Polar Code: An Advanced Encoding And Decoding Architecture For Next Generation 5G Applications

Polar Codes become a new channel coding, which will be common to apply for next-generation wireless communication systems. Polar codes, introduced by Arikan, achieves the capacity of symmetric channels with “low encoding and decoding complexity” for a large class of underlying channels. Recently, polar code has become the most favorable error correcting code in the viewpoint of information theory due to its property of channel achieving capacity. Polar code achieves the capacity of the class of symmetric binary memory less channels. In this paper review of polar code, an advanced encoding and decoding architecture for next generation applications

Directional edge and texture representations for image processing

An efficient representation for natural images is of fundamental importance in image processing and analysis. The commonly used separable transforms such as wavelets axe not best suited for images due to their inability to exploit directional regularities such as edges and oriented textural patterns; while most of the recently proposed directional schemes cannot represent these two types of features in a unified transform. This thesis focuses on the development of directional representations for images which can capture both edges and textures in a multiresolution manner. The thesis first considers the problem of extracting linear features with the multiresolution Fourier transform (MFT). Based on a previous MFT-based linear feature model, the work extends the extraction method into the situation when the image is corrupted by noise. The problem is tackled by the combination of a "Signal+Noise" frequency model, a refinement stage and a robust classification scheme. As a result, the MFT is able to perform linear feature analysis on noisy images on which previous methods failed. A new set of transforms called the multiscale polar cosine transforms (MPCT) are also proposed in order to represent textures. The MPCT can be regarded as real-valued MFT with similar basis functions of oriented sinusoids. It is shown that the transform can represent textural patches more efficiently than the conventional Fourier basis. With a directional best cosine basis, the MPCT packet (MPCPT) is shown to be an efficient representation for edges and textures, despite its high computational burden. The problem of representing edges and textures in a fixed transform with less complexity is then considered. This is achieved by applying a Gaussian frequency filter, which matches the disperson of the magnitude spectrum, on the local MFT coefficients. This is particularly effective in denoising natural images, due to its ability to preserve both types of feature. Further improvements can be made by employing the information given by the linear feature extraction process in the filter's configuration. The denoising results compare favourably against other state-of-the-art directional representations

From 3D Point Clouds to Pose-Normalised Depth Maps

We consider the problem of generating either pairwise-aligned or pose-normalised depth maps from noisy 3D point clouds in a relatively unrestricted poses. Our system is deployed in a 3D face alignment application and consists of the following four stages: (i) data filtering, (ii) nose tip identification and sub-vertex localisation, (iii) computation of the (relative) face orientation, (iv) generation of either a pose aligned or a pose normalised depth map. We generate an implicit radial basis function (RBF) model of the facial surface and this is employed within all four stages of the process. For example, in stage (ii), construction of novel invariant features is based on sampling this RBF over a set of concentric spheres to give a spherically-sampled RBF (SSR) shape histogram. In stage (iii), a second novel descriptor, called an isoradius contour curvature signal, is defined, which allows rotational alignment to be determined using a simple process of 1D correlation. We test our system on both the University of York (UoY) 3D face dataset and the Face Recognition Grand Challenge (FRGC) 3D data. For the more challenging UoY data, our SSR descriptors significantly outperform three variants of spin images, successfully identifying nose vertices at a rate of 99.6%. Nose localisation performance on the higher quality FRGC data, which has only small pose variations, is 99.9%. Our best system successfully normalises the pose of 3D faces at rates of 99.1% (UoY data) and 99.6% (FRGC data)

Copy-move forgery detection: a survey on time complexity issues and solutions

As the image processing especially image editing software evolve, more image manipulations were possible to be done, thus authentication of image become a very crucial task. Copy-move forgery detection (CMFD), a popular research focus in digital image forensic, is used to authenticate an image by detecting malicious copy-move tampering in an image. Copy-move forgery occurs when a region in an image is copied and paste into the same image. There were many survey and review papers discussed about CMFD robustness and accuracy yet less attention was given to performance and time complexity. In this paper, we attempts to highlight the key factors contribute to the time complexity issue. Before that, the CMFD processes were first explained for better understanding. The trends of tackling those issues are then explored. Finally, numbers of proposed solutions will be outlined to conclude this paper

Learning the shape of protein micro-environments with a holographic convolutional neural network

Proteins play a central role in biology from immune recognition to brain activity. While major advances in machine learning have improved our ability to predict protein structure from sequence, determining protein function from structure remains a major challenge. Here, we introduce Holographic Convolutional Neural Network (H-CNN) for proteins, which is a physically motivated machine learning approach to model amino acid preferences in protein structures. H-CNN reflects physical interactions in a protein structure and recapitulates the functional information stored in evolutionary data. H-CNN accurately predicts the impact of mutations on protein function, including stability and binding of protein complexes. Our interpretable computational model for protein structure-function maps could guide design of novel proteins with desired function

Localization, Mapping and SLAM in Marine and Underwater Environments

The use of robots in marine and underwater applications is growing rapidly. These applications share the common requirement of modeling the environment and estimating the robots’ pose. Although there are several mapping, SLAM, target detection and localization methods, marine and underwater environments have several challenging characteristics, such as poor visibility, water currents, communication issues, sonar inaccuracies or unstructured environments, that have to be considered. The purpose of this Special Issue is to present the current research trends in the topics of underwater localization, mapping, SLAM, and target detection and localization. To this end, we have collected seven articles from leading researchers in the field, and present the different approaches and methods currently being investigated to improve the performance of underwater robots

Comparing Features of Three-Dimensional Object Models Using Registration Based on Surface Curvature Signatures

This dissertation presents a technique for comparing local shape properties for similar three-dimensional objects represented by meshes. Our novel shape representation, the curvature map, describes shape as a function of surface curvature in the region around a point. A multi-pass approach is applied to the curvature map to detect features at different scales. The feature detection step does not require user input or parameter tuning. We use features ordered by strength, the similarity of pairs of features, and pruning based on geometric consistency to efficiently determine key corresponding locations on the objects. For genus zero objects, the corresponding locations are used to generate a consistent spherical parameterization that defines the point-to-point correspondence used for the final shape comparison

Detection of copy-move forgery in digital images using different computer vision approaches

Image forgery detection approaches are many and varied, but they generally all serve the same objectives: detect and localize the forgery. Copy-move forgery detection (CMFD) is widely spread and must challenge approach. In this thesis, We first investigate the problems and the challenges of the existed algorithms to detect copy-move forgery in digital images and then we propose integrating multiple forensic strategies to overcome these problems and increase the efficiency of detecting and localizing forgery based on the same image input source. Test and evaluate our copy-move forgery detector algorithm presented the outcome that has been enhanced by various computer vision field techniques. Because digital image forgery is a growing problem due to the increase in readily-available technology that makes the process relatively easy for forgers, we propose strategies and applications based on the PatchMatch algorithm and deep neural network learning (DNN). We further focus on the convolutional neural network (CNN) architecture approach in a generative adversarial network (GAN) and transfer learning environment. The F-measure score (FM), recall, precision, accuracy, and efficiency are calculated in the proposed algorithms and compared with a selection of literature algorithms using the same evaluation function in order to make a fair evaluation. The FM score achieves 0.98, with an efficiency rate exceeding 90.5% in most cases of active and passive forgery detection tasks, indicating that the proposed methods are highly robust. The output results show the high efficiency of detecting and localizing the forgery across different image formats for active and passive forgery detection. Therefore, the proposed methods in this research successfully overcome the main investigated issues in copy-move forgery detection as such: First, increase efficiency in copy-move forgery detection under a wide range of manipulation process to a copy-moved image. Second, detect and localized the copy-move forgery patches versus the pristine patches in the forged image. Finally, our experiments show the overall validation accuracy based on the proposed deep learning approach is 90%, according to the iteration limit. Further enhancement of the deep learning and learning transfer approach is recommended for future work

Surface Modeling and Analysis Using Range Images: Smoothing, Registration, Integration, and Segmentation

This dissertation presents a framework for 3D reconstruction and scene analysis, using a set of range images. The motivation for developing this framework came from the needs to reconstruct the surfaces of small mechanical parts in reverse engineering tasks, build a virtual environment of indoor and outdoor scenes, and understand 3D images. The input of the framework is a set of range images of an object or a scene captured by range scanners. The output is a triangulated surface that can be segmented into meaningful parts. A textured surface can be reconstructed if color images are provided. The framework consists of surface smoothing, registration, integration, and segmentation. Surface smoothing eliminates the noise present in raw measurements from range scanners. This research proposes area-decreasing flow that is theoretically identical to the mean curvature flow. Using area-decreasing flow, there is no need to estimate the curvature value and an optimal step size of the flow can be obtained. Crease edges and sharp corners are preserved by an adaptive scheme. Surface registration aligns measurements from different viewpoints in a common coordinate system. This research proposes a new surface representation scheme named point fingerprint. Surfaces are registered by finding corresponding point pairs in an overlapping region based on fingerprint comparison. Surface integration merges registered surface patches into a whole surface. This research employs an implicit surface-based integration technique. The proposed algorithm can generate watertight models by space carving or filling the holes based on volumetric interpolation. Textures from different views are integrated inside a volumetric grid. Surface segmentation is useful to decompose CAD models in reverse engineering tasks and help object recognition in a 3D scene. This research proposes a watershed-based surface mesh segmentation approach. The new algorithm accurately segments the plateaus by geodesic erosion using fast marching method. The performance of the framework is presented using both synthetic and real world data from different range scanners. The dissertation concludes by summarizing the development of the framework and then suggests future research topics