Markov mezők a képmodellezésben, alkalmazásuk az automatikus képszegmentálás területén = Markovian Image Models: Applications in Unsupervised Image Segmentation

1) Kifejlesztettünk egy olyan szín és textúra alapú szegmentáló MRF algoritmust, amely alkalmas egy kép automatikus szegmentálását elvégezni. Az eredményeinket az Image and Vision Computing folyóiratban publikáltuk. 2) Kifejlesztettünk egy Reversible Jump Markov Chain Monte Carlo technikán alapuló automatikus képszegmentáló eljárást, melyet sikeresen alkalmaztunk színes képek teljesen automatikus szegmentálására. Az eredményeinket a BMVC 2004 konferencián és az Image and Vision Computing folyóiratban publikáltuk. 3) A modell többrétegű továbbfejlesztését alkalmaztuk video objektumok szín és mozgás alapú szegmentálására, melynek eredményeit a HACIPPR 2005 illetve az ACCV 2006 nemzetközi konferenciákon publikáltuk. Szintén ehhez az alapproblémához kapcsolódik Horváth Péter hallgatómmal az optic flow szamításával illetve szín, textúra és mozgás alapú GVF aktív kontúrral kapcsoltos munkáink. TDK dolgozata első helyezést ért el a 2004-es helyi versenyen, az eredményeinket pedig a KEPAF 2004 konferencián publikáltuk. 4) Horváth Péter PhD hallgatómmal illetve az franciaországi INRIA Ariana csoportjával, kidolgoztunk egy olyan képszegmentáló eljárást, amely a szegmentálandó objektum alakját is figyelembe veszi. Az eredményeinket az ICPR 2006 illetve az ICCVGIP 2006 konferencián foglaltuk össze. A modell előzményeként kidolgoztunk továbbá egy alakzat-momemntumokon alapuló aktív kontúr modellt, amelyet a HACIPPR 2005 konferencián publikáltunk. | 1) We have proposed a monogrid MRF model which is able to combine color and texture features in order to improve the quality of segmentation results. We have also solved the estimation of model parameters. This work has been published in the Image and Vision Computing journal. 2) We have proposed an RJMCMC sampling method which is able to identify multi-dimensional Gaussian mixtures. Using this technique, we have developed a fully automatic color image segmentation algorithm. Our results have been published at BMVC 2004 international conference and in the Image and Vision Computing journal. 3) A new multilayer MRF model has been proposed which is able to segment an image based on multiple cues (such as color, texture, or motion). This work has been published at HACIPPR 2005 and ACCV 2006 international conferences. The work on optic flow computation and color-, texture-, and motion-based GVF active contours doen with my student, Mr. Peter Horvath, won a first price at the local Student Research Competition in 2004. Results have been presented at KEPAF 2004 conference. 4) A new shape prior, called 'gas of circles' has been introduced using active contour models. This work is done in collaboration with the Ariana group of INRIA, France and my PhD student, Mr. Peter Horvath. Results are published at the ICPR 2006 and ICCVGIP 2006 conferences. A preliminary study on active contour models using shape-moments has also been done, these results are published at HACIPPR 2005

Image Segmentation Using Active Contours Driven by the Bhattacharyya Gradient Flow

©2007 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or distribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE. This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. In most cases, these works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder.DOI: 10.1109/TIP.2007.908073This paper addresses the problem of image segmentation by means of active contours, whose evolution is driven by the gradient flow derived froman energy functional that is based on the Bhattacharyya distance. In particular, given the values of a photometric variable (or of a set thereof), which is to be used for classifying the image pixels, the active contours are designed to converge to the shape that results in maximal discrepancy between the empirical distributions of the photometric variable inside and outside of the contours. The above discrepancy is measured by means of the Bhattacharyya distance that proves to be an extremely useful tool for solving the problem at hand. The proposed methodology can be viewed as a generalization of the segmentation methods, in which active contours maximize the difference between a finite number of empirical moments of the "inside" and "outside" distributions. Furthermore, it is shown that the proposed methodology is very versatile and flexible in the sense that it allows one to easily accommodate a diversity of the image features based on which the segmentation should be performed. As an additional contribution, a method for automatically adjusting the smoothness properties of the empirical distributions is proposed. Such a procedure is crucial in situations when the number of data samples (supporting a certain segmentation class) varies considerably in the course of the evolution of the active contour. In this case, the smoothness properties of the empirical distributions have to be properly adjusted to avoid either over- or underestimation artifacts. Finally, a number of relevant segmentation results are demonstrated and some further research directions are discussed

Inferring Latent States and Refining Force Estimates via Hierarchical Dirichlet Process Modeling in Single Particle Tracking Experiments

Optical microscopy provides rich spatio-temporal information characterizing in vivo molecular motion. However, effective forces and other parameters used to summarize molecular motion change over time in live cells due to latent state changes, e.g., changes induced by dynamic micro-environments, photobleaching, and other heterogeneity inherent in biological processes. This study focuses on techniques for analyzing Single Particle Tracking (SPT) data experiencing abrupt state changes. We demonstrate the approach on GFP tagged chromatids experiencing metaphase in yeast cells and probe the effective forces resulting from dynamic interactions that reflect the sum of a number of physical phenomena. State changes are induced by factors such as microtubule dynamics exerting force through the centromere, thermal polymer fluctuations, etc. Simulations are used to demonstrate the relevance of the approach in more general SPT data analyses. Refined force estimates are obtained by adopting and modifying a nonparametric Bayesian modeling technique, the Hierarchical Dirichlet Process Switching Linear Dynamical System (HDP-SLDS), for SPT applications. The HDP-SLDS method shows promise in systematically identifying dynamical regime changes induced by unobserved state changes when the number of underlying states is unknown in advance (a common problem in SPT applications). We expand on the relevance of the HDP-SLDS approach, review the relevant background of Hierarchical Dirichlet Processes, show how to map discrete time HDP-SLDS models to classic SPT models, and discuss limitations of the approach. In addition, we demonstrate new computational techniques for tuning hyperparameters and for checking the statistical consistency of model assumptions directly against individual experimental trajectories; the techniques circumvent the need for "ground-truth" and subjective information.Comment: 25 pages, 6 figures. Differs only typographically from PLoS One publication available freely as an open-access article at http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.013763

Segmenting Foreground Objects from a Dynamic Textured Background via a Robust Kalman Filter

The algorithm presented in this paper aims to segment the foreground objects in video (e.g., people) given time-varying, textured backgrounds. Examples of time-varying backgrounds include waves on water, clouds moving, trees waving in the wind, automobile traffic, moving crowds, escalators, etc. We have developed a novel foreground-background segmentation algorithm that explicitly accounts for the non-stationary nature and clutter-like appearance of many dynamic textures. The dynamic texture is modeled by an Autoregressive Moving Average Model (ARMA). A robust Kalman filter algorithm iteratively estimates the intrinsic appearance of the dynamic texture, as well as the regions of the foreground objects. Preliminary experiments with this method have demonstrated promising results

Deep learning cardiac motion analysis for human survival prediction

Motion analysis is used in computer vision to understand the behaviour of moving objects in sequences of images. Optimising the interpretation of dynamic biological systems requires accurate and precise motion tracking as well as efficient representations of high-dimensional motion trajectories so that these can be used for prediction tasks. Here we use image sequences of the heart, acquired using cardiac magnetic resonance imaging, to create time-resolved three-dimensional segmentations using a fully convolutional network trained on anatomical shape priors. This dense motion model formed the input to a supervised denoising autoencoder (4Dsurvival), which is a hybrid network consisting of an autoencoder that learns a task-specific latent code representation trained on observed outcome data, yielding a latent representation optimised for survival prediction. To handle right-censored survival outcomes, our network used a Cox partial likelihood loss function. In a study of 302 patients the predictive accuracy (quantified by Harrell's C-index) was significantly higher (p < .0001) for our model C=0.73 (95$\%$ CI: 0.68 - 0.78) than the human benchmark of C=0.59 (95$\%$ CI: 0.53 - 0.65). This work demonstrates how a complex computer vision task using high-dimensional medical image data can efficiently predict human survival

Three dimensional transparent structure segmentation and multiple 3D motion estimation from monocular perspective image sequences

A three dimensional scene can be segmented using different cues, such as boundaries, texture, motion, discontinuities of the optical flow, stereo, models for structure, etc. We investigate segmentation based upon one of these cues, namely three dimensional motion. If the scene contain transparent objects, the two dimensional (local) cues are inconsistent, since neighboring points with similar optical flow can correspond to different objects. We present a method for performing three dimensional motion-based segmentation of (possibly) transparent scenes together with recursive estimation of the motion of each independent rigid object from monocular perspective images. Our algorithm is based on a recently proposed method for rigid motion reconstruction and a validation test which allows us to initialize the scheme and detect outliers during the motion estimation procedure. The scheme is tested on challenging real and synthetic image sequences. Segmentation is performed for the Ullmann's experiment of two transparent cylinders rotating about the same axis in opposite directions