Visual recognition of objects : behavioral, computational, and neurobiological aspects

I surveyed work on visual object recognition and perception. In animals, vision has been studied mainly on the behavioral and neurobiological levels. Behavioral data typically show what the visual system, by itself or together with the rest of the organism, is capable of. They show, for example, that humans can recognie objects regardless of size and position, but that rotated objects pose problems. Important insights into the organization of behavior have also been provided by people who suffered localized brain damage. We have learned that the brain is divided into areas subserving different and relatively well-defined behaviors. The visual system itself is also organized in different subsystems; the visual cortex alone contains nearly twenty maps of the visual field. And individual neurons respond selectively to visual stimuli, e.g., the orientation of line segments, color, direction of motion, and, most intriguingly, faces. The question is how the actions of all these neurons produce the behavior we observe. How do neurons represent the shape of objects such that they can be recognized? Before we can answer the question, we have to understand the computational aspect of shape representation, the nature of the problem as it were. Many methods for representing shape have been explored, mainly by computer scientists, but so far no satisfactory answers have been found

HYPERSPECTRAL IMAGING AND PATTERN RECOGNITION TECHNOLOGIES FOR REAL TIME FRUIT SAFETY AND QUALITY INSPECTION

Hyperspectral band selection and band combination has become a powerful tool and have gained enormous interest among researchers. An important task in hyperspectral data processing is to reduce the redundancy of the spectral and spatial information without losing any valuable details that are needed for the subsequent detection, discrimination and classification processes. An integrated principal component analysis (PCA) and Fisher linear discriminant (FLD) method has been developed for feature band selection, and other pattern recognition technologies have been applied and compared with the developed method. The results on different types of defects from cucumber and apple samples show that the integrated PCA-FLD method outperforms PCA, FLD and canonical discriminant methods when they are used separately for classification. The integrated method adds a new tool for the multivariate analysis of hyperspectral images and can be extended to other hyperspectral imaging applications. Dimensionality reduction not only serves as the first step of data processing that leads to a significant decrease in computational complexity in the successive procedures, but also a research tool for determining optimal spectra requirement for online automatic inspection of fruit. In this study, the hyperspectral research shows that the near infrared spectrum at 753nm is best for detecting apple defect. When applied for online apple defect inspection, over 98% of good apple detection rate is achieved. However, commercially available apple sorting and inspection machines cannot effectively solve the stem-calyx problems involved in automatic apple defects detection. In this study, a dual-spectrum NIR/MIR sensing method is applied. This technique can effectively distinguish true defects from stems and calyxes, which leads to a potential solution of the problem. The results of this study will advance the technology in fruit safety and quality inspection and improve the cost-effectiveness of fruit packing processes

A Quantitative Measure of Mono-Componentness for Time-Frequency Analysis

Joint time-frequency (TF) analysis is an ideal method for analyzing non-stationary signals, but is challenging to use leading to it often being neglected. The exceptions being the short-time Fourier transform (STFT) and spectrogram. Even then, the inability to have simultaneously high time and frequency resolution is a frustrating issue with the STFT and spectrogram. However, there is a family of joint TF analysis techniques that do have simultaneously high time and frequency resolution – the quadratic TF distribution (QTFD) family. Unfortunately, QTFDs are often more troublesome than beneficial. The issue is interference/cross-terms that causes these methods to become so difficult to use. They require that the “proper” joint distribution be selected based on information that is typically unavailable for real-world signals. However, QTFDs do not produce cross-terms when applied to a mono-component signal. Clearly, determining the mono-componentness of a signal provides a key piece of information. However, until now, the means for determining if a signal is a monocomponent or a multi-component has been to choose a QTFD, generate the TF representation (TFR), and visually examine it. The work presented here provides a method for quantitatively determining if a signal is a mono-component. This new capability provides an important step towards finally allowing QTFDs to be used on multi-component signals, while producing few to no interference terms through enabling the use of the quadratic superposition property. The focus of this work is on establishing the legitimacy for “measuring” mono-componentness along with its algorithmic implementation. Several applications are presented, such as quantifying the quality of the decomposition results produced by the blind decomposition algorithm, Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD). The mono-componentness measure not only provides an objective means to validate the outcome of a decomposition algorithm, it also provides a practical, quantitative metric for their comparison. More importantly, this quantitative measurement encapsulates mono-componentness in a form which can actually be incorporated in the design of decomposition algorithms as a viable condition/constraint so that true mono-components could be extracted. Incorporating the mono-component measure into a decomposition algorithm will eventually allow interference free TFRs to be calculated from multi-component signals without requiring prior knowledge

Coding of object parts, view, orientation and size in the temporal cortex of the macaque

The study examined the importance of (1) component parts, (2) view, (3) orientation and (4) size in the neural encoding of the sight of a complex object in the temporal cortex of the macaque. Studies focused on cells selectively responsive to the sight of the head/body but unresponsive to control stimuli. (1) Cells responsive to the static whole body were tested with two component parts of the body. 44% (29/66) of cells responded to the whole body and to one of the two body regions tested: 23 to the head; 6 to the body. 36% (24/66) responded independently to both regions of the body when tested in isolation. The remaining cells were selective for the entire body and unresponsive to component parts. Similar selectivity for component parts was observed amongst cells responsive to moving heads/bodies (18 cells tested). (2) 90% (66/73) of cells (selectively responsive to static or moving head/bodies) tested were sensitive to perspective view (viewer-centred). Comparable levels of view sensitivity were found for responses to the whole body and its parts. Contrary to some influential models of object recognition these results indicate view-specific processing for both the appearance of separate object components and for integration of information across components. (3) The majority of cells tested (18/25, 72%) were selectively responsive to a particular orientation in the picture plane of the static whole body stimulus. 7 cells generalised across all orientations (4 cell with pure generalisation; 3 cells with superimposed orientation tuning). Of all cells sensitive to orientation, the majority (15/21, 71%) were tuned to the upright image. (4) The majority of cells tested (81%, 13/16) were selective for a particular stimulus size. The remaining cells (3/16) showed generalisation across a 4 fold decrease in size from life-sized. Interestingly, all size sensitive cells were tuned to life-sized stimuli. These results do not support previous suggestions that cells responsive to the head and body are selective to the view but generalise across orientation and size. Here, extensive selectivity for size and orientation is reported. It is suggested that object part, view, orientation and size specific responses might be pooled to obtain generalising responses. Experience appears to affect neuronal coding in two ways: a) Cells become selective for multiple object components due to spatial and temporal association between parts; and b) more cells become tuned to views, orientations and image sizes commonly experienced

Pattern Recognition

A wealth of advanced pattern recognition algorithms are emerging from the interdiscipline between technologies of effective visual features and the human-brain cognition process. Effective visual features are made possible through the rapid developments in appropriate sensor equipments, novel filter designs, and viable information processing architectures. While the understanding of human-brain cognition process broadens the way in which the computer can perform pattern recognition tasks. The present book is intended to collect representative researches around the globe focusing on low-level vision, filter design, features and image descriptors, data mining and analysis, and biologically inspired algorithms. The 27 chapters coved in this book disclose recent advances and new ideas in promoting the techniques, technology and applications of pattern recognition