1,526 research outputs found
Exposure Fusion for Hand-held Camera Inputs with Optical Flow and PatchMatch
This paper proposes a hybrid synthesis method for multi-exposure image fusion
taken by hand-held cameras. Motions either due to the shaky camera or caused by
dynamic scenes should be compensated before any content fusion. Any
misalignment can easily cause blurring/ghosting artifacts in the fused result.
Our hybrid method can deal with such motions and maintain the exposure
information of each input effectively. In particular, the proposed method first
applies optical flow for a coarse registration, which performs well with
complex non-rigid motion but produces deformations at regions with missing
correspondences. The absence of correspondences is due to the occlusions of
scene parallax or the moving contents. To correct such error registration, we
segment images into superpixels and identify problematic alignments based on
each superpixel, which is further aligned by PatchMatch. The method combines
the efficiency of optical flow and the accuracy of PatchMatch. After PatchMatch
correction, we obtain a fully aligned image stack that facilitates a
high-quality fusion that is free from blurring/ghosting artifacts. We compare
our method with existing fusion algorithms on various challenging examples,
including the static/dynamic, the indoor/outdoor and the daytime/nighttime
scenes. Experiment results demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of our
method
Beam scanning by liquid-crystal biasing in a modified SIW structure
A fixed-frequency beam-scanning 1D antenna based on Liquid Crystals (LCs) is designed for application in 2D scanning with lateral alignment. The 2D array environment imposes full decoupling of adjacent 1D antennas, which often conflicts with the LC requirement of DC biasing: the proposed design accommodates both. The LC medium is placed inside a Substrate Integrated Waveguide (SIW) modified to work as a Groove Gap Waveguide, with radiating slots etched on the upper broad wall, that radiates as a Leaky-Wave Antenna (LWA). This allows effective application of the DC bias voltage needed for tuning the LCs. At the same time, the RF field remains laterally confined, enabling the possibility to lay several antennas in parallel and achieve 2D beam scanning. The design is validated by simulation employing the actual properties of a commercial LC medium
Seamless Multimodal Biometrics for Continuous Personalised Wellbeing Monitoring
Artificially intelligent perception is increasingly present in the lives of
every one of us. Vehicles are no exception, (...) In the near future, pattern
recognition will have an even stronger role in vehicles, as self-driving cars
will require automated ways to understand what is happening around (and within)
them and act accordingly. (...) This doctoral work focused on advancing
in-vehicle sensing through the research of novel computer vision and pattern
recognition methodologies for both biometrics and wellbeing monitoring. The
main focus has been on electrocardiogram (ECG) biometrics, a trait well-known
for its potential for seamless driver monitoring. Major efforts were devoted to
achieving improved performance in identification and identity verification in
off-the-person scenarios, well-known for increased noise and variability. Here,
end-to-end deep learning ECG biometric solutions were proposed and important
topics were addressed such as cross-database and long-term performance,
waveform relevance through explainability, and interlead conversion. Face
biometrics, a natural complement to the ECG in seamless unconstrained
scenarios, was also studied in this work. The open challenges of masked face
recognition and interpretability in biometrics were tackled in an effort to
evolve towards algorithms that are more transparent, trustworthy, and robust to
significant occlusions. Within the topic of wellbeing monitoring, improved
solutions to multimodal emotion recognition in groups of people and
activity/violence recognition in in-vehicle scenarios were proposed. At last,
we also proposed a novel way to learn template security within end-to-end
models, dismissing additional separate encryption processes, and a
self-supervised learning approach tailored to sequential data, in order to
ensure data security and optimal performance. (...)Comment: Doctoral thesis presented and approved on the 21st of December 2022
to the University of Port
Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Meets Deep Learning
This reprint focuses on the application of the combination of synthetic aperture radars and depth learning technology. It aims to further promote the development of SAR image intelligent interpretation technology. A synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is an important active microwave imaging sensor, whose all-day and all-weather working capacity give it an important place in the remote sensing community. Since the United States launched the first SAR satellite, SAR has received much attention in the remote sensing community, e.g., in geological exploration, topographic mapping, disaster forecast, and traffic monitoring. It is valuable and meaningful, therefore, to study SAR-based remote sensing applications. In recent years, deep learning represented by convolution neural networks has promoted significant progress in the computer vision community, e.g., in face recognition, the driverless field and Internet of things (IoT). Deep learning can enable computational models with multiple processing layers to learn data representations with multiple-level abstractions. This can greatly improve the performance of various applications. This reprint provides a platform for researchers to handle the above significant challenges and present their innovative and cutting-edge research results when applying deep learning to SAR in various manuscript types, e.g., articles, letters, reviews and technical reports
Graphonomics and your Brain on Art, Creativity and Innovation : Proceedings of the 19th International Graphonomics Conference (IGS 2019 – Your Brain on Art)
[Italiano]: “Grafonomia e cervello su arte, creatività e innovazione”.
Un forum internazionale per discutere sui recenti progressi nell'interazione tra arti creative, neuroscienze, ingegneria, comunicazione, tecnologia, industria, istruzione, design, applicazioni forensi e mediche. I contributi hanno esaminato lo stato dell'arte, identificando sfide e opportunità , e hanno delineato le possibili linee di sviluppo di questo settore di ricerca. I temi affrontati includono: strategie integrate per la comprensione dei sistemi neurali, affettivi e cognitivi in ambienti realistici e complessi; individualità e differenziazione dal punto di vista neurale e comportamentale; neuroaesthetics (uso delle neuroscienze per spiegare e comprendere le esperienze estetiche a livello neurologico); creatività e innovazione; neuro-ingegneria e arte ispirata dal cervello, creatività e uso di dispositivi di mobile brain-body imaging (MoBI) indossabili; terapia basata su arte creativa; apprendimento informale; formazione; applicazioni forensi. / [English]: “Graphonomics and your brain on art, creativity and innovation”.
A single track, international forum for discussion on recent advances at the intersection of the creative arts, neuroscience, engineering, media, technology, industry, education, design, forensics, and medicine.
The contributions reviewed the state of the art, identified challenges and opportunities and created a roadmap for the field of graphonomics and your brain on art.
The topics addressed include: integrative strategies for understanding neural, affective and cognitive systems in realistic, complex environments; neural and behavioral individuality and variation; neuroaesthetics (the use of neuroscience to explain and understand the aesthetic experiences at the neurological level); creativity and innovation; neuroengineering and brain-inspired art, creative concepts and wearable mobile brain-body imaging (MoBI) designs; creative art therapy; informal learning; education; forensics
Deep learning for trading and hedging in financial markets
Deep learning has achieved remarkable results in many areas, from image classification, language translation to question answering. Deep neural network models have proved to be good at processing large amounts of data and capturing complex relationships embedded in the data. In this thesis, we use deep learning methods to solve trading and hedging problems in the financial markets. We show that our solutions, which consist of various deep neural network models, could achieve better accuracies and efficiencies than many conventional mathematical-based methods.
We use Technical Analysis Neural Network (TANN) to process high-frequency tick data from the foreign exchange market. Various technical indicators are calculated from the market data and fed into the neural network model. The model generates a classification label, which indicates the future movement direction of the FX rate in the short term. Our solution can surpass many well-known machine learning algorithms on classification accuracies.
Deep Hedging models the relationship between the underlying asset and the prices of option contracts. We upgrade the pipeline by removing the restriction on trading frequency. With different levels of risk tolerances, the modified deep hedging model can propose various hedging solutions. These solutions form the Efficient Hedging Frontier (EHF), where their associated risk levels and returns are directly observable. We also show that combining a Deep Hedging model with a prediction algorithm ultimately increases the hedging performances.
Implied volatility is the critical parameter for evaluating many financial derivatives. We propose a novel PCA Variational Auto-Enocder model to encode three independent features of implied volatility surfaces from the European stock markets. This novel encoding brings various benefits to generating and extrapolating implied volatility surfaces. It also enables the transformation of implied volatility surfaces from a stock index to a single stock, significantly improving the efficiency of derivatives pricing
Application of Wavelet Analysis and Random Field in Integrity Management of Pipelines Containing Dents and Corrosions
Metal loss corrosions and dents are two major threats to the integrity of oil and natural gas pipelines. In the pipeline industry, the Fitness-For-Service (FFS) assessment is commonly employed for pipelines containing these defects. However, FFS assessment usually assumes that a defect has a simple shape, and such a simplification may significantly affect the accuracy of the assessment. Therefore, retaining the actual shapes of defects and incorporating them into the FFS assessment can improve assessment accuracy. The main objective of the present thesis is to extract key information about the sizes, directions, and shapes of corrosions and dents from the measurement of in-service and excavated pipelines, and then improve the accuracy of FFS assessment based on the extracted information.
The first study develops a wavelet transform-based denoising method for the measured inner surface of in-service dented pipelines obtained from caliper tools. Since the inner surface is differently sampled along the longitudinal and circumferential directions, the commonly used denoising methods cannot sufficiently remove measurement errors from the signal. The proposed method is based on overcomplete expansion, and the overcomplete dictionary is constructed from the hyperbolic wavelet transform and stationary transform. The strain estimated from the signal denoised by the proposed method is closer to the actual strain than the other denoising method. An overcomplete dictionary that can effectively denoise the dent signal is then constructed based on the statistics of the measurement of in-service dented pipelines.
The second study explores the vital directional features and length scales of natural corrosion clusters that govern the burst capacity of corroded pipelines. The corrosion depths in a cluster are measured by high-resolution laser scans, and two-dimensional (2D) discrete wavelet transform (DWT) with a suitable wavelet function is employed to decompose the corrosion cluster. A methodology is proposed to determine level- and sub-band-dependent thresholds such that those wavelet coefficients below the thresholds have a negligible impact on the burst capacity predicted by the widely used RSTRENG model and can be ignored for the reconstruction of the cluster. The preserved wavelet coefficients show that longitudinally orientated features with 4 – 32 mm in length have a greater influence on the remaining burst capacity than other features. This facilitates FFS assessment of corroded pipelines.
The third study aims to simulate the corrosion fields whose morphology and marginal distribution are close to the actual corrosion fields from limited information summarized from the ILI data. The corrosion field containing multiple corrosion anomalies is modelled as a nonhomogeneous non-Gaussian random field, where the spatial correlation and marginal distribution of anomalies are estimated from their sizes. The proposed methodology provides realizations of corrosion fields with the RSTRENG-predicted burst capacity closer to the actual burst capacity than the commonly used methodology that idealizes anomalies as cuboids.
The fourth study presents a framework to analyze and simulate nonhomogeneous non-Gaussian corrosion fields on the external surface of buried in-service pipelines by using continuous and discrete wavelet transforms. Continuous wavelet transform (CWT), dual-tree complex discrete wavelet transform (DT-CDWT), and dual-tree complex discrete wavelet with hyperbolic wavelet transform scheme (DT-CHWT) are incorporated into the iterative power and amplitude correction (IPAC) algorithm to extract the features of the natural corrosion field measured by a high-resolution laser scan and generate synthetic corrosion fields. The results indicate that the proposed framework can generate synthetic corrosion fields that effectively capture probabilistic characteristics of the measured corrosion field in terms of the scalogram, textural features, and burst capacity of the pipe segment containing the corrosion field
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