62,226 research outputs found
Connectivity-Enforcing Hough Transform for the Robust Extraction of Line Segments
Global voting schemes based on the Hough transform (HT) have been widely used
to robustly detect lines in images. However, since the votes do not take line
connectivity into account, these methods do not deal well with cluttered
images. In opposition, the so-called local methods enforce connectivity but
lack robustness to deal with challenging situations that occur in many
realistic scenarios, e.g., when line segments cross or when long segments are
corrupted. In this paper, we address the critical limitations of the HT as a
line segment extractor by incorporating connectivity in the voting process.
This is done by only accounting for the contributions of edge points lying in
increasingly larger neighborhoods and whose position and directional content
agree with potential line segments. As a result, our method, which we call
STRAIGHT (Segment exTRAction by connectivity-enforcInG HT), extracts the
longest connected segments in each location of the image, thus also integrating
into the HT voting process the usually separate step of individual segment
extraction. The usage of the Hough space mapping and a corresponding
hierarchical implementation make our approach computationally feasible. We
present experiments that illustrate, with synthetic and real images, how
STRAIGHT succeeds in extracting complete segments in several situations where
current methods fail.Comment: Submitted for publicatio
Shearlet-based compressed sensing for fast 3D cardiac MR imaging using iterative reweighting
High-resolution three-dimensional (3D) cardiovascular magnetic resonance
(CMR) is a valuable medical imaging technique, but its widespread application
in clinical practice is hampered by long acquisition times. Here we present a
novel compressed sensing (CS) reconstruction approach using shearlets as a
sparsifying transform allowing for fast 3D CMR (3DShearCS). Shearlets are
mathematically optimal for a simplified model of natural images and have been
proven to be more efficient than classical systems such as wavelets. Data is
acquired with a 3D Radial Phase Encoding (RPE) trajectory and an iterative
reweighting scheme is used during image reconstruction to ensure fast
convergence and high image quality. In our in-vivo cardiac MRI experiments we
show that the proposed method 3DShearCS has lower relative errors and higher
structural similarity compared to the other reconstruction techniques
especially for high undersampling factors, i.e. short scan times. In this
paper, we further show that 3DShearCS provides improved depiction of cardiac
anatomy (measured by assessing the sharpness of coronary arteries) and two
clinical experts qualitatively analyzed the image quality
Edge and Line Feature Extraction Based on Covariance Models
age segmentation based on contour extraction usually involves three stages of image operations: feature extraction, edge detection and edge linking. This paper is devoted to the first stage: a method to design feature extractors used to detect edges from noisy and/or blurred images. The method relies on a model that describes the existence of image discontinuities (e.g. edges) in terms of covariance functions. The feature extractor transforms the input image into a “log-likelihood ratio” image. Such an image is a good starting point of the edge detection stage since it represents a balanced trade-off between signal-to-noise ratio and the ability to resolve detailed structures. For 1-D signals, the performance of the edge detector based on this feature extractor is quantitatively assessed by the so called “average risk measure”. The results are compared with the performances of 1-D edge detectors known from literature. Generalizations to 2-D operators are given. Applications on real world images are presented showing the capability of the covariance model to build edge and line feature extractors. Finally it is shown that the covariance model can be coupled to a MRF-model of edge configurations so as to arrive at a maximum a posteriori estimate of the edges or lines in the image
The Iray Light Transport Simulation and Rendering System
While ray tracing has become increasingly common and path tracing is well
understood by now, a major challenge lies in crafting an easy-to-use and
efficient system implementing these technologies. Following a purely
physically-based paradigm while still allowing for artistic workflows, the Iray
light transport simulation and rendering system allows for rendering complex
scenes by the push of a button and thus makes accurate light transport
simulation widely available. In this document we discuss the challenges and
implementation choices that follow from our primary design decisions,
demonstrating that such a rendering system can be made a practical, scalable,
and efficient real-world application that has been adopted by various companies
across many fields and is in use by many industry professionals today
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