472 research outputs found
Two and three dimensional segmentation of multimodal imagery
The role of segmentation in the realms of image understanding/analysis, computer vision, pattern recognition, remote sensing and medical imaging in recent years has been significantly augmented due to accelerated scientific advances made in the acquisition of image data. This low-level analysis protocol is critical to numerous applications, with the primary goal of expediting and improving the effectiveness of subsequent high-level operations by providing a condensed and pertinent representation of image information. In this research, we propose a novel unsupervised segmentation framework for facilitating meaningful segregation of 2-D/3-D image data across multiple modalities (color, remote-sensing and biomedical imaging) into non-overlapping partitions using several spatial-spectral attributes. Initially, our framework exploits the information obtained from detecting edges inherent in the data. To this effect, by using a vector gradient detection technique, pixels without edges are grouped and individually labeled to partition some initial portion of the input image content. Pixels that contain higher gradient densities are included by the dynamic generation of segments as the algorithm progresses to generate an initial region map. Subsequently, texture modeling is performed and the obtained gradient, texture and intensity information along with the aforementioned initial partition map are used to perform a multivariate refinement procedure, to fuse groups with similar characteristics yielding the final output segmentation. Experimental results obtained in comparison to published/state-of the-art segmentation techniques for color as well as multi/hyperspectral imagery, demonstrate the advantages of the proposed method. Furthermore, for the purpose of achieving improved computational efficiency we propose an extension of the aforestated methodology in a multi-resolution framework, demonstrated on color images. Finally, this research also encompasses a 3-D extension of the aforementioned algorithm demonstrated on medical (Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Computed Tomography) volumes
Activity profiling for minimally invasive surgery
Imperial Users onl
QUIS-CAMPI: Biometric Recognition in Surveillance Scenarios
The concerns about individuals security have justified the increasing number of surveillance
cameras deployed both in private and public spaces. However, contrary to popular belief,
these devices are in most cases used solely for recording, instead of feeding intelligent analysis
processes capable of extracting information about the observed individuals. Thus, even though
video surveillance has already proved to be essential for solving multiple crimes, obtaining relevant
details about the subjects that took part in a crime depends on the manual inspection
of recordings. As such, the current goal of the research community is the development of
automated surveillance systems capable of monitoring and identifying subjects in surveillance
scenarios. Accordingly, the main goal of this thesis is to improve the performance of biometric
recognition algorithms in data acquired from surveillance scenarios. In particular, we aim at
designing a visual surveillance system capable of acquiring biometric data at a distance (e.g.,
face, iris or gait) without requiring human intervention in the process, as well as devising biometric
recognition methods robust to the degradation factors resulting from the unconstrained
acquisition process.
Regarding the first goal, the analysis of the data acquired by typical surveillance systems
shows that large acquisition distances significantly decrease the resolution of biometric samples,
and thus their discriminability is not sufficient for recognition purposes. In the literature,
diverse works point out Pan Tilt Zoom (PTZ) cameras as the most practical way for acquiring
high-resolution imagery at a distance, particularly when using a master-slave configuration. In
the master-slave configuration, the video acquired by a typical surveillance camera is analyzed
for obtaining regions of interest (e.g., car, person) and these regions are subsequently imaged
at high-resolution by the PTZ camera. Several methods have already shown that this configuration
can be used for acquiring biometric data at a distance. Nevertheless, these methods
failed at providing effective solutions to the typical challenges of this strategy, restraining its
use in surveillance scenarios. Accordingly, this thesis proposes two methods to support the development
of a biometric data acquisition system based on the cooperation of a PTZ camera
with a typical surveillance camera. The first proposal is a camera calibration method capable
of accurately mapping the coordinates of the master camera to the pan/tilt angles of the PTZ
camera. The second proposal is a camera scheduling method for determining - in real-time -
the sequence of acquisitions that maximizes the number of different targets obtained, while
minimizing the cumulative transition time. In order to achieve the first goal of this thesis,
both methods were combined with state-of-the-art approaches of the human monitoring field
to develop a fully automated surveillance capable of acquiring biometric data at a distance and
without human cooperation, designated as QUIS-CAMPI system.
The QUIS-CAMPI system is the basis for pursuing the second goal of this thesis. The analysis
of the performance of the state-of-the-art biometric recognition approaches shows that these
approaches attain almost ideal recognition rates in unconstrained data. However, this performance
is incongruous with the recognition rates observed in surveillance scenarios. Taking into
account the drawbacks of current biometric datasets, this thesis introduces a novel dataset comprising
biometric samples (face images and gait videos) acquired by the QUIS-CAMPI system at a
distance ranging from 5 to 40 meters and without human intervention in the acquisition process.
This set allows to objectively assess the performance of state-of-the-art biometric recognition
methods in data that truly encompass the covariates of surveillance scenarios. As such, this set
was exploited for promoting the first international challenge on biometric recognition in the wild. This thesis describes the evaluation protocols adopted, along with the results obtained
by the nine methods specially designed for this competition. In addition, the data acquired by
the QUIS-CAMPI system were crucial for accomplishing the second goal of this thesis, i.e., the
development of methods robust to the covariates of surveillance scenarios. The first proposal
regards a method for detecting corrupted features in biometric signatures inferred by a redundancy
analysis algorithm. The second proposal is a caricature-based face recognition approach
capable of enhancing the recognition performance by automatically generating a caricature
from a 2D photo. The experimental evaluation of these methods shows that both approaches
contribute to improve the recognition performance in unconstrained data.A crescente preocupação com a segurança dos indivĂduos tem justificado o crescimento
do nĂşmero de câmaras de vĂdeo-vigilância instaladas tanto em espaços privados como pĂşblicos.
Contudo, ao contrário do que normalmente se pensa, estes dispositivos são, na maior parte dos
casos, usados apenas para gravação, não estando ligados a nenhum tipo de software inteligente
capaz de inferir em tempo real informações sobre os indivĂduos observados. Assim, apesar de a
vĂdeo-vigilância ter provado ser essencial na resolução de diversos crimes, o seu uso está ainda
confinado Ă disponibilização de vĂdeos que tĂŞm que ser manualmente inspecionados para extrair
informações relevantes dos sujeitos envolvidos no crime. Como tal, atualmente, o principal
desafio da comunidade cientĂfica Ă© o desenvolvimento de sistemas automatizados capazes de
monitorizar e identificar indivĂduos em ambientes de vĂdeo-vigilância.
Esta tese tem como principal objetivo estender a aplicabilidade dos sistemas de reconhecimento
biomĂ©trico aos ambientes de vĂdeo-vigilância. De forma mais especifica, pretende-se
1) conceber um sistema de vĂdeo-vigilância que consiga adquirir dados biomĂ©tricos a longas distâncias
(e.g., imagens da cara, Ăris, ou vĂdeos do tipo de passo) sem requerer a cooperação dos
indivĂduos no processo; e 2) desenvolver mĂ©todos de reconhecimento biomĂ©trico robustos aos
fatores de degradação inerentes aos dados adquiridos por este tipo de sistemas.
No que diz respeito ao primeiro objetivo, a análise aos dados adquiridos pelos sistemas tĂpicos
de vĂdeo-vigilância mostra que, devido Ă distância de captura, os traços biomĂ©tricos amostrados
não são suficientemente discriminativos para garantir taxas de reconhecimento aceitáveis.
Na literatura, vários trabalhos advogam o uso de câmaras Pan Tilt Zoom (PTZ) para adquirir
imagens de alta resolução à distância, principalmente o uso destes dispositivos no modo masterslave.
Na configuração master-slave um módulo de análise inteligente seleciona zonas de interesse
(e.g. carros, pessoas) a partir do vĂdeo adquirido por uma câmara de vĂdeo-vigilância
e a câmara PTZ é orientada para adquirir em alta resolução as regiões de interesse. Diversos
métodos já mostraram que esta configuração pode ser usada para adquirir dados biométricos
à distância, ainda assim estes não foram capazes de solucionar alguns problemas relacionados
com esta estratĂ©gia, impedindo assim o seu uso em ambientes de vĂdeo-vigilância. Deste modo,
esta tese propõe dois métodos para permitir a aquisição de dados biométricos em ambientes de
vĂdeo-vigilância usando uma câmara PTZ assistida por uma câmara tĂpica de vĂdeo-vigilância. O
primeiro é um método de calibração capaz de mapear de forma exata as coordenadas da câmara
master para o ângulo da câmara PTZ (slave) sem o auxĂlio de outros dispositivos Ăłticos. O
segundo método determina a ordem pela qual um conjunto de sujeitos vai ser observado pela
câmara PTZ. O método proposto consegue determinar em tempo-real a sequência de observações
que maximiza o nĂşmero de diferentes sujeitos observados e simultaneamente minimiza o
tempo total de transição entre sujeitos. De modo a atingir o primeiro objetivo desta tese, os
dois métodos propostos foram combinados com os avanços alcançados na área da monitorização
de humanos para assim desenvolver o primeiro sistema de vĂdeo-vigilância completamente automatizado
e capaz de adquirir dados biométricos a longas distâncias sem requerer a cooperação
dos indivĂduos no processo, designado por sistema QUIS-CAMPI.
O sistema QUIS-CAMPI representa o ponto de partida para iniciar a investigação relacionada
com o segundo objetivo desta tese. A análise do desempenho dos métodos de reconhecimento
biométrico do estado-da-arte mostra que estes conseguem obter taxas de reconhecimento
quase perfeitas em dados adquiridos sem restrições (e.g., taxas de reconhecimento
maiores do que 99% no conjunto de dados LFW). Contudo, este desempenho nĂŁo Ă© corroborado pelos resultados observados em ambientes de vĂdeo-vigilância, o que sugere que os conjuntos
de dados atuais nĂŁo contĂŞm verdadeiramente os fatores de degradação tĂpicos dos ambientes de
vĂdeo-vigilância. Tendo em conta as vulnerabilidades dos conjuntos de dados biomĂ©tricos atuais,
esta tese introduz um novo conjunto de dados biomĂ©tricos (imagens da face e vĂdeos do tipo de
passo) adquiridos pelo sistema QUIS-CAMPI a uma distância máxima de 40m e sem a cooperação
dos sujeitos no processo de aquisição. Este conjunto permite avaliar de forma objetiva o desempenho
dos mĂ©todos do estado-da-arte no reconhecimento de indivĂduos em imagens/vĂdeos
capturados num ambiente real de vĂdeo-vigilância. Como tal, este conjunto foi utilizado para
promover a primeira competição de reconhecimento biométrico em ambientes não controlados.
Esta tese descreve os protocolos de avaliação usados, assim como os resultados obtidos por 9
métodos especialmente desenhados para esta competição. Para além disso, os dados adquiridos
pelo sistema QUIS-CAMPI foram essenciais para o desenvolvimento de dois métodos para
aumentar a robustez aos fatores de degradação observados em ambientes de vĂdeo-vigilância. O
primeiro Ă© um mĂ©todo para detetar caracterĂsticas corruptas em assinaturas biomĂ©tricas atravĂ©s
da análise da redundância entre subconjuntos de caracterĂsticas. O segundo Ă© um mĂ©todo de
reconhecimento facial baseado em caricaturas automaticamente geradas a partir de uma Ăşnica
foto do sujeito. As experiências realizadas mostram que ambos os métodos conseguem reduzir
as taxas de erro em dados adquiridos de forma nĂŁo controlada
Image Segmentation in a Remote Sensing Perspective
Image segmentation is generally defined as the process of partitioning an image into suitable groups of pixels such that each region is homogeneous but the union of two adjacent regions is not, according to a homogeneity criterion that is application specific. In most automatic image processing tasks, efficient image segmentation is one of the most critical steps and, in general, no unique solution can be provided for all possible applications. My thesis is mainly focused on Remote Sensing (RS) images, a domain in which a growing attention has been devoted to image segmentation in the last decades, as a fundamental step for various application such as land cover/land use classification and change detection. In particular, several different aspects have been addressed, which span from the design of novel low-level image segmentation techniques to the de?nition of new application scenarios leveraging Object-based Image Analysis (OBIA). More specifically, this summary will cover the three main activities carried out during my PhD: first, the development of two segmentation techniques for object layer extraction from multi/hyper-spectral and multi-resolution images is presented, based on respectively morphological image analysis and graph clustering. Finally, a new paradigm for the interactive segmentation of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) multi-temporal series is introduced
Advanced Image Acquisition, Processing Techniques and Applications
"Advanced Image Acquisition, Processing Techniques and Applications" is the first book of a series that provides image processing principles and practical software implementation on a broad range of applications. The book integrates material from leading researchers on Applied Digital Image Acquisition and Processing. An important feature of the book is its emphasis on software tools and scientific computing in order to enhance results and arrive at problem solution
Regularized motion estimation techniques and their applications to video coding
Ankara : Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering and the Institute of Engineering and Sciences of Bilkent University, 1996.Thesis (Master's) -- Bilkent University, 1996.Includes bibliographical references leaves 77-80.Novel regularized motion estimation techniques and their possible applications
to video coding are presented. A block matching motion estimation algorithm
which extracts better block motion field by forming and ininimizing a suitable
energy function is introduced. Based on ciri Âżidciptive structure onto block
sizes, cui cidvcinced block matching Âżilgorithm is presented. The block sizes
are adaptively Âżidjusted according to the motion. Blockwise coarse to fine
segmentation based motion estimation algorithm is introduced for further
reduction on the number of bits that are spent lor the coding of the block
motion vectors. Motion estiiricition algorithms which can be used lor Âżiverage
motion determination and artificial frame generation by fractional motion
compensation are Âżilso developed. Finallj^, an alternative motion estimation
cind compensation technique which defines feciture based motion vectors on the
ob ject boundciries and reconstructs the decoded frame from the interpolation of
the compensated object boundaries is presented. All the algorithms developed
in this thesis are simulated on recil or synthetic images cind their performance
is demonstrcited.Kıranyaz, SerkanM.S
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