17,955 research outputs found
Structured Knowledge Representation for Image Retrieval
We propose a structured approach to the problem of retrieval of images by
content and present a description logic that has been devised for the semantic
indexing and retrieval of images containing complex objects. As other
approaches do, we start from low-level features extracted with image analysis
to detect and characterize regions in an image. However, in contrast with
feature-based approaches, we provide a syntax to describe segmented regions as
basic objects and complex objects as compositions of basic ones. Then we
introduce a companion extensional semantics for defining reasoning services,
such as retrieval, classification, and subsumption. These services can be used
for both exact and approximate matching, using similarity measures. Using our
logical approach as a formal specification, we implemented a complete
client-server image retrieval system, which allows a user to pose both queries
by sketch and queries by example. A set of experiments has been carried out on
a testbed of images to assess the retrieval capabilities of the system in
comparison with expert users ranking. Results are presented adopting a
well-established measure of quality borrowed from textual information
retrieval
Pigment Melanin: Pattern for Iris Recognition
Recognition of iris based on Visible Light (VL) imaging is a difficult
problem because of the light reflection from the cornea. Nonetheless, pigment
melanin provides a rich feature source in VL, unavailable in Near-Infrared
(NIR) imaging. This is due to biological spectroscopy of eumelanin, a chemical
not stimulated in NIR. In this case, a plausible solution to observe such
patterns may be provided by an adaptive procedure using a variational technique
on the image histogram. To describe the patterns, a shape analysis method is
used to derive feature-code for each subject. An important question is how much
the melanin patterns, extracted from VL, are independent of iris texture in
NIR. With this question in mind, the present investigation proposes fusion of
features extracted from NIR and VL to boost the recognition performance. We
have collected our own database (UTIRIS) consisting of both NIR and VL images
of 158 eyes of 79 individuals. This investigation demonstrates that the
proposed algorithm is highly sensitive to the patterns of cromophores and
improves the iris recognition rate.Comment: To be Published on Special Issue on Biometrics, IEEE Transaction on
Instruments and Measurements, Volume 59, Issue number 4, April 201
A survey of visual preprocessing and shape representation techniques
Many recent theories and methods proposed for visual preprocessing and shape representation are summarized. The survey brings together research from the fields of biology, psychology, computer science, electrical engineering, and most recently, neural networks. It was motivated by the need to preprocess images for a sparse distributed memory (SDM), but the techniques presented may also prove useful for applying other associative memories to visual pattern recognition. The material of this survey is divided into three sections: an overview of biological visual processing; methods of preprocessing (extracting parts of shape, texture, motion, and depth); and shape representation and recognition (form invariance, primitives and structural descriptions, and theories of attention)
Shape-Based Models for Interactive Segmentation of Medical Images
Accurate image segmentation is one of the key problems in computer vision. In domains such as radiation treatment planning, dosimetrists must manually trace the outlines of a few critical structures on large numbers of images. Considerable similarity can be seen in the shape of these regions, both between adjacent slices in a particular patient and across the spectrum of patients. Consequently we should be able to model this similarity and use it to assist in the process of segmentation. Previous work has demonstrated that a constraint-based 2D radial model can capture generic shape information for certain shape classes, and can reduce user interaction by a factor of three over purely manual segmentation. Additional simulation studies have shown that a probabilistic version of the model has the potential to further reduce user interaction. This paper describes an implementation of both models in a general-purpose imaging and graphics framework and compares the usefulness of the models on several shape classes
STV-based Video Feature Processing for Action Recognition
In comparison to still image-based processes, video features can provide rich and intuitive information about dynamic events occurred over a period of time, such as human actions, crowd behaviours, and other subject pattern changes. Although substantial progresses have been made in the last decade on image processing and seen its successful applications in face matching and object recognition, video-based event detection still remains one of the most difficult challenges in computer vision research due to its complex continuous or discrete input signals, arbitrary dynamic feature definitions, and the often ambiguous analytical methods. In this paper, a Spatio-Temporal Volume (STV) and region intersection (RI) based 3D shape-matching method has been proposed to facilitate the definition and recognition of human actions recorded in videos. The distinctive characteristics and the performance gain of the devised approach stemmed from a coefficient factor-boosted 3D region intersection and matching mechanism developed in this research. This paper also reported the investigation into techniques for efficient STV data filtering to reduce the amount of voxels (volumetric-pixels) that need to be processed in each operational cycle in the implemented system. The encouraging features and improvements on the operational performance registered in the experiments have been discussed at the end
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