8140967
Character-like region verification for extracting text in scene images
This paper proposes a method of identifying character-like regions in order to extract and recognize characters in natural color scene images automatically. After connected component extraction based on a multi-group decomposition scheme, alignment analysis is used to check the block candidates, namely, the character-like regions in each binary image layer and the final composed image. Priority adaptive segmentation (PAS) is implemented to obtain accurate foreground pixels of the character in each block. Then some heuristic meanings such as statistical features, recognition confidence, and alignment properties, are employed to justify the segmented characters. The algorithms are robust for a wide range of character fonts, shooting conditions, and color backgrounds. Results of our experiments are promising for real applications.
12667544
Camera Readable 2D Bar Codes Design and Decoding for Mobile Phones
2D bar codes were designed to carry significantly more data than its 1D counterpart. Thanks to the popular combination of cameras and mobile phones, it will naturally bring great commercial value to use the camera phone for 2D bar code reading. This paper addresses the problem of specific 2D bar code design for mobile phones and introduces a low-level solution of matrix codes. At the same time, we propose an efficient scheme for 2D bar codes decoding, of which the effort is put on solutions of the difficulties introduced by low image quality that is very common in bar code images taken by a phone camera.
14093058
A virtual mouse system for mobile device
This paper presents a novel virtual mouse system for mobile phones. The system is based on computer vision techniques. It first captures an image using the camera of the mobile phone, then extracts feature points of the scene and tracks them. By using this algorithm we can estimate the camera motion and give the translation vector to our virtual mouse interface. We use NOKIA 6630 camera phone as the developing platform which has a Mega Pixel camera on the back of it. The experiments show the promising results.
16868039
Automatic text discovering through stroke-based segmentation and text string combination
In this paper we present a novel framework of automatic text discovering for content-based multimedia application. For single image, the stroke-based binarization and the coarse-to-fine text extraction will collaborate to generate a clean text image for recognition. For image sequence, multi-frame text enhancement is adopted to increase the text/background contrast, and the recognition results are finally refined by the text string combination algorithm to get more precise semantic information. Two prototype demos have been successfully developed on mobile phones. The experimental results on different platforms show the superior performance of the proposed method.
206800753
Automatic character location and segmentation in color scene images
This paper describes a connected component (CC)-based approach to automatic text location and segmentation in natural scene images. A multi-group decomposition scheme is used to deal with the complexity of the color background. Connected component extraction is implemented using the block adjacency graph (BAG) algorithm after noise filtering and runlength smearing (RLS) operation. Some heuristic features and priority adaptive segmentation (PAS) of characters are proposed in block candidate verification and grayscale-based recognition. A prototype system is completed and the experimental results prove the effectiveness of the proposed method.
20367321
Interactive Storyboard: Animated Story Creation on Touch Interfaces
Storytelling, or the telling of narrative, plays a central role in human experience. However, prevalent tools for animated story creation are so complex that expertise is required to grasp them. To help novices such as children create a wide range of visual stories quickly and easily, in this paper we present the design and evaluation of the Interactive Storyboard, an application that enables novices to create vivid animations on touch interfaces, and further to generate live digital stories in a cooperative way. User interviews help us reach the basic assumptions of use cases and design principles for storytelling via Interactive Storyboard. The prototyping application is evaluated by potential users including children and parents, after which improvement on usability and extension of functionalities is conducted. Further usability tests indicate that the Storyboard application is easy to use, more efficient and attractive than formal tools in concrete scenarios, and effectively enhances novices' creativity.
465231
BLAST++: BLASTing queries in batches
UNLABELLED
BLAST++ is a tool that is integrated with NCBI BLAST, allowing multiple, say K, queries to be searched against a database concurrently. The results obtained by BLAST++ are identical to that obtained by executing BLAST on each of the K queries, but BLAST++ completes the processing in a much shorter time.


AVAILABILITY
http://xena1.ddns.comp.nus.edu.sg/~genesis/blast++


SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION
http://xena1.ddns.comp.nus.edu.sg/~genesis/blast++
44811386
Classification of Polarimetric SAR Data Based on Multidimensional Watershed Clustering
This paper proposes a polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (PolSAR) data classification method which applies multi-dimensional transform to identify density peaks and valleys for polarimetric signatures clustering. The new approach firstly introduces an improved maximum homogeneous region filter which can effectively preserve structure feature and polarimetric signatures. Then polarimetric signatures are extracted based on Freeman-Durden three-component composition. Finally, we obtain the classification results by multi-dimensional watershed clustering on the extracted polarimetric signatures. The effectiveness of this classification scheme is demonstrated using the full polarimetric L-band SAR imagery.
5961776
NetSpy: Automatic Generation of Spyware Signatures for NIDS
We present NetSpy, a tool to automatically generate network-level signatures for spyware. NetSpy determines whether an untrusted program is spyware by correlating user input with network traffic generated by the untrusted program. If classified as spyware, NetSpy also generates a signature characterizing the malicious substrate of the spyware's network behavior. Such a signature can be used by network intrusion detection systems to detect spyware installations in large networks. In our experiments, NetSpy precisely identified each of the 7 spyware programs that we considered and generated network-level signatures for them. Of the 9 supposedly-benign programs that we considered, NetSpy correctly characterized 6 of them as benign. The remaining 3 programs showed network behavior that was highly suggestive of spying activity
17038094
On-line Algorithm for Server Selection of Video Streaming over P2P Networks
Abstract We consider a video streaming application over P2Pnetworks and introduce the P2P on-line server selection problem. This task is related to the classic K-server problem, known from the theory of online algorithms. The difference is that our problem has a dynamic cost matrix, due to network congestion which may trigger the rerouting of streaming paths. With the assumption that the number of hops of any alternative path from the server node p to the requesting node q is at most δ times the number of hops of the shortest path from p to q, our dynamic work function algorithm works for the P2P on-line server selection problem with competitive ratio δ×(2k-1). 1. Introduction In this paper we consider a video streaming application over P2Pnetworks. As we know, it isdifficult to provide large scale streaming service using traditional, centralized client-serverarchitecture, since a bottleneck occurs at the server. The network service model known as Peer-to-Peer (P2P) solves this problem, due to its distributed nature. We address the issue of optimizing the server selection for video streaming in P2P networks.Optimization tasks are classified into online and offline problems. Optimization problems in which the input is received piece by piece and the corresponding piece of output must be produced before knowing the entire input are called online problems. In some optimization tasks, such as job scheduling, both the online and offline versions of the problem are meaningful. Many other situations, such as telephone circuit switching, investment planning etc. are intrinsically online. For these problems, offline algorithms are not acceptable. Competitive algorithms were introduced by Sleator and Tarjan [1] in the context of optimization problems. They sought a worst case complexity measure for on-line algorithms that have to make decisions based on current and previous parts of the input. In the on-line problem the input is given as a sequence σ = σ
8395605
FLTL-MC: Online High Level Program Analysis for Web Services
Although Java- or .NET- centric technologies are the most commonly used in Web services, they are by no means the only ones in practice. This paper proposes an online finite model checking tool FLTL-MC to check the high level safety and liveness properties in complex distributed web service systems, which can offer both a richer and more natural way to search errors. Liveness properties can specify desirable system behaviors which must be satisfied eventually, but are not always satisfied. Existing software model checkers cannot verify liveness in real code because doing so requires finding an infinite execution that does not satisfy aliveness property. In our proposed model, we adopt the finite linear temporal logic to specify the semantics of the online model checking, use binary instrumentation to obtain the distribute states and apply the FLTL-MC engine to dynamically verify the finite linear temporal logic properties in Web service systems. At last, we investigate the well-known distributed protocol WS-Reliable Messaging to demonstrate its applications and detect some hidden bugs with our prototype system.