the potential of modelling process, regarding a partially automated surface water network. By using the parameter settings, with a specified amount of simulated rain falling, onto the imaged area, the amount of surface water flow is estimated, to get predictions about runoff situations in urban areas, since runoff, in such a situation, can be high enough to pose a dangerous flood risk. The area of Feock, in Cornwall, is used as a simulation area of study, in this research, where some promising results have been derived, regarding classification and modelling of runoff. The correlation coefficient estimation, between classification and runoff accuracy, provides useful insight, regarding the dependence of runoff performance on classification performance. The trained system was tested on some unknown area images as well, demonstrating a reasonable performance, considering the training and classification limitations and conditions. Furthermore, in these unknown area images, reasonable estimations were derived, regarding surface water runoff. An analysis of unbalanced and balanced data-based classification and runoff estimations, for multiple parameter configurations, provides aid to the selection of classification and modelling parameter values, to be used in future unknown data predictions. This research is founded on the incorporation of satellite imaging into water modelling, using selective images for analysis and assessment of results. This system can be further improved, and runoff predictions of high precision can be better achieved, by adding more high-resolution images to the classifiers training. The added variety, to the trained model, can lead to an even better classification of any unknown image, which could eventually provide better modelling and better insights into surface water modelling. Moreover, the modelling phase can be extended, in future research, to deal with real-time parameters, by calibrating the model, after the classification phase, in order to observe the impact of classification on the actual calibration

Biometric Systems

Because of the accelerating progress in biometrics research and the latest nation-state threats to security, this book's publication is not only timely but also much needed. This volume contains seventeen peer-reviewed chapters reporting the state of the art in biometrics research: security issues, signature verification, fingerprint identification, wrist vascular biometrics, ear detection, face detection and identification (including a new survey of face recognition), person re-identification, electrocardiogram (ECT) recognition, and several multi-modal systems. This book will be a valuable resource for graduate students, engineers, and researchers interested in understanding and investigating this important field of study

Interactive computer vision through the Web

Computer vision is the computational science aiming at reproducing and improving the ability of human vision to understand its environment. In this thesis, we focus on two fields of computer vision, namely image segmentation and visual odometry and we show the positive impact that interactive Web applications provide on each. The first part of this thesis focuses on image annotation and segmentation. We introduce the image annotation problem and challenges it brings for large, crowdsourced datasets. Many interactions have been explored in the literature to help segmentation algorithms. The most common consist in designating contours, bounding boxes around objects, or interior and exterior scribbles. When crowdsourcing, annotation tasks are delegated to a non-expert public, sometimes on cheaper devices such as tablets. In this context, we conducted a user study showing the advantages of the outlining interaction over scribbles and bounding boxes. Another challenge of crowdsourcing is the distribution medium. While evaluating an interaction in a small user study does not require complex setup, distributing an annotation campaign to thousands of potential users might differ. Thus we describe how the Elm programming language helped us build a reliable image annotation Web application. A highlights tour of its functionalities and architecture is provided, as well as a guide on how to deploy it to crowdsourcing services such as Amazon Mechanical Turk. The application is completely opensource and available online. In the second part of this thesis we present our open-source direct visual odometry library. In that endeavor, we provide an evaluation of other open-source RGB-D camera tracking algorithms and show that our approach performs as well as the currently available alternatives. The visual odometry problem relies on geometry tools and optimization techniques traditionally requiring much processing power to perform at realtime framerates. Since we aspire to run those algorithms directly in the browser, we review past and present technologies enabling high performance computations on the Web. In particular, we detail how to target a new standard called WebAssembly from the C++ and Rust programming languages. Our library has been started from scratch in the Rust programming language, which then allowed us to easily port it to WebAssembly. Thanks to this property, we are able to showcase a visual odometry Web application with multiple types of interactions available. A timeline enables one-dimensional navigation along the video sequence. Pairs of image points can be picked on two 2D thumbnails of the image sequence to realign cameras and correct drifts. Colors are also used to identify parts of the 3D point cloud, selectable to reinitialize camera positions. Combining those interactions enables improvements on the tracking and 3D point reconstruction results

A Survey on Graph Kernels

Graph kernels have become an established and widely-used technique for solving classification tasks on graphs. This survey gives a comprehensive overview of techniques for kernel-based graph classification developed in the past 15 years. We describe and categorize graph kernels based on properties inherent to their design, such as the nature of their extracted graph features, their method of computation and their applicability to problems in practice. In an extensive experimental evaluation, we study the classification accuracy of a large suite of graph kernels on established benchmarks as well as new datasets. We compare the performance of popular kernels with several baseline methods and study the effect of applying a Gaussian RBF kernel to the metric induced by a graph kernel. In doing so, we find that simple baselines become competitive after this transformation on some datasets. Moreover, we study the extent to which existing graph kernels agree in their predictions (and prediction errors) and obtain a data-driven categorization of kernels as result. Finally, based on our experimental results, we derive a practitioner's guide to kernel-based graph classification

Generalizations of the Multicut Problem for Computer Vision

Graph decomposition has always been a very important concept in machine learning and computer vision. Many tasks like image and mesh segmentation, community detection in social networks, as well as object tracking and human pose estimation can be formulated as a graph decomposition problem. The multicut problem in particular is a popular model to optimize for a decomposition of a given graph. Its main advantage is that no prior knowledge about the number of components or their sizes is required. However, it has several limitations, which we address in this thesis: Firstly, the multicut problem allows to specify only cost or reward for putting two direct neighbours into distinct components. This limits the expressibility of the cost function. We introduce special edges into the graph that allow to define cost or reward for putting any two vertices into distinct components, while preserving the original set of feasible solutions. We show that this considerably improves the quality of image and mesh segmentations. Second, multicut is notorious to be NP-hard for general graphs, that limits its applications to small super-pixel graphs. We define and implement two primal feasible heuristics to solve the problem. They do not provide any guarantees on the runtime or quality of solutions, but in practice show good convergence behaviour. We perform an extensive comparison on multiple graphs of different sizes and properties. Third, we extend the multicut framework by introducing node labels, so that we can jointly optimize for graph decomposition and nodes classification by means of exactly the same optimization algorithm, thus eliminating the need to hand-tune optimizers for a particular task. To prove its universality we applied it to diverse computer vision tasks, including human pose estimation, multiple object tracking, and instance-aware semantic segmentation. We show that we can improve the results over the prior art using exactly the same data as in the original works. Finally, we use employ multicuts in two applications: 1) a client-server tool for interactive video segmentation: After the pre-processing of the video a user draws strokes on several frames and a time-coherent segmentation of the entire video is performed on-the-fly. 2) we formulate a method for simultaneous segmentation and tracking of living cells in microscopy data. This task is challenging as cells split and our algorithm accounts for this, creating parental hierarchies. We also present results on multiple model fitting. We find models in data heavily corrupted by noise by finding components defining these models using higher order multicuts. We introduce an interesting extension that allows our optimization to pick better hyperparameters for each discovered model. In summary, this thesis extends the multicut problem in different directions, proposes algorithms for optimization, and applies it to novel data and settings.Die Zerlegung von Graphen ist ein sehr wichtiges Konzept im maschinellen Lernen und maschinellen Sehen. Viele Aufgaben wie Bild- und Gittersegmentierung, Kommunitätserkennung in sozialen Netzwerken, sowie Objektverfolgung und Schätzung von menschlichen Posen können als Graphzerlegungsproblem formuliert werden. Der Mehrfachschnitt-Ansatz ist ein populäres Mittel um über die Zerlegungen eines gegebenen Graphen zu optimieren. Sein größter Vorteil ist, dass kein Vorwissen über die Anzahl an Komponenten und deren Größen benötigt wird. Dennoch hat er mehrere ernsthafte Limitierungen, welche wir in dieser Arbeit behandeln: Erstens erlaubt der klassische Mehrfachschnitt nur die Spezifikation von Kosten oder Belohnungen für die Trennung von zwei Nachbarn in verschiedene Komponenten. Dies schränkt die Ausdrucksfähigkeit der Kostenfunktion ein und führt zu suboptimalen Ergebnissen. Wir fügen dem Graphen spezielle Kanten hinzu, welche es erlauben, Kosten oder Belohnungen für die Trennung von beliebigen Paaren von Knoten in verschiedene Komponenten zu definieren, ohne die Menge an zulässigen Lösungen zu verändern. Wir zeigen, dass dies die Qualität von Bild- und Gittersegmentierungen deutlich verbessert. Zweitens ist das Mehrfachschnittproblem berüchtigt dafür NP-schwer für allgemeine Graphen zu sein, was die Anwendungen auf kleine superpixel-basierte Graphen einschränkt. Wir definieren und implementieren zwei primal-zulässige Heuristiken um das Problem zu lösen. Diese geben keine Garantien bezüglich der Laufzeit oder der Qualität der Lösungen, zeigen in der Praxis jedoch gutes Konvergenzverhalten. Wir führen einen ausführlichen Vergleich auf vielen Graphen verschiedener Größen und Eigenschaften durch. Drittens erweitern wir den Mehrfachschnitt-Ansatz um Knoten-Kennzeichnungen, sodass wir gemeinsam über Zerlegungen und Knoten-Klassifikationen mit dem gleichen Optimierungs-Algorithmus optimieren können. Dadurch wird der Bedarf der Feinabstimmung einzelner aufgabenspezifischer Löser aus dem Weg geräumt. Um die Allgemeingültigkeit dieses Ansatzes zu überprüfen, haben wir ihn auf verschiedenen Aufgaben des maschinellen Sehens, einschließlich menschliche Posenschätzung, Mehrobjektverfolgung und instanz-bewusste semantische Segmentierung, angewandt. Wir zeigen, dass wir Resultate von vorherigen Arbeiten mit exakt den gleichen Daten verbessern können. Abschließend benutzen wir Mehrfachschnitte in zwei Anwendungen: 1) Ein Nutzer-Server-Werkzeug für interaktive Video Segmentierung: Nach der Vorbearbeitung eines Videos zeichnet der Nutzer Striche auf mehrere Einzelbilder und eine zeit-kohärente Segmentierung des gesamten Videos wird in Echtzeit berechnet. 2) Wir formulieren eine Methode für simultane Segmentierung und Verfolgung von lebenden Zellen in Mikroskopie-Aufnahmen. Diese Aufgabe ist anspruchsvoll, da Zellen sich aufteilen und unser Algorithmus dies in der Erstellung von Eltern-Hierarchien mitberücksichtigen muss. Wir präsentieren außerdem Resultate zur Mehrmodellanpassung. Wir berechnen Modelle in stark verrauschten Daten indem wir mithilfe von Mehrfachschnitten höherer Ordnung Komponenten finden, die diesen Modellen entsprechen. Wir führen eine interessante Erweiterung ein, die es unserer Optimierung erlaubt, bessere Hyperparameter für jedes entdeckte Modell auszuwählen. Zusammenfassend erweitert diese Arbeit den Mehrfachschnitt-Ansatz in unterschiedlichen Richtungen, schlägt Algorithmen zur Inferenz in den resultierenden Modellen vor und wendet ihn auf neuartigen Daten und Umgebungen an

Real-Time, Multiple Pan/Tilt/Zoom Computer Vision Tracking and 3D Positioning System for Unmanned Aerial System Metrology

The study of structural characteristics of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UASs) continues to be an important field of research for developing state of the art nano/micro systems. Development of a metrology system using computer vision (CV) tracking and 3D point extraction would provide an avenue for making these theoretical developments. This work provides a portable, scalable system capable of real-time tracking, zooming, and 3D position estimation of a UAS using multiple cameras. Current state-of-the-art photogrammetry systems use retro-reflective markers or single point lasers to obtain object poses and/or positions over time. Using a CV pan/tilt/zoom (PTZ) system has the potential to circumvent their limitations. The system developed in this paper exploits parallel-processing and the GPU for CV-tracking, using optical flow and known camera motion, in order to capture a moving object using two PTU cameras. The parallel-processing technique developed in this work is versatile, allowing the ability to test other CV methods with a PTZ system using known camera motion. Utilizing known camera poses, the object\u27s 3D position is estimated and focal lengths are estimated for filling the image to a desired amount. This system is tested against truth data obtained using an industrial system