How is Gaze Influenced by Image Transformations? Dataset and Model

Data size is the bottleneck for developing deep saliency models, because collecting eye-movement data is very time consuming and expensive. Most of current studies on human attention and saliency modeling have used high quality stereotype stimuli. In real world, however, captured images undergo various types of transformations. Can we use these transformations to augment existing saliency datasets? Here, we first create a novel saliency dataset including fixations of 10 observers over 1900 images degraded by 19 types of transformations. Second, by analyzing eye movements, we find that observers look at different locations over transformed versus original images. Third, we utilize the new data over transformed images, called data augmentation transformation (DAT), to train deep saliency models. We find that label preserving DATs with negligible impact on human gaze boost saliency prediction, whereas some other DATs that severely impact human gaze degrade the performance. These label preserving valid augmentation transformations provide a solution to enlarge existing saliency datasets. Finally, we introduce a novel saliency model based on generative adversarial network (dubbed GazeGAN). A modified UNet is proposed as the generator of the GazeGAN, which combines classic skip connections with a novel center-surround connection (CSC), in order to leverage multi level features. We also propose a histogram loss based on Alternative Chi Square Distance (ACS HistLoss) to refine the saliency map in terms of luminance distribution. Extensive experiments and comparisons over 3 datasets indicate that GazeGAN achieves the best performance in terms of popular saliency evaluation metrics, and is more robust to various perturbations. Our code and data are available at: https://github.com/CZHQuality/Sal-CFS-GAN

Generalization of form in visual pattern classification.

Human observers were trained to criterion in classifying compound Gabor signals with sym- metry relationships, and were then tested with each of 18 blob-only versions of the learning set. General- ization to dark-only and light-only blob versions of the learning signals, as well as to dark-and-light blob versions was found to be excellent, thus implying virtually perfect generalization of the ability to classify mirror-image signals. The hypothesis that the learning signals are internally represented in terms of a 'blob code' with explicit labelling of contrast polarities was tested by predicting observed generalization behaviour in terms of various types of signal representations (pixelwise, Laplacian pyramid, curvature pyramid, ON/OFF, local maxima of Laplacian and curvature operators) and a minimum-distance rule. Most representations could explain generalization for dark-only and light-only blob patterns but not for the high-thresholded versions thereof. This led to the proposal of a structure-oriented blob-code. Whether such a code could be used in conjunction with simple classifiers or should be transformed into a propo- sitional scheme of representation operated upon by a rule-based classification process remains an open question

HUMAN FACE RECOGNITION BASED ON FRACTAL IMAGE CODING

Human face recognition is an important area in the field of biometrics. It has been an active area of research for several decades, but still remains a challenging problem because of the complexity of the human face. In this thesis we describe fully automatic solutions that can locate faces and then perform identification and verification. We present a solution for face localisation using eye locations. We derive an efficient representation for the decision hyperplane of linear and nonlinear Support Vector Machines (SVMs). For this we introduce the novel concept of $\rho$ and $\eta$ prototypes. The standard formulation for the decision hyperplane is reformulated and expressed in terms of the two prototypes. Different kernels are treated separately to achieve further classification efficiency and to facilitate its adaptation to operate with the fast Fourier transform to achieve fast eye detection. Using the eye locations, we extract and normalise the face for size and in-plane rotations. Our method produces a more efficient representation of the SVM decision hyperplane than the well-known reduced set methods. As a result, our eye detection subsystem is faster and more accurate. The use of fractals and fractal image coding for object recognition has been proposed and used by others. Fractal codes have been used as features for recognition, but we need to take into account the distance between codes, and to ensure the continuity of the parameters of the code. We use a method based on fractal image coding for recognition, which we call the Fractal Neighbour Distance (FND). The FND relies on the Euclidean metric and the uniqueness of the attractor of a fractal code. An advantage of using the FND over fractal codes as features is that we do not have to worry about the uniqueness of, and distance between, codes. We only require the uniqueness of the attractor, which is already an implied property of a properly generated fractal code. Similar methods to the FND have been proposed by others, but what distinguishes our work from the rest is that we investigate the FND in greater detail and use our findings to improve the recognition rate. Our investigations reveal that the FND has some inherent invariance to translation, scale, rotation and changes to illumination. These invariances are image dependent and are affected by fractal encoding parameters. The parameters that have the greatest effect on recognition accuracy are the contrast scaling factor, luminance shift factor and the type of range block partitioning. The contrast scaling factor affect the convergence and eventual convergence rate of a fractal decoding process. We propose a novel method of controlling the convergence rate by altering the contrast scaling factor in a controlled manner, which has not been possible before. This helped us improve the recognition rate because under certain conditions better results are achievable from using a slower rate of convergence. We also investigate the effects of varying the luminance shift factor, and examine three different types of range block partitioning schemes. They are Quad-tree, HV and uniform partitioning. We performed experiments using various face datasets, and the results show that our method indeed performs better than many accepted methods such as eigenfaces. The experiments also show that the FND based classifier increases the separation between classes. The standard FND is further improved by incorporating the use of localised weights. A local search algorithm is introduced to find a best matching local feature using this locally weighted FND. The scores from a set of these locally weighted FND operations are then combined to obtain a global score, which is used as a measure of the similarity between two face images. Each local FND operation possesses the distortion invariant properties described above. Combined with the search procedure, the method has the potential to be invariant to a larger class of non-linear distortions. We also present a set of locally weighted FNDs that concentrate around the upper part of the face encompassing the eyes and nose. This design was motivated by the fact that the region around the eyes has more information for discrimination. Better performance is achieved by using different sets of weights for identification and verification. For facial verification, performance is further improved by using normalised scores and client specific thresholding. In this case, our results are competitive with current state-of-the-art methods, and in some cases outperform all those to which they were compared. For facial identification, under some conditions the weighted FND performs better than the standard FND. However, the weighted FND still has its short comings when some datasets are used, where its performance is not much better than the standard FND. To alleviate this problem we introduce a voting scheme that operates with normalised versions of the weighted FND. Although there are no improvements at lower matching ranks using this method, there are significant improvements for larger matching ranks. Our methods offer advantages over some well-accepted approaches such as eigenfaces, neural networks and those that use statistical learning theory. Some of the advantages are: new faces can be enrolled without re-training involving the whole database; faces can be removed from the database without the need for re-training; there are inherent invariances to face distortions; it is relatively simple to implement; and it is not model-based so there are no model parameters that need to be tweaked