Socializing the Semantic Gap: A Comparative Survey on Image Tag Assignment, Refinement and Retrieval

Where previous reviews on content-based image retrieval emphasize on what can be seen in an image to bridge the semantic gap, this survey considers what people tag about an image. A comprehensive treatise of three closely linked problems, i.e., image tag assignment, refinement, and tag-based image retrieval is presented. While existing works vary in terms of their targeted tasks and methodology, they rely on the key functionality of tag relevance, i.e. estimating the relevance of a specific tag with respect to the visual content of a given image and its social context. By analyzing what information a specific method exploits to construct its tag relevance function and how such information is exploited, this paper introduces a taxonomy to structure the growing literature, understand the ingredients of the main works, clarify their connections and difference, and recognize their merits and limitations. For a head-to-head comparison between the state-of-the-art, a new experimental protocol is presented, with training sets containing 10k, 100k and 1m images and an evaluation on three test sets, contributed by various research groups. Eleven representative works are implemented and evaluated. Putting all this together, the survey aims to provide an overview of the past and foster progress for the near future.Comment: to appear in ACM Computing Survey

Page layout analysis and classification in complex scanned documents

Page layout analysis has been extensively studied since the 1980`s, particularly after computers began to be used for document storage or database units. For efficient document storage and retrieval from a database, a paper document would be transformed into its electronic version. Algorithms and methodologies are used for document image analysis in order to segment a scanned document into different regions such as text, image or line regions. To contribute a novel approach in the field of page layout analysis and classification, this algorithm is developed for both RGB space and grey-scale scanned documents without requiring any specific document types, and scanning techniques. In this thesis, a page classification algorithm is proposed which mainly applies wavelet transform, Markov random field (MRF) and Hough transform to segment text, photo and strong edge/ line regions in both color and gray-scale scanned documents. The algorithm is developed to handle both simple and complex page layout structures and contents (text only vs. book cover that includes text, lines and/or photos). The methodology consists of five modules. In the first module, called pre-processing, image enhancements techniques such as image scaling, filtering, color space conversion or gamma correction are applied in order to reduce computation time and enhance the scanned document. The techniques, used to perform the classification, are employed on the one-fourth resolution input image in the CIEL*a*b* color space. In the second module, the text detection module uses wavelet analysis to generate a text-region candidate map which is enhanced by applying a Run Length Encoding (RLE) technique for verification purposes. The third module, photo detection, initially uses block-wise segmentation which is based on basis vector projection technique. Then, MRF with maximum a-posteriori (MAP) optimization framework is utilized to generate photo map. Next, Hough transform is applied to locate lines in the fourth module. Techniques for edge detection, edge linkages, and line-segment fitting are used to detect strong-edges in the module as well. After those three classification maps are obtained, in the last module a final page layout map is generated by using K-Means. Features are extracted to classify the intersection regions and merge into one classification map with K-Means clustering. The proposed technique is tested on several hundred images and its performance is validated by utilizing Confusion Matrix (CM). It shows that the technique achieves an average of 85% classification accuracy rate in text, photo, and background regions on a variety of scanned documents like articles, magazines, business-cards, dictionaries or newsletters etc. More importantly, it performs independently from a scanning process and an input scanned document (RGB or gray-scale) with comparable classification quality

Considerations for Starting a Winery

This publication is for anyone who has ever considered entering the wine industry. The goal of this publication is to provide information about requirements and procedures for starting a winery. It is not a “how-to” manual but rather is designed to serve as a starting point to investigate the many aspects of owning and operating a winery. Although the manuscript frequently refers to procedures for starting a winery in Arkansas, the concepts presented are applicable throughout the U.S. Detailed economic information on starting a winery is covered in a companion publication. Both publications are part of a project supported by the National Research Initiative of the USDA Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service, grant number #2006-55618-17203. The purpose of this grant is to provide research and training to help owners of small- and medium-sized farms in Arkansas and throughout the U.S. explore the potential for grapes as an alternative and sustainable crop