A simple and efficient face detection algorithm for video database applications

The objective of this work is to provide a simple and yet efficient tool to detect human faces in video sequences. This information can be very useful for many applications such as video indexing and video browsing. In particular the paper focuses on the significant improvements made to our face detection algorithm presented by Albiol, Bouman and Delp (see IEEE Int. Conference on Image Processing, Kobe, Japan, 1999). Specifically, a novel approach to retrieve skin-like homogeneous regions is presented, which is later used to retrieve face images. Good results have been obtained for a large variety of video sequences.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Ground truth annotation of traffic video data

This paper presents a software application to generate ground-truth data on video files from traffic surveillance cameras used for Intelligent Transportation Systems (IT systems). The computer vision system to be evaluated counts the number of vehicles that cross a line per time unit intensity-, the average speed and the occupancy. The main goal of the visual interface presented in this paper is to be easy to use without the requirement of any specific hardware. It is based on a standard laptop or desktop computer and a Jog shuttle wheel. The setup is efficient and comfortable because one hand of the annotating person is almost all the time on the space key of the keyboard while the other hand is on the jog shuttle wheel. The mean time required to annotate a video file ranges from 1 to 5 times its duration (per lane) depending on the content. Compared to general purpose annotation tool a time factor gain of about 7 times is achieved.This work was funded by the Spanish Government project MARTA under the CENIT program and CICYT contract TEC2009-09146.Mossi García, JM.; Albiol Colomer, AJ.; Albiol Colomer, A.; Oliver Moll, J. (2014). Ground truth annotation of traffic video data. Multimedia Tools and Applications. 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-013-1396-xS114Albiol A et al (2011) Detection of parked vehicles using spatiotemporal maps. IEEE Trans Intell Transport Syst 12(4):1277–1291Blunsden SJ, Fisher R (2010) The BEHAVE video dataset: ground truthed video for multi-person behavior classification. Annal British Mach Vis Assoc 4:1–12Bradski G, Kaehler A (2008) Learning OpenCV: Computer vision with the OpenCV library. O'Reilly Media, IncorporatedBrooke J. SUS: a “quick and dirty” usability scale. Usability evaluation in industry. Taylor and FrancisBrostow GJ et al (2009) Semantic object classes in video: a high-definition ground truth database. Pattern Recognit Lett 30(2):88–97Buch N et al (2011) A review of computer vision techniques for the analysis of urban traffic. IEEE Trans Intell Transp Syst 12(3):920–939D’Orazio T et al. (2009) A semi-automatic system for ground truth generation of soccer video sequences. Advanced Video and Signal Based Surveillance, 2009. AVSS’09. Sixth IEEE International Conference on (Sep. 2009), 559–564Dollar P et al (2012) Pedestrian detection: an evaluation of the state of the art. IEEE Trans Pattern Anal Mach Intell 34(4):743–761Faro A et al (2011) Adaptive background modeling integrated with luminosity sensors and occlusion processing for reliable vehicle detection. IEEE Trans Intell Transport Syst 12(4):1398–1412Giro-i-Nieto X et al (2010) GAT: a graphical annotation tool for semantic regions. Multimed Tool Appl 46(2–3):155–174i-LIDS. Image Library for Intelligent Detection Systems: www.ilids.co.uk . Home Office Scientific Development Branch, United Kingdom. Last Accessed February 2013Kasturi R et al (2009) Framework for performance evaluation of face, text, and vehicle detection and tracking in video: data, metrics, and protocol. IEEE Trans Pattern Anal Mach Intell 31(2):319–336Laganière R (2011) OpenCV 2 computer vision application programming cookbook. Packt Pub LimitedLorist MM et al (2000) Mental fatigue and task control: planning and preparation. Psychophysiology 37(5):614–625Russell B et al (2008) LabelMe: a database and web-based tool for image annotation. Int J Comput Vis 77(1):157–173Serrano M, Gracía J, Patricio M, Molina J (2010). Interactive video annotation tool. Distributed Computing and Artificial Intelligence, 325–332Traffic City Cameras. Ajuntament de València, Spain. http://camaras.valencia.es . Last Accessed February 2013TREC video retrieval evaluation. http://www-nlpir.nist.gov/projects/trecvid/Vezzani R, Cucchiara R (2010) Video Surveillance Online Repository (ViSOR): an integrated framework. Multimed Tool Appl 50(2):359–380ViPER: the video performance evaluation resource: http://viper-toolkit.sourceforge.net/Volkmer T et al. (2005) A web-based system for collaborative annotation of large image and video collections: an evaluation and user study. Proceedings of the 13th annual ACM international conference on Multimedia (New York, NY, USA, 2005), 892–901Zhang HB, Li SA, Chen SY, Su SZ, Duh DJ, Li SZ (2012) Adaptive photograph retrieval method. Multimedia Tools and Applications, Published online September 2012.Zou Y et al (2011) Traffic incident classification at intersections based on image sequences by HMM/SVM classifiers. Multimed Tool Appl 52(1):133–14

Designing internet of tangible things for children with hearing impairment

Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs) are a new, non-traditional way to interact with digital information using a physical environment. Therefore, TUIs connect a physical set of objects that can be explored and manipulated. TUI can be interconnected over the Internet, using Internet of Things (IoT) technology to monitor a child''s activities in real-time. Internet of Tangible Things (IoTT) is defined as a tangible interaction applied to IoT. This article describes four case studies that apply IoTT to children with cochlear implants and children whose communication is sign language. For each case study, a discussion is presented, discussing how IoTT can help the child development in skills such as: social, emotional, psychomotor, cognitive, and visual. It was found that IoTT works best when it includes the social component in children with hearing impairment, because it helps them to communicate with each other and build social-emotional skills

Who is who at different cameras: people re-identification using depth cameras

This study proposes the concept of bodyprints to perform re-identification of people in surveillance videos. Bodyprints are obtained using calibrated depth-colour cameras such as kinect. The author's results on a database of 40 people show that bodyprints are very robust to changes of pose, point of view and illumination. Potential applications include tracking people with networks of non-overlapping cameras. © 2012 The Institution of Engineering and Technology.The work presented in this paper has been funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology under the CICYT contract TEVISMART, TEC2009-09146.Albiol Colomer, AJ.; Albiol Colomer, A.; Oliver Moll, J.; Mossi García, JM. (2012). Who is who at different cameras: people re-identification using depth cameras. IET Computer Vision. 6(5):378-387. https://doi.org/10.1049/iet-cvi.2011.0140S37838765Dee, H. M., & Velastin, S. A. (2007). How close are we to solving the problem of automated visual surveillance? Machine Vision and Applications, 19(5-6), 329-343. doi:10.1007/s00138-007-0077-zhttp://www.pointclouds.org/Zhang, Z., & Troje, N. F. (2005). View-independent person identification from human gait. Neurocomputing, 69(1-3), 250-256. doi:10.1016/j.neucom.2005.06.002Bazzani, L., Cristani, M., Perina, A., Farenzena, M., & Murino, V. (2010). Multiple-Shot Person Re-identification by HPE Signature. 2010 20th International Conference on Pattern Recognition. doi:10.1109/icpr.2010.349Doretto, G., Sebastian, T., Tu, P., & Rittscher, J. (2011). Appearance-based person reidentification in camera networks: problem overview and current approaches. Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Humanized Computing, 2(2), 127-151. doi:10.1007/s12652-010-0034-yBk, S., Corvee, E., Bremond, F., & Thonnat, M. (2010). Person Re-identification Using Spatial Covariance Regions of Human Body Parts. 2010 7th IEEE International Conference on Advanced Video and Signal Based Surveillance. doi:10.1109/avss.2010.34Da-Jinn Wang, Chao-Ho Chen, Tsong-Yi Chen, & Chien-Tsung Lee. (2009). People Recognition for Entering & Leaving a Video Surveillance Area. 2009 Fourth International Conference on Innovative Computing, Information and Control (ICICIC). doi:10.1109/icicic.2009.293Bird, N. D., Masoud, O., Papanikolopoulos, N. P., & Isaacs, A. (2005). Detection of Loitering Individuals in Public Transportation Areas. IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, 6(2), 167-177. doi:10.1109/tits.2005.848370Oliveira, I. O. de, & Pio, J. L. de S. (2009). People Reidentification in a Camera Network. 2009 Eighth IEEE International Conference on Dependable, Autonomic and Secure Computing. doi:10.1109/dasc.2009.33Hamdoun, O., Moutarde, F., Stanciulescu, B., & Steux, B. (2008). Person re-identification in multi-camera system by signature based on interest point descriptors collected on short video sequences. 2008 Second ACM/IEEE International Conference on Distributed Smart Cameras. doi:10.1109/icdsc.2008.4635689Office, U.H.: ‘i-LIDS multiple camera tracking scenario definition’, 2008)http://www.gpiv.upv.es/kinect_data/http://www.primesense.com/http://www.openni.org/http://opencv.willowgarage.com/http://www.ros.org/http://kinectforwindows.org/Grimaud, M. (1992). New measure of contrast: the dynamics. Image Algebra and Morphological Image Processing III. doi:10.1117/12.60650Beucher, S., and Meyer, F.: ‘The morphological approach to segmentation: the watershed transformation’, (Marcel-Dekker 1992), p. 433–4

First tests of the applicability of γ\gamma-ray imaging for background discrimination in time-of-flight neutron capture measurements

In this work we explore for the first time the applicability of using $\gamma$-ray imaging in neutron capture measurements to identify and suppress spatially localized background. For this aim, a pinhole gamma camera is assembled, tested and characterized in terms of energy and spatial performance. It consists of a monolithic CeBr$_3$ scintillating crystal coupled to a position-sensitive photomultiplier and readout through an integrated circuit AMIC2GR. The pinhole collimator is a massive carven block of lead. A series of dedicated measurements with calibrated sources and with a neutron beam incident on a $^{197}$Au sample have been carried out at n_TOF, achieving an enhancement of a factor of two in the signal-to-background ratio when selecting only those events coming from the direction of the sample.Comment: Preprint submitted to Nucl. Instr. and Meth.

Psychophysiological responses to acute stress in two groups of healthy women differing in fitness

This study examined how the degree of fitness affects several psychophysiological responses to stress in elite sportswomen and physically active women. Trait anxiety and mood were evaluated, and salivary testosterone (Tsal) and cortisol (Csal) concentrations determined before and after a maximal ergometry. Afterwards, subjects carried out the Stroop task, where heart rate (HR) and skin conductance level (SCL) were continuously recorded. At baseline, elite sportswomen had worse mood, and lower cardiovascular basal measures and testosterone:cortisol ratio. In the Stroop task, they showed higher SCL reactivity and worse recovery with respect to the baseline values than physically active women. There was a positive relationship between Tsal and HR as well as between negative mood and SCL, and a negative one between negative mood and HR. In women, the degree of fitness moderates he electrodermal responses to acute stress, a specific pattern of relationship among different psychophysiological variables being found

Contextualized genome-scale model unveils high-order metabolic effects of the specific growth rate and oxygenation level in recombinant Pichia pastoris

Pichia pastoris is recognized as a biotechnological workhorse for recombinant protein expression. The metabolic performance of this microorganism depends on genetic makeup and culture conditions, amongst which the specific growth rate and oxygenation level are critical. Despite their importance, only their individual effects have been assessed so far, and thus their combined effects and metabolic consequences still remain to be elucidated. In this work, we present a comprehensive framework for revealing high-order (i.e., individual and combined) metabolic effects of the above parameters in glucose-limited continuous cultures of P. pastoris, using thaumatin production as a case study. Specifically, we employed a rational experimental design to calculate statistically significant metabolic effects from multiple chemostat data, which were later contextualized using a refined and highly predictive genome-scale metabolic model of this yeast under the simulated conditions. Our results revealed a negative effect of the oxygenation on the specific product formation rate (thaumatin), and a positive effect on the biomass yield. Notably, we identified a novel positive combined effect of both the specific growth rate and oxygenation level on the specific product formation rate. Finally, model predictions indicated an opposite relationship between the oxygenation level and the growth-associated maintenance energy (GAME) requirement, suggesting a linear GAME decrease of 0.56 mmol ATP/g per each 1% increase in oxygenation level, which translated into a 44% higher metabolic cost under low oxygenation compared to high oxygenation. Overall, this work provides a systematic framework for mapping high-order metabolic effects of different culture parameters on the performance of a microbial cell factory. Particularly in this case, it provided valuable insights about optimal operational conditions for protein production in P. pastoris

Measuring the Purpose Strength

In the preceding chapters, a new logic for the twenty-first-century organization was proposed—the logic of leading based on a shared and common business purpose, one that captures the mind, captivates the heart, and guides the day-to-day routines of every individual in the organization. In view of this new logic, though, the question becomes, how are leaders to assess whether or not the purpose of the business is truly common and deeply shared

Performance of HPGe Detectors in High Magnetic Fields

A new generation of high-resolution hypernuclear gamma$-spectroscopy experiments with high-purity germanium detectors (HPGe) are presently designed at the FINUDA spectrometer at DAPhiNE, the Frascati phi-factory, and at PANDA, the antiproton proton hadron spectrometer at the future FAIR facility. Both, the FINUDA and PANDA spectrometers are built around the target region covering a large solid angle. To maximise the detection efficiency the HPGe detectors have to be located near the target, and therefore they have to be operated in strong magnetic fields B ~ 1 T. The performance of HPGe detectors in such an environment has not been well investigated so far. In the present work VEGA and EUROBALL Cluster HPGe detectors were tested in the field provided by the ALADiN magnet at GSI. No significant degradation of the energy resolution was found, and a change in the rise time distribution of the pulses from preamplifiers was observed. A correlation between rise time and pulse height was observed and is used to correct the measured energy, recovering the energy resolution almost completely. Moreover, no problems in the electronics due to the magnetic field were observed.Comment: submitted to Nucl. Instrum. Meth. Phys. Res. A, LaTeX, 19 pages, 9 figure