41865724
Improved Image Coding with Classified VQ and Side-Match VQ
A new scheme for vector quantization (VQ) is proposed in this paper. We employ side-match and classified criteria for designing VQ codebooks to combat blocking effects induced from high compression rates, and then we use the proposed algorithm to improve the reconstructed image quality. Simulation results demonstrate the better image quality to compare with that produced from conventional schemes objectively and subjectively, at the cost of reasonable encoding complexity.
18319018
A Multiple-Instance Neural Networks based Image Content Retrieval System
In this paper, we proposed a multiple-instance neural network (MINN) for content-based image retrieval (CBIR). In order to represent the rich content of an image without precisely image segmentation, the image retrieval problem is considered as a multiple-instance learning problem. A set of exemplar images are selected by a user, each of which is labelled as conceptual related (positive) or conceptual unrelated (negative) image. Then, the proposed MINN is trained by using the proposed learning algorithm to learn the user's preferred image concept from the positive and negative examples. Experimental results show that: (1) without image segmentation and using only the color histogram as the image feature, the MINN without relevance feedback performs slightly inferior to some leading image retrieval methods, and (2) the MINN with the relevance feedback can significantly improve the retrieving performance from 40.3% to 59.3%, which outperforms to the results of some leading image retrieval methods
16432489
Genetic watermarking based on transform-domain techniques
Abstract An innovative watermarking scheme based on genetic algorithms (GA) in the transform domain is proposed. It is robust against watermarking attacks, which are commonly employed in the literature. In addition, the watermarked image quality is also considered. In this paper, we employ GA for optimizing both the fundamentally conflicting requirements. Watermarking with GA is easy for implementation. We also examine the effectiveness of our scheme by checking the fitness function in GA, which includes both factors related to robustness and invisibility. Simulation results also show both the robustness under attacks, and the improvement in watermarked image quality with GA.
45740416
Automated Information Mining on Multimedia TV News Archives
This paper addresses an integrated information mining techniques for multimedia TV-news archive. The utilizes techniques from the fields of acoustic, image, and video analysis, for information retrieval on news story title, newsman and scene identification. The goal is to construct a compact yet meaningful abstraction of broadcast news video, allowing users to browse through large amounts of data in a non-linear fashion with flexibility and efficiency. By using acoustic analysis, the system can classify video into news versus commercials, with 90% accuracy on a data set of 400 hours TV-news recorded off the air from July 2003 to August of 2004. By applying speaker identification and/or image detection techniques, each news stories can be segmented with an accuracy of 96%. On screen captions or subtitles are recognized by OCR techniques to produce the text title of each news stories. The extracted title words can be used to link or to navigate more related News contents on the WWW. In cooperation with facial and scene analysis and recognition techniques, OCR results can provide users with multimodality query for specific news stories. Some experimental results are presented and discussed for the system reliability and performance evaluation and comparison.
10859494
Adaptive watermarking using relationships between wavelet coefficients
We propose an approach that hides watermarks in relationships between wavelet coefficients. This approach minimizes the perceptual distortion of watermarked images, measured by PSNR or just noticeable distortion (JND). Therefore, the strength of watermarks can be enlarged to increase the robustness of the watermarks, while keeping the quality of watermarked images visually acceptable. Experimental results show that the watermark is still detectable after common image processing operations such as JPEG compression, Gaussian filtering and sharpening.
38419730
Combined Encryption and Watermarking Approaches for Scalable Multimedia Coding
Intellectual Property (IP) protection is a critical element in a multimedia transmission system. Conventional IP protection schemes can be categorized into two major branches: encryption and watermarking. In this paper, a structure to perform layered access protection by combining encryption and robust watermarking is proposed and implemented. By taking advantage of the nature of cryptographic schemes and digital watermarking, the copyright of multimedia contents can be well protected. We adopt the scalable transmission method over the broadcasting environment. The embedded watermark can be thus extracted with high confidence. Then, the next-layer secrets can be perfectly decrypted and reconstructed. Finally, the media contents are recovered.
197229
The PIR integrated protein databases and data retrieval system
The Protein Information Resource (PIR) provides many databases and tools to support genomic and proteomic research. PIR is a member of UniProt—Universal Protein Resource—the central repository of protein sequence and function, which maintains UniProt Knowledgebase with extensively curated annotation, UniProt Reference databases to speed sequence searches, and UniProt Archive to reflect sequence history. PIR also provides PIRSF family classification system based on evolutionary relationships of full-length proteins, and iProClass integrated database of protein family, function, and structure. These databases are easily accessible from PIR web site using a centralized data retrieval system for information retrieval and knowledge discovery.
1841883
Mining putative regulatory elements in gene promoter regions of Saccharomyces cerevisiae
The availability of genome-wide gene expression data provides a unique set of genes from which we can decipher the mechanisms underlying the common transcriptional response. Transcription factors, which can bind to specific DNA sites, cooperatively regulate the transcription of genes. This study attempts to mine putative binding sites to investigate how combinations of the sites predicted from known sites and over-represented repetitive elements are distributed in the promoter regions of groups of functionally related genes. The over-represented repetitive elements appearing in the associations are possible transcription factor binding sites. The deduced association rules would facilitate to predict putative regulatory elements and to identify genes which are potentially co-regulated by the putative regulatory elements. Our proposed approach is applied to Saccharomyces cerevisiae and the promoter regions of yeast ORFs.
635773
Surface Alignment of 3D Spherical Harmonic Models: Application to Cardiac MRI Analysis
The spherical harmonic (SPHARM) description is a powerful surface modeling technique that can model arbitrarily shaped but simply connected 3D objects and has been used in many applications in medical imaging. Previous SPHARM techniques use the first order ellipsoid for establishing surface correspondence and aligning objects. However, this first order information may not be sufficient in many cases; a more general method for establishing surface correspondence would be to minimize the mean squared distance between two corresponding surfaces. In this paper, a new surface matching algorithm is proposed for 3D SPHARM models to achieve this goal. This algorithm employs a useful rotational property of spherical harmonic basis functions for a fast implementation. Applications of medical image analysis (e.g., spatio-temporal modeling of heart shape changes) are used to demonstrate this approach. Theoretical proofs and experimental results show that our approach is an accurate and flexible surface correspondence alignment method.
6353106
The Universal Protein Resource (UniProt): an expanding universe of protein information
The Universal Protein Resource (UniProt) provides a central resource on protein sequences and functional annotation with three database components, each addressing a key need in protein bioinformatics. The UniProt Knowledgebase (UniProtKB), comprising the manually annotated UniProtKB/Swiss-Prot section and the automatically annotated UniProtKB/TrEMBL section, is the preeminent storehouse of protein annotation. The extensive cross-references, functional and feature annotations and literature-based evidence attribution enable scientists to analyse proteins and query across databases. The UniProt Reference Clusters (UniRef) speed similarity searches via sequence space compression by merging sequences that are 100% (UniRef100), 90% (UniRef90) or 50% (UniRef50) identical. Finally, the UniProt Archive (UniParc) stores all publicly available protein sequences, containing the history of sequence data with links to the source databases. UniProt databases continue to grow in size and in availability of information. Recent and upcoming changes to database contents, formats, controlled vocabularies and services are described. New download availability includes all major releases of UniProtKB, sequence collections by taxonomic division and complete proteomes. A bibliography mapping service has been added, and an ID mapping service will be available soon. UniProt databases can be accessed online at or downloaded at .
8641332
Magnetic diffusion: Scalability, reliability, and QoS of data dissemination mechanisms for wireless sensor networks
Envisioning a new generation of sensor network applications in healthcare and workplace safety, we seek mechanisms that provide timely and reliable transmissions of mission-critical data. Inspired by the physics in magnetism, we propose a simple diffusion-based data dissemination mechanism, referred to as the magnetic diffusion (MD). In that, the data sink, functioning like the magnet, propagates the magnetic charge to set up the magnetic field. Under the influence of the magnetic field, the sensor data, functioning like the metallic nails, are attracted towards the sink. We compare MD to the state-of-the-art mechanisms and find that MD: (1) performs the best in timely delivery of data, (2) achieves high data reliability in the presence of network dynamics, and yet (3) works as energy efficiently as the state of the art. These suggest that MD is an effective data dissemination solution to the mission-critical applications.