Road Feature Extraction from High Resolution Aerial Images Upon Rural Regions Based on Multi-Resolution Image Analysis and Gabor Filters

Accurate, detailed and up-to-date road information is of special importance in geo-spatial databases as it is used in a variety of applications such as vehicle navigation, traffic management and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). The commercial road maps utilized for road navigation or the geographical information system (GIS) today are based on linear road centrelines represented in vector format with poly-lines (i.e., series of nodes and shape points, connected by segments), which present a serious lack of accuracy, contents, and completeness for their applicability at the sub-road level. For instance, the accuracy level of the present standard maps is around 5 to 20 meters. The roads/streets in the digital maps are represented as line segments rendered using different colours and widths. However, the widths of line segments do not necessarily represent the actual road widths accurately. Another problem with the existing road maps is that few precise sub-road details, such as lane markings and stop lines, are included, whereas such sub-road information is crucial for applications such as lane departure warning or lane-based vehicle navigation. Furthermore, the vast majority of roadmaps aremodelled in 2D space, whichmeans that some complex road scenes, such as overpasses and multi-level road systems, cannot be effectively represented. In addition, the lack of elevation information makes it infeasible to carry out applications such as driving simulation and 3D vehicle navigation

Fuzzification of Gabor Filter for License Plate Detection Application

Disertacija prikazuje novi algoritam za detekciju i izdvajanje registarskih tablica iz slike vozila koristeći fazi 2D Gaborov filtar. Parametri filtra: orijentacija i talasna dužina su fazifikovani u cilju optimizacije odziva Gaborovog filtra i postizanja dodatne selektivnosti filtra. Prethodno navedeni parametri dominiraju u rezultatu filtriranja. Bellova i trougaona funkcija pripadnosti pokazale su se kao najbolji izbor pri fazifikaciji parametara filtra. Algoritam je evaluiran nad više baza slika i postignuti su zadovoljavajući rezultati. Komponente od interesa su efikasno izdvojene i postignuta značajna otpornost na šum i degradaciju na slici.The thesis presents a new algorithm for detection and extraction of license plates from a vehicle image using a fuzzy two-dimensional Gabor filter. The filter parameters, orientation and wavelengths are fuzzified to optimize the Gabor filter’s response and achieve a greater selectivity. It was concluded that Bell’s function and triangular membership function are the most efficient methods for fuzzification. Algorithm was evaluated on several databases and has provided satisfactory results. The components of interest were efficiently extracted, and the procedure was found to be very noise-resistant

Reconnaissance de l'écriture manuscrite en-ligne par approche combinant systèmes à vastes marges et modèles de Markov cachés

Handwriting recognition is one of the leading applications of pattern recognition and machine learning. Despite having some limitations, handwriting recognition systems have been used as an input method of many electronic devices and helps in the automation of many manual tasks requiring processing of handwriting images. In general, a handwriting recognition system comprises three functional components; preprocessing, recognition and post-processing. There have been improvements made within each component in the system. However, to further open the avenues of expanding its applications, specific improvements need to be made in the recognition capability of the system. Hidden Markov Model (HMM) has been the dominant methods of recognition in handwriting recognition in offline and online systems. However, the use of Gaussian observation densities in HMM and representational model for word modeling often does not lead to good classification. Hybrid of Neural Network (NN) and HMM later improves word recognition by taking advantage of NN discriminative property and HMM representational capability. However, the use of NN does not optimize recognition capability as the use of Empirical Risk minimization (ERM) principle in its training leads to poor generalization. In this thesis, we focus on improving the recognition capability of a cursive online handwritten word recognition system by using an emerging method in machine learning, the support vector machine (SVM). We first evaluated SVM in isolated character recognition environment using IRONOFF and UNIPEN character databases. SVM, by its use of principle of structural risk minimization (SRM) have allowed simultaneous optimization of representational and discriminative capability of the character recognizer. We finally demonstrate the various practical issues in using SVM within a hybrid setting with HMM. In addition, we tested the hybrid system on the IRONOFF word database and obtained favourable results.Nos travaux concernent la reconnaissance de l'écriture manuscrite qui est l'un des domaines de prédilection pour la reconnaissance des formes et les algorithmes d'apprentissage. Dans le domaine de l'écriture en-ligne, les applications concernent tous les dispositifs de saisie permettant à un usager de communiquer de façon transparente avec les systèmes d'information. Dans ce cadre, nos travaux apportent une contribution pour proposer une nouvelle architecture de reconnaissance de mots manuscrits sans contrainte de style. Celle-ci se situe dans la famille des approches hybrides locale/globale où le paradigme de la segmentation/reconnaissance va se trouver résolu par la complémentarité d'un système de reconnaissance de type discriminant agissant au niveau caractère et d'un système par approche modèle pour superviser le niveau global. Nos choix se sont portés sur des Séparateurs à Vastes Marges (SVM) pour le classifieur de caractères et sur des algorithmes de programmation dynamique, issus d'une modélisation par Modèles de Markov Cachés (HMM). Cette combinaison SVM/HMM est unique dans le domaine de la reconnaissance de l'écriture manuscrite. Des expérimentations ont été menées, d'abord dans un cadre de reconnaissance de caractères isolés puis sur la base IRONOFF de mots cursifs. Elles ont montré la supériorité des approches SVM par rapport aux solutions à bases de réseaux de neurones à convolutions (Time Delay Neural Network) que nous avions développées précédemment, et leur bon comportement en situation de reconnaissance de mots

Remote Sensing

This dual conception of remote sensing brought us to the idea of preparing two different books; in addition to the first book which displays recent advances in remote sensing applications, this book is devoted to new techniques for data processing, sensors and platforms. We do not intend this book to cover all aspects of remote sensing techniques and platforms, since it would be an impossible task for a single volume. Instead, we have collected a number of high-quality, original and representative contributions in those areas

Off-line unconstratined handwritten word recognition

In this paper, we describe our system for writer independent, off-line unconstrained handwritten word recognition. We have developed a new method to automatically determine the parameters of Gabor filters to extract features from slant and tilt corrected images. An algorithm is also developed to translate 2D images to 1D domain. Finally, we propose a modified dynamic programming method with fuzzy theory to recognize words. Our initial experiments have shown promising results

Recognition of Cursive Handwritten Country Names on Overseas-Addressed Mail

Background: Mail items posted within a country are either addressed for internal (within-country) delivery or to overseas destinations. Overseas-destined mail must be pre-sorted in the country of origin and forwarded to the destination country for further sorting and delivery. Handwritten addresses, which form a considerable percentage of all postal mail, pose a particularly difficult problem for automatic sorting. This paper presents an approach to automatic sorting of overseas destined mail items by locating and recognizing the handwritten country name. Method: The method proposed extracts structural features from the handwritten country names and combines this with OCR of the first letter of each word to solve the problem of limited vocabulary off-line unconstrained handwritten word recognition. The emphasis is to create a simple and reliable method of recognition, which can be readily implemented, in a fast real-time sorting system. Preprocessing, word holistic feature extraction, character classifier, and integration of lexical and syntactical knowledge are used in this system. Results: An accuracy of 85.0% correct country name recognition was achieved with an error rate (wrongly recognized country name) of 0.5% and a rejection rate (could not recognize the country name) of 14.5% using a test set of 1294 address images of the 371 variations of country names observed on overseas-addressed mail. Conclusions: The proposed method demonstrates the feasibility of fast and accurate country name location and sorting