Object-based 2D-to-3D video conversion for effective stereoscopic content generation in 3D-TV applications

Three-dimensional television (3D-TV) has gained increasing popularity in the broadcasting domain, as it enables enhanced viewing experiences in comparison to conventional two-dimensional (2D) TV. However, its application has been constrained due to the lack of essential contents, i.e., stereoscopic videos. To alleviate such content shortage, an economical and practical solution is to reuse the huge media resources that are available in monoscopic 2D and convert them to stereoscopic 3D. Although stereoscopic video can be generated from monoscopic sequences using depth measurements extracted from cues like focus blur, motion and size, the quality of the resulting video may be poor as such measurements are usually arbitrarily defined and appear inconsistent with the real scenes. To help solve this problem, a novel method for object-based stereoscopic video generation is proposed which features i) optical-flow based occlusion reasoning in determining depth ordinal, ii) object segmentation using improved region-growing from masks of determined depth layers, and iii) a hybrid depth estimation scheme using content-based matching (inside a small library of true stereo image pairs) and depth-ordinal based regularization. Comprehensive experiments have validated the effectiveness of our proposed 2D-to-3D conversion method in generating stereoscopic videos of consistent depth measurements for 3D-TV applications

Functional single index models for longitudinal data

A new single-index model that reflects the time-dynamic effects of the single index is proposed for longitudinal and functional response data, possibly measured with errors, for both longitudinal and time-invariant covariates. With appropriate initial estimates of the parametric index, the proposed estimator is shown to be $\sqrt{n}$-consistent and asymptotically normally distributed. We also address the nonparametric estimation of regression functions and provide estimates with optimal convergence rates. One advantage of the new approach is that the same bandwidth is used to estimate both the nonparametric mean function and the parameter in the index. The finite-sample performance for the proposed procedure is studied numerically.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/10-AOS845 the Annals of Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aos/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Medical imaging analysis with artificial neural networks

Given that neural networks have been widely reported in the research community of medical imaging, we provide a focused literature survey on recent neural network developments in computer-aided diagnosis, medical image segmentation and edge detection towards visual content analysis, and medical image registration for its pre-processing and post-processing, with the aims of increasing awareness of how neural networks can be applied to these areas and to provide a foundation for further research and practical development. Representative techniques and algorithms are explained in detail to provide inspiring examples illustrating: (i) how a known neural network with fixed structure and training procedure could be applied to resolve a medical imaging problem; (ii) how medical images could be analysed, processed, and characterised by neural networks; and (iii) how neural networks could be expanded further to resolve problems relevant to medical imaging. In the concluding section, a highlight of comparisons among many neural network applications is included to provide a global view on computational intelligence with neural networks in medical imaging

Activity-driven content adaptation for effective video summarisation

In this paper, we present a novel method for content adaptation and video summarization fully implemented in compressed-domain. Firstly, summarization of generic videos is modeled as the process of extracted human objects under various activities/events. Accordingly, frames are classified into five categories via fuzzy decision including shot changes (cut and gradual transitions), motion activities (camera motion and object motion) and others by using two inter-frame measurements. Secondly, human objects are detected using Haar-like features. With the detected human objects and attained frame categories, activity levels for each frame are determined to adapt with video contents. Continuous frames belonging to same category are grouped to form one activity entry as content of interest (COI) which will convert the original video into a series of activities. An overall adjustable quota is used to control the size of generated summarization for efficient streaming purpose. Upon this quota, the frames selected for summarization are determined by evenly sampling the accumulated activity levels for content adaptation. Quantitative evaluations have proved the effectiveness and efficiency of our proposed approach, which provides a more flexible and general solution for this topic as domain-specific tasks such as accurate recognition of objects can be avoided

Covariate adjusted functional principal components analysis for longitudinal data

Classical multivariate principal component analysis has been extended to functional data and termed functional principal component analysis (FPCA). Most existing FPCA approaches do not accommodate covariate information, and it is the goal of this paper to develop two methods that do. In the first approach, both the mean and covariance functions depend on the covariate $Z$ and time scale $t$ while in the second approach only the mean function depends on the covariate $Z$. Both new approaches accommodate additional measurement errors and functional data sampled at regular time grids as well as sparse longitudinal data sampled at irregular time grids. The first approach to fully adjust both the mean and covariance functions adapts more to the data but is computationally more intensive than the approach to adjust the covariate effects on the mean function only. We develop general asymptotic theory for both approaches and compare their performance numerically through simulation studies and a data set.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/09-AOS742 the Annals of Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aos/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Shot boundary detection in MPEG videos using local and global indicators

Shot boundary detection (SBD) plays important roles in many video applications. In this letter, we describe a novel method on SBD operating directly in the compressed domain. First, several local indicators are extracted from MPEG macroblocks, and AdaBoost is employed for feature selection and fusion. The selected features are then used in classifying candidate cuts into five sub-spaces via pre-filtering and rule-based decision making. Following that, global indicators of frame similarity between boundary frames of cut candidates are examined using phase correlation of dc images. Gradual transitions like fade, dissolve, and combined shot cuts are also identified. Experimental results on the test data from TRECVID'07 have demonstrated the effectiveness and robustness of our proposed methodology. * INSPEC o Controlled Indexing decision making , image segmentation , knowledge based systems , video coding o Non Controlled Indexing AdaBoost , MPEG videos , feature selection , global indicator , local indicator , rule-based decision making , shot boundary detection , video segmentation * Author Keywords Decision making , TRECVID , shot boundary detection (SBD) , video segmentation , video signal processing References 1. J. Yuan , H. Wang , L. Xiao , W. Zheng , J. L. F. Lin and B. Zhang "A formal study of shot boundary detection", IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst. Video Technol., vol. 17, pp. 168 2007. Abstract |Full Text: PDF (2789KB) 2. C. Grana and R. Cucchiara "Linear transition detection as a unified shot detection approach", IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst. Video Technol., vol. 17, pp. 483 2007. Abstract |Full Text: PDF (505KB) 3. Q. Urhan , M. K. Gullu and S. Erturk "Modified phase-correlation based robust hard-cut detection with application to archive film", IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst. Video Technol., vol. 16, pp. 753 2006. Abstract |Full Text: PDF (3808KB) 4. C. Cotsaces , N. Nikolaidis and I. Pitas "Video shot detection and condensed representation: A review", Proc. IEEE Signal Mag., vol. 23, pp. 28 2006. 5. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), pp. [online] Available: http://www-nlpir.nist.gov/projects/trecvid/ 6. J. Bescos "Real-time shot change detection over online MPEG-2 video", IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst. Video Technol., vol. 14, pp. 475 2004. Abstract |Full Text: PDF (1056KB) 7. H. Lu and Y. P. Tan "An effective post-refinement method for shot boundary detection", IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst. Video Technol., vol. 15, pp. 1407 2005. Abstract |Full Text: PDF (3128KB) 8. G. Boccignone , A. Chianese , V. Moscato and A. Picariello "Foveated shot detection for video segmentation", IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst. Video Technol., vol. 15, pp. 365 2005. Abstract |Full Text: PDF (2152KB) 9. Z. Cernekova , I. Pitas and C. Nikou "Information theory-based shot cut/fade detection and video summarization", IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst. Video Technol., vol. 16, pp. 82 2006. Abstract |Full Text: PDF (1184KB) 10. L.-Y. Duan , M. Xu , Q. Tian , C.-S. Xu and J. S. Jin "A unified framework for semantic shot classification in sports video", IEEE Trans. Multimedia, vol. 7, pp. 1066 2005. Abstract |Full Text: PDF (2872KB) 11. H. Fang , J. M. Jiang and Y. Feng "A fuzzy logic approach for detection of video shot boundaries", Pattern Recogn., vol. 39, pp. 2092 2006. [CrossRef] 12. R. A. Joyce and B. Liu "Temporal segmentation of video using frame and histogram space", IEEE Trans. Multimedia, vol. 8, pp. 130 2006. Abstract |Full Text: PDF (864KB) 13. A. Hanjalic "Shot boundary detection: Unraveled and resolved", IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst. Video Technol., vol. 12, pp. 90 2002. Abstract |Full Text: PDF (289KB) 14. S.-C. Pei and Y.-Z. Chou "Efficient MPEG compressed video analysis using macroblock type information", IEEE Trans. Multimedia, vol. 1, pp. 321 1999. Abstract |Full Text: PDF (612KB) 15. C.-L. Huang and B.-Y. Liao "A robust scene-change detection method for video segmentation", IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst. Video Technol., vol. 11, pp. 1281 2001. Abstract |Full Text: PDF (241KB) 16. Y. Freund and R. E. Schapire "A decision-theoretic generalization of online learning and an application to boosting", J. Comput. Syst. Sci., vol. 55, pp. 119 1997. [CrossRef] On this page * Abstract * Index Terms * References Brought to you by STRATHCLYDE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY * Your institute subscribes to: * IEEE-Wiley eBooks Library , IEEE/IET Electronic Library (IEL) * What can I access? Terms of Us