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

Persistent Homology Tools for Image Analysis

Topological Data Analysis (TDA) is a new field of mathematics emerged rapidly since the first decade of the century from various works of algebraic topology and geometry. The goal of TDA and its main tool of persistent homology (PH) is to provide topological insight into complex and high dimensional datasets. We take this premise onboard to get more topological insight from digital image analysis and quantify tiny low-level distortion that are undetectable except possibly by highly trained persons. Such image distortion could be caused intentionally (e.g. by morphing and steganography) or naturally in abnormal human tissue/organ scan images as a result of onset of cancer or other diseases. The main objective of this thesis is to design new image analysis tools based on persistent homological invariants representing simplicial complexes on sets of pixel landmarks over a sequence of distance resolutions. We first start by proposing innovative automatic techniques to select image pixel landmarks to build a variety of simplicial topologies from a single image. Effectiveness of each image landmark selection demonstrated by testing on different image tampering problems such as morphed face detection, steganalysis and breast tumour detection. Vietoris-Rips simplicial complexes constructed based on the image landmarks at an increasing distance threshold and topological (homological) features computed at each threshold and summarized in a form known as persistent barcodes. We vectorise the space of persistent barcodes using a technique known as persistent binning where we demonstrated the strength of it for various image analysis purposes. Different machine learning approaches are adopted to develop automatic detection of tiny texture distortion in many image analysis applications. Homological invariants used in this thesis are the 0 and 1 dimensional Betti numbers. We developed an innovative approach to design persistent homology (PH) based algorithms for automatic detection of the above described types of image distortion. In particular, we developed the first PH-detector of morphing attacks on passport face biometric images. We shall demonstrate significant accuracy of 2 such morph detection algorithms with 4 types of automatically extracted image landmarks: Local Binary patterns (LBP), 8-neighbour super-pixels (8NSP), Radial-LBP (R-LBP) and centre-symmetric LBP (CS-LBP). Using any of these techniques yields several persistent barcodes that summarise persistent topological features that help gaining insights into complex hidden structures not amenable by other image analysis methods. We shall also demonstrate significant success of a similarly developed PH-based universal steganalysis tool capable for the detection of secret messages hidden inside digital images. We also argue through a pilot study that building PH records from digital images can differentiate breast malignant tumours from benign tumours using digital mammographic images. The research presented in this thesis creates new opportunities to build real applications based on TDA and demonstrate many research challenges in a variety of image processing/analysis tasks. For example, we describe a TDA-based exemplar image inpainting technique (TEBI), superior to existing exemplar algorithm, for the reconstruction of missing image regions

Image and Video Forensics

Nowadays, images and videos have become the main modalities of information being exchanged in everyday life, and their pervasiveness has led the image forensics community to question their reliability, integrity, confidentiality, and security. Multimedia contents are generated in many different ways through the use of consumer electronics and high-quality digital imaging devices, such as smartphones, digital cameras, tablets, and wearable and IoT devices. The ever-increasing convenience of image acquisition has facilitated instant distribution and sharing of digital images on digital social platforms, determining a great amount of exchange data. Moreover, the pervasiveness of powerful image editing tools has allowed the manipulation of digital images for malicious or criminal ends, up to the creation of synthesized images and videos with the use of deep learning techniques. In response to these threats, the multimedia forensics community has produced major research efforts regarding the identification of the source and the detection of manipulation. In all cases (e.g., forensic investigations, fake news debunking, information warfare, and cyberattacks) where images and videos serve as critical evidence, forensic technologies that help to determine the origin, authenticity, and integrity of multimedia content can become essential tools. This book aims to collect a diverse and complementary set of articles that demonstrate new developments and applications in image and video forensics to tackle new and serious challenges to ensure media authenticity

Gaze-Based Human-Robot Interaction by the Brunswick Model

We present a new paradigm for human-robot interaction based on social signal processing, and in particular on the Brunswick model. Originally, the Brunswick model copes with face-to-face dyadic interaction, assuming that the interactants are communicating through a continuous exchange of non verbal social signals, in addition to the spoken messages. Social signals have to be interpreted, thanks to a proper recognition phase that considers visual and audio information. The Brunswick model allows to quantitatively evaluate the quality of the interaction using statistical tools which measure how effective is the recognition phase. In this paper we cast this theory when one of the interactants is a robot; in this case, the recognition phase performed by the robot and the human have to be revised w.r.t. the original model. The model is applied to Berrick, a recent open-source low-cost robotic head platform, where the gazing is the social signal to be considered

Learning How To Recognize Faces In Heterogeneous Environments

Face recognition is a mature field in biometrics in which several systems have been proposed over the last three decades. Such systems are extremely reliable under controlled recording conditions and it has been deployed in the field in critical tasks, such as in border control and in less critical ones, such as to unlock mobile phones. However, the lack of cooperation from the subject and variations on the pose, occlusion and illumination are still open problems and significantly affect error rates. Another challenge that arose recently in face recognition research is the ability of matching faces from different image domains. Use cases encompass the matching between Visual Light images (VIS) with Near infra-red images (NIR), Visual Light images (VIS) with Thermograms or Depth maps. This match can occur even in situations where no real face exists, such as matching using sketches. This task is so called Heterogeneous Face Recognition. The key difficulty in the comparison of faces in heterogeneous conditions is that images from the same subject may differ in appearance due to changes in image domain. In this thesis we address this problem of Heterogeneous Face Recognition (HFR). Our contributions are four-fold. First, we analyze the applicability of crafted features used in face recognition in the HFR task. Second, still working with crafted features, we propose that the variability between two image domains can be suppressed with a linear shift in the Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) mean subspace. That encompasses inter-session variability (ISV) modeling. Third, we propose that high level features of Deep Convolutional Neural Networks trained on Visual Light images are potentially domain independent and can be used to encode faces sensed in different image domains. Fourth, large-scale experiments are conducted on several HFR databases, covering various image domains showing competitive performances. Moreover, the implementation of all the proposed techniques are integrated into a collaborative open source software library called Bob that enforces fair evaluations and encourages reproducible research

Multimedia Forensics

This book is open access. Media forensics has never been more relevant to societal life. Not only media content represents an ever-increasing share of the data traveling on the net and the preferred communications means for most users, it has also become integral part of most innovative applications in the digital information ecosystem that serves various sectors of society, from the entertainment, to journalism, to politics. Undoubtedly, the advances in deep learning and computational imaging contributed significantly to this outcome. The underlying technologies that drive this trend, however, also pose a profound challenge in establishing trust in what we see, hear, and read, and make media content the preferred target of malicious attacks. In this new threat landscape powered by innovative imaging technologies and sophisticated tools, based on autoencoders and generative adversarial networks, this book fills an important gap. It presents a comprehensive review of state-of-the-art forensics capabilities that relate to media attribution, integrity and authenticity verification, and counter forensics. Its content is developed to provide practitioners, researchers, photo and video enthusiasts, and students a holistic view of the field

Multimedia Forensics

This book is open access. Media forensics has never been more relevant to societal life. Not only media content represents an ever-increasing share of the data traveling on the net and the preferred communications means for most users, it has also become integral part of most innovative applications in the digital information ecosystem that serves various sectors of society, from the entertainment, to journalism, to politics. Undoubtedly, the advances in deep learning and computational imaging contributed significantly to this outcome. The underlying technologies that drive this trend, however, also pose a profound challenge in establishing trust in what we see, hear, and read, and make media content the preferred target of malicious attacks. In this new threat landscape powered by innovative imaging technologies and sophisticated tools, based on autoencoders and generative adversarial networks, this book fills an important gap. It presents a comprehensive review of state-of-the-art forensics capabilities that relate to media attribution, integrity and authenticity verification, and counter forensics. Its content is developed to provide practitioners, researchers, photo and video enthusiasts, and students a holistic view of the field

Applications of Medical Physics

Applications of Medical Physics” is a Special Issue of Applied Sciences that has collected original research manuscripts describing cutting-edge physics developments in medicine and their translational applications. Reviews providing updates on the latest progresses in this field are also included. The collection includes a total of 20 contributions by authors from 9 different countries, which cover several areas of medical physics, spanning from radiation therapy, nuclear medicine, radiology, dosimetry, radiation protection, and radiobiology