An experimental study of the feasibility of phase‐based video magnification for damage detection and localisation in operational deflection shapes

Optical measurements from high‐speed, high‐definition video recordings can be used to define the full‐field dynamics of a structure. By comparing the dynamic responses resulting from both damaged and undamaged elements, structural health monitoring can be carried out, similarly as with mounted transducers. Unlike the physical sensors, which provide point‐wise measurements and a limited number of output channels, high‐quality video recording allows very spatially dense information. Moreover, video acquisition is a noncontact technique. This guarantees that any anomaly in the dynamic behaviour can be more easily correlated to damage and not to added mass or stiffness due to the installed sensors. However, in real‐life scenarios, the vibrations due to environmental input are often so small that they are indistinguishable from measurement noise if conventional image‐based techniques are applied. In order to improve the signal‐to‐noise ratio in low‐amplitude measurements, phase‐based motion magnification has been recently proposed. This study intends to show that model‐based structural health monitoring can be performed on modal data and time histories processed with phase‐based motion magnification, whereas unamplified vibrations would be too small for being successfully exploited. All the experiments were performed on a multidamaged box beam with different damage sizes and angles

Development Of A High Performance Mosaicing And Super-Resolution Algorithm

In this dissertation, a high-performance mosaicing and super-resolution algorithm is described. The scale invariant feature transform (SIFT)-based mosaicing algorithm builds an initial mosaic which is iteratively updated by the robust super resolution algorithm to achieve the final high-resolution mosaic. Two different types of datasets are used for testing: high altitude balloon data and unmanned aerial vehicle data. To evaluate our algorithm, five performance metrics are employed: mean square error, peak signal to noise ratio, singular value decomposition, slope of reciprocal singular value curve, and cumulative probability of blur detection. Extensive testing shows that the proposed algorithm is effective in improving the captured aerial data and the performance metrics are accurate in quantifying the evaluation of the algorithm

Techniques for Detection and Tracking of Multiple Objects

During the past decade, object detection and object tracking in videos have received a great deal of attention from the research community in view of their many applications, such as human activity recognition, human computer interaction, crowd scene analysis, video surveillance, sports video analysis, autonomous vehicle navigation, driver assistance systems, and traffic management. Object detection and object tracking face a number of challenges such as variation in scale, appearance, view of the objects, as well as occlusion, and changes in illumination and environmental conditions. Object tracking has some other challenges such as similar appearance among multiple targets and long-term occlusion, which may cause failure in tracking. Detection-based tracking techniques use an object detector for guiding the tracking process. However, existing object detectors usually suffer from detection errors, which may mislead the trackers, if used for tracking. Thus, improving the performance of the existing detection schemes will consequently enhance the performance of detection-based trackers. The objective of this research is two fold: (a) to investigate the use of 2D discrete Fourier and cosine transforms for vehicle detection, and (b) to develop a detection-based online multi-object tracking technique. The first part of the thesis deals with the use of 2D discrete Fourier and cosine transforms for vehicle detection. For this purpose, we introduce the transform-domain two-dimensional histogram of oriented gradients (TD2DHOG) features, as a truncated version of 2DHOG in the 2DDFT or 2DDCT domain. It is shown that these TD2DHOG features obtained from an image at the original resolution and a downsampled version from the same image are approximately the same within a multiplicative factor. This property is then utilized in developing a scheme for the detection of vehicles of various resolutions using a single classifier rather than multiple resolution-specific classifiers. Extensive experiments are conducted, which show that the use of the single classifier in the proposed detection scheme reduces drastically the training and storage cost over the use of a classifier pyramid, yet providing a detection accuracy similar to that obtained using TD2DHOG features with a classifier pyramid. Furthermore, the proposed method provides a detection accuracy that is similar or even better than that provided by the state-of-the-art techniques. In the second part of the thesis, a robust collaborative model, which enhances the interaction between a pre-trained object detector and a number of particle filter-based single-object online trackers, is proposed. The proposed scheme is based on associating a detection with a tracker for each frame. For each tracker, a motion model that incorporates the associated detections with the object dynamics, and a likelihood function that provides different weights for the propagated particles and the newly created ones from the associated detections are introduced, with a view to reduce the effect of detection errors on the tracking process. Finally, a new image sample selection scheme is introduced in order to update the appearance model of a given tracker. Experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed scheme in enhancing the multi-object tracking performance

Geo-rectification and cloud-cover correction of multi-temporal Earth observation imagery

Over the past decades, improvements in remote sensing technology have led to mass proliferation of aerial imagery. This, in turn, opened vast new possibilities relating to land cover classification, cartography, and so forth. As applications in these fields became increasingly more complex, the amount of data required also rose accordingly and so, to satisfy these new needs, automated systems had to be developed. Geometric distortions in raw imagery must be rectified, otherwise the high accuracy requirements of the newest applications will not be attained. This dissertation proposes an automated solution for the pre-stages of multi-spectral satellite imagery classification, focusing on Fast Fourier Shift theorem based geo-rectification and multi-temporal cloud-cover correction. By automatizing the first stages of image processing, automatic classifiers can take advantage of a larger supply of image data, eventually allowing for the creation of semi-real-time mapping applications

Correlation Filters for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle-Based Aerial Tracking: A Review and Experimental Evaluation

Aerial tracking, which has exhibited its omnipresent dedication and splendid performance, is one of the most active applications in the remote sensing field. Especially, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-based remote sensing system, equipped with a visual tracking approach, has been widely used in aviation, navigation, agriculture,transportation, and public security, etc. As is mentioned above, the UAV-based aerial tracking platform has been gradually developed from research to practical application stage, reaching one of the main aerial remote sensing technologies in the future. However, due to the real-world onerous situations, e.g., harsh external challenges, the vibration of the UAV mechanical structure (especially under strong wind conditions), the maneuvering flight in complex environment, and the limited computation resources onboard, accuracy, robustness, and high efficiency are all crucial for the onboard tracking methods. Recently, the discriminative correlation filter (DCF)-based trackers have stood out for their high computational efficiency and appealing robustness on a single CPU, and have flourished in the UAV visual tracking community. In this work, the basic framework of the DCF-based trackers is firstly generalized, based on which, 23 state-of-the-art DCF-based trackers are orderly summarized according to their innovations for solving various issues. Besides, exhaustive and quantitative experiments have been extended on various prevailing UAV tracking benchmarks, i.e., UAV123, UAV123@10fps, UAV20L, UAVDT, DTB70, and VisDrone2019-SOT, which contain 371,903 frames in total. The experiments show the performance, verify the feasibility, and demonstrate the current challenges of DCF-based trackers onboard UAV tracking.Comment: 28 pages, 10 figures, submitted to GRS

Fourier Transform to Detect Pine Seedlings in a Digital Image

Each year, u.s. forest nurseries produce approximately 200 million pine seedlings. Forest companies depend on an adequate number of seedlings in order to replant timber land. To monitor the progress of seedlings, nurseries periodically conduct an inventory. The procedure is performed manually and is based on a statistical estimate. The process is slow, tedious, and imprecise. Automating the inventory procedure is subject of this dissertation. A digital image processing technique to visually count pine seedlings is investigated. The technique is based on a proposed imaging system which resides on a platform behind a tractor. As the system passes over the seedling bed, image sensors capture an overhead view of individual seedlings. A computer analyzes the sensor values in order to detect and count individual seedlings. This dissertation is concerned with developing a computer algorithm. Several test images were obtained. Pertinent seedling features in the images are gray level contrast, lines formed by the needles, and circular distribution of the needles. Four different techniques were investigated in an attempt to use these features to detect pine seedlings. These techniques are gray level peaks geometric intersection of needle lines, gray level contour encoding 1 and a technique based on the Fourier transform.Agricultural Engineerin

Hyperspectral Image Unmixing Incorporating Adjacency Information

While the spectral information contained in hyperspectral images is rich, the spatial resolution of such images is in many cases very low. Many pixel spectra are mixtures of pure materials’ spectra and therefore need to be decomposed into their constituents. This work investigates new decomposition methods taking into account spectral, spatial and global 3D adjacency information. This allows for faster and more accurate decomposition results