788 research outputs found
Recent Advances in Signal Processing
The signal processing task is a very critical issue in the majority of new technological inventions and challenges in a variety of applications in both science and engineering fields. Classical signal processing techniques have largely worked with mathematical models that are linear, local, stationary, and Gaussian. They have always favored closed-form tractability over real-world accuracy. These constraints were imposed by the lack of powerful computing tools. During the last few decades, signal processing theories, developments, and applications have matured rapidly and now include tools from many areas of mathematics, computer science, physics, and engineering. This book is targeted primarily toward both students and researchers who want to be exposed to a wide variety of signal processing techniques and algorithms. It includes 27 chapters that can be categorized into five different areas depending on the application at hand. These five categories are ordered to address image processing, speech processing, communication systems, time-series analysis, and educational packages respectively. The book has the advantage of providing a collection of applications that are completely independent and self-contained; thus, the interested reader can choose any chapter and skip to another without losing continuity
Spatial and temporal background modelling of non-stationary visual scenes
PhDThe prevalence of electronic imaging systems in everyday life has become increasingly apparent
in recent years. Applications are to be found in medical scanning, automated manufacture, and
perhaps most significantly, surveillance. Metropolitan areas, shopping malls, and road traffic
management all employ and benefit from an unprecedented quantity of video cameras for monitoring
purposes. But the high cost and limited effectiveness of employing humans as the final
link in the monitoring chain has driven scientists to seek solutions based on machine vision techniques.
Whilst the field of machine vision has enjoyed consistent rapid development in the last
20 years, some of the most fundamental issues still remain to be solved in a satisfactory manner.
Central to a great many vision applications is the concept of segmentation, and in particular,
most practical systems perform background subtraction as one of the first stages of video
processing. This involves separation of ‘interesting foreground’ from the less informative but
persistent background. But the definition of what is ‘interesting’ is somewhat subjective, and
liable to be application specific. Furthermore, the background may be interpreted as including
the visual appearance of normal activity of any agents present in the scene, human or otherwise.
Thus a background model might be called upon to absorb lighting changes, moving trees and
foliage, or normal traffic flow and pedestrian activity, in order to effect what might be termed in
‘biologically-inspired’ vision as pre-attentive selection. This challenge is one of the Holy Grails
of the computer vision field, and consequently the subject has received considerable attention.
This thesis sets out to address some of the limitations of contemporary methods of background
segmentation by investigating methods of inducing local mutual support amongst pixels
in three starkly contrasting paradigms: (1) locality in the spatial domain, (2) locality in the shortterm
time domain, and (3) locality in the domain of cyclic repetition frequency.
Conventional per pixel models, such as those based on Gaussian Mixture Models, offer no
spatial support between adjacent pixels at all. At the other extreme, eigenspace models impose
a structure in which every image pixel bears the same relation to every other pixel. But Markov
Random Fields permit definition of arbitrary local cliques by construction of a suitable graph, and
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are used here to facilitate a novel structure capable of exploiting probabilistic local cooccurrence
of adjacent Local Binary Patterns. The result is a method exhibiting strong sensitivity to multiple
learned local pattern hypotheses, whilst relying solely on monochrome image data.
Many background models enforce temporal consistency constraints on a pixel in attempt to
confirm background membership before being accepted as part of the model, and typically some
control over this process is exercised by a learning rate parameter. But in busy scenes, a true
background pixel may be visible for a relatively small fraction of the time and in a temporally
fragmented fashion, thus hindering such background acquisition. However, support in terms of
temporal locality may still be achieved by using Combinatorial Optimization to derive shortterm
background estimates which induce a similar consistency, but are considerably more robust
to disturbance. A novel technique is presented here in which the short-term estimates act as
‘pre-filtered’ data from which a far more compact eigen-background may be constructed.
Many scenes entail elements exhibiting repetitive periodic behaviour. Some road junctions
employing traffic signals are among these, yet little is to be found amongst the literature regarding
the explicit modelling of such periodic processes in a scene. Previous work focussing on gait
recognition has demonstrated approaches based on recurrence of self-similarity by which local
periodicity may be identified. The present work harnesses and extends this method in order
to characterize scenes displaying multiple distinct periodicities by building a spatio-temporal
model. The model may then be used to highlight abnormality in scene activity. Furthermore, a
Phase Locked Loop technique with a novel phase detector is detailed, enabling such a model to
maintain correct synchronization with scene activity in spite of noise and drift of periodicity.
This thesis contends that these three approaches are all manifestations of the same broad
underlying concept: local support in each of the space, time and frequency domains, and furthermore,
that the support can be harnessed practically, as will be demonstrated experimentally
Monte Carlo Method with Heuristic Adjustment for Irregularly Shaped Food Product Volume Measurement
Volume measurement plays an important role in the production and processing of food products. Various methods have been
proposed to measure the volume of food products with irregular shapes based on 3D reconstruction. However, 3D reconstruction
comes with a high-priced computational cost. Furthermore, some of the volume measurement methods based on 3D reconstruction
have a low accuracy. Another method for measuring volume of objects uses Monte Carlo method. Monte Carlo method performs
volume measurements using random points. Monte Carlo method only requires information regarding whether random points
fall inside or outside an object and does not require a 3D reconstruction. This paper proposes volume measurement using a
computer vision system for irregularly shaped food products without 3D reconstruction based on Monte Carlo method with
heuristic adjustment. Five images of food product were captured using five cameras and processed to produce binary images.
Monte Carlo integration with heuristic adjustment was performed to measure the volume based on the information extracted from
binary images. The experimental results show that the proposed method provided high accuracy and precision compared to the
water displacement method. In addition, the proposed method is more accurate and faster than the space carving method
Finding Unexpected Events in Staring Continuous-Dwell Sensor Data Streams Via Adaptive Prediction
This research produced a Predictive Anomaly Detector (PAD). It is an adaptive prediction-based approach to detecting unexpected events in data streams drawn from staring continuous-dwell sensors. The underlying technology is spectrum independent and does not depend on correlated data (neither temporal nor spatial) to achieve improved detection and extraction in highly robust environments. ( robust environment refers to the data stream\u27s control law being variable and the spectral content covering a wide range of wavelengths.)
The resulting approach uses a network of simple building-block equations (basis functions) to predict the non-event data and thereby present subtle sub-streams to a detection model as potential events of interest. The prediction model is automatically created from sequential observations of the data stream. Once model construction is complete, it continues to evolve as new samples arrive. Each sample value that is sufficiently different from the model\u27s predicted value is postulated as an unexpected event. A subsequent detection model uses a set of rules to confirm unexpected events while ignoring outliers. Intruder detection in robust video scenes is the main focus, although one demonstration achieved voice detection in a noisy audio signal. These demonstrations are coupled to a concept of operations that emphasizes the spectrum-independence of this approach and its integration with other processing requirements such as target recognition and tracking. Primary benefits delivered by this work include the ability to process large data volumes for obscured or buried information within highly active environments. The fully automated nature of this technique helps mitigate manning shortfalls typically associated with sorting through large volumes of surveillance data using trained analysts. This approach enables an organization to perform automated cueing for these analysts so that they spend less time examining data where nothing of interest exists. This maximizes the value of skilled personnel by using them to assess data with true potential. In this way, larger data volumes can be processed in a shorter period of time leading to a higher likelihood that important events and signals will be found, analyzed, and acted upon
Dynamical Systems
Complex systems are pervasive in many areas of science integrated in our daily lives. Examples include financial markets, highway transportation networks, telecommunication networks, world and country economies, social networks, immunological systems, living organisms, computational systems and electrical and mechanical structures. Complex systems are often composed of a large number of interconnected and interacting entities, exhibiting much richer global scale dynamics than the properties and behavior of individual entities. Complex systems are studied in many areas of natural sciences, social sciences, engineering and mathematical sciences. This special issue therefore intends to contribute towards the dissemination of the multifaceted concepts in accepted use by the scientific community. We hope readers enjoy this pertinent selection of papers which represents relevant examples of the state of the art in present day research. [...
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