Expressive Body Capture: 3D Hands, Face, and Body from a Single Image

To facilitate the analysis of human actions, interactions and emotions, we compute a 3D model of human body pose, hand pose, and facial expression from a single monocular image. To achieve this, we use thousands of 3D scans to train a new, unified, 3D model of the human body, SMPL-X, that extends SMPL with fully articulated hands and an expressive face. Learning to regress the parameters of SMPL-X directly from images is challenging without paired images and 3D ground truth. Consequently, we follow the approach of SMPLify, which estimates 2D features and then optimizes model parameters to fit the features. We improve on SMPLify in several significant ways: (1) we detect 2D features corresponding to the face, hands, and feet and fit the full SMPL-X model to these; (2) we train a new neural network pose prior using a large MoCap dataset; (3) we define a new interpenetration penalty that is both fast and accurate; (4) we automatically detect gender and the appropriate body models (male, female, or neutral); (5) our PyTorch implementation achieves a speedup of more than 8x over Chumpy. We use the new method, SMPLify-X, to fit SMPL-X to both controlled images and images in the wild. We evaluate 3D accuracy on a new curated dataset comprising 100 images with pseudo ground-truth. This is a step towards automatic expressive human capture from monocular RGB data. The models, code, and data are available for research purposes at https://smpl-x.is.tue.mpg.de.Comment: To appear in CVPR 201

Reconstructing Signing Avatars from Video Using Linguistic Priors

Sign language (SL) is the primary method of communication for the 70 million Deaf people around the world. Video dictionaries of isolated signs are a core SL learning tool. Replacing these with 3D avatars can aid learning and enable AR/VR applications, improving access to technology and online media. However, little work has attempted to estimate expressive 3D avatars from SL video; occlusion, noise, and motion blur make this task difficult. We address this by introducing novel linguistic priors that are universally applicable to SL and provide constraints on 3D hand pose that help resolve ambiguities within isolated signs. Our method, SGNify, captures fine-grained hand pose, facial expression, and body movement fully automatically from in-the-wild monocular SL videos. We evaluate SGNify quantitatively by using a commercial motion-capture system to compute 3D avatars synchronized with monocular video. SGNify outperforms state-of-the-art 3D body-pose- and shape-estimation methods on SL videos. A perceptual study shows that SGNify's 3D reconstructions are significantly more comprehensible and natural than those of previous methods and are on par with the source videos. Code and data are available at sgnify.is.tue.mpg.de

Alleviating Human-level Shift : A Robust Domain Adaptation Method for Multi-person Pose Estimation

Human pose estimation has been widely studied with much focus on supervised learning requiring sufficient annotations. However, in real applications, a pretrained pose estimation model usually need be adapted to a novel domain with no labels or sparse labels. Such domain adaptation for 2D pose estimation hasn't been explored. The main reason is that a pose, by nature, has typical topological structure and needs fine-grained features in local keypoints. While existing adaptation methods do not consider topological structure of object-of-interest and they align the whole images coarsely. Therefore, we propose a novel domain adaptation method for multi-person pose estimation to conduct the human-level topological structure alignment and fine-grained feature alignment. Our method consists of three modules: Cross-Attentive Feature Alignment (CAFA), Intra-domain Structure Adaptation (ISA) and Inter-domain Human-Topology Alignment (IHTA) module. The CAFA adopts a bidirectional spatial attention module (BSAM)that focuses on fine-grained local feature correlation between two humans to adaptively aggregate consistent features for adaptation. We adopt ISA only in semi-supervised domain adaptation (SSDA) to exploit the corresponding keypoint semantic relationship for reducing the intra-domain bias. Most importantly, we propose an IHTA to learn more domain-invariant human topological representation for reducing the inter-domain discrepancy. We model the human topological structure via the graph convolution network (GCN), by passing messages on which, high-order relations can be considered. This structure preserving alignment based on GCN is beneficial to the occluded or extreme pose inference. Extensive experiments are conducted on two popular benchmarks and results demonstrate the competency of our method compared with existing supervised approaches.Comment: Accepted By ACM MM'202

Is prolonged infusion of piperacillin/tazobactam and meropenem in critically ill patients associated with improved pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic and patient outcomes? An observation from the Defining Antibiotic Levels in Intensive care unit patients (DALI) cohort

Objectives:We utilized the database of the Defining Antibiotic Levels in Intensive care unit patients (DALI) study to statistically compare the pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic and clinical outcomes between prolonged-infusion and intermittent-bolus dosing of piperacillin/tazobactam and meropenem in critically ill patients using inclusion criteria similar to those used in previous prospective studies.Methods: This was a post hoc analysis of a prospective, multicentre pharmacokinetic point-prevalence study (DALI), which recruited a large cohort of critically ill patients from 68 ICUs across 10 countries.Results: Of the 211 patients receiving piperacillin/tazobactam and meropenem in the DALI study, 182 met inclusion criteria. Overall, 89.0% (162/182) of patients achieved the most conservative target of 50% fT(> MIC) (time over which unbound or free drug concentration remains above the MIC). Decreasing creatinine clearance and the use of prolonged infusion significantly increased the PTA for most pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic targets. In the subgroup of patients who had respiratory infection, patients receiving beta-lactams via prolonged infusion demonstrated significantly better 30 day survival when compared with intermittent-bolus patients [86.2% (25/29) versus 56.7% (17/30); P=0.012]. Additionally, in patients with a SOFA score of >= 9, administration by prolonged infusion compared with intermittent-bolus dosing demonstrated significantly better clinical cure [73.3% (11/15) versus 35.0% (7/20); P=0.035] and survival rates [73.3% (11/15) versus 25.0% (5/20); P=0.025].Conclusions: Analysis of this large dataset has provided additional data on the niche benefits of administration of piperacillin/tazobactam and meropenem by prolonged infusion in critically ill patients, particularly for patients with respiratory infections

The development of a video retrieval system using a clinician-led approach

Patient video taken at home can provide valuable insights into the recovery progress during a programme of physical therapy, but is very time consuming for clinician review. Our work focussed on (i) enabling any patient to share information about progress at home, simply by sharing video and (ii) building intelligent systems to support Physical Therapists (PTs) in reviewing this video data and extracting the necessary detail. This paper reports the development of the system, appropriate for future clinical use without reliance on a technical team, and the clinician involvement in that development. We contribute an interactive content-based video retrieval system that significantly reduces the time taken for clinicians to review videos, using human head movement as an example. The system supports query-by-movement (clinicians move their own body to define search queries) and retrieves the essential fine-grained movements needed for clinical interpretation. This is done by comparing sequences of image-based pose estimates (here head rotations) through a distance metric (here Fréchet distance) and presenting a ranked list of similar movements to clinicians for review. In contrast to existing intelligent systems for retrospective review of human movement, the system supports a flexible analysis where clinicians can look for any movement that interests them. Evaluation by a group of PTs with expertise in training movement control showed that 96% of all relevant movements were identified with time savings of as much as 99.1% compared to reviewing target videos in full. The novelty of this contribution includes retrospective progress monitoring that preserves context through video, and content-based video retrieval that supports both fine-grained human actions and query-by-movement. Future research, including large clinician-led studies, will refine the technical aspects and explore the benefits in terms of patient outcomes, PT time, and financial savings over the course of a programme of therapy. It is anticipated that this clinician-led approach will mitigate the reported slow clinical uptake of technology with resulting patient benefit

Political, social and economic components of the 1896 & 2004 Athens olympic games

The subject of this thesis is research into the political, social and economic elements of the Athens Olympic Games of 1896 and 2004, and the tracing of their imprints on modern and contemporary Greek history. Its broad field of research encompasses: the conditions under which the Olympic endeavours adapted to contemporary circumstances; the chief characteristics of the two periods and the influences that, as national and at the same time international events, they received and exercised. The research is based on the methods of modern historiography, attempting an interpretation of the 1896 and 2004 Athens Olympic Games. An inter-disciplinary approach was judged to be necessary for a joint examination of the research questions. The thesis is structured into two parts: the first for 1896 and the second for 2004. Moreover, the research is focused on two levels of thematic analysis. The first concerns the development phases of the Olympic endeavour; and the second, its link with the realities of the years 1893 – 1896 and 1997 – 2004, and more generally its connection with its times. The aim of the research was to contribute to the new approach adopted on the 1st Olympics as a subject; and to offer a critical and systematic approach to the organization of the 28th Olympics, which has naturally had a greater influence on the country’s future. The voices and actions of the Olympic protagonists and the institutions and bodies involved constitute the core of the research material. Study of the organization of the Athens Olympics confirmed our work premise, since on both occasions their staging was related to the demands of prevailing ideologies, far beyond the scope of their obvious content. Hence their shaping into a hive of national and collective visions can be explained, and for this reason it seems that the successful hosting of the Games was regarded as a major challenge bringing temporary disruptions and circumstantial changes in the course and development of Greek affairs. In both cases, the endeavour expressed the national ambitions of the age, aiming firstly at the international acceptance and recognition of modern Greece. In 1896, the Games underpinned the Megali Idea (Great Idea), contributing to the contemporary emphasis on irredentism. In 2004, the Games took on national characteristics and a developmental significance, projecting the new face of a powerful member of the European Family and the Economic and Monetary Union. The Greek experience of the Games reveals two aspects associated with the nation’s interest to the Olympic institution. The first results from the recognition of the symbolic and prominent place of the country as the heir to Ancient Greece, striving and succeeding in putting its seal on the Olympic Games revival, and the second is connected to their willingness to accept the country as such.Αντικείμενο της διατριβής αποτελεί η διερεύνηση των πολιτικών, κοινωνικών και οικονομικών συνιστωσών των Ολυμπιακών Αγώνων της Αθήνας του 1896 και του 2004 και ο εντοπισμός του αποτυπώματός τους στη νεότερη και σύγχρονη ελληνική ιστορία. Στο ευρύ ερευνητικό της πεδίο περιλαμβάνονται: οι όροι προσαρμογής της ολυμπιακής υπόθεσης στις τρέχουσες συνθήκες, τα κύρια χαρακτηριστικά των δύο περιόδων και οι επιδράσεις που δέχτηκε και άσκησε ως εθνικό και παράλληλα διεθνές γεγονός. Η έρευνα στηρίζεται στις μεθόδους της σύγχρονης ιστοριογραφίας επιχειρώντας μια συνθετική ερμηνευτική προσέγγιση των Ολυμπιακών Αγώνων της Αθήνας του 1896 και του 2004. Ο διεπιστημονικός προσανατολισμός κρίθηκε αναγκαίος για την συνεξέταση των ερευνητικών ερωτημάτων. Η διατριβή δομείται σε δύο μέρη, το πρώτο για για το 1896 και το δεύτερο για το 2004. Εξάλλου η προβληματική της έρευνας διαρθρώνεται σε δύο επίπεδα θεματικής ανάλυσης. Το πρώτο επικεντρώνεται στην παρουσίαση των φάσεων εξέλιξης της ολυμπιακής υπόθεσης και το δεύτερο στην σύζευξή της με την πραγματικότητα των ετών 1893 – 1896 και 1997 – 2004 και γενικότερα στην σχέση με την εποχή της. Προσδοκία της έρευνας ήταν να συνεισφέρει στην επαναπροσέγγιση της θεματικής των 1ων Ολυμπιακών και να προσφέρει μια κριτική συστηματική προσέγγιση για τη διοργάνωση των 28ων η οποία και είχε φυσιολογικά μεγαλύτερη επίδραση στο γίγνεσθαι της χώρας. Ο λόγος και η πράξη των πρωταγωνιστών της ολυμπιακής υπόθεσης και των εμπλεκόμενων θεσμικών οργάνων και φορέων, συγκροτεί τον πυρήνα του ερευνητικού υλικού. Η μελέτη της διοργάνωσης των Αγώνων της Αθήνας επιβεβαίωσε την υπόθεση εργασίας μας, καθώς και τις δύο φορές, η τέλεσή τους σχετίστηκε με τα αιτήματα των κυρίαρχων ιδεολογιών, προσλαμβάνοντας όψεις και διαστάσεις μεγαλύτερες του αυτοτελούς περιεχομένου τους. Έτσι μπορεί να εξηγηθεί η μορφοποίηση τους σε κυψέλη εθνικών και συλλογικών οραματισμών και για το λόγο αυτό φαίνεται ότι η επιτυχής φιλοξενία τους αντιμετωπίστηκε ως μείζονα πρόκληση που έφερε πρόσκαιρες αναταράξεις και συγκυριακές μεταβολές στην πορεία και εξέλιξη των ελληνικών πραγμάτων. Το εγχείρημα εξέφρασε και στις δύο περιπτώσεις τις εθνικές φιλοδοξίες της εποχής του, αποβλέποντας πρωτίστως στη διεθνή αποδοχή και καταξίωση της νεότερης Ελλάδας. Το 1896 οι Αγώνες πλαισίωσαν τη Μεγάλη Ιδέα, συμβάλλοντας στην τόνωση του ελληνικού αλυτρωτισμού της περιόδου. Το 2004 προσέλαβαν εθνικά χαρακτηριστικά και αναπτυξιακό νόημα, προβάλλοντας το νέο πρόσωπο μιας ισχυρής Ελλάδας της ευρωπαϊκής οικογένειας και της Οικονομικής και Νομισματικής της Ένωσης. Από την ελληνική εμπειρία των Αγώνων διαφαίνονται δύο απεικονίσεις του ελληνικού ενδιαφέροντος αναφορικά με τον ολυμπιακό θεσμό. Η μία είναι παράγωγο της αναγνώρισης της σημειολογικά υπερέχουσας θέσης της χώρας ως κληρονόμου της αρχαίας Ελλάδας που επεδίωξε και πέτυχε να βάλει την σφραγίδα της στην αναβίωσή τους και η άλλη εμφορείται από τη διάθεση αποδοχής της χώρας μέσω αυτών