1991 OURE report, including the 1st Annual UMR Undergraduate Research Symposium -- Entire Proceedings

The Opportunities for Undergraduate Research Experiences program began in 1990. The aims were to enrich the learning process and make it more active, encourage interaction between students and faculty members, raise the level of research on the campus, help recruit superior students to the graduate program, and support the notion that teaching and research are compatible and mutually reinforcing. Chancellor Jischke made available an annual budget of $50,000 to support the program. As the papers herein attest, the OURE program is achieving its goals — UMR graduates have performed research on an enormous variety of topics, have worked closely with faculty members, and have experienced deeply both the pleasures and frustrations of research. Several of the undergraduates whose papers are included are now graduate students at UMR or elsewhere. Others, who have not yet graduated, are eager to submit proposals to the next OURE round. I am sure all involved join me in expressing gratitude to Chancellor Jischke for inaugurating the program. The first section of this volume is made up of papers presented at the first annual UMR Undergraduate Research Symposium, held in April 1991. Joining the UMR undergraduates in the Symposium were students from other colleges and universities who had participated in an NSF- sponsored summer program of research on parallel processing conducted by the UMR Computer Science Department

Edge detection using neural network arbitration

A human observer is able to recognise and describe most parts of an object by its contour, if this is properly traced and reflects the shape of the object itself. With a machine vision system this recognition task has been approached using a similar technique. This prompted the development of many diverse edge detection algorithms. The work described in this thesis is based on the visual observation that edge maps produced by different algorithms, as the image degrades. Display different properties of the original image. Our proposed objective is to try and improve the edge map through the arbitration between edge maps produced by diverse (in nature, approach and performance) edge detection algorithms. As image processing tools are repetitively applied to similar images we believe the objective can be achieved by a learning process based on sample images. It is shown that such an approach is feasible, using an artificial neural network to perform the arbitration. This is taught from sets extracted from sample images. The arbitration system is implemented upon a parallel processing platform. The performance of the system is presented through examples of diverse types of image. Comparisons with a neural network edge detector (also developed within this thesis) and conventional edge detectors show that the proposed system presents significant advantages

Detecção e agrupamento de contornos

A detecção de contornos a partir de imagens digitais é um procedimento do qual resulta informação essencial para muitos algoritmos de visão por computador. A natureza das imagens digitais bidimensionais: a sua relativamente baixa resolução; a amostragem espacial e em amplitude; a presença de ruído; a falta de informação em profundidade; as oclusões, etc., e a importância dos contornos como informação básica para muitos outros algoritmos a montante, fazem com que a detecção de contornos seja um problema apenas parcialmente resolvido, com múltiplas abordagens e dando origem desde há algumas décadas a larga quantidade de publicações. Continua a ser um tema actual de investigação como se comprova pela quantidade e qualidade das publicações científicas mais actuais nesta área. A tese discute a detecção de contornos nas suas fases clássicas: a estimação da amplitude do sinal que aponta a presença de um ponto de contorno; a pré-classificação dos pontos da imagem com base nos sinais estimados e o posterior agrupamento dos pontos de contorno individuais em segmentos de curvas de contorno. Propõe-se, nesta tese: um método de projecto de estimadores de presença de pontos de contorno baseado na utilização de equações integrais de Fredholm; um classificador não-linear que utiliza informação de pontos vizinhos para a tomada de decisão, e uma metodologia de agrupamento de pontos de contorno com crescimento iterativo com uma função de custo com suporte local. A metodologia de extracção das propriedades baseada na equação integral de Fredholm de primeira ordem permite uma análise unificadora de vários métodos previamente propostos na literatura sobre o assunto. O procedimento de classificação dos pontos de contorno baseia-se na análise das sequências ordenadas das amplitudes do gradiente na vizinhança do ponto de contorno. O procedimento é estudado com base nas funções densidade de distribuição das estatísticas ordenadas dos pontos de contorno vizinhos e na assunção de que os pontos de um mesmo contorno possuem distribuições ordenadas similares. A fase final da detecção de contornos é realizada com um procedimento de agrupamento de contornos em que se constrói uma hipótese de vizinhança para eventual crescimento do contorno e em que se estima o melhor ponto para agregação ao contorno. Os resultados experimentais para os métodos propostos são apresentados e analisados com imagens reais e sintéticas

Edge detection using neural network arbitration

A human observer is able to recognise and describe most parts of an object by its contour, if this is properly traced and reflects the shape of the object itself. With a machine vision system this recognition task has been approached using a similar technique. This prompted the development of many diverse edge detection algorithms. The work described in this thesis is based on the visual observation that edge maps produced by different algorithms, as the image degrades. Display different properties of the original image. Our proposed objective is to try and improve the edge map through the arbitration between edge maps produced by diverse (in nature, approach and performance) edge detection algorithms. As image processing tools are repetitively applied to similar images we believe the objective can be achieved by a learning process based on sample images. It is shown that such an approach is feasible, using an artificial neural network to perform the arbitration. This is taught from sets extracted from sample images. The arbitration system is implemented upon a parallel processing platform. The performance of the system is presented through examples of diverse types of image. Comparisons with a neural network edge detector (also developed within this thesis) and conventional edge detectors show that the proposed system presents significant advantages

Suggestions for Improvements in Current Computer Image Processing Methods in Detection and Quantification of the Severity of Atrophic Rhinitis in Pigs

This paper investigates several techniques to aid in the utilization of computer image processing methods to detect and quantify the severity of atrophic rhinitis in pigs. An algorithm for reducing the complexity of matrix multiplications from O(n3) to O(n2.81) is explored. A one-pixel-wide edge detection method is also studied. These techniques are considered for improving the accuracy, repeatability, and speed of existing detection and quantification methods