Interactive image segmentation via kernel propagation

In this paper, we propose a new approach to interactive image segmentation via kernel propagation (KP), called KP Cut. The key to success in interactive image segmentation is to preserve characteristics of the user?s interactive input and maintain data-coherence effectively. To achieve this, we employ KP which is very effective in propagating the given supervised information into the entire data set. KP first learns a small-size seed-kernel matrix, and then propagates it into a large-size full-kernel matrix. It is based on a learned kernel, and thus can fit the given data better than a predefined kernel. Based on KP, we first generate a small-size seed-kernel matrix from the user?s interactive input. Then, the seed-kernel matrix is propagated into the full-kernel matrix of the entire image. During the propagation, foreground objects are effectively segmented from background. Experimental results demonstrate that KP Cut effectively extracts foreground objects from background, and outperforms the state-of-the-art methods for interactive image segmentation.     

Two-stage nonparametric kernel leaning: From label propagation to kernel propagation

We introduce a kernel learning algorithm, called kernel propagation (KP), to learn a nonparametric kernel from a mixture of a few pairwise constraints and plentiful unlabeled samples. Specifically, KP consists of two stages: the first is to learn a small-sized sub-kernel matrix just restricted to the samples with constrains, and the second is to propagate this learned sub-kernel matrix into a large-sized full-kernel matrix over all samples. As an interesting fact, our approach exposes a natural connection between KP and label propagation (LP), that is, one LP can naturally induce its KP counterpart. Thus, we develop three KPs from the three typical LPs correspondingly. Following the idea in KP, we also naturally develop an out-of-sample extension to directly capture a kernel matrix for outside-training data without the need of relearning. The final experiments verify that our developments are more efficient, more error-tolerant and also comparably effective in comparison with the state-of-the-art algorithm.     

Learning low-rank kernel matrices for constrained clustering

Constrained clustering methods (that usually use must-link and/or cannot-link constraints) have been received much attention in the last decade. Recently, kernel adaptation or kernel learning has been considered as a powerful approach for constrained clustering. However, these methods usually either allow only special forms of kernels or learn non-parametric kernel matrices and scale very poorly. Therefore, they either learn a metric that has low flexibility or are applicable only on small data sets due to their high computational complexity. In this paper, we propose a more efficient non-linear metric learning method that learns a low-rank kernel matrix from must-link and cannot-link constraints and the topological structure of data. We formulate the proposed method as a trace ratio optimization problem and learn appropriate distance metrics through finding optimal low-rank kernel matrices. We solve the proposed optimization problem much more efficiently than SDP solvers. Additionally, we show that the spectral clustering methods can be considered as a special form of low-rank kernel learning methods. Extensive experiments have demonstrated the superiority of the proposed method compared to recently introduced kernel learning methods.     

融合块对角约束的鲁棒低秩多核聚类

针对现有的多核学习(multiple kernel learning, MKL)子空间聚类方法忽略噪声和特征空间中数据的低秩结构问题,提出一种新的鲁棒多核子空间聚类方法(low-rank robust multiple kernel clustering, LRMKC),该方法结合块对角表示(block diagonal representation, BDR)与低秩共识核(low-rank consensus kernel, LRCK)学习,可以更好地挖掘数据的潜在结构.为了学习最优共识核,设计一种基于混合相关熵度量(mixture correntropy induced metric, MCIM)的自动加权策略,其不仅为每个核设置最优权重,而且通过抑制噪声提高模型的鲁棒性;为了探索特征空间数据的低秩结构,提出一种非凸低秩共识核学习方法;考虑到亲和度矩阵的块对角性质,对系数矩阵应用块对角约束.LRMKC将MKL、LRCK与BDR巧妙融合,以迭代提高各种方法的效率,最终形成一个处理非线性结构数据的全局优化方法.与最先进的MKL子空间聚类方法相比,通过在图像和文本数据集上的大量实验验证了LRMKC的优越性.     

基于核模糊聚类的变分水平集医学图像分割方法

针对现有无须重新初始化的变分水平集分割模型, 存在对边缘模糊、对比度差等图像不是很敏感、分割效果不理想的问题, 提出了一种基于核模糊聚类的变分水平集医学图像分割方法。将原始图像进行核模糊C-均值聚类, 把得到的聚类结果带入初始化水平集函数得到初始轮廓, 最后利用李模型的分割方法实现最终的图像分割。实验结果表明, 该方法具有良好的分割质量, 适应性强, 同时可减少迭代次数。     

Learning a Mahalanobis distance metric for data clustering and classification

Distance metric is a key issue in many machine learning algorithms. This paper considers a general problem of learning from pairwise constraints in the form of must-links and cannot-links. As one kind of side information, a must-link indicates the pair of the two data points must be in a same class, while a cannot-link indicates that the two data points must be in two different classes. Given must-link and cannot-link information, our goal is to learn a Mahalanobis distance metric. Under this metric, we hope the distances of point pairs in must-links are as small as possible and those of point pairs in cannot-links are as large as possible. This task is formulated as a constrained optimization problem, in which the global optimum can be obtained effectively and efficiently. Finally, some applications in data clustering, interactive natural image segmentation and face pose estimation are given in this paper. Experimental results illustrate the effectiveness of our algorithm.     

Semi-supervised clustering with metric learning: An adaptive kernel method

Most existing representative works in semi-supervised clustering do not sufficiently solve the violation problem of pairwise constraints. On the other hand, traditional kernel methods for semi-supervised clustering not only face the problem of manually tuning the kernel parameters due to the fact that no sufficient supervision is provided, but also lack a measure that achieves better effectiveness of clustering. In this paper, we propose an adaptive Semi-supervised Clustering Kernel Method based on Metric learning (SCKMM) to mitigate the above problems. Specifically, we first construct an objective function from pairwise constraints to automatically estimate the parameter of the Gaussian kernel. Then, we use pairwise constraint-based K-means approach to solve the violation issue of constraints and to cluster the data. Furthermore, we introduce metric learning into nonlinear semi-supervised clustering to improve separability of the data for clustering. Finally, we perform clustering and metric learning simultaneously. Experimental results on a number of real-world data sets validate the effectiveness of the proposed method.     

显著特征融合的主颜色聚类分割算法*

针对颜色密度聚类分割模型容易产生误分割的问题,提出基于视觉显著性调节的主颜色聚类分割算法.首先,根据空间颜色信息和Mean-shift算法平滑结果分别计算图像的全局显著特征和区域显著特征,并融合2类显著特征作为特征空间聚类的约束项.然后,采用核密度估计方法计算图像主颜色作为初始类,并将显著特征作为调节因子进行聚类分割.最后,进行区域合并.在标准的分割图像库上进行实验并与多种算法对比,结果表明,文中算法具有更高的区域轮廓准确度,并且有效利用图像显著特征,降低密度聚类形成的区域不一致性,提高像素聚类的精度和分割的鲁棒性.     

统计聚类模型研究综述

聚类分析在工程领域如生物序列分析、图像分割、文本分析等广泛应用。聚类方法涉及广泛,而基于概率统计理论的方法是其中的一大类。从最基本的FCM模型出发,阐述了势函数(Potential)、山脉(Mountain)函数聚类方法、信息熵方法,分析比较了这些方法的适用范围和优缺点,介绍了当今流行的核聚类、谱聚类和高斯混合模型聚类方法及其求解过程,并分析了它们的优缺点、计算复杂性等指标。最后,介绍了一些崭新的聚类模型的研究方向。     

基于连续预测的半监督学习图像语义标注

为了在图像底层特征与高层语义之间建立关系,提高图像自动标注的精确度,结合基于图学习的方法和基于分类的标注算法,提出了基于连续预测的半监督学习图像语义标注的方法,并对该方法的复杂度进行分析。该方法利用标签数据提供的信息和标签事例与无标签事例之间的关系,根据邻接点(事例)属于同一个类的事实,构建K邻近图。用一个基于图的分类器,通过核函数有效地计算邻接信息。在建立图的基础上,把经过划分后的样本节点集通过基于连续预测的多标签半监督学习方法进行标签传递。实验表明,提出的算法在图像标注中的标注词的平均查准率、平均查全率方面有显著的提高。     

Energy based competitive learning

This paper addresses the three important issues associated with competitive learning clustering, which are auto-initialization, adaptation to clusters of different size and sparsity, and eliminating the disturbance caused by outliers. Although many competitive learning methods have been developed to deal with some of these problems, few of them can solve all the three problems simultaneously. In this paper, we propose a new competitive learning clustering method termed energy based competitive learning (EBCL) to simultaneously tackle these problems. Auto-initialization is achieved by extracting samples of high energy to form a core point set, whereby connected components are obtained as initial clusters. To adapt to clusters of different size and sparsity, a novel competition mechanism, namely, size-sparsity balance of clusters (SSB), is developed to select a winning prototype. For eliminating the disturbance caused by outliers, another new competition mechanism, namely, adaptive learning rate based on samples' energy (ALR), is proposed to update the winner. Data clustering experiments on 2000 simulated datasets comprising clusters of different size and sparsity, as well as with outliers, have been performed to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. Then we apply EBCL to automatic color image segmentation. Comparison results show that the proposed EBCL outperforms existing competitive learning algorithms.     

Spectral clustering with fuzzy similarity measure

Spectral clustering algorithms have been successfully used in the field of pattern recognition and computer vision. The widely used similarity measure for spectral clustering is Gaussian kernel function which measures the similarity between data points. However, it is difficult for spectral clustering to choose the suitable scaling parameter in Gaussian kernel similarity measure. In this paper, utilizing the prototypes and partition matrix obtained by fuzzy c-means clustering algorithm, we develop a fuzzy similarity measure for spectral clustering (FSSC). Furthermore, we introduce the K-nearest neighbor sparse strategy into FSSC and apply the sparse FSSC to texture image segmentation. In our experiments, we firstly perform some experiments on artificial data to verify the efficiency of the proposed fuzzy similarity measure. Then we analyze the parameters sensitivity of our method. Finally, we take self-tuning spectral clustering and Nyström methods for baseline comparisons, and apply these three methods to the synthetic texture and remote sensing image segmentation. The experimental results show that the proposed method is significantly effective and stable.     

Locally linear metric adaptation with application to semi-supervised clustering and image retrieval

Many computer vision and pattern recognition algorithms are very sensitive to the choice of an appropriate distance metric. Some recent research sought to address a variant of the conventional clustering problem called semi-supervised clustering, which performs clustering in the presence of some background knowledge or supervisory information expressed as pairwise similarity or dissimilarity constraints. However, existing metric learning methods for semi-supervised clustering mostly perform global metric learning through a linear transformation. In this paper, we propose a new metric learning method that performs nonlinear transformation globally but linear transformation locally. In particular, we formulate the learning problem as an optimization problem and present three methods for solving it. Through some toy data sets, we show empirically that our locally linear metric adaptation (LLMA) method can handle some difficult cases that cannot be handled satisfactorily by previous methods. We also demonstrate the effectiveness of our method on some UCI data sets. Besides applying LLMA to semi-supervised clustering, we have also used it to improve the performance of content-based image retrieval systems through metric learning. Experimental results based on two real-world image databases show that LLMA significantly outperforms other methods in boosting the image retrieval performance.     

A framework for the segmentation of high-resolution satellite imagery using modified seeded-region growing and region merging

Image segmentation is becoming increasingly important in areas such as object-oriented image classification in the field of remote-sensing image analysis. We present a new approach for the image segmentation of a high-resolution pan-sharpened satellite image based on modified seeded-region growing and region merging. First, we conduct some pre-processing prior to image segmentation to improve segmentation quality. The initial seeds are automatically selected using the proposed block-based seed-selection method. After automatic selection of significant seeds, initial segmentation is achieved by applying the modified seeded-region growing procedure. Finally, region merging, based on a region-adjacency graph, is carried out in post-processing to obtain the final segmentation result. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method shows better performance than other approaches, and has good potential for its application to the segmentation of high-resolution satellite imagery.     

Learning to Recognize Objects with Little Supervision

This paper shows (i) improvements over state-of-the-art local feature recognition systems, (ii) how to formulate principled models for automatic local feature selection in object class recognition when there is little supervised data, and (iii) how to formulate sensible spatial image context models using a conditional random field for integrating local features and segmentation cues (superpixels). By adopting sparse kernel methods, Bayesian learning techniques and data association with constraints, the proposed model identifies the most relevant sets of local features for recognizing object classes, achieves performance comparable to the fully supervised setting, and obtains excellent results for image classification.     

基于K均值聚类和粒子群优化的多核SVM图像分割

图像分割是图像理解和计算机视觉的重要内容.针对单核SVM在进行图像分割过程中不能兼顾分割精度高和泛化性能好的问题,提出一种基于K均值聚类和优化多核SVM的图像分割算法.该算法首先运用K均值聚类算法自动选取训练样本,然后提取其颜色特征和纹理特征作为训练样本的特征属性,并使用其对构造的多核SVM分割模型进行训练,最后用粒子群优化算法对多核核参数、惩罚因子以及核权重系数联合寻优,使生成的多核SVM具有更好的分割性能.实验结果表明,本文方法在有效提取图像目标细节的同时,获得了更高的分割精度,与基于单核的SVM分割模型相比,具有更强的泛化能力.     

基于最大熵的模糊核聚类图像分割方法

传统聚类算法易陷入局部极值,在数据线性不可分时分类效果较差。为此,提出一种基于最大熵的模糊核聚类图像分割方法。采用最大熵算法对原始图像进行初步分割,求得初始聚类中心;引入Mercer核函数,把输入空间的样本映射到高维特征空间,并在特征空间中进行图像分割。实验结果表明,该方法能减少迭代次数,使分类结果更稳定,从而较好地把目标从背景中分割出来。     

一种基于约束关系的电子病历图像分割核聚类算法

针对电子病历中图像分割问题，提出了基于约束关系的改进核聚类算法，该算法通过引入约束关系在图像分割前进行修正，从而提高图像分割效果。该核聚类算法在MRI中电子病历图像分割实验的结果表明，施加约束关系的核聚类算法能有效地解决电子病历图像中含噪声以及灰度不均匀等问题，具有一定的鲁棒性和较好的图像分割效果。     

基于改进模糊聚类算法的路面裂纹图像分割

图像分割是路面裂纹识别的关键步骤,图像分割的效果直接影响路面裂纹的识别和分类。针对路面图像模糊核均值聚类算法中迭代结果容易出现局部最优的问题。提出一种改进的模糊核均值聚类算法,利用OTSU算法先获得最佳阈值,再通过该阈值得到各聚类的灰度均值,将这些均值作为聚类中心的初始值以实现模糊聚类算法。路面图像裂纹分割试验结果证明,提出的改进算法实现初始聚类中心的优化,避免算法出现局部最优,提高了分割效果,可以应用到路面裂纹图像分割的工程应用中。