6932570
3D Surface Matching and Recognition Using Conformal Geometry
3D surface matching is a fundamental issue in computer vision with many applications such as shape registration, 3D object recognition and classification. However, surface matching with noise, occlusion and clutter is a challenging problem. In this paper, we analyze a family of conformal geometric maps including harmonic maps, conformal maps and least squares conformal maps with regards to 3D surface matching. As a result, we propose a novel and computationally efficient surface matching framework that uses least squares conformal maps. According to conformal geometry theory, each 3D surface with disk topology can be mapped to a 2D domain through a global optimization and the resulting map is a diffeomorphism, i.e., one-to-one and onto. This allows us to simplify the 3D surface-matching problem to a 2D image-matching problem, by comparing the resulting 2D conformal geometric maps, which are stable, insensitive to resolution changes and robust to occlusion and noise. Therefore, highly accurate and efficient 3D surface matching algorithms can be achieved by using conformal geometric maps. Finally, the performance of conformal geometric maps is evaluated and analyzed comprehensively in 3D surface matching with occlusion, noise and resolution variation. We also provide a series of experiments on real 3D face data that achieve high recognition rates.
2947494
High Resolution Tracking of Non-Rigid Motion of Densely Sampled 3D Data Using Harmonic Maps
Abstract
We present a novel automatic method for high resolution, non-rigid dense 3D point tracking. High quality dense point clouds of non-rigid geometry moving at video speeds are acquired using a phase-shifting structured light ranging technique. To use such data for the temporal study of subtle motions such as those seen in facial expressions, an efficient non-rigid 3D motion tracking algorithm is needed to establish inter-frame correspondences. The novelty of this paper is the development of an algorithmic framework for 3D tracking that unifies tracking of intensity and geometric features, using harmonic maps with added feature correspondence constraints. While the previous uses of harmonic maps provided only global alignment, the proposed introduction of interior feature constraints allows to track non-rigid deformations accurately as well. The harmonic map between two topological disks is a diffeomorphism with minimal stretching energy and bounded angle distortion. The map is stable, insensitive to resolution changes and is robust to noise. Due to the strong implicit and explicit smoothness constraints imposed by the algorithm and the high-resolution data, the resulting registration/deformation field is smooth, continuous and gives dense one-to-one inter-frame correspondences. Our method is validated through a series of experiments demonstrating its accuracy and efficiency.

13511504
Non-Rigid Object Alignment with a Mismatch Template Based on Exhaustive Local Search
Non-rigid object alignment is especially challenging when only a single appearance template is available and target and template images fail to match. Two sources of discrepancy between target and template are changes in illumination and non-rigid motion. Because most existing methods rely on a holistic representation for the alignment process, they require multiple training images to capture appearance variance. We developed a patch-based method that requires only a single appearance template of the object. Specifically, we fit the patch-based face model to an unseen image using an exhaustive local search and constrain the local warp updates within a global warping space. Our approach is not limited to intensity values or gradients, and therefore offers a natural framework to integrate multiple local features, such as filter responses, to increase robustness to large initialization error, illumination changes and non-rigid deformations. This approach was evaluated experimentally on more than 100 subjects for multiple illumination conditions and facial expressions. In all the experiments, our patch-based method outperforms the holistic gradient descent method in terms of accuracy and robustness of feature alignment and image registration.
20961254
Strictly Nonblocking Multirate logd(N, m, p) Networks
We give necessary and sufficient conditions for the d-nary multilog network to be strictly nonblocking under the discrete multirate model, and we give sufficient conditions for the same under the continuous multirate model.
9142519
Utilizing field usage patterns for Java heap space optimization
This research studies the characteristics of field usage patterns in the SpecJVM98 benchmarks. It finds that multiple object instances of the same class often exhibit different field-usage patterns. Motivated by this observation, we designed a heap compression mechanism that classifies object instances at runtime based on their field-usage patterns and eliminates unused fields to save space. To achieve the maximum space savings while minimizing the space and time overhead, our design combines three interrelated techniques in a novel manner: runtime object instance classification, field virtualization, and bidirectional object layout. An experimental evaluation reveals that this mechanism can reduce the maximum heap occupancy of SpecJVM98 benchmarks by up to 18% and 14% on average while keeping the application execution overhead low.
19020033
Estimation of multiple directional light sources for synthesis of augmented reality images
We present a new method for the detection and estimation of multiple directional illuminants, using a single image of any object with known geometry and Lambertian reflectance. We use the resulting highly accurate estimates to modify virtually the illumination and geometry of a real scene and produce correctly illuminated mixed reality images. Our method obviates the need to modify the imaged scene by inserting calibration objects of any particular geometry, relying instead on partial knowledge of the geometry of the scene. Thus, the recovered multiple illuminants can be used both for image-based rendering and for shape reconstruction. Our method combines information both from the shading of the object and from shadows cast on the scene by the object. Initially we use a method based on shadows and a method based on shading independently. The shadow based method utilizes brightness variation inside the shadows cast by the object, whereas the shading based method utilizes brightness variation on the directly illuminated portions of the object. We demonstrate how the two sources of information complement each other in a number of occasions. We then describe an approach that integrates the two methods, with results superior to those obtained if the two methods are used separately. The resulting illumination information can be used (i) to render synthetic objects in a real photograph with correct illumination effects, and (ii) to virtually re-light the scene.
206733202
Foreground and Shadow Detection Based on Conditional Random Field
This paper presents a conditional random field (CRF) approach to integrate spatial and temporal constraints for moving object detection and cast shadow removal in image sequences. Interactions among both detection (foreground/background/shadow) labels and observed data are unified by a probabilistic framework based on the conditional random field, where the interaction strength can be adaptively adjusted in terms of data similarity of neighboring sites. Experimental results show that the proposed approach effectively fuses contextual dependencies in video sequences and significantly improves the accuracy of object detection.
117805231
Hierarchical methods for three-dimensional surface reconstruction
Surface reconstruction from raw data such as volume data, implicit functions, and scattered data in three-dimensional space is very useful in medical imaging, scientific visualization, and geometric modeling. In this study, several surface reconstruction techniques are investigated. A new surface reconstruction technique and several interpolation schemes are introduced for processing the volume data. A new hierarchical scheme for extracting three-dimensional surfaces from volume data is presented. The hierarchical scheme is used to visualize different levels of surface detail allowing a user to explore different features of the surface at different scales. Estimated surface curvature is used as a smoothness condition, and the distance measurement between different levels of surfaces constructed is used as a stopping criterion. The volume pyramid used by the hierarchical scheme was built and tested by two different data structures: an octree and wavelet transforms. The hierarchical method using three-dimensional wavelet transforms is also useful in multiresolution surface analysis. An adaptive hierarchical method using an octree is implemented to increase the accuracy of the surface by adaptively subdividing regions of high curvature using an appropriate interpolation scheme without substantially increasing the number of polygons.
12687767
Comments on "Estimation of frequencies and damping factors by two-dimensional ESPRIT type methods"
For original paper, see Rouquette and Najim (IEEE Trans. Signal Process., vol.49, no.1, p.237-45, 2001).The original authors present two high-resolution approaches to estimate two-dimensional (2-D) signal parameters. The first approach decomposes the 2-D estimation problem into two one-dimensional (1-D) ones, estimates the 1-D frequencies with the MEMP method, and then forms correct pairs using a new pairing scheme introduced in Vanpoucke et al. (1994). The second method (the 2-D ESPRIT method) directly estimates the 2-D frequencies. It is shown that both methods are more accurate than the related methods. The present authors note that the original paper appears to have a key error in the permutation matrix specification of the first method. In this comment, they derive the correct one with the performance simulations.
1683130
PLA-based runtime dynamism in support of privacy-enhanced Web personalization
Software product line architectures (PLAs) have been widely recognized as a successful approach in industrial software development for improving productivity, software quality and time-to-market. In this paper, we focus on the usage of a PLA for a quite different purpose, namely, handling privacy constraints in Web personalization. To provide personalized services such as customized recommendations, a personalized Website collects users' personal data, which raises various privacy concerns. We aim at reconciling the benefits of web personalization with privacy constraints that come from users themselves as well as from privacy legislations and regulations that apply to a given user. We propose a dynamic, privacy-enabling personalization infrastructure and conceive it as a PLA. This infrastructure allows for dynamically selecting and instantiating personalization architectures that provide personalized services to each individual user and comply with the prevailing privacy constraints
9587091
Topology control for delay-constraint data collection in wireless sensor networks
Data collection is one of the most important operations in wireless sensor networks. Many practical applications require the real-time data transmission, such as monitoring, tracking, etc. In this paper, we import and define the topology control problem for delay-constraint data collection (TDDC), and then formalize this problem into an integer programming problem. As NP-Hardness of this problem, we present a load-aware power-increased topology control algorithm (namely LPTC) to heuristically solve the problem. The theoretical analysis shows that this algorithm can reach O(1)-approximation ratio for the linear networks. And we also analyze the impact of the delay-constraint on the worst-case for the planar networks. Moreover, this paper designs two localized algorithms, called as SDEL and DDEL, based on the area division for TDDC problem. The experimental results show that LPTC algorithm can save at least 17% power consumptions compared with HBH algorithm in many situations.