Collaborative Personalization of Image Enhancement

This paper presents methods for personalization of image enhancement, which could be deployed in photo editing software and also in cloud-based image sharing services. We observe that users do have different preferences for enhancing images and that there are groups of people that share similarities in preferences. Our goal is to predict enhancements for novel images belonging to a particular user based on her specific taste, to facilitate the retouching process on large image collections. To that end, we describe an enhancement framework that can learn user preferences in an individual or collaborative way. The proposed system is based on a novel interactive application that allows to collect user’s enhancement preferences. We propose algorithms to predict personalized enhancements by learning a preference model from the provided information. Furthermore, the algorithm improves prediction performance as more enhancement examples are progressively added. We conducted experiments via Amazon Mechanical Turk to collect preferences from a large group of people. Results show that the proposed framework can suggest image enhancements more targeted to individual users than commercial tools with global auto-enhancement functionalities.     

Mobile collaborative medical display system

Because of recent advances in wireless communication technologies, the world of mobile computing is flourishing with a variety of applications. In this study, we present an integrated architecture for a personal digital assistant (PDA)-based mobile medical display system that supports collaborative work between remote users. We aim to develop a system that enables users in different regions to share a working environment for collaborative visualization with the potential for exploring huge medical datasets. Our system consists of three major components: mobile client, gateway, and parallel rendering server. The mobile client serves as a front end and enables users to choose the visualization and control parameters interactively and cooperatively. The gateway handles requests and responses between mobile clients and the rendering server for efficient communication. Through the gateway, it is possible to share working environments between users, allowing them to work together in computer supported cooperative work (CSCW) mode. Finally, the parallel rendering server is responsible for performing heavy visualization tasks. Our experience indicates that some features currently available to our mobile clients for collaborative scientific visualization are limited due to the poor performance of mobile devices and the low bandwidth of wireless connections. However, as mobile devices and wireless network systems are experiencing considerable elevation in their capabilities, we believe that our methodology will be utilized effectively in building quite responsive, useful mobile collaborative medical systems in the very near future.     

Distributed design review using tangible augmented technical drawings

In this work we integrate augmented reality technology in a product development process using real technical drawings as a tangible interface for design review. We present an original collaborative framework for Augmented Design Review Over Network (ADRON). It provides the following features: augmented technical drawings, interactive FEM simulation, multimodal annotation and chat tools, web content integration and collaborative client/server architecture. Our framework is intended to use common hardware instead of expensive and complex virtual or augmented facilities. We designed the interface specifically for users with little or no augmented reality expertise proposing tangible interfaces for data review and visual editing for all the functions and configurations. Two case studies are presented and discussed: a real-time “touch and see” stress/strain simulation and a collaborative distributed design review session of an industrial component.     

Leveraging Java applets: toward collaboration transparency in Java

Widespread use of the Internet is giving rise to the need for collaborative applications that link users at remote sites. Many toolkits support the development of collaboration-aware applications, those developed specifically for cooperative work by multiple users. Another approach is collaboration transparency, the collaborative use of applications originally developed for a single user. When the runtime environment supports collaboration transparency, an application programmer need not write new code to make an application collaborative. Thus, collaboration transparency leverages the existing base of single user applications by extending them to collaborative use. We review options for providing collaboration transparency. We also discuss how collaboration transparency can be incorporated into Sun Microsystems' Java, the most widely used vehicle for developing interactive World Wide Web applications     

协同系统中三维图形渲染的分布式架构

在三维协同系统中,三维图形的渲染效率和传输速度影响到了系统的整体效率。本文采用分布式架构保证三维图形在协同系统中的渲染和传输效率。把渲染好的三维图形以拍照的形式生成图片在网络中传输,打破了传统三维图形渲染对浏览器的限制以及对移动终端消耗巨大资源的局限。服务器端通过建立多线程TCP通信,既保证了用户交互操作的可靠性,同时又避免了多个用户同时操作三维图形时出现的操作二义性。最终实现用户与三维图形的实时交互,从而提高用户体验。      

Component-based tailorability: Enabling highly flexible software applications

Component technologies are perceived as an important means to keep software architectures flexible. Flexibility offered by component technologies typically addresses software developers at design time. However, the design of software which should support social systems, such as work groups or communities, also demands ‘use-time’, or technically spoken, ‘run-time’ flexibility. In this paper, we summarize a decade of research efforts on component-based approaches to flexibilize groupware applications at run-time. We address the user as a ‘casual programmer’ who develops and individualizes software for his work context. To deal with the challenges of run-time flexibility, we developed a design approach which covers three levels: software architecture, user interface, and collaboration support. With regard to the software architecture, a component model, called FlexiBeans, has been developed. The FreEvolve platform serves as an environment in which component-based applications can be tailored at run-time. Additionally, we have developed three different types of graphical user interfaces, enabling users to tailor their applications by recomposing components. To enable collaborative tailoring activities, we have integrated functions that allow sharing component structures among users. We also present different types of support techniques which are integrated into the user interface in order to enable users’ individual and collaborative tailoring activities. We conclude by elaborating on the notion of ‘software infrastructure’ which offers a holistic approach to support design activities of professional and non-professional programmers.     

mStar: enabling collaborative applications on the Internet

Distributed, real-time multimedia applications on the Internet permit users to cooperate in new and more interesting ways for collaborative teamwork and net-based learning. The mStar environment features an agent-based architecture, implemented in Java, which preserves compatibility with the dominant Mbone paradigm for IP multicast. The shared software environment provides an integrated solution for generating, presenting, scoring, and editing media in collaborative applications. In particular, mStar supports developers in creating distributed, real-time multimedia software applications such as e-meetings. mStar enhances both distance education and collaborative teamwork by presenting a uniform user interface for real-time audio and video, shared whiteboard, char, voting, and distributed Web-based presentations. The system also supports on-demand recording and session playback     

Interactive multi-user video retrieval systems

In this paper we present two interactive multi-user systems for video search and browsing. The first is composed by web applications which allows multiuser interaction in a distributed environment; such applications are based on the Rich Internet Application paradigm, designed to obtain the levels of responsiveness and interactivity typical of a desktop application. The second system implements a multi-user collaborative application within a single location, exploiting multi-touch devices. Both systems use the same backend, based on a service oriented architecture (SOA) that provides services for automatic and manual annotation, and an ontology-based video search and browsing engine. Ontology-based browsing let users to inspect the content of video collections; user queries are expanded through ontology reasoning. User-centered field trials of the systems, conducted to assess the user experience and satisfaction, have shown that the approach followed to design these interfaces is extremely appreciated by professional archivists and people working on multimedia.     

基于Android的智能图像共享系统的研究

Android以其开源性、易用性和良好的用户体验,成为智能手机及平板电脑主流的操作系统和移动应用开发平台。对Android系统架构以及基于此平台的应用程序的设计和实现过程进行研究,设计并实现了智能图像共享系统。该系统顺应3G移动互联网技术和微博蓬勃发展的趋势,实现了移动终端对图像的上传、特效编辑、即拍即传、地理信息共享等功能。     

JPernLite: extensible transaction services for the WWW

Concurrency control is one of the key problems in design and implementation of collaborative systems such as hypertext/hypermedia systems, CAD/CAM systems, and software development environments. Most existing systems store data in specialized databases with built-in concurrency control policies, usually implemented via locking. It is desirable to construct such collaborative systems on top of the World Wide Web, but most Web servers do not support even conventional transactions, let alone distributed (multi-Website) transactions or flexible concurrency control mechanisms oriented toward team work-such as event notification, shared locks, and fine granularity locks. We present a transaction server that operates independently of Web servers or the collaborative systems, to fill the concurrency control gap. By default, the transaction server enforces the conventional atomic transaction model, where sets of operations are performed in an all-or-nothing fashion and isolated from concurrent users. The server can be tailored dynamically to apply more sophisticated concurrency control policies appropriate for collaboration. The transaction server also supports applications employing information resources other than Web servers, such as legacy databases, CORBA objects, and other hypermedia systems. Our implementation permits a wide range of system architecture styles     

The Telemedicine benchmark--a general tool to measure and compare the performance of video conferencing equipment in the telemedicine area.

In this paper, we describe the 'Telemedicine Benchmark' (TMB), which is a set of standard procedures, protocols and measurements to test reliability and levels of performance of data exchange in a telemedicine session. We have put special emphasis on medical imaging, i.e. digital image transfer, joint viewing and editing and 3D manipulation. With the TMB, we can compare the aptitude of different video conferencing software systems for telemedicine issues and the effect of different network technologies (ISDN, xDSL, ATM, Ethernet). The evaluation criteria used are length of delays and functionality. For the application of the TMB, a data set containing radiological images and medical reports was set up. Considering the Benchmark protocol, this data set has to be exchanged between the partners of the session. The Benchmark covers file transfer, whiteboard usage, application sharing and volume data analysis and compression. The TMB has proven to be a useful tool in several evaluation issues.     

Interactive Optimization of Generative Image Modelling using Sequential Subspace Search and Content‐based Guidance

Generative image modeling techniques such as GAN demonstrate highly convincing image generation result. However, user interaction is often necessary to obtain desired results. Existing attempts add interactivity but require either tailored architectures or extra data. We present a human‐in‐the‐optimization method that allows users to directly explore and search the latent vector space of generative image modelling. Our system provides multiple candidates by sampling the latent vector space, and the user selects the best blending weights within the subspace using multiple sliders. In addition, the user can express their intention through image editing tools. The system samples latent vectors based on inputs and presents new candidates to the user iteratively. An advantage of our formulation is that one can apply our method to arbitrary pre‐trained model without developing specialized architecture or data. We demonstrate our method with various generative image modelling applications, and show superior performance in a comparative user study with prior art iGAN [ZKSE16].     

Collaborative Interaction for Videos on Mobile Devices Based on Sketch Gestures

With the rapid progress of the network and mobile techniques, mobile devices such as mobile phones and portable devices, have become one of the most important parts in common life.Efficient techniques for watching, navigating and sharing videos on mobile devices collaboratively are appealing in mobile environment.In this paper, we propose a novel approach supporting efficiently collaborative operations on videos with sketch gestures.Furthermore, effective collaborative annotation and navigation operations are given to interact with videos on mobile devices for facilitating users’ communication based on mobile devices’ characteristics.Gesture operation and collaborative interaction architecture are given and improved during the interactive process.Finally, a user study is conducted showing that the effectivity and collaborative accessibility of video exploration is improved.     

Paint and Click: Unified Interactions for Image Boundaries

Image boundaries are a fundamental component of many interactive digital photography techniques, enabling applications such as segmentation, panoramas, and seamless image composition. Interactions for image boundaries often rely on two complementary but separate approaches: editing via painting or clicking constraints. In this work, we provide a novel, unified approach for interactive editing of pairwise image boundaries that combines the ease of painting with the direct control of constraints. Rather than a sequential coupling, this new formulation allows full use of both interactions simultaneously, giving users unprecedented flexibility for fast boundary editing. To enable this new approach, we provide technical advancements. In particular, we detail a reformulation of image boundaries as a problem of finding cycles, expanding and correcting limitations of the previous work. Our new formulation provides boundary solutions for painted regions with performance on par with state‐of‐the‐art specialized, paint‐only techniques. In addition, we provide instantaneous exploration of the boundary solution space with user constraints. Finally, we provide examples of common graphics applications impacted by our new approach.     

基于P2P的协作式垃圾邮件检测系统

对于某一封邮件是否为垃圾邮件,很多的邮件用户可能有着相同的看法.利用这一特性,提出了一种基于P2P的协作式垃圾邮件检测系统的设计方案.系统借助的信息摘要技术,在保护用户隐私的同时,提供了较好的抗攻击能力.在邮件服务器层构建了有超级节点的P2P网络,实现了垃圾邮件信息的分布式共享.同时在用户层设计了基于多Agent的体系结构,在利用邮件服务器对收到邮件进行初步分析的结果的同时,利用个性化贝叶斯Agent,可以实现一定程度的个性化垃圾邮件检测服务.     

High performance medical image processing in client/server-environments

As 3D scanning devices like computer tomography (CT) or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) become more widespread, there is also an increasing need for powerful computers that can handle the enormous amounts of data with acceptable response times. We describe an approach to parallelize some of the more frequently used image processing operators on distributed memory architectures. It is desirable to make such specialized machines accessible on a network, in order to save costs by sharing resources. We present a client/server approach that is specifically tailored to the interactive work with volume data. Our image processing server implements a volume visualization method that allows the user to assess the segmentation of anatomical structures. We can enhance the presentation by combining the volume visualizations on a viewing station with additional graphical elements, which can be manipulated in real-time. The methods presented were verified on two applications for different domains.     

多用户通信机制中支持隐私保护的属性基动态广播加密

云计算和物联网的快速发展使多用户信息共享机制备受关注,然而当用户将个人数据上传到云服务器与不同用户共享时,未经授权的用户和不可信的第三方云服务提供商会窥探这些隐私数据,对数据安全和用户隐私构成严重威胁。此外,多用户共享机制还存在访问控制不灵活、用户撤销和动态管理等问题。为了解决这些问题,文章结合属性基加密与广播加密技术提出一种动态广播加密机制。该方案在保证数据安全的同时,利用不经意传输协议,实现了接收者的匿名,保护了用户隐私。此外,该方案还支持新用户随时动态加入系统,且不影响原用户在系统中的解密能力,并实现了用户撤销和快速解密。性能分析表明,该方案较已有方案在安全性和效率方面有明显优势。     

GRIP: A Group Recommender Based on Interactive Preference Model

Numerous applications of recommender systems can provide us a tool to understand users. A group recommender reflects the analysis of multiple users’ behavior, and aims to provide each user of the group with the things they involve according to users’ preferences. Currently, most of the existing group recommenders ignore the interaction among the users. However, in the course of group activities, the interactive preferences will dramatically affect the success of recommenders. The problem becomes even more challenging when some unknown preferences of users are partly influenced by other users in the group. An interaction-based method named GRIP (Group Recommender Based on Interactive Preference) is presented which can use group activity history information and recommender post-rating feedback mechanism to generate interactive preference parameters. To evaluate the performance of the proposed method, it is compared with traditional collaborative filtering on the MovieLens dataset. The results indicate the superiority of the GRIP recommender for multi-users regarding both validity and accuracy.     

AR/MR Remote Collaboration on Physical Tasks: A Review

This paper provides a review of research into using Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality(MR) for remote collaboration on physical tasks. AR/MR-based remote collaboration on physical tasks has recently become more prominent in academic research and engineering applications. It has great potential in many fields, such as real-time remote medical consultation, education, training, maintenance, remote assistance in engineering, and other remote collaborative tasks. However, to the best of our knowledge there has not been any comprehensive review of research in AR/MR remote collaboration on physical tasks. Therefore, this paper presents a comprehensive survey of research between 2000 and 2018 in this domain. We collected 215 papers, more than 80% of which were published between 2010 and 2018, and all relevant works are discussed at length. Then we elaborate on the review from typical architectures, applications (e.g., industry, telemedicine, architecture, teleducation and others), and empathic computing. Next, we made an in-depth review of the papers from seven aspects: (1) collection and classification research, (2) using 3D scene reconstruction environments and live panorama, (3) periodicals and conducting research, (4) local and remote user interfaces, (5) features of user interfaces commonly used, (6) architecture and sharing non-verbal cues, (7) applications and toolkits. We find that most papers (160 articles, 74.4%) are published in conferences, using co-located collaboration to emulate remote collaboration is adopted by more than half (126, 58.6%) of the reviewed papers, the shared non-verbal cues can be mainly classified into five types (Virtual Replicas or Physical Proxy(VRP), AR Annotations or a Cursor Pointer(ARACP), avatar, gesture, and gaze), the local/remote interface is mainly divided into four categories (Head-Mounted Displays(HMD), Spatial Augmented Reality(SAR), Windows-Icon-Menu-Pointer(WIMP) and Hand-Held Displays(HHD)). From this, we can draw ten conclusions. Following this we report on issues for future works. The paper also provides an overall academic roadmap and useful insight into the state-of-the-art of AR/MR remote collaboration on physical tasks. This work will be useful for current and future researchers who are interested in collaborative AR/MR systems.