Age estimation using a hierarchical classifier based on global and local facial features

The research related to age estimation using face images has become increasingly important, due to the fact it has a variety of potentially useful applications. An age estimation system is generally composed of aging feature extraction and feature classification; both of which are important in order to improve the performance. For the aging feature extraction, the hybrid features, which are a combination of global and local features, have received a great deal of attention, because this method can compensate for defects found in individual global and local features. As for feature classification, the hierarchical classifier, which is composed of an age group classification (e.g. the class of less than 20 years old, the class of 20-39 years old, etc.) and a detailed age estimation (e.g. 17, 23 years old, etc.), provide a much better performance than other methods. However, both the hybrid features and hierarchical classifier methods have only been studied independently and no research combining them has yet been conducted in the previous works. Consequently, we propose a new age estimation method using a hierarchical classifier method based on both global and local facial features. Our research is novel in the following three ways, compared to the previous works. Firstly, age estimation accuracy is greatly improved through a combination of the proposed hybrid features and the hierarchical classifier. Secondly, new local feature extraction methods are proposed in order to improve the performance of the hybrid features. The wrinkle feature is extracted using a set of region specific Gabor filters, each of which is designed based on the regional direction of the wrinkles, and the skin feature is extracted using a local binary pattern (LBP), capable of extracting the detailed textures of skin. Thirdly, the improved hierarchical classifier is based on a support vector machine (SVM) and a support vector regression (SVR). To reduce the error propagation of the hierarchical classifier, each age group classifier is designed so that the age range to be estimated is overlapped by consideration of false acceptance error (FAE) and false rejection error (FRE) of each classifier. The experimental results showed that the performance of the proposed method was superior to that of the previous methods when using the BERC, PAL and FG-Net aging databases.     

一种快速的自适应目标跟踪方法

由于光照变化、视角差异、相机抖动和部分遮挡等因素的影响,鲁棒的目标跟踪仍然是计算机视觉领域极具挑战性的研究课题.受协同训练和粒子滤波算法的启发,提出一种快速的自适应目标跟踪方法.该方法采用HOG(histogram of oriented gradients)和LBP(local binary pattern)描述目标特征并建立分类器,通过协同训练实现分类器的在线更新,有效解决了误差累积问题.为缩小目标搜索的状态空间,利用ICONDENSATION的运动模型和重要采样提高粒子采样的准确性和效率,并引入校正因子抑制虚假目标的干扰,从而提升了跟踪算法的鲁棒性和分类器更新的准确性.在两组标准测试集和两组自建测试集上的对比实验结果验证了所提出跟踪算法的有效性.与基于全局搜索的跟踪方法相比,该算法在不降低跟踪性能的前提下将处理速度提高25倍以上.     

基于上下文重构的短文本情感极性判别研究

文本对象所固有的多义性,面对短文本特征稀疏和上下文缺失的情况,现有处理方法无法明辨语义,形成了底层特征和高层表达之间巨大的语义鸿沟.本文尝试借由时间、空间、联系等要素挖掘文本间隐含的关联关系,重构文本上下文范畴,提升情感极性分类性能.具体做法对应一个两阶段处理过程:1)基于短文本的内在联系将其初步重组成上下文(领域);2)将待处理短文本归入适合的上下文(领域)进行深入处理.首先给出了基于Naive Bayes分类器的短文本情感极性分类基本框架,揭示出上下文(领域)范畴差异对分类性能的影响.接下来讨论了基于领域归属划分的文本情感极性分类增强方法,并将领域的概念扩展为上下文关系,提出了基于特殊上下文关系的文本情感极性判别方法.同时为了解决由于信息缺失所造成的上下文重组困难,给出基于遗传算法的任意上下文重组方案.理论分析表明,满足限制条件的前提下,基于上下文重构的情感极性判别方法能够同时降低抽样误差(Sample error)和近似误差(Approximation error).真实数据集上的实验结果也验证了理论分析的结论.     

A Two Stage Sequential Ensemble Applied to the Classification of Alzheimer’s Disease Based on MRI Features

We present a two stage sequential ensemble where data samples whose output from the first classifier fall in a low confidence output interval (LCOI) are processed by a second stage classifier. Training is composed of three processes: training the first classifier, determining the LCOI of the first classifier, and training the second classifier upon the data items whose output fall in the LCOI. The LCOI is determined varying a threshold on the false positive rate (FPR) and false negative rate (FNR) curves. We have tested the approach on a database of feature vectors for the classification of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and control subjects extracted from structural magnetic resonance imaging (sMRI) data. In this paper, we focus on the combinations obtained when the first classifier is a relevance vector machine (RVM). Obtained results improve over previous results for this database.     

ECG beat classification using particle swarm optimization and support vector machine

In this paper, we propose a novel ECG arrhythmia classification method using power spectral-based features and support vector machine (SVM) classifier. The method extracts electrocardiogram’s spectral and three timing interval features. Non-parametric power spectral density (PSD) estimation methods are used to extract spectral features. The proposed approach optimizes the relevant parameters of SVM classifier through an intelligent algorithm using particle swarm optimization (PSO). These parameters are: Gaussian radial basis function (GRBF) kernel parameter σ and C penalty parameter of SVM classifier. ECG records from the MIT-BIH arrhythmia database are selected as test data. It is observed that the proposed power spectral-based hybrid particle swarm optimization-support vector machine (SVMPSO) classification method offers significantly improved performance over the SVM which has constant and manually extracted parameter.     

Two-stage cascaded classification approach based on genetic fuzzy learning for speech/music discrimination

Automatic discrimination of speech and music is an important tool in many multimedia applications. The paper presents a robust and effective approach for speech/music discrimination, which relies on a two-stage cascaded classification scheme. The cascaded classification scheme is composed of a statistical pattern recognition classifier followed by a genetic fuzzy system. For the first stage of the classification scheme, other widely used classifiers, such as neural networks and support vector machines, have also been considered in order to assess the robustness of the proposed classification scheme. Comparison with well-proven signal features is also performed. In this work, the most commonly used genetic learning algorithms (Michigan and Pittsburgh) have been evaluated in the proposed two-stage classification scheme. The genetic fuzzy system gives rise to an improvement of about 4% in the classification accuracy rate. Experimental results show the good performance of the proposed approach with a classification accuracy rate of about 97% for the best trial.     

A generative framework for fast urban labeling using spatial and temporal context

This paper introduces a multi-level classification framework for the semantic annotation of urban maps as provided by a mobile robot. Environmental cues are considered for classification at different scales. The first stage considers local scene properties using a probabilistic bag-of-words classifier. The second stage incorporates contextual information across a given scene (spatial context) and across several consecutive scenes (temporal context) via a Markov Random Field (MRF). Our approach is driven by data from an onboard camera and 3D laser scanner and uses a combination of visual and geometric features. By framing the classification exercise probabilistically we take advantage of an information-theoretic bail-out policy when evaluating class-conditional likelihoods. This efficiency, combined with low order MRFs resulting from our two-stage approach, allows us to generate scene labels at speeds suitable for online deployment. We demonstrate the virtue of considering such spatial and temporal context during the classification task and analyze the performance of our technique on data gathered over almost 17 km of track through a city.     

自然场景图像与合成图像的快速分类

目的 随着现代通信和传感技术的快速发展,互联网上多媒体数据日益增长,既为人们生活提供了便利,又给信息有效利用提出了挑战。为充分挖掘网络图像中蕴含的丰富信息,同时考虑到网络中图像类型的多样性,以及不同类型的图像需要不同的处理方法,本文针对当今互联网中两种主要的图像类型：自然场景图像与合成图像,设计层次化的快速分类算法。方法 该算法包括两层,第1层利用两类图像在颜色,饱和度以及边缘对比度上表现出来的差异性提取全局特征,并结合支持向量机（SVM）进行初步分类,第1层分类结果中低置信度的图像会被送到第2层中。在第2层中,系统基于词袋模型（bag-of-words）对图像不同类型的局部区域的纹理信息进行编码得到局部特征并结合第2个SVM分类器完成最终分类。针对层次化分类框架,文中还提出两种策略对两个分类器进行融合,分别为分类器结果融合与全局+局部特征融合。为测试算法的实用性,同时收集并发布了一个包含超过30 000幅图像的数据库。结果 本文设计的全局与局部特征对两类图像具有较强的判别性。在单核Intel Xeon（R）（2.50 GHz）CPU上,分类精度可达到98.26%,分类速度超过40帧/s。另外通过与基于卷积神经网络的方法进行对比实验可发现,本文提出的算法在性能上与浅层网络相当,但消耗更少的计算资源。结论 本文基于自然场景图像与合成图像在颜色、饱和度、边缘对比度以及局部纹理上的差异,设计并提取快速有效的全局与局部特征,并结合层次化的分类框架,完成对两类图像的快速分类任务,该算法兼顾分类精度与分类速度,可应用于对实时性要求较高的图像检索与数据信息挖掘等实际项目中。     

基于多维特征及BP网络的高分辨雷达目标识别

高分辨雷达目标的识别性能取决于目标特征的提取以及分类器的设计。为解决雷达高分辨距离像（HRRP）的方位、平移和幅度敏感性问题,采用了序贯预处理方法,有效提高了HRRP的信噪比。通过提取能较好反映雷达目标散射点回波特性的多维特征向量,设计BP神经网络作为分类器,提出了一种基于目标多维特征向量以及BP神经网络的高分辨雷达目标识别方法。利用在微波暗室测量获得的三种国产飞机模型回波数据进行目标识别处理,实验结果表明,提出的方法能有效地完成三种目标识别任务,在虚警率低于3%的情况下正确识别率优于95%。     

基于SVM分类器的XSS攻击检测技术

Web应用高速发展的同时产生了大量安全漏洞,跨站脚本攻击(XSS)就是危害最为严重的Web漏洞之一,而基于规则的传统XSS检测工具难以检测未知的和变形的XSS。为了应对未知的和变形的XSS,文中提出了一种基于支持向量机(SVM)分类器的XSS攻击检测方案。该方案在大量分析XSS攻击样本及其变形样本和正常样本的基础上,提取最具代表性的五维特征并将这些特征向量化,然后进行SVM算法的训练和测试。通过准确率、召回率和误报率3个指标来对分类器的检测效果进行评价,并优化特征提取方式。改进后的SVM分类器与传统工具和普通SVM相比性能均有所提升。     

基于CNN和农作物光谱纹理特征进行作物分布制图

以卷积神经网络（Convolutional Neural Network, CNN）为代表的深度学习技术,在农作物遥感分类制图领域具有广阔的应用前景。以多时相Landsat 8 多光谱遥感影像为数据源,搭建CNN模型对农作物进行光谱特征提取与分类,并与支撑向量机（SVM）常规分类方法进行对比。进一步引入影像纹理信息,利用CNN对农作物光谱和纹理特征进行提取,优化作物分布提取结果。实验表明：① 基于光谱特征的农作物分布提取,验证结果对比显示,CNN对应各类别精度、总体精度均优于SVM,其中二者总体精度分别为95.14%和91.77%;② 引入影像纹理信息后,基于光谱和纹理特征的CNN农作物分类总体精度提高至96.43%,Kappa系数0.952,且分类结果的空间分布更为合理,可有效区分花生、道路等精细地物,说明纹理特征可用于识别不同作物。基于光谱和纹理信息的CNN特征提取,可面向种植结构复杂区域实现农作物精准分类与分布制图。     

基于CNN和农作物光谱纹理特征进行作物分布制图

以卷积神经网络（Convolutional Neural Network, CNN）为代表的深度学习技术，在农作物遥感分类制图领域具有广阔的应用前景。以多时相Landsat 8 多光谱遥感影像为数据源，搭建CNN模型对农作物进行光谱特征提取与分类，并与支撑向量机（SVM）常规分类方法进行对比。进一步引入影像纹理信息，利用CNN对农作物光谱和纹理特征进行提取，优化作物分布提取结果。实验表明：① 基于光谱特征的农作物分布提取，验证结果对比显示，CNN对应各类别精度、总体精度均优于SVM，其中二者总体精度分别为95.14%和91.77%；② 引入影像纹理信息后，基于光谱和纹理特征的CNN农作物分类总体精度提高至96.43%，Kappa系数0.952，且分类结果的空间分布更为合理，可有效区分花生、道路等精细地物，说明纹理特征可用于识别不同作物。基于光谱和纹理信息的CNN特征提取，可面向种植结构复杂区域实现农作物精准分类与分布制图。     

非负局部Laplacian稀疏编码和上下文信息的图像分类

目的 稀疏编码是图像特征表示的有效方法,但不足之处是编码不稳定,即相似的特征可能会被编码成不同的码字。且在现有的图像分类方法中,图像特征表示和图像分类是相互独立的过程,提取的图像特征并没有有效保留图像特征之间的语义联系。针对这两个问题,提出非负局部Laplacian稀疏编码和上下文信息的图像分类算法。方法 图像特征表示包含两个阶段,第一阶段利用非负局部的Laplacian稀疏编码方法对局部特征进行编码,并通过最大值融合得到原始的图像表示,从而有效改善编码的不稳定性;第二阶段在所有图像特征表示中随机选择部分图像生成基于上下文信息的联合空间,并通过分类器将图像映射到这些空间中,将映射后的特征表示作为最终的图像表示,使得图像特征之间的上下文信息更多地被保留。结果 在4个公共的图像数据集Corel-10、Scene-15、Caltech-101以及Caltech-256上进行仿真实验,并和目前与稀疏编码相关的算法进行实验对比,分类准确率提高了约3%~18%。结论 本文提出的非负局部Laplacian稀疏编码和上下文信息的图像分类算法,改善了编码的不稳定性并保留了特征之间的相互依赖性。实验结果表明,该算法与现有算法相比的分类效果更好。另外,该方法也适用于图像分割、标注以及检索等计算机视觉领域的应用。     

SVM-based hierarchical architectures for handwritten Bangla character recognition

We propose support vector machine (SVM) based hierarchical classification schemes for recognition of handwritten Bangla characters. A comparative study is made among multilayer perceptron, radial basis function network and SVM classifier for this 45 class recognition problem. SVM classifier is found to outperform the other classifiers. A fusion scheme using the three classifiers is proposed which is marginally better than SVM classifier. It is observed that there are groups of characters having similar shapes. These groups are determined in two different ways on the basis of the confusion matrix obtained from SVM classifier. In the former, the groups are disjoint while they are overlapped in the latter. Another grouping scheme is proposed based on the confusion matrix obtained from neural gas algorithm. Groups are disjoint here. Three different two-stage hierarchical learning architectures (HLAs) are proposed using the three grouping schemes. An unknown character image is classified into a group in the first stage. The second stage recognizes the class within this group. Performances of the HLA schemes are found to be better than single stage classification schemes. The HLA scheme with overlapped groups outperforms the other two HLA schemes.     

Encoding Spatial Context for Large-Scale Partial-Duplicate Web Image Retrieval

Many recent state-of-the-art image retrieval approaches are based on Bag-of-Visual-Words model and represent an image with a set of visual words by quantizing local SIFT (scale invariant feature transform) features. Feature quantization reduces the discriminative power of local features and unavoidably causes many false local matches between images, which degrades the retrieval accuracy. To filter those false matches, geometric context among visual words has been popularly explored for the verification of geometric consistency. However, existing studies with global or local geometric verification are either computationally expensive or achieve limited accuracy. To address this issue, in this paper, we focus on partial duplicate Web image retrieval, and propose a scheme to encode the spatial context for visual matching verification. An efficient affine enhancement scheme is proposed to refine the verification results. Experiments on partial-duplicate Web image search, using a database of one million images, demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed approach. Evaluation on a 10-million image database further reveals the scalability of our approach.     

Combining classifiers: A theoretical framework

The problem of classifier combination is considered in the context of the two main fusion scenarios: fusion of opinions based on identical and on distinct representations. We develop a theoretical framework for classifier combination for these two scenarios. For multiple experts using distinct representations we argue that many existing schemes such as the product rule, sum rule, min rule, max rule, majority voting, and weighted combination, can be considered as special cases of compound classification. We then consider the effect of classifier combination in the case of multiple experts using a shared representation where the aim of fusion is to obtain a better estimate of the appropriatea posteriori class probabilities. We also show that the two theoretical frameworks can be used for devising fusion strategies when the individual experts use features some of which are shared and the remaining ones distinct. We show that in both cases (distinct and shared representations), the expert fusion involves the computation of a linear or nonlinear function of thea posteriori class probabilities estimated by the individual experts. Classifier combination can therefore be viewed as a multistage classification process whereby thea posteriori class probabilities generated by the individual classifiers are considered as features for a second stage classification scheme. Most importantly, when the linear or nonlinear combination functions are obtained by training, the distinctions between the two scenarios fade away, and one can view classifier fusion in a unified way.     

融合Shapley值和粒子群优化算法的混合特征选择算法

针对在模式分类问题中,数据往往存在不相关的或冗余的特征,从而影响分类的准确性的问题,提出一种融合Shapley值和粒子群优化算法的混合特征选择算法,以利用最少的特征获得最佳分类效果。在粒子群优化算法的局部搜索中引入博弈论的Shapley值,首先计算粒子（特征子集）中每个特征对分类效果的贡献值（Shapley值）,然后逐步删除Shapley值最低的特征以优化特征子集,进而更新粒子,同时也增强了算法的全局搜索能力,最后将改进后的粒子群优化算法运用于特征选择,以支持向量机分类器的分类性能和选择的特征数目作为特征子集评价标准,对UCI机器学习数据集和基因表达数据集的17个具有不同特征数量的医疗数据集进行分类实验。实验结果表明所提算法能有效地删除数据集中55%以上不相关的或冗余的特征,尤其对于中大型数据集能删减80%以上,并且所选择的特征子集也具有较好的分类能力,分类准确率能提高2至23个百分点。     

A PSO-AB classifier for solving sequence classification problems

Recently, considerable attention has focused on compound sequence classification methods which integrate multiple data mining techniques. Among these methods, sequential pattern mining (SPM) based sequence classifiers are considered to be efficient for solving complex sequence classification problems. Although previous studies have demonstrated the strength of SPM-based sequence classification methods, the challenges of pattern redundancy, inappropriate sequence similarity measures, and hard-to-classify sequences remain unsolved. This paper proposes an efficient two-stage SPM-based sequence classification method to address these three problems. In the first stage, during the sequential pattern mining process, redundant sequential patterns are identified if the pattern is a sub-sequence of other sequential patterns. A list of compact sequential patterns is generated excluding redundant patterns and used as representative features for the second stage. In the second stage, a sequence similarity measurement is used to evaluate partial similarity between sequences and patterns. Finally, a particle swarm optimization-AdaBoost (PSO-AB) sequence classifier is developed to improve sequence classification accuracy. In the PSO-AB sequence classifier, the PSO algorithm is used to optimize the weights in the individual sequence classifier, while the AdaBoost strategy is used to adaptively change the distribution of patterns that are hard to classify. The experiments show that the proposed two-stage SPM-based sequence classification method is efficient and superior to other approaches.     

基于遗传算法和BP神经网络的孤立性肺结节分类算法

为了提高计算机辅助诊断系统中孤立性肺结节的良恶性诊断的准确性,提出了一种基于遗传算法和BP神经网的分类算法。该算法针对BP神经网络容易陷入局部最优的问题,综合考虑孤立性肺结节的医学诊断特性,采用遗传算法对基于BP神经网络的分类器进行优化,并通过对PET/CT图像进行处理,提取病灶的功能特征、结构特征以及临床信息作为神经网络分类器的输入样本,实现孤立性肺结节的良恶性分类。对医院以及网络公共数据库中的大量实验数据进行分类实验,结果表明优化后的算法在分类准确性上有较大的提高,说明该方法在肺结节临床分类方面是有效的。     

Recognizing image “style” and activities in video using local features and naive Bayes

The goal of this paper is to offer a framework for classification of images and video according to their “type”, or “style”––a problem which is hard to define, but easy to illustrate; for example, identifying an artist by the style of his/her painting, or determining the activity in a video sequence. The paper offers a simple classification paradigm based on local properties of spatial or spatio-temporal blocks. The learning and classification are based on the naive Bayes classifier. A few experimental results are presented.