Model-based learning of local image features for unsupervised texture segmentation

Features that capture well the textural patterns of a certain class of images are crucial for the performance of texture segmentation methods. The manual selection of features or designing new ones can be a tedious task. Therefore, it is desirable to automatically adapt the features to a certain image or class of images. Typically, this requires a large set of training images with similar textures and ground truth segmentation. In this work, we propose a framework to learn features for texture segmentation when no such training data is available. The cost function for our learning process is constructed to match a commonly used segmentation model, the piecewise constant Mumford-Shah model. This means that the features are learned such that they provide an approximately piecewise constant feature image with a small jump set. Based on this idea, we develop a two-stage algorithm which first learns suitable convolutional features and then performs a segmentation. We note that the features can be learned from a small set of images, from a single image, or even from image patches. The proposed method achieves a competitive rank in the Prague texture segmentation benchmark, and it is effective for segmenting histological images

On the Irresistible Efficiency of Signal Processing Methods in Quantum Computing

We show that many well-known signal transforms allow highly efficient realizations on a quantum computer. We explain some elementary quantum circuits and review the construction of the Quantum Fourier Transform. We derive quantum circuits for the Discrete Cosine and Sine Transforms, and for the Discrete Hartley transform. We show that at most O(log^2 N) elementary quantum gates are necessary to implement any of those transforms for input sequences of length N.Comment: 15 pages, LaTeX 2e. Expanded version of quant-ph/0111038. SPECLOG 2000, Tampere, Finlan

On the Monomiality of Nice Error Bases

Unitary error bases generalize the Pauli matrices to higher dimensional systems. Two basic constructions of unitary error bases are known: An algebraic construction by Knill, which yields nice error bases, and a combinatorial construction by Werner, which yields shift-and-multiply bases. An open problem posed by Schlingemann and Werner (see http://www.imaph.tu-bs.de/qi/problems/6.html) relates these two constructions and asks whether each nice error basis is equivalent to a shift-and-multiply basis. We solve this problem and show that the answer is negative. However, we also show that it is always possible to find a fairly sparse representation of a nice error basis.Comment: 6 page

Discretizing the Heston Model: An Analysis of the Weak Convergence Rate

In this manuscript we analyze the weak convergence rate of a discretization scheme for the Heston model. Under mild assumptions on the smoothness of the payoff and on the Feller index of the volatility process, respectively, we establish a weak convergence rate of order one. Moreover, under almost minimal assumptions we obtain weak convergence without a rate. These results are accompanied by several numerical examples. Our error analysis relies on a classical technique from Talay & Tubaro, a recent regularity estimate for the Heston PDE by Feehan & Pop and Malliavin calculus

Remarks on Clifford codes

Clifford codes are a class of quantum error control codes that form a natural generalization of stabilizer codes. These codes were introduced in 1996 by Knill, but only a single Clifford code was known, which is not already a stabilizer code. We derive a necessary and sufficient condition that allows to decide when a Clifford code is a stabilizer code, and compile a table of all true Clifford codes for error groups of small order.Comment: 10 pages; submitted to Quantum Information and Computatio