7,369 research outputs found
Efficient Regularization of Squared Curvature
Curvature has received increased attention as an important alternative to
length based regularization in computer vision. In contrast to length, it
preserves elongated structures and fine details. Existing approaches are either
inefficient, or have low angular resolution and yield results with strong block
artifacts. We derive a new model for computing squared curvature based on
integral geometry. The model counts responses of straight line triple cliques.
The corresponding energy decomposes into submodular and supermodular pairwise
potentials. We show that this energy can be efficiently minimized even for high
angular resolutions using the trust region framework. Our results confirm that
we obtain accurate and visually pleasing solutions without strong artifacts at
reasonable run times.Comment: 8 pages, 12 figures, to appear at IEEE conference on Computer Vision
and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), June 201
Image reconstruction from photon sparse data
We report an algorithm for reconstructing images when the average number of photons recorded per pixel is of order unity, i.e. photon-sparse data. The image optimisation algorithm minimises a cost function incorporating both a Poissonian log-likelihood term based on the deviation of the reconstructed image from the measured data and a regularization-term based upon the sum of the moduli of the second spatial derivatives of the reconstructed image pixel intensities. The balance between these two terms is set by a bootstrapping technique where the target value of the log-likelihood term is deduced from a smoothed version of the original data. When compared to the original data, the processed images exhibit lower residuals with respect to the true object. We use photon-sparse data from two different experimental systems, one system based on a single-photon, avalanche photo-diode array and the other system on a time-gated, intensified camera. However, this same processing technique could most likely be applied to any low photon-number image irrespective of how the data is collected
Stochastic Training of Neural Networks via Successive Convex Approximations
This paper proposes a new family of algorithms for training neural networks
(NNs). These are based on recent developments in the field of non-convex
optimization, going under the general name of successive convex approximation
(SCA) techniques. The basic idea is to iteratively replace the original
(non-convex, highly dimensional) learning problem with a sequence of (strongly
convex) approximations, which are both accurate and simple to optimize.
Differently from similar ideas (e.g., quasi-Newton algorithms), the
approximations can be constructed using only first-order information of the
neural network function, in a stochastic fashion, while exploiting the overall
structure of the learning problem for a faster convergence. We discuss several
use cases, based on different choices for the loss function (e.g., squared loss
and cross-entropy loss), and for the regularization of the NN's weights. We
experiment on several medium-sized benchmark problems, and on a large-scale
dataset involving simulated physical data. The results show how the algorithm
outperforms state-of-the-art techniques, providing faster convergence to a
better minimum. Additionally, we show how the algorithm can be easily
parallelized over multiple computational units without hindering its
performance. In particular, each computational unit can optimize a tailored
surrogate function defined on a randomly assigned subset of the input
variables, whose dimension can be selected depending entirely on the available
computational power.Comment: Preprint submitted to IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and
Learning System
DOPE: Distributed Optimization for Pairwise Energies
We formulate an Alternating Direction Method of Mul-tipliers (ADMM) that
systematically distributes the computations of any technique for optimizing
pairwise functions, including non-submodular potentials. Such discrete
functions are very useful in segmentation and a breadth of other vision
problems. Our method decomposes the problem into a large set of small
sub-problems, each involving a sub-region of the image domain, which can be
solved in parallel. We achieve consistency between the sub-problems through a
novel constraint that can be used for a large class of pair-wise functions. We
give an iterative numerical solution that alternates between solving the
sub-problems and updating consistency variables, until convergence. We report
comprehensive experiments, which demonstrate the benefit of our general
distributed solution in the case of the popular serial algorithm of Boykov and
Kolmogorov (BK algorithm) and, also, in the context of non-submodular
functions.Comment: Accepted at CVPR 201
Compression for Smooth Shape Analysis
Most 3D shape analysis methods use triangular meshes to discretize both the
shape and functions on it as piecewise linear functions. With this
representation, shape analysis requires fine meshes to represent smooth shapes
and geometric operators like normals, curvatures, or Laplace-Beltrami
eigenfunctions at large computational and memory costs.
We avoid this bottleneck with a compression technique that represents a
smooth shape as subdivision surfaces and exploits the subdivision scheme to
parametrize smooth functions on that shape with a few control parameters. This
compression does not affect the accuracy of the Laplace-Beltrami operator and
its eigenfunctions and allow us to compute shape descriptors and shape
matchings at an accuracy comparable to triangular meshes but a fraction of the
computational cost.
Our framework can also compress surfaces represented by point clouds to do
shape analysis of 3D scanning data
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