SIFT Flow: Dense Correspondence across Scenes and its Applications

While image alignment has been studied in different areas of computer vision for decades, aligning images depicting different scenes remains a challenging problem. Analogous to optical flow where an image is aligned to its temporally adjacent frame, we propose SIFT flow, a method to align an image to its nearest neighbors in a large image corpus containing a variety of scenes. The SIFT flow algorithm consists of matching densely sampled, pixel-wise SIFT features between two images, while preserving spatial discontinuities. The SIFT features allow robust matching across different scene/object appearances, whereas the discontinuity-preserving spatial model allows matching of objects located at different parts of the scene. Experiments show that the proposed approach robustly aligns complex scene pairs containing significant spatial differences. Based on SIFT flow, we propose an alignment-based large database framework for image analysis and synthesis, where image information is transferred from the nearest neighbors to a query image according to the dense scene correspondence. This framework is demonstrated through concrete applications, such as motion field prediction from a single image, motion synthesis via object transfer, satellite image registration and face recognition

The adjustment needs of Chinese immigrant women living in Bristol - a narrative inquiry

According to tradition, Chinese women are submissive; they are neglected in the UK Chinese community and relatively invisible in British society. Whilst there is sufficient evidence to support the view that Chinese women immigrants experience difficulties in their daily lives, little is known about these women as a unique group. This qualitative narrative inquiry sets out the untold stories of three Chinese immigrant women, including the researcher, and explores the influence of their cultural values on their adjustment needs during their settlement in Britain.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Global and local motion priors and their applications

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2008.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 61-64).With the rising popularity and accessibility of cameras as well as the arrival of popular video sharing websites like YouTube.com, Google Video, veoh.com, and many others, large quantities of video are produced and available everyday. With all this data, it becomes necessary to find ways of understanding the content of videos in large data sets for applications in areas like multimedia management, video surveillance, and many others. At the same time, all this amount of information produced everyday can be used for solving problems that can be difficult without a large amount of training data such as scene matching and alignment. This work studies motion properties across different sources of video. Both the global motion (also known as the camera motion) and the local motion are studied, to extract common properties of similar video sequences. As a consequence, several applications using these types of information arise. In the case of global motion, an application for clustering videos based on their genre is examined. For the local motion, this work describes a way to use a database of flow fields together with matching and alignment techniques for inferring an optical flow field from a single image (as opposed to the standard problem of motion estimation using two adjacent video frames) as well as synthesizing video also from a single image.by Jenny Yuen.S.M

Labeling and modeling large databases of videos

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2012.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 91-98).As humans, we can say many things about the scenes surrounding us. For instance, we can tell what type of scene and location an image depicts, describe what objects live in it, their material properties, or their spatial arrangement. These comprise descriptions of a scene and are majorly studied areas in computer vision. This thesis, however, hypotheses that observers have an inherent prior knowledge that can be applied to the scene at hand. This prior knowledge can be translated into the cognisance of which objects move, or in the trajectories and velocities to expect. Conversely, when faced with unusual events such as car accidents, humans are very well tuned to identify them regardless of having observed the scene a priori. This is, in part, due to prior observations that we have for scenes with similar configurations to the current one. This thesis emulates the prior knowledge base of humans by creating a large and heterogeneous database and annotation tool for videos depicting real world scenes. The first application of this thesis is in the area of unusual event detection. Given a short clip, the task is to identify the moving portions of the scene that depict abnormal events. We adopt a data-driven framework powered by scene matching techniques to retrieve the videos nearest to the query clip and integrate the motion information in the nearest videos. The result is a final clip with localized annotations for unusual activity. The second application lies in the area of event prediction. Given a static image, we adapt our framework to compile a prediction of motions to expect in the image. This result is crafted by integrating the knowledge of videos depicting scenes similar to the query image. With the help of scene matching, only scenes relevant to the queries are considered, resulting in reliable predictions. Our dataset, experimentation, and proposed model introduce and explore a new facet of scene understanding in images and videos.by Jenny Yuen.Ph.D

Proteolytic exposure of a cryptic site within collagen type IV is required for angiogenesis and tumor growth in vivo

Evidence is provided that proteolytic cleavage of collagen type IV results in the exposure of a functionally important cryptic site hidden within its triple helical structure. Exposure of this cryptic site was associated with angiogenic, but not quiescent, blood vessels and was required for angiogenesis in vivo. Exposure of the HUIV26 epitope was associated with a loss of α1β1 integrin binding and the gain of αvβ3 binding. A monoclonal antibody (HUIV26) directed to this site disrupts integrin-dependent endothelial cell interactions and potently inhibits angiogenesis and tumor growth. Together, these studies suggest a novel mechanism by which proteolysis contributes to angiogenesis by exposing hidden regulatory elements within matrix-immobilized collagen type IV

Health-related quality of life, functional impairment and comorbidity in people with mild-to-moderate chronic kidney disease: a cross-sectional study

Objectives: To determine the associations between comorbidities, health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and functional impairment in people with mild-to-moderate chronic kidney disease (CKD) in primary care.Design: Cross-sectional analysis at 5-year follow-up in a prospective cohort study.Setting: Thirty-two general practitioner surgeries in England.Participants: 1008 participants with CKD stage 3 (of 1741 people recruited at baseline in the Renal Risk in Derby study) who survived to 5?years and had complete follow-up data for HRQoL and functional status (FS).Primary and secondary outcome measures HRQoL assessed using the 5-level EQ-5D version (EQ-5D-5L, with domains of mobility, self-care, usual activities, pain/discomfort and anxiety/depression and index value using utility scores calculated from the English general population), and FS using the Karnofsky Performance Status scale (functional impairment defined as Karnofksy score ?70). Comorbidity was defined by self-reported or doctor-diagnosed condition, disease-specific medication or blood result.Results: Mean age was 75.8 years. The numbers reporting some problems in EQ-5D-5L domains were: 582 (57.7%) for mobility, 166 (16.5%) for self-care, 466 (46.2%) for usual activities, 712 (70.6%) for pain/discomfort and 319 (31.6%) for anxiety/depression. Only 191 (18.9%) reported no problems in any domain. HRQoL index values showed greater variation among those with lower FS (eg, for those with Karnofsky score of 60, the median (IQR) EQ-5D index value was 0.45 (0.24 to 0.68) compared with 0.94 (0.86 to 1) for those with Karnofsky score of 90). Overall, 234 (23.2%) had functional impairment.In multivariable logistic regression models, functional impairment was independently associated with experiencing problems for all EQ-5D-5L domains (mobility: OR 16.87 (95% CI 8.70 to 32.79, p < 0.001, self-care: OR 13.08 (95% CI 8.46 to 20.22), p< 0.001, usual activities: OR 8.27 (95% CI 5.43 to 12.58), p< 0.001, pain/discomfort: OR 2.94 (95% CI 1.86 to 4.67), p< 0.001, anxiety/depression: 3.08 (95% CI 2.23 to 4.27), p< 0.001). Higher comorbidity count and obesity were independently associated with problems in mobility, self-care, usual activities and pain/discomfort: for three or more comorbidities versus none: (mobility: OR 2.10 (95% CI 1.08 to 4.10, p for trend 0.002), self-care: OR 2.64 (95% CI 0.72 to 9.67, p for trend 0.05), usual activities: OR 4.20 (95% CI 2.02 to 8.74, p for trend < 0.001), pain/discomfort: OR 3.06 (95% CI 1.63 to 5.73, p for trend < 0.001)), and for obese (body mass index (BMI) ?30?kg/m2) versus BMI < 25?kg/m2: (mobility: OR 2.44 (95% CI 1.61 to 3.69, p for trend < 0.001), self-care: OR 1.98 (95% CI 1.06 to 3.71, p for trend 0.003), usual activities: OR 1.82 (95% CI 1.19 to 2.76, p for trend 0.019), pain/discomfort: OR 2.37 (95% CI 1.58 to 3.55, p for trend < 0.001)). Female sex, lower FS and lower educational attainment were independently associated with anxiety/depression (ORs 1.60 (95% CI 1.18 to 2.16, p 0.002), 3.08 (95% CI 2.23 to 4.27, p< 0.001) and 1.67 (95% CI 1.10 to 2.52, p 0.009), respectively). Older age, higher comorbidity count, albuminuria (?30?mg/mmol vs < 3?mg/mmol), lower educational attainment (no formal qualifications vs degree level) and obesity were independently associated with functional impairment (ORs 1.07 (95% CI 1.04 to 1.09, p< 0.001), 2.18 (95% CI 0.80 to 5.96, p for trend < 0.001), 1.74 (95% CI 0.82 to 3.68, p for trend 0.005), 2.08 (95% CI 1.26 to 3.41, p for trend < 0.001) and 4.23 (95% CI 2.48 to 7.20), respectively).Conclusions: The majority of persons with mild-to-moderate CKD reported reductions in at least one HRQoL domain, which were independently associated with comorbidities, obesity and functional impairment

Intranasal DNA vaccine for protection against respiratory infectious diseases: the delivery perspectives

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