1,863 research outputs found
The Megamaser Cosmology Project: IV. A Direct Measurement of the Hubble Constant from UGC 3789
In Papers I and II from the Megamaser Cosmology Project (MCP), we reported
initial observations of water masers in an accretion disk of a supermassive
black hole at the center of the galaxy UGC 3789, which gave an angular-diameter
distance to the galaxy and an estimate of Ho with 16% uncertainty. We have
since conducted more VLBI observations of the spatial-velocity structure of
these water masers, as well as continued monitoring of its spectrum to better
measure maser accelerations. These more extensive observations, combined with
improved modeling of the masers in the accretion disk of the central
supermassive black hole, confirm our previous results, but with signifcantly
improved accuracy. We find Ho = 68.9 +/- 7.1 km/s/Mpc; this estimate of Ho is
independent of other methods and is accurate to +/-10%, including sources of
systematic error. This places UGC 3789 at a distance of 49.6 +/- 5.1 Mpc, with
a central supermassive black hole of (1.16 +/- 0.12) x 10^7 Msun.Comment: to appear in Ap
Relative Geologic Time By Dynamic Time Warping
This thesis considers an approach to tackle a core problem within seismic interpretation, which is bringing an autonomously generated interpretation of the seismic
data, which is now known as a Relative Geologic Time. The proposed method readily utilizes the method of Dynamic Time Warping, which is an established method
within signal processing. Using Dynamic Time Warping is thought to replicate similar interpretations an interpreter would conduct when fulfilling an interpretation of
the subsurface. Utilizing Dynamic Time Warping to seismic data results in a fully
autonomous interpretation of the subsurface, conducted in minutes and seconds. The
method is simple and extendable, which can easily be further expanded. The workflow established during the thesis work results in a method that successfully produces
an RGT volume. However, problems related to the method must be improved to
enhance the outcome further and diminish errors present in the result. Furthermore,
even with problems associated with the method, potential solutions are described in
detail in the discussion and appendix. Discussion affiliated with previous attempts
in solving Relative Geologic Time volumes is emphasized. The research conducted in
Dynamic Time Warping is promising and emits potential for further research. LaTeX
setup by Gunn and Patel (2017)
Unwind: Interactive Fish Straightening
The ScanAllFish project is a large-scale effort to scan all the world's
33,100 known species of fishes. It has already generated thousands of
volumetric CT scans of fish species which are available on open access
platforms such as the Open Science Framework. To achieve a scanning rate
required for a project of this magnitude, many specimens are grouped together
into a single tube and scanned all at once. The resulting data contain many
fish which are often bent and twisted to fit into the scanner. Our system,
Unwind, is a novel interactive visualization and processing tool which
extracts, unbends, and untwists volumetric images of fish with minimal user
interaction. Our approach enables scientists to interactively unwarp these
volumes to remove the undesired torque and bending using a piecewise-linear
skeleton extracted by averaging isosurfaces of a harmonic function connecting
the head and tail of each fish. The result is a volumetric dataset of a
individual, straight fish in a canonical pose defined by the marine biologist
expert user. We have developed Unwind in collaboration with a team of marine
biologists: Our system has been deployed in their labs, and is presently being
used for dataset construction, biomechanical analysis, and the generation of
figures for scientific publication
Trennung und SchĂ€tzung der Anzahl von Audiosignalquellen mit Zeit- und FrequenzĂŒberlappung
Everyday audio recordings involve mixture signals: music contains a mixture of instruments; in a meeting or conference, there is a mixture of human voices. For these mixtures, automatically separating or estimating the number of sources is a challenging task. A common assumption when processing mixtures in the time-frequency domain is that sources are not fully overlapped. However, in this work we consider some cases where the overlap is severe â for instance, when instruments play the same note (unison) or when many people speak concurrently ("cocktail party") â highlighting the need for new representations and more powerful models.
To address the problems of source separation and count estimation, we use conventional signal processing techniques as well as deep neural networks (DNN). We ïŹrst address the source separation problem for unison instrument mixtures, studying the distinct spectro-temporal modulations caused by vibrato. To exploit these modulations, we developed a method based on time warping, informed by an estimate of the fundamental frequency. For cases where such estimates are not available, we present an unsupervised model, inspired by the way humans group time-varying sources (common fate). This contribution comes with a novel representation that improves separation for overlapped and modulated sources on unison mixtures but also improves vocal and accompaniment separation when used as an input for a DNN model.
Then, we focus on estimating the number of sources in a mixture, which is important for real-world scenarios. Our work on count estimation was motivated by a study on how humans can address this task, which lead us to conduct listening experiments, conïŹrming that humans are only able to estimate the number of up to four sources correctly. To answer the question of whether machines can perform similarly, we present a DNN architecture, trained to estimate the number of concurrent speakers. Our results show improvements compared to other methods, and the model even outperformed humans on the same task.
In both the source separation and source count estimation tasks, the key contribution of this thesis is the concept of âmodulationâ, which is important to computationally mimic human performance. Our proposed Common Fate Transform is an adequate representation to disentangle overlapping signals for separation, and an inspection of our DNN count estimation model revealed that it proceeds to ïŹnd modulation-like intermediate features.Im Alltag sind wir von gemischten Signalen umgeben: Musik besteht aus einer Mischung von Instrumenten; in einem Meeting oder auf einer Konferenz sind wir einer Mischung menschlicher Stimmen ausgesetzt. FĂŒr diese Mischungen ist die automatische Quellentrennung oder die Bestimmung der Anzahl an Quellen eine anspruchsvolle Aufgabe. Eine hĂ€uïŹge Annahme bei der Verarbeitung von gemischten Signalen im Zeit-Frequenzbereich ist, dass die Quellen sich nicht vollstĂ€ndig ĂŒberlappen. In dieser Arbeit betrachten wir jedoch einige FĂ€lle, in denen die Ăberlappung immens ist zum Beispiel, wenn Instrumente den gleichen Ton spielen (unisono) oder wenn viele Menschen gleichzeitig sprechen (Cocktailparty) â, so dass neue Signal-ReprĂ€sentationen und leistungsfĂ€higere Modelle notwendig sind.
Um die zwei genannten Probleme zu bewĂ€ltigen, verwenden wir sowohl konventionelle Signalverbeitungsmethoden als auch tiefgehende neuronale Netze (DNN). Wir gehen zunĂ€chst auf das Problem der Quellentrennung fĂŒr Unisono-Instrumentenmischungen ein und untersuchen die speziellen, durch Vibrato ausgelösten, zeitlich-spektralen Modulationen. Um diese Modulationen auszunutzen entwickelten wir eine Methode, die auf Zeitverzerrung basiert und eine SchĂ€tzung der Grundfrequenz als zusĂ€tzliche Information nutzt. FĂŒr FĂ€lle, in denen diese SchĂ€tzungen nicht verfĂŒgbar sind, stellen wir ein unĂŒberwachtes Modell vor, das inspiriert ist von der Art und Weise, wie Menschen zeitverĂ€nderliche Quellen gruppieren (Common Fate). Dieser Beitrag enthĂ€lt eine neuartige ReprĂ€sentation, die die Separierbarkeit fĂŒr ĂŒberlappte und modulierte Quellen in Unisono-Mischungen erhöht, aber auch die Trennung in Gesang und Begleitung verbessert, wenn sie in einem DNN-Modell verwendet wird.
Im Weiteren beschĂ€ftigen wir uns mit der SchĂ€tzung der Anzahl von Quellen in einer Mischung, was fĂŒr reale Szenarien wichtig ist. Unsere Arbeit an der SchĂ€tzung der Anzahl war motiviert durch eine Studie, die zeigt, wie wir Menschen diese Aufgabe angehen. Dies hat uns dazu veranlasst, eigene Hörexperimente durchzufĂŒhren, die bestĂ€tigten, dass Menschen nur in der Lage sind, die Anzahl von bis zu vier Quellen korrekt abzuschĂ€tzen. Um nun die Frage zu beantworten, ob Maschinen dies Ă€hnlich gut können, stellen wir eine DNN-Architektur vor, die erlernt hat, die Anzahl der gleichzeitig sprechenden Sprecher zu ermitteln. Die Ergebnisse zeigen Verbesserungen im Vergleich zu anderen Methoden, aber vor allem auch im Vergleich zu menschlichen Hörern.
Sowohl bei der Quellentrennung als auch bei der SchĂ€tzung der Anzahl an Quellen ist ein Kernbeitrag dieser Arbeit das Konzept der âModulationâ, welches wichtig ist, um die Strategien von Menschen mittels Computern nachzuahmen. Unsere vorgeschlagene Common Fate Transformation ist eine adĂ€quate Darstellung, um die Ăberlappung von Signalen fĂŒr die Trennung zugĂ€nglich zu machen und eine Inspektion unseres DNN-ZĂ€hlmodells ergab schlieĂlich, dass sich auch hier modulationsĂ€hnliche Merkmale ïŹnden lassen
Visual motion : algorithms for analysis and application
Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1990.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 71-73).by Michael Adam Sokolov.M.S
Superresolution Enhancement of Hyperspectral CHRIS/Proba Images With a Thin-Plate Spline Nonrigid Transform Model
Given the hyperspectral-oriented waveband configuration of multiangular CHRIS/Proba imagery, the scope of its application could widen if the present 18-m resolution would be improved. The multiangular images of CHRIS could be used as input for superresolution (SR) image reconstruction. A critical procedure in SR is an accurate registration of the low-resolution images. Conventional methods based on affine transformation may not be effective given the local geometric distortion in high off-nadir angular images. This paper examines the use of a non-rigid transform to improve the result of a nonuniform interpolation and deconvolution SR method. A scale-invariant feature transform is used to collect control points (CPs). To ensure the quality of CPs, a rigorous screening procedure is designed: 1) an ambiguity test; 2) the m-estimator sample consensus method; and 3) an iterative method using statistical characteristics of the distribution of random errors. A thin-plate spline (TPS) nonrigid transform is then used for the registration. The proposed registration method is examined with a Delaunay triangulation-based nonuniform interpolation and reconstruction SR method. Our results show that the TPS nonrigid transform allows accurate registration of angular images. SR results obtained from simulated LR images are evaluated using three quantitative measures, namely, relative mean-square error, structural similarity, and edge stability. Compared to the SR methods that use an affine transform, our proposed method performs better with all three evaluation measures. With a higher level of spatial detail, SR-enhanced CHRIS images might be more effective than the original data in various applications.JRC.H.7-Climate Risk Managemen
Guided Time Warping for Motion Editing
Time warping allows users to modify timing without affecting poses. It has many applications in animation systems for motion editing, such as refining motions to meet new timing constraints or modifying the acting of animated characters. However, time warping typically requires many manual adjustments to achieve the desired results. We present a technique which simplifies this process by allowing time warps to be guided by a provided reference motion. Given few timing constraints, it computes a warp that both satisfies these constraints and maximizes local timing similarities to the reference. The algorithm is fast enough to incorporate into standard animation workflows. We apply the technique to two common tasks: preserving the natural timing of motions under new time constraints and modifying the timing of motions for stylistic effects.Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game La
Multimodal image registration with applications to image fusion
This paper presents an algorithm for accurately aligning two images of the same scene captured simultaneously by sensors operating in different wavebands (e.g. TV and IR). Such a setup is common in image fusion systems where the sensors are physically aligned as closely as possible and yet significant image mis-alignment remains due to differences in field of view, lens distortion and other camera characteristics. Our proposed registration method involves numerically minimising a global objective function defined in terms of local normalised correlation measures. The algorithm is demonstrated on real multimodal imagery and
applications to imagefusion are considered. In particular
we illustrate thatfused image quality is closely related to
the degree ofregistration accuracy achieved. To maintain
this accuracy in real systems it is often necessary to
continuously update the transform over time. Thus we
extend our registration approach to execute in real time
on live imagery, providing optimal fused imagery in the
presence ofrelative sensor motion andparallax effects
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