2,108 research outputs found
Hierarchical Graphical Models for Multigroup Shape Analysis using Expectation Maximization with Sampling in Kendall's Shape Space
This paper proposes a novel framework for multi-group shape analysis relying
on a hierarchical graphical statistical model on shapes within a population.The
framework represents individual shapes as point setsmodulo translation,
rotation, and scale, following the notion in Kendall shape space.While
individual shapes are derived from their group shape model, each group shape
model is derived from a single population shape model. The hierarchical model
follows the natural organization of population data and the top level in the
hierarchy provides a common frame of reference for multigroup shape analysis,
e.g. classification and hypothesis testing. Unlike typical shape-modeling
approaches, the proposed model is a generative model that defines a joint
distribution of object-boundary data and the shape-model variables.
Furthermore, it naturally enforces optimal correspondences during the process
of model fitting and thereby subsumes the so-called correspondence problem. The
proposed inference scheme employs an expectation maximization (EM) algorithm
that treats the individual and group shape variables as hidden random variables
and integrates them out before estimating the parameters (population mean and
variance and the group variances). The underpinning of the EM algorithm is the
sampling of pointsets, in Kendall shape space, from their posterior
distribution, for which we exploit a highly-efficient scheme based on
Hamiltonian Monte Carlo simulation. Experiments in this paper use the fitted
hierarchical model to perform (1) hypothesis testing for comparison between
pairs of groups using permutation testing and (2) classification for image
retrieval. The paper validates the proposed framework on simulated data and
demonstrates results on real data.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figures, International Conference on Machine Learning 201
Optimising Trade-offs Among Stakeholders in Ad Auctions
We examine trade-offs among stakeholders in ad auctions. Our metrics are the
revenue for the utility of the auctioneer, the number of clicks for the utility
of the users and the welfare for the utility of the advertisers. We show how to
optimize linear combinations of the stakeholder utilities, showing that these
can be tackled through a GSP auction with a per-click reserve price. We then
examine constrained optimization of stakeholder utilities.
We use simulations and analysis of real-world sponsored search auction data
to demonstrate the feasible trade-offs, examining the effect of changing the
allowed number of ads on the utilities of the stakeholders. We investigate both
short term effects, when the players do not have the time to modify their
behavior, and long term equilibrium conditions.
Finally, we examine a combinatorially richer constrained optimization
problem, where there are several possible allowed configurations (templates) of
ad formats. This model captures richer ad formats, which allow using the
available screen real estate in various ways. We show that two natural
generalizations of the GSP auction rules to this domain are poorly behaved,
resulting in not having a symmetric Nash equilibrium or having one with poor
welfare. We also provide positive results for restricted cases.Comment: 18 pages, 10 figures, ACM Conference on Economics and Computation
201
A chi-squared time-frequency discriminator for gravitational wave detection
Searches for known waveforms in gravitational wave detector data are often
done using matched filtering. When used on real instrumental data, matched
filtering often does not perform as well as might be expected, because
non-stationary and non-Gaussian detector noise produces large spurious filter
outputs (events). This paper describes a chi-squared time-frequency test which
is one way to discriminate such spurious events from the events that would be
produced by genuine signals. The method works well only for broad-band signals.
The case where the filter template does not exactly match the signal waveform
is also considered, and upper bounds are found for the expected value of
chi-squared.Comment: 18 pages, five figures, RevTex
HUMAN FACE RECOGNITION BASED ON FRACTAL IMAGE CODING
Human face recognition is an important area in the field of biometrics. It has been an active area of research for several decades, but still remains a challenging problem because of the complexity of the human face. In this thesis we describe fully automatic solutions that can locate faces and then perform identification and verification. We present a solution for face localisation using eye locations. We derive an efficient representation for the decision hyperplane of linear and nonlinear Support Vector Machines (SVMs). For this we introduce the novel concept of and prototypes. The standard formulation for the decision hyperplane is reformulated and expressed in terms of the two prototypes. Different kernels are treated separately to achieve further classification efficiency and to facilitate its adaptation to operate with the fast Fourier transform to achieve fast eye detection. Using the eye locations, we extract and normalise the face for size and in-plane rotations. Our method produces a more efficient representation of the SVM decision hyperplane than the well-known reduced set methods. As a result, our eye detection subsystem is faster and more accurate. The use of fractals and fractal image coding for object recognition has been proposed and used by others. Fractal codes have been used as features for recognition, but we need to take into account the distance between codes, and to ensure the continuity of the parameters of the code. We use a method based on fractal image coding for recognition, which we call the Fractal Neighbour Distance (FND). The FND relies on the Euclidean metric and the uniqueness of the attractor of a fractal code. An advantage of using the FND over fractal codes as features is that we do not have to worry about the uniqueness of, and distance between, codes. We only require the uniqueness of the attractor, which is already an implied property of a properly generated fractal code. Similar methods to the FND have been proposed by others, but what distinguishes our work from the rest is that we investigate the FND in greater detail and use our findings to improve the recognition rate. Our investigations reveal that the FND has some inherent invariance to translation, scale, rotation and changes to illumination. These invariances are image dependent and are affected by fractal encoding parameters. The parameters that have the greatest effect on recognition accuracy are the contrast scaling factor, luminance shift factor and the type of range block partitioning. The contrast scaling factor affect the convergence and eventual convergence rate of a fractal decoding process. We propose a novel method of controlling the convergence rate by altering the contrast scaling factor in a controlled manner, which has not been possible before. This helped us improve the recognition rate because under certain conditions better results are achievable from using a slower rate of convergence. We also investigate the effects of varying the luminance shift factor, and examine three different types of range block partitioning schemes. They are Quad-tree, HV and uniform partitioning. We performed experiments using various face datasets, and the results show that our method indeed performs better than many accepted methods such as eigenfaces. The experiments also show that the FND based classifier increases the separation between classes. The standard FND is further improved by incorporating the use of localised weights. A local search algorithm is introduced to find a best matching local feature using this locally weighted FND. The scores from a set of these locally weighted FND operations are then combined to obtain a global score, which is used as a measure of the similarity between two face images. Each local FND operation possesses the distortion invariant properties described above. Combined with the search procedure, the method has the potential to be invariant to a larger class of non-linear distortions. We also present a set of locally weighted FNDs that concentrate around the upper part of the face encompassing the eyes and nose. This design was motivated by the fact that the region around the eyes has more information for discrimination. Better performance is achieved by using different sets of weights for identification and verification. For facial verification, performance is further improved by using normalised scores and client specific thresholding. In this case, our results are competitive with current state-of-the-art methods, and in some cases outperform all those to which they were compared. For facial identification, under some conditions the weighted FND performs better than the standard FND. However, the weighted FND still has its short comings when some datasets are used, where its performance is not much better than the standard FND. To alleviate this problem we introduce a voting scheme that operates with normalised versions of the weighted FND. Although there are no improvements at lower matching ranks using this method, there are significant improvements for larger matching ranks. Our methods offer advantages over some well-accepted approaches such as eigenfaces, neural networks and those that use statistical learning theory. Some of the advantages are: new faces can be enrolled without re-training involving the whole database; faces can be removed from the database without the need for re-training; there are inherent invariances to face distortions; it is relatively simple to implement; and it is not model-based so there are no model parameters that need to be tweaked
- …