Enhancement-Driven Pretraining for Robust Fingerprint Representation Learning

Fingerprint recognition stands as a pivotal component of biometric technology, with diverse applications from identity verification to advanced search tools. In this paper, we propose a unique method for deriving robust fingerprint representations by leveraging enhancement-based pre-training. Building on the achievements of U-Net-based fingerprint enhancement, our method employs a specialized encoder to derive representations from fingerprint images in a self-supervised manner. We further refine these representations, aiming to enhance the verification capabilities. Our experimental results, tested on publicly available fingerprint datasets, reveal a marked improvement in verification performance against established self-supervised training techniques. Our findings not only highlight the effectiveness of our method but also pave the way for potential advancements. Crucially, our research indicates that it is feasible to extract meaningful fingerprint representations from degraded images without relying on enhanced samples.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, Accepted at 19th VISIGRAPP 2024: VISAPP conferenc

Temples in Diocletian’s Palace and the Veneration of Egyptian Deities

Sva četiri hrama u Dioklecijanovoj palači imala su kripte. Kripte pod Malim hramom (krstionica), Kibelinim hramom i pod onim poligonalnim (katedrala) također su u svezi s vodom. Osobito je zanimljiva kripta ispod poligonalnog hrama (katedrala) u kojoj je bunar. Pristup u tu kriptu, koja je naknadno posvećena sv. Luciji, ne nalazi se u osovini hrama, već bočno, a stepenište i hodnik, valja naglasiti, spajaju se pod pravim kutom, što onemogućuje prodor svjetla, kao što je to slučaj i kod drugih kripta u hramovima posvećenima egipatskim (aleksandrijskim) božanstvima. Kripte s vodom u hramovima u Dioklecijanovoj palači u Splitu, zajedno sa sfingama upućuje na pretpostavku o štovanju egipatskih božanstava. Njima je bilo posvećeno i poligonalno zdanje koje se inače smatra da je bilo Dioklecijanov mauzolej.The Egyptian artefacts in Split have long drawn attention. They have been variously interpreted, mainly through Diocletian’s inclination for Egypt and its religions and his tendency towards Egyptomania. As far as I know, the Egyptian element in Split has not yet been interpreted to suggest the possibility that some, or perhaps all, of the temples in the palace were connected with Egyptian deities. The sphinxes in the palace indicate the cults of Egyptian deities. Because of the opinion prevalent since the beginning of the 20th century that the polygonal building like an eight-sided prism (in which Split Cathedral is housed) was Diocletian’s mausoleum, the Split sphinxes are also attributed a funereal character. But in the Graeco-Roman era, as Plutarch explains (De Iside…IX), as does Clement of Alexandria (Strom. VI, 5), sphinxes watch over temples. This is one of the arguments supporting the idea of connecting the temples in the palace with the cult of the Egyptian (and Alexandrian) deities Isis and Serapis. In Diocletian’s Palace there are temples at the eastern and western sides of the Peristyle, the central open space. The temple on the eastern side is a polygonal building that has been repurposed as Split Cathedral. To the west of the Peristyle are three temples: one, mainly well preserved, was remodelled into the baptistery of the city of Split, in colloquial terms, the Little Temple, in front of which, on the northern and southern sides, were two small temples shaped like cylinders. The temple transformed into the baptistery of Split, the Little Temple, is of the prostyle type, common in Roman religious architecture. The naos and pronaos are on a high stylobate which is accessed by steps. The entry into the crypt at the rear of the temple is small and narrow, more like a window than a door. Both temples, in their ground plan of the central type, with about the same dimensions across, had, it is hypothesised, pillars – a portico, around the naos, under which is a crypt (a well?). From the temple on the south east side of the temenos a partially preserved stylobate has remained, with multiple mouldings, visible in the ground floor of the Luccari Palace (a palace with a façade on the SW side of the Peristyle). The temple on the NE side is in existence only at the level of the floor adumbrated in the ground floor of the Grisogono-Cipci Palace (today the Luxor Café). It is important to point out that in the crypt of this temple, water welled up during the excavations. An analogy to the spatial disposition of three temples, one of which has a rectangular and the other two circular ground plans, is provided by the complex of the Red Basilica, so called (Kizul Avlu) in Pergamon (Bergama) dedicated to the Egyptian gods. Unlike the temples in Diocletian’s Palace, those in Pergamonare of colossal sizes.The crypts and the water in the Split temples in Diocletian’s Palace are indications that the Egyptian gods were probably worshipped in them. The veneration of the holy water of the Nile is the central element in the cult of Isis and Osiris/ Serapis. A head of pink granite (fragment of a statue of a pharaoh or perhaps a sphinx) was found in front of Diocletian’s Palace where the channels of the aqueduct branch out. All four temples in Diocletian’s Palace had crypts. The crypts below the Little Temple (baptistery), Temple of Cybele and the octagonal one (i.e. the cathedral) are also connected with water. Particularly interesting is the crypt below the polygonal temple (the cathedral) in which there is a well. The crypt is dedicated to St Lucy. But as well as the existing well there was another, smaller, well alongside a former altar in the crypt, by which in the ground there was a rectangular claypipe from Roman times. The steps and the corridor that give access to the crypts of the Greek and Roman temples in which Egyptian deities were venerated are often joined at right angles. Access into the crypt of St Lucy does not lie in the axis of the temple, ratherlaterally; the stairs and corridor, it has to be emphasised, are joined at a right angle, which makes the ingress of light impossible, as is the case in other crypts in temples dedicated to Egyptian (Alexandrian) deities. Today too on the Feast of St Lucy the crypt with the water that is considered miracle-working is opened for the congregation

Strobilurin Effects on Nitrogen Use Efficiency for the Yield and Protein in Durum Wheat Grown under Rainfed Mediterranean Conditions

In wheat, the increase in nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) and optimization of the nitrogen doses to be used are both very important aspects for improving sustainable and productive agriculture. The aim of this study was to investigate, under rainfed Mediterranean conditions, the influence of strobilurin treatment and N fertilization on durum wheat N use efficiency for yield (NUEy) and protein (NUEp) and on the contribution of their components, nitrogen uptake efficiency (UPE) and nitrogen utilization efficiency (NUtE). Two durum wheat cultivars (Saragolla and Sfinge) were grown for two years in field conditions under five nitrogen treatments (60 kg ha−1 N60; 90 and 120 kg ha−1 given two and three times; N90, N90T3, N120 and N120T3) comparing a control without strobilurin treatment (ST0) and one application of strobilurin (STaz). In Sfinge, STaz caused a decrease in UPE and NUEp and an increase in NUtE and NUEy. In Saragolla, the opposite behavior was observed. Moreover, strobilurin positively affected the contribution of UPE and negatively that of NUtE to NUEy only in Saragolla. Furthermore, strobilurin determined higher NUEy and NUEp values under most of the N treatments adopted in the drier year. With this study, we supported the hypothesis that in Mediterranean conditions, the possibility of reducing N rate application from 120 to 90 kg ha−1 with a strobilurin-based treatment, even in the absence of fungal diseases, could represent a useful agronomic strategy for durum wheat grown under drought conditions as those predicted under the ongoing climate change

I contributi alle imprese colpite dal sisma del 2012 in Emilia-Romagna: una base informativa per l'analisi e il monitoraggio della ricostruzione

In the project Energie Sisma Emilia (www.energie.unimore.it), the data on contributions paid for the reconstruction of economic activities damaged by the earthquake that hit Emilia in 2012 are an essential information for monitoring the reconstruction. This paper aims to describe the criteria to assign contributions for the restoration and reconstruction of the buildings (for industrial, agricultural and commercial) damaged by an earthquake. The data collected during the submission of applications for assistance, then processed by the head of the procedure for its payment, may allow to draw a clear picture of the reconstruction process by highlighting the specific sector and size of businesses affected, in the municipalities of the crater of the earthquake as well as of construction companies and professionals involved in the process of submitting applications for assistance and the implementation of the intervention. In the Emilia Romagna region, businesses companies affected by the earthquake were given access to four sources of contributions: (a) for the reconstruction of buildings, temporary relocation, restoration of machinery and equipment and compensation for damage to the inventory of raw materials, semi-finished and finished products; (b) funds made available by Inail (National Institute for insurance against accidents at work) for seismic retrofitting; (c) funds intended for productive investment for innovation and (d) to support the location in case of unavailability of local unit in which it was performed, the activity before the earthquake, (ERDF - POR Regione-Emilia Romagna). By systematizing data and information available to date, we share some preliminary information gathered by the research group Energy Sisma Emilia for the analysis of data on the reconstruction of business companies, which will start once the data will be made available in an appropriate manner by the Emilia-Romagna

SFINGE 3D: A novel benchmark for online detection and recognition of heterogeneous hand gestures from 3D fingers' trajectories

In recent years gesture recognition has become an increasingly interesting topic for both research and industry. While interaction with a device through a gestural interface is a promising idea in several applications especially in the industrial field, some of the issues related to the task are still considered a challenge. In the scientific literature, a relevant amount of work has been recently presented on the problem of detecting and classifying gestures from 3D hands' joints trajectories that can be captured by cheap devices installed on head-mounted displays and desktop computers. The methods proposed so far can achieve very good results on benchmarks requiring the offline supervised classification of segmented gestures of a particular kind but are not usually tested on the more realistic task of finding gestures execution within a continuous hand tracking session.In this paper, we present a novel benchmark, SFINGE 3D, aimed at evaluating online gesture detection and recognition. The dataset is composed of a dictionary of 13 segmented gestures used as a training set and 72 trajectories each containing 3-5 of the 13 gestures, performed in continuous tracking, padded with random hand movements acting as noise. The presented dataset, captured with a head-mounted Leap Motion device, is particularly suitable to evaluate gesture detection methods in a realistic use-case scenario, as it allows the analysis of online detection performance on heterogeneous gestures, characterized by static hand pose, global hand motions, and finger articulation.We exploited SFINGE 3D to compare two different approaches for the online detection and classification, one based on visual rendering and Convolutional Neural Networks and the other based on geometrybased handcrafted features and dissimilarity-based classifiers. We discuss the results, analyzing strengths and weaknesses of the methods, and deriving useful hints for their improvement. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Distributed incremental fingerprint identification with reduced database penetration rate using a hierarchical classification based on feature fusion and selection

Fingerprint recognition has been a hot research topic along the last few decades, with many applications and ever growing populations to identify. The need of flexible, fast identification systems is therefore patent in such situations. In this context, fingerprint classification is commonly used to improve the speed of the identification. This paper proposes a complete identification system with a hierarchical classification framework that fuses the information of multiple feature extractors. A feature selection is applied to improve the classification accuracy. Finally, the distributed identification is carried out with an incremental search, exploring the classes according to the probability order given by the classifier. A single parameter tunes the trade-off between identification time and accuracy. The proposal is evaluated over two NIST databases and a large synthetic database, yielding penetration rates close to the optimal values that can be reached with classification, leading to low identification times with small or no accuracy loss