92,727 research outputs found
Recover Subjective Quality Scores from Noisy Measurements
Simple quality metrics such as PSNR are known to not correlate well with
subjective quality when tested across a wide spectrum of video content or
quality regime. Recently, efforts have been made in designing objective quality
metrics trained on subjective data (e.g. VMAF), demonstrating better
correlation with video quality perceived by human. Clearly, the accuracy of
such a metric heavily depends on the quality of the subjective data that it is
trained on. In this paper, we propose a new approach to recover subjective
quality scores from noisy raw measurements, using maximum likelihood
estimation, by jointly estimating the subjective quality of impaired videos,
the bias and consistency of test subjects, and the ambiguity of video contents
all together. We also derive closed-from expression for the confidence interval
of each estimate. Compared to previous methods which partially exploit the
subjective information, our approach is able to exploit the information in
full, yielding tighter confidence interval and better handling of outliers
without the need for z-scoring or subject rejection. It also handles missing
data more gracefully. Finally, as side information, it provides interesting
insights on the test subjects and video contents.Comment: 16 pages; abridged version appeared in Data Compression Conference
(DCC) 201
The observed spiral structure of the Milky Way
The spiral structure of the Milky Way is not yet well determined. The keys to
understanding this structure are to increase the number of reliable spiral
tracers and to determine their distances as accurately as possible. HII
regions, giant molecular clouds (GMCs), and 6.7-GHz methanol masers are closely
related to high mass star formation, and hence they are excellent spiral
tracers. We update the catalogs of Galactic HII regions, GMCs, and 6.7-GHz
methanol masers, and then outline the spiral structure of the Milky Way. We
collected data for more than 2500 known HII regions, 1300 GMCs, and 900 6.7-GHz
methanol masers. If the photometric or trigonometric distance was not yet
available, we determined the kinematic distance using a Galaxy rotation curve
with the current IAU standard, = 8.5 kpc and = 220 km
s, and the most recent updated values of = 8.3 kpc and
= 239 km s, after we modified the velocities of tracers with the adopted
solar motions. With the weight factors based on the excitation parameters of
HII regions or the masses of GMCs, we get the distributions of these spiral
tracers. The distribution of tracers shows at least four segments of arms in
the first Galactic quadrant, and three segments in the fourth quadrant. The
Perseus Arm and the Local Arm are also delineated by many bright HII regions.
The arm segments traced by massive star forming regions and GMCs are able to
match the HI arms in the outer Galaxy. We found that the models of three-arm
and four-arm logarithmic spirals are able to connect most spiral tracers. A
model of polynomial-logarithmic spirals is also proposed, which not only
delineates the tracer distribution, but also matches the observed tangential
directions.Comment: 22 Pages, 16 Figures, 7 Tables, updated to match the published
versio
Solar Force-free Magnetic Fields
The structure and dynamics of the solar corona is dominated by the magnetic
field. In most areas in the corona magnetic forces are so dominant that all
non-magnetic forces like plasma pressure gradient and gravity can be neglected
in the lowest order. This model assumption is called the force-free field
assumption, as the Lorentz force vanishes. This can be obtained by either
vanishing electric currents (leading to potential fields) or the currents are
co-aligned with the magnetic field lines. First we discuss a mathematically
simpler approach that the magnetic field and currents are proportional with one
global constant, the so-called linear force-free field approximation. In the
generic case, however, the relation between magnetic fields and electric
currents is nonlinear and analytic solutions have been only found for special
cases, like 1D or 2D configurations. For constructing realistic nonlinear
force-free coronal magnetic field models in 3D, sophisticated numerical
computations are required and boundary conditions must be obtained from
measurements of the magnetic field vector in the solar photosphere. This
approach is currently of large interests, as accurate measurements of the
photospheric field become available from ground-based (for example SOLIS) and
space-born (for example Hinode and SDO) instruments. If we can obtain accurate
force-free coronal magnetic field models we can calculate the free magnetic
energy in the corona, a quantity which is important for the prediction of
flares and coronal mass ejections. Knowledge of the 3D structure of magnetic
field lines also help us to interpret other coronal observations, e.g.,
EUV-images of the radiating coronal plasma.Comment: 49 pages, 11 figures, Living Reviews in Solar Physics, accepte
New constraints on data-closeness and needle map consistency for shape-from-shading
This paper makes two contributions to the problem of needle-map recovery using shape-from-shading. First, we provide a geometric update procedure which allows the image irradiance equation to be satisfied as a hard constraint. This not only improves the data closeness of the recovered needle-map, but also removes the necessity for extensive parameter tuning. Second, we exploit the improved ease of control of the new shape-from-shading process to investigate various types of needle-map consistency constraint. The first set of constraints are based on needle-map smoothness. The second avenue of investigation is to use curvature information to impose topographic constraints. Third, we explore ways in which the needle-map is recovered so as to be consistent with the image gradient field. In each case we explore a variety of robust error measures and consistency weighting schemes that can be used to impose the desired constraints on the recovered needle-map. We provide an experimental assessment of the new shape-from-shading framework on both real world images and synthetic images with known ground truth surface normals. The main conclusion drawn from our analysis is that the data-closeness constraint improves the efficiency of shape-from-shading and that both the topographic and gradient consistency constraints improve the fidelity of the recovered needle-map
- …