15,862 research outputs found
Automated detection of extended sources in radio maps: progress from the SCORPIO survey
Automated source extraction and parameterization represents a crucial
challenge for the next-generation radio interferometer surveys, such as those
performed with the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) and its precursors. In this
paper we present a new algorithm, dubbed CAESAR (Compact And Extended Source
Automated Recognition), to detect and parametrize extended sources in radio
interferometric maps. It is based on a pre-filtering stage, allowing image
denoising, compact source suppression and enhancement of diffuse emission,
followed by an adaptive superpixel clustering stage for final source
segmentation. A parameterization stage provides source flux information and a
wide range of morphology estimators for post-processing analysis. We developed
CAESAR in a modular software library, including also different methods for
local background estimation and image filtering, along with alternative
algorithms for both compact and diffuse source extraction. The method was
applied to real radio continuum data collected at the Australian Telescope
Compact Array (ATCA) within the SCORPIO project, a pathfinder of the ASKAP-EMU
survey. The source reconstruction capabilities were studied over different test
fields in the presence of compact sources, imaging artefacts and diffuse
emission from the Galactic plane and compared with existing algorithms. When
compared to a human-driven analysis, the designed algorithm was found capable
of detecting known target sources and regions of diffuse emission,
outperforming alternative approaches over the considered fields.Comment: 15 pages, 9 figure
A Framework for Symmetric Part Detection in Cluttered Scenes
The role of symmetry in computer vision has waxed and waned in importance
during the evolution of the field from its earliest days. At first figuring
prominently in support of bottom-up indexing, it fell out of favor as shape
gave way to appearance and recognition gave way to detection. With a strong
prior in the form of a target object, the role of the weaker priors offered by
perceptual grouping was greatly diminished. However, as the field returns to
the problem of recognition from a large database, the bottom-up recovery of the
parts that make up the objects in a cluttered scene is critical for their
recognition. The medial axis community has long exploited the ubiquitous
regularity of symmetry as a basis for the decomposition of a closed contour
into medial parts. However, today's recognition systems are faced with
cluttered scenes, and the assumption that a closed contour exists, i.e. that
figure-ground segmentation has been solved, renders much of the medial axis
community's work inapplicable. In this article, we review a computational
framework, previously reported in Lee et al. (2013), Levinshtein et al. (2009,
2013), that bridges the representation power of the medial axis and the need to
recover and group an object's parts in a cluttered scene. Our framework is
rooted in the idea that a maximally inscribed disc, the building block of a
medial axis, can be modeled as a compact superpixel in the image. We evaluate
the method on images of cluttered scenes.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figure
Joint segmentation of color and depth data based on splitting and merging driven by surface fitting
This paper proposes a segmentation scheme based on the joint usage of color and depth data together with a 3D surface estimation scheme. Firstly a set of multi-dimensional vectors is built from color, geometry and surface orientation information. Normalized cuts spectral clustering is then applied in order to recursively segment the scene in two parts thus obtaining an over-segmentation. This procedure is followed by a recursive merging stage where close segments belonging to the same object are joined together. At each step of both procedures a NURBS model is fitted on the computed segments and the accuracy of the fitting is used as a measure of the plausibility that a segment represents a single surface or object. By comparing the accuracy to the one at the previous step, it is possible to determine if each splitting or merging operation leads to a better scene representation and consequently whether to perform it or not. Experimental results show how the proposed method provides an accurate and reliable segmentation
Methods for Analysing Endothelial Cell Shape and Behaviour in Relation to the Focal Nature of Atherosclerosis
The aim of this thesis is to develop automated methods for the analysis of the
spatial patterns, and the functional behaviour of endothelial cells, viewed under
microscopy, with applications to the understanding of atherosclerosis.
Initially, a radial search approach to segmentation was attempted in order to
trace the cell and nuclei boundaries using a maximum likelihood algorithm; it
was found inadequate to detect the weak cell boundaries present in the available
data. A parametric cell shape model was then introduced to fit an equivalent
ellipse to the cell boundary by matching phase-invariant orientation fields of the
image and a candidate cell shape. This approach succeeded on good quality
images, but failed on images with weak cell boundaries. Finally, a support
vector machines based method, relying on a rich set of visual features, and a
small but high quality training dataset, was found to work well on large numbers
of cells even in the presence of strong intensity variations and imaging noise.
Using the segmentation results, several standard shear-stress dependent parameters
of cell morphology were studied, and evidence for similar behaviour
in some cell shape parameters was obtained in in-vivo cells and their nuclei.
Nuclear and cell orientations around immature and mature aortas were broadly
similar, suggesting that the pattern of flow direction near the wall stayed approximately
constant with age. The relation was less strong for the cell and
nuclear length-to-width ratios.
Two novel shape analysis approaches were attempted to find other properties
of cell shape which could be used to annotate or characterise patterns, since a
wide variability in cell and nuclear shapes was observed which did not appear
to fit the standard parameterisations. Although no firm conclusions can yet be
drawn, the work lays the foundation for future studies of cell morphology.
To draw inferences about patterns in the functional response of cells to flow,
which may play a role in the progression of disease, single-cell analysis was performed
using calcium sensitive florescence probes. Calcium transient rates were
found to change with flow, but more importantly, local patterns of synchronisation
in multi-cellular groups were discernable and appear to change with flow.
The patterns suggest a new functional mechanism in flow-mediation of cell-cell
calcium signalling
Structure Preserving Large Imagery Reconstruction
With the explosive growth of web-based cameras and mobile devices, billions
of photographs are uploaded to the internet. We can trivially collect a huge
number of photo streams for various goals, such as image clustering, 3D scene
reconstruction, and other big data applications. However, such tasks are not
easy due to the fact the retrieved photos can have large variations in their
view perspectives, resolutions, lighting, noises, and distortions.
Fur-thermore, with the occlusion of unexpected objects like people, vehicles,
it is even more challenging to find feature correspondences and reconstruct
re-alistic scenes. In this paper, we propose a structure-based image completion
algorithm for object removal that produces visually plausible content with
consistent structure and scene texture. We use an edge matching technique to
infer the potential structure of the unknown region. Driven by the estimated
structure, texture synthesis is performed automatically along the estimated
curves. We evaluate the proposed method on different types of images: from
highly structured indoor environment to natural scenes. Our experimental
results demonstrate satisfactory performance that can be potentially used for
subsequent big data processing, such as image localization, object retrieval,
and scene reconstruction. Our experiments show that this approach achieves
favorable results that outperform existing state-of-the-art techniques
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