ECISER: Efficient Clip-art Image SEgmentation by Re-rasterization

Clip-art image segmentation is widely used as an essential step to solve many vision problems such as colorization and vectorization. Many of these applications not only demand accurate segmentation results, but also have little tolerance for time cost, which leads to the main challenge of this kind of segmentation. However, most existing segmentation techniques are found not sufficient for this purpose due to either their high computation cost or low accuracy. To address such issues, we propose a novel segmentation approach, ECISER, which is well-suited in this context. The basic idea of ECISER is to take advantage of the particular nature of cartoon images and connect image segmentation with aliased rasterization. Based on such relationship, a clip-art image can be quickly segmented into regions by re-rasterization of the original image and several other computationally efficient techniques developed in this paper. Experimental results show that our method achieves dramatic computational speedups over the current state-of-the-art approaches, while preserving almost the same quality of results.     

Food recognition using neural network classifier and multiple hypotheses image segmentation

ABSTRACT

This paper proposes the multiple-hypotheses image segmentation and feed-forward neural network classifier for food recognition to improve the performance. Initially, the food or meal image is given as input. Then, the segmentation is applied to identify the regions, where a particular food item is located using salient region detection, multi-scale segmentation, and fast rejection. Then, the features of every food item are extracted by the global feature and local feature extraction. After the features are obtained, the classification is performed for each segmented region using a feed-forward neural network model. Finally, the calorie value is computed with the aid of (i) food volume and (ii) calorie and nutrition measure based on mass value. The experimental results and performance evaluation are validated. The outcome of the proposed method attains 0.947 for Macro Average Accuracy (MAA) and 0.959 for Standard Accuracy (SA), which provides better classification performance.     

Cluster analysis in industrial market segmentation through artificial neural network

Market segmentation has commonly applied cluster analysis. This study intends to make the comparison of conventional two-stage method with proposed two-stage method through the simulated data. The proposed two-stage method is the combination of self-organizing feature maps and K-means method. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme is better than the conventional two-stage method based on the rate of misclassification.     

A Novel Segmentation and Feedback Model for Resolving Contention in Optical Burst Switching

A novel segmentation and feedback model (SFM) applied to resolve contention is proposed. Simulation and performance analyses show that the SFM effectively avoids contentions in optical burst switching (OBS). The long delay time of deflection routing and the immature technology of wavelength converters and optical buffers are not deployed in the SFM. The SFM does not only realize fast switching but also allows preemption by higher priority bursts.     

Learning-based dynamic coupling of discrete and continuous trackers

We present a data-driven dynamic coupling between discrete and continuous methods for tracking objects of high dofs, which overcomes the limitations of previous techniques. In our approach, two trackers work in parallel, and the coupling between them is based on the tracking error. We use a model-based continuous method to achieve accurate results and, in cases of failure, we re-initialize the model using our discrete tracker. This method maintains the accuracy of a more tightly coupled system, while increasing its efficiency. At any given frame, our discrete tracker uses the current and several previous frames to search into a database for the best matching solution. For improved robustness, object configuration sequences, rather than single configurations, are stored in the database. We apply our framework to the problem of 3D hand tracking from image sequences and the discrimination between fingerspelling and continuous signs in American Sign Language.     

An improved watershed algorithm based on efficient computation of shortest paths

The present paper describes a new algorithm to calculate the watershed transform through rain simulation of greyscale digital images by means of pixel arrowing. The efficiency of this method is based on limiting the necessary neighbouring operations to compute the transform to the outmost, and in the total number of scannings performed over the whole image. The experiments demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is able to significantly reduce the running time of the fastest known algorithm without involving any loss of efficiency.     

Image segmentation towards new image representation methods

Very low bit-rate video coding has recently become one of the most important areas of image communication and a large variety of applications have already been identified. Since conventional approaches are reaching a saturation point, in terms of coding efficiency, a new generation of video coding techniques, aiming at a deeper “understanding” of the image, is being studied. In this context, image analysis, particularly the identification of objects or regions in images (segmentation), is a very important step. This paper describes a segmentation algorithm based on split and merge. Images are first simplified using mathematical morphology operators, which eliminate perceptually less relevant details. The simplified image is then split according to a quad tree structure and the resulting regions are finally merged in three steps: merge, elimination of small regions and control of the number of regions.     

Convex relaxation for a 3D spatiotemporal segmentation model using the primal-dual method

A method based on 3D videos is proposed for multi-target segmentation and tracking with a moving viewing system. A spatiotemporal energy functional is built up to perform motion segmentation and estimation simultaneously. To overcome the limitation of the local minimum problem with the level set method, a convex relaxation method is applied to the 3D spatiotemporal segmentation model. The relaxed convex model is independent of the initial condition. A primal-dual algorithm is used to improve computational efficiency. Several indoor experiments show the validity of the proposed method.     

基于像素拓展的图形分割与合成的方法研究

提出了一种新的图像分割与合成方法。对于图像的分割,提出了新的分割算法,先是手工将一些明显属于物体和明显属于背景的像素分割出来,然后创建一个小矩形区域进行像素拓展迭代,迭代到图像边界为止。对于图像的合成,采用平均法,设计了新的算法,使物体的基本颜色保持不变的同时,降低了合成图像中从源图像分割的物体与新背景的差异,并使得其饱和度、色度、强度更加自然真实。     

RAFNet: RGB-D attention feature fusion network for indoor semantic segmentation

Semantic segmentation based on the complementary information from RGB and depth images has recently gained great popularity, but due to the difference between RGB and depth maps, how to effectively use RGB-D information is still a problem. In this paper, we propose a novel RGB-D semantic segmentation network named RAFNet, which can selectively gather features from the RGB and depth information. Specifically, we construct an architecture with three parallel branches and propose several complementary attention modules. This structure enables a fusion branch and we add the Bi-directional Multi-step Propagation (BMP) strategy to it, which can not only retain the feature streams of the original RGB and depth branches but also fully utilize the feature flow of the fusion branch. There are three kinds of complementary attention modules that we have constructed. The RGB-D fusion module can effectively extract important features from the RGB and depth branch streams. The refinement module can reduce the loss of semantic information and the context aggregation module can help propagate and integrate information better. We train and evaluate our model on NYUDv2 and SUN-RGBD datasets, and prove that our model achieves state-of-the-art performances.