Ranking-preserving cross-source learning for image retargeting quality assessment

Image retargeting techniques adjust images into different sizes and have attracted much attention recently. Objective quality assessment (OQA) of image retargeting results is often desired to automatically select the best results. Existing OQA methods train a model using some benchmarks (e.g., RetargetMe), in which subjective scores evaluated by users are provided. Observing that it is challenging even for human subjects to give consistent scores for retargeting results of different source images (diff-source-results), in this paper we propose a learning-based OQA method that trains a General Regression Neural Network (GRNN) model based on relative scores - which preserve the ranking - of retargeting results of the same source image (same-source-results). In particular, we develop a novel training scheme with provable convergence that learns a common base scalar for same-source-results. With this source specific offset, our computed scores not only preserve the ranking of subjective scores for same-source-results, but also provide a reference to compare the diff-source-results. We train and evaluate our GRNN model using human preference data collected in RetargetMe. We further introduce a subjective benchmark to evaluate the generalizability of different OQA methods. Experimental results demonstrate that our method outperforms ten representative OQA methods in ranking prediction and has better generalizability to different datasets

Visual Comfort Assessment for Stereoscopic Image Retargeting

In recent years, visual comfort assessment (VCA) for 3D/stereoscopic content has aroused extensive attention. However, much less work has been done on the perceptual evaluation of stereoscopic image retargeting. In this paper, we first build a Stereoscopic Image Retargeting Database (SIRD), which contains source images and retargeted images produced by four typical stereoscopic retargeting methods. Then, the subjective experiment is conducted to assess four aspects of visual distortion, i.e. visual comfort, image quality, depth quality and the overall quality. Furthermore, we propose a Visual Comfort Assessment metric for Stereoscopic Image Retargeting (VCA-SIR). Based on the characteristics of stereoscopic retargeted images, the proposed model introduces novel features like disparity range, boundary disparity as well as disparity intensity distribution into the assessment model. Experimental results demonstrate that VCA-SIR can achieve high consistency with subjective perception

A deep evaluator for image retargeting quality by geometrical and contextual interaction

An image is compressed or stretched during the multidevice displaying, which will have a very big impact on perception quality. In order to solve this problem, a variety of image retargeting methods have been proposed for the retargeting process. However, how to evaluate the results of different image retargeting is a very critical issue. In various application systems, the subjective evaluation method cannot be applied on a large scale. So we put this problem in the accurate objective-quality evaluation. Currently, most of the image retargeting quality assessment algorithms use simple regression methods as the last step to obtain the evaluation result, which are not corresponding with the perception simulation in the human vision system (HVS). In this paper, a deep quality evaluator for image retargeting based on the segmented stacked AutoEnCoder (SAE) is proposed. Through the help of regularization, the designed deep learning framework can solve the overfitting problem. The main contributions in this framework are to simulate the perception of retargeted images in HVS. Especially, it trains two separated SAE models based on geometrical shape and content matching. Then, the weighting schemes can be used to combine the obtained scores from two models. Experimental results in three well-known databases show that our method can achieve better performance than traditional methods in evaluating different image retargeting results

Preserving Trustworthiness and Confidentiality for Online Multimedia

Technology advancements in areas of mobile computing, social networks, and cloud computing have rapidly changed the way we communicate and interact. The wide adoption of media-oriented mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets enables people to capture information in various media formats, and offers them a rich platform for media consumption. The proliferation of online services and social networks makes it possible to store personal multimedia collection online and share them with family and friends anytime anywhere. Considering the increasing impact of digital multimedia and the trend of cloud computing, this dissertation explores the problem of how to evaluate trustworthiness and preserve confidentiality of online multimedia data. The dissertation consists of two parts. The first part examines the problem of evaluating trustworthiness of multimedia data distributed online. Given the digital nature of multimedia data, editing and tampering of the multimedia content becomes very easy. Therefore, it is important to analyze and reveal the processing history of a multimedia document in order to evaluate its trustworthiness. We propose a new forensic technique called ``Forensic Hash", which draws synergy between two related research areas of image hashing and non-reference multimedia forensics. A forensic hash is a compact signature capturing important information from the original multimedia document to assist forensic analysis and reveal processing history of a multimedia document under question. Our proposed technique is shown to have the advantage of being compact and offering efficient and accurate analysis to forensic questions that cannot be easily answered by convention forensic techniques. The answers that we obtain from the forensic hash provide valuable information on the trustworthiness of online multimedia data. The second part of this dissertation addresses the confidentiality issue of multimedia data stored with online services. The emerging cloud computing paradigm makes it attractive to store private multimedia data online for easy access and sharing. However, the potential of cloud services cannot be fully reached unless the issue of how to preserve confidentiality of sensitive data stored in the cloud is addressed. In this dissertation, we explore techniques that enable confidentiality-preserving search of encrypted multimedia, which can play a critical role in secure online multimedia services. Techniques from image processing, information retrieval, and cryptography are jointly and strategically applied to allow efficient rank-ordered search over encrypted multimedia database and at the same time preserve data confidentiality against malicious intruders and service providers. We demonstrate high efficiency and accuracy of the proposed techniques and provide a quantitative comparative study with conventional techniques based on heavy-weight cryptography primitives

Learning to rank retargeted images

Image retargeting techniques that adjust images into different sizes have attracted much attention recently. Objective quality assessment (OQA) of image retargeting results is often desired to automatically select the best results. Existing OQA methods output an absolute score for each retargeted image and use these scores to compare different results. Observing that it is challenging even for human subjects to give consistent scores for retargeting results of different source images, in this paper we propose a learningbased OQA method that predicts the ranking of a set of retargeted images with the same source image. We show that this more manageable task helps achieve more consistent prediction to human preference and is sufficient for most application scenarios. To compute the ranking, we propose a simple yet efficient machine learning framework that uses a General Regression Neural Network (GRNN) to model a combination of seven elaborate OQA metrics. We then propose a simple scheme to transform the relative scores output from GRNN into a global ranking. We train our GRNN model using human preference data collected in the elaborate RetargetMe benchmark and evaluate our method based on the subjective study in RetargetMe. Moreover, we introduce a further subjective benchmark to evaluate the generalizability of different OQA methods. Experimental results demonstrate that our method outperforms eight representative OQA methods in ranking prediction and has better generalizability to different datasets

Perceptually Guided Photo Retargeting

We propose perceptually guided photo retargeting, which shrinks a photo by simulating a human's process of sequentially perceiving visually/semantically important regions in a photo. In particular, we first project the local features (graphlets in this paper) onto a semantic space, wherein visual cues such as global spatial layout and rough geometric context are exploited. Thereafter, a sparsity-constrained learning algorithm is derived to select semantically representative graphlets of a photo, and the selecting process can be interpreted by a path which simulates how a human actively perceives semantics in a photo. Furthermore, we learn the prior distribution of such active graphlet paths (AGPs) from training photos that are marked as esthetically pleasing by multiple users. The learned priors enforce the corresponding AGP of a retargeted photo to be maximally similar to those from the training photos. On top of the retargeting model, we further design an online learning scheme to incrementally update the model with new photos that are esthetically pleasing. The online update module makes the algorithm less dependent on the number and contents of the initial training data. Experimental results show that: 1) the proposed AGP is over 90% consistent with human gaze shifting path, as verified by the eye-tracking data, and 2) the retargeting algorithm outperforms its competitors significantly, as AGP is more indicative of photo esthetics than conventional saliency maps

Vision-based retargeting for endoscopic navigation

Endoscopy is a standard procedure for visualising the human gastrointestinal tract. With the advances in biophotonics, imaging techniques such as narrow band imaging, confocal laser endomicroscopy, and optical coherence tomography can be combined with normal endoscopy for assisting the early diagnosis of diseases, such as cancer. In the past decade, optical biopsy has emerged to be an effective tool for tissue analysis, allowing in vivo and in situ assessment of pathological sites with real-time feature-enhanced microscopic images. However, the non-invasive nature of optical biopsy leads to an intra-examination retargeting problem, which is associated with the difficulty of re-localising a biopsied site consistently throughout the whole examination. In addition to intra-examination retargeting, retargeting of a pathological site is even more challenging across examinations, due to tissue deformation and changing tissue morphologies and appearances. The purpose of this thesis is to address both the intra- and inter-examination retargeting problems associated with optical biopsy. We propose a novel vision-based framework for intra-examination retargeting. The proposed framework is based on combining visual tracking and detection with online learning of the appearance of the biopsied site. Furthermore, a novel cascaded detection approach based on random forests and structured support vector machines is developed to achieve efficient retargeting. To cater for reliable inter-examination retargeting, the solution provided in this thesis is achieved by solving an image retrieval problem, for which an online scene association approach is proposed to summarise an endoscopic video collected in the first examination into distinctive scenes. A hashing-based approach is then used to learn the intrinsic representations of these scenes, such that retargeting can be achieved in subsequent examinations by retrieving the relevant images using the learnt representations. For performance evaluation of the proposed frameworks, extensive phantom, ex vivo and in vivo experiments have been conducted, with results demonstrating the robustness and potential clinical values of the methods proposed.Open Acces