Reconstruction of 3D human facial images using partial differential equations.

One of the challenging problems in geometric modeling and computer graphics is the construction of realistic human facial geometry. Such geometry are essential for a wide range of applications, such as 3D face recognition, virtual reality applications, facial expression simulation and computer based plastic surgery application. This paper addresses a method for the construction of 3D geometry of human faces based on the use of Elliptic Partial Differential Equations (PDE). Here the geometry corresponding to a human face is treated as a set of surface patches, whereby each surface patch is represented using four boundary curves in the 3-space that formulate the appropriate boundary conditions for the chosen PDE. These boundary curves are extracted automatically using 3D data of human faces obtained using a 3D scanner. The solution of the PDE generates a continuous single surface patch describing the geometry of the original scanned data. In this study, through a number of experimental verifications we have shown the efficiency of the PDE based method for 3D facial surface reconstruction using scan data. In addition to this, we also show that our approach provides an efficient way of facial representation using a small set of parameters that could be utilized for efficient facial data storage and verification purposes

Efficient 3D data representation for biometric applications

YesAn important issue in many of today's biometric applications is the development of efficient and accurate techniques for representing related 3D data. Such data is often available through the process of digitization of complex geometric objects which are of importance to biometric applications. For example, in the area of 3D face recognition a digital point cloud of data corresponding to a given face is usually provided by a 3D digital scanner. For efficient data storage and for identification/authentication in a timely fashion such data requires to be represented using a few parameters or variables which are meaningful. Here we show how mathematical techniques based on Partial Differential Equations (PDEs) can be utilized to represent complex 3D data where the data can be parameterized in an efficient way. For example, in the case of a 3D face we show how it can be represented using PDEs whereby a handful of key facial parameters can be identified for efficient storage and verification

A review of digital video tampering: from simple editing to full synthesis.

Video tampering methods have witnessed considerable progress in recent years. This is partly due to the rapid development of advanced deep learning methods, and also due to the large volume of video footage that is now in the public domain. Historically, convincing video tampering has been too labour intensive to achieve on a large scale. However, recent developments in deep learning-based methods have made it possible not only to produce convincing forged video but also to fully synthesize video content. Such advancements provide new means to improve visual content itself, but at the same time, they raise new challenges for state-of-the-art tampering detection methods. Video tampering detection has been an active field of research for some time, with periodic reviews of the subject. However, little attention has been paid to video tampering techniques themselves. This paper provides an objective and in-depth examination of current techniques related to digital video manipulation. We thoroughly examine their development, and show how current evaluation techniques provide opportunities for the advancement of video tampering detection. A critical and extensive review of photo-realistic video synthesis is provided with emphasis on deep learning-based methods. Existing tampered video datasets are also qualitatively reviewed and critically discussed. Finally, conclusions are drawn upon an exhaustive and thorough review of tampering methods with discussions of future research directions aimed at improving detection methods

Interactive surface design and manipulation using PDE-method through Autodesk Maya plug-in.

This paper aims to propose a method for geometric design, modelling and shape manipulation using minimum input design parameters. Here, we address the method for the construction of 3D geometry based on the use of Elliptic Partial Differential Equations (PDE). The geometry corresponding to an object is treated as a set of surface patches, whereby each surface patch is represented using four boundary curves in the 3D space that formulate the appropriate boundary conditions for the chosen PDE. We present our methodology using a plugin that was developed utilizing Maya API. The plug-in provides the user with tools that could be used easily and effectively for designing purposes. Maya is a popular 3D modelling tool. Various types of shapes with different complexities are presented here. Our proposed method allow the designer to utilize the Maya functionality for sketching curves in the 3D space that represents the outline of arbitrary shapes, construct the corresponding model using the PDE method, deform and sculpt these models interactively by editing the boundary curves

Automatic features characterization from 3d facial images.

This paper presents a novel and computationally fast method for automatic identification of symmetry profile from 3D facial images. The algorithm is based on the concepts of computational geometry which yield fast and accurate results. In order to detect the symmetry profile of a human face, the tip of the nose is identified first. Assuming that the symmetry plane passes through the tip of the nose, the symmetry profile is then extracted. This is undertaken by means of computing the intersection between the symmetry plane and the facial mesh, resulting in a planner curve that accurately represents the symmetry profile. Experimentation using two different 3D face databases was carried out, resulting in fast and accurate results

MFC-GAN: class-imbalanced dataset classification using multiple fake class generative adversarial network.

Class-imbalanced datasets are common across different domains such as health, banking, security and others. With such datasets, the learning algorithms are often biased toward the majority class-instances. Data Augmentation is a common approach that aims at rebalancing a dataset by injecting more data samples of the minority class instances. In this paper, a new data augmentation approach is proposed using a Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN) to handle the class imbalance problem. Unlike common GAN models, which use a single fake class, the proposed method uses multiple fake classes to ensure a fine-grained generation and classification of the minority class instances. Moreover, the proposed GAN model is conditioned to generate minority class instances aiming at rebalancing the dataset. Extensive experiments were carried out using public datasets, where synthetic samples generated using our model were added to the imbalanced dataset, followed by performing classification using Convolutional Neural Network. Experiment results show that our model can generate diverse minority class instances, even in extreme cases where the number of minority class instances is relatively low. Additionally, superior performance of our model over other common augmentation and oversampling methods was achieved in terms of classification accuracy and quality of the generated samples

Improving Bag-of-visual-Words model with spatial-temporal correlation for video retrieval

Most of the state-of-art approaches to Query-by-Example (QBE) video retrieval are based on the Bag-of-visual-Words (BovW) representation of visual content. It, however, ig- nores the spatial-temporal information, which is important for similarity measurement between videos. Direct incorpo- ration of such information into the video data representa- tion for a large scale data set is computationally expensive in terms of storage and similarity measurement. It is also static regardless of the change of discriminative power of vi- sual words with respect to di↵erent queries. To tackle these limitations, in this paper, we propose to discover Spatial- Temporal Correlations (STC) imposed by the query exam- ple to improve the BovW model for video retrieval. The STC, in terms of spatial proximity and relative motion co- herence between di↵erent visual words, is crucial to identify the discriminative power of the visual words. We develop a novel technique to emphasize the most discriminative visual words for similarity measurement, and incorporate this STC-based approach into the standard inverted index archi- tecture. Our approach is evaluated on the TRECVID2002 and CC WEB VIDEO datasets for two typical QBE video retrieval tasks respectively. The experimental results demon- strate that it substantially improves the BovW model as well as a state of the art method that also utilizes spatial- temporal information for QBE video retrieval

A data-driven decision support tool for offshore oil and gas decommissioning.

A growing number of oil and gas offshore infrastructures across the globe are approaching the end of their operational life. It is a major challenge for the industry to plan and make a decision on the decommissioning as the processes are resource exhaustive. Whether a facility is completely removed, partially removed or left in-situ, each option will affect individual parties differently. Stakeholders’ concerns and needs are collected and analyzed to obtain the most compromised decommissioning decision. Engaging with hundreds of stakeholders is extremely complicated, hence time-consuming and costly. This issue can be addressed using a predictive model to provide suggested decommissioning options based on the data of previously approved projects. However, the lack of readily available relevant datasets is the main hindrance of such an approach. In this paper, we introduce a new oil and gas decommissioning dataset extensively covering all types of offshore infrastructures in the UK landscape over a 21-year period. An experimental framework using several learning algorithms on the new dataset for predicting the decommissioning option is presented. Various resampling methods were applied to tackle the imbalanced class distribution of the dataset for improved classification. Promising results were achieved despite the exclusion of some stakeholder-related features used in the traditional approach. This shows signs of a potential solution for the industry to significantly reduce time and cost spent on a decommissioning project, and encourages more efforts put into researching on this timely topic