A Book Reader Design for Persons with Visual Impairment and Blindness

The objective of this dissertation is to provide a new design approach to a fully automated book reader for individuals with visual impairment and blindness that is portable and cost effective. This approach relies on the geometry of the design setup and provides the mathematical foundation for integrating, in a unique way, a 3-D space surface map from a low-resolution time of flight (ToF) device with a high-resolution image as means to enhance the reading accuracy of warped images due to the page curvature of bound books and other magazines. The merits of this low cost, but effective automated book reader design include: (1) a seamless registration process of the two imaging modalities so that the low resolution (160 x 120 pixels) height map, acquired by an Argos3D-P100 camera, accurately covers the entire book spread as captured by the high resolution image (3072 x 2304 pixels) of a Canon G6 Camera; (2) a mathematical framework for overcoming the difficulties associated with the curvature of open bound books, a process referred to as the dewarping of the book spread images, and (3) image correction performance comparison between uniform and full height map to determine which map provides the highest Optical Character Recognition (OCR) reading accuracy possible. The design concept could also be applied to address the challenging process of book digitization. This method is dependent on the geometry of the book reader setup for acquiring a 3-D map that yields high reading accuracy once appropriately fused with the high-resolution image. The experiments were performed on a dataset consisting of 200 pages with their corresponding computed and co-registered height maps, which are made available to the research community (cate-book3dmaps.fiu.edu). Improvements to the characters reading accuracy, due to the correction steps, were quantified and measured by introducing the corrected images to an OCR engine and tabulating the number of miss-recognized characters. Furthermore, the resilience of the book reader was tested by introducing a rotational misalignment to the book spreads and comparing the OCR accuracy to those obtained with the standard alignment. The standard alignment yielded an average reading accuracy of 95.55% with the uniform height map (i.e., the height values of the central row of the 3-D map are replicated to approximate all other rows), and 96.11% with the full height maps (i.e., each row has its own height values as obtained from the 3D camera). When the rotational misalignments were taken into account, the results obtained produced average accuracies of 90.63% and 94.75% for the same respective height maps, proving added resilience of the full height map method to potential misalignments

An optimized algorithm of image stitching in the case of a multi-modal probe for monitoring the evolution of scars

International audienceWe propose a new system that makes possible to monitor the evolution of scars after the excision of a tumorous dermatosis. The hardware part of this system is composed of a new optical innovative probe with which two types of images can be acquired simultaneously: an anatomic image acquired under a white light and a functional one based on autofluorescence from the protoporphyrin within the cancer cells. For technical reasons related to the maximum size of the area covered by the probe, acquired images are too small to cover the whole scar. That is why a sequence of overlapping images is taken in order to cover the required area. The main goal of this paper is to describe the creation of two panoramic images (anatomic and functional). Fluorescence images do not have enough salient information for matching the images; stitching algorithms are applied over each couple of successive white light images to produce an anatomic panorama of the entire scar. The same transformations obtained from this step are used to register and stitch the functional images. Several experiments have been implemented using different stitching algorithms (SIFT, ASIFT and SURF), with various transformation parameters (angles of rotation, projection, scaling, etc...) and different types of skin images. We present the results of these experiments that propose the best solution. Thus, clinician has two panoramic images superimposed and usable for diagnostic support. A collaborative layer is added to the system to allow sharing panoramas among several practitioners over different places

SOW: Digitization and longterm preservation of weather maps at ZAMG

The targets of this concept are: delivering a catalog of requirements; the evaluation of tools; possible file formats (e.g. FITS) necessary for digitization and longtime preservation of the historical weather maps at ZAMG (Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics, Austria's national weather and geophysical service

Rendu basé image de fonds photographiques historiques massifs

This paper states an overview of my dissertation research centered on the continuous immersive visualization and navigation through time and space of large sets of historical photographs. The research aims for: (i) the treatment of scientific obstacles (e.g. data volume, heterogeneity, distortions, and uncertainties) that appear when old pictures are placed in today's environment; (ii) the visualization (saliently and spatially) of these photos. The main model of the study is image-based rendering IBR, because of its capacity to use imprecise or non-existent geometry (i.e. since a modern 3D scene may differ from a historical one, due to environmental changes over time). The findings of this work may contribute significantly by extending the current IBR models and providing a new innovative way to examine these massive and heterogeneous datasets.Cet article donne un aperçu de ma thèse de doctorat centrée sur la visualisation immersive continue et la navigation dans le temps et dans l’espace de grands ensembles de photographies historiques. Les objectifs de la recherche sont les suivants: (i) traitement des obstacles scientifiques (volume de données, hétérogénéité, distorsions et incertitudes, par exemple) qui apparaissent lorsque de vieilles images sont placées dans l’environnement actuel; (ii) la visualisation (de manière saillante et spatiale) de ces photos. Le modèle principal de l’étude est le rendu IBR basé sur l’image, en raison de sa capacité à utiliser une géométrie imprécise ou inexistante (c’est-à-dire qu’une scène 3D moderne peut différer de l’historique, en raison des changements environnementaux survenus au fil du temps). Les résultats de ce travail pourraient contribuer de manière significative en étendant les modèles IBR actuels et en fournissant un nouveau moyen innovant d’examiner ces ensembles de données massifs et hétérogènes

Towards a 3D digital model for management and fruition of Ducal Palace at Urbino. An integrated survey with mobile mapping

none1noThe digitization is the first feat of safety, knowledge and management of Cultural Heritage. The technological development has produced a complexity increase to manage the big data acquired. This paper shows the best practices for the digitization of a museum (National Gallery of Marche), hosted in a historical and complex building: it's a problem of contents and "container" (the Urbino Ducal Palace = a city in the appearance of a Palace). This is the case study of the first challenging aim of the CIVITAS project. The digitization workflow has combined the several sensors and technology at different scales, such as static and mobile wearable laser scanners systems, the different focals for internal and external cameras, 360 panoramas and HD images. The goal achieved is the new 3D digital model, validated and with high accuracy, containing big 3D data, as starting point of HBIM, Serious Games, VR/AR applications.openNespeca R.Nespeca, R