Image registration for image-based rendering.

Image-based rendering (IBR) has received much attention in recent years for its ability to synthesize photo-realistic novel views. To support translational motion, existing IBR methods either require a large amount of reference images or assume that some geometric information is available. However, rendering with a large amount of images is very expensive in terms of image acquisition, data storage, and memory costs. As IBR accepts various kinds of geometric proxy, we may use image registration techniques, such as stereo matching and structure and motion recognition, to obtain geometric information to help reduce the number of images required. Unfortunately, existing image registration techniques only support a small search range and require closely sampled reference images. This results in a high spatial sampling rate, making IBR impractical for use in scalable walkthrough environments.Our primary objective of this project is to develop an image registration technique that would recover the geometric proxy for IBR while, at the same time, reducing the number of reference images required. In this paper, we analyze the roles and requirements of an image registration technique for reducing the spatial sampling rate. Based on these requirements, we present a novel image registration technique to automatically recover the geometric proxy from reference images. With the distinguishing feature of supporting a large search range, the new method can accurately identify correspondences even though the reference images may only be sparsely sampled. This can significantly reduce the acquisition effort, the model size, and the memory cost.     

Video compression using spatiotemporal regularity flow.

We propose a new framework in wavelet video coding to improve the compression rate by exploiting the spatiotemporal regularity of the data. A sequence of images creates a spatiotemporal volume. This volume is said to be regular along the directions in which the pixels vary the least, hence the entropy is the lowest. The wavelet decomposition of regularized data results in a fewer number of significant coefficients, thus yielding a higher compression rate. The directions of regularity of an image sequence depend on both its motion content and spatial structure. We propose the representation of these directions by a 3-D vector field, which we refer to as the spatiotemporal regularity flow (SPREF). SPREF uses splines to approximate the directions of regularity. The compactness of the spline representation results in a low storage overhead for SPREF, which is a desired property in compression applications. Once SPREF directions are known, they can be converted into actual paths along which the data is regular. Directional decomposition of the data along these paths can be further improved by using a special class of wavelet basis called the 3-D orthonormal bandelet basis. SPREF -based video compression not only removes the temporal redundancy, but it also compensates for the spatial redundancy. Our experiments on several standard video sequences demonstrate that the proposed method results in higher compression rates as compared to the standard wavelet based compression.     

JPEG2000: standard for interactive imaging

JPEG2000 is the latest image compression standard to emerge from the Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) working under the auspices of the International Standards Organization. Although the new standard does offer superior compression performance to JPEG, JPEG2000 provides a whole new way of interacting with compressed imagery in a scalable and interoperable fashion. This paper provides a tutorial-style review of the new standard, explaining the technology on which it is based and drawing comparisons with JPEG and other compression standards. The paper also describes new work, exploiting the capabilities of JPEG2000 in client-server systems for efficient interactive browsing of images over the Internet.     

Space-frequency quantization for image compression with directionlets.

The standard separable 2-D wavelet transform (WT) has recently achieved a great success in image processing because it provides a sparse representation of smooth images. However, it fails to efficiently capture 1-D discontinuities, like edges or contours. These features, being elongated and characterized by geometrical regularity along different directions, intersect and generate many large magnitude wavelet coefficients. Since contours are very important elements in the visual perception of images, to provide a good visual quality of compressed images, it is fundamental to preserve good reconstruction of these directional features. In our previous work, we proposed a construction of critically sampled perfect reconstruction transforms with directional vanishing moments imposed in the corresponding basis functions along different directions, called directionlets. In this paper, we show how to design and implement a novel efficient space-frequency quantization (SFQ) compression algorithm using directionlets. Our new compression method outperforms the standard SFQ in a rate-distortion sense, both in terms of mean-square error and visual quality, especially in the low-rate compression regime. We also show that our compression method, does not increase the order of computational complexity as compared to the standard SFQ algorithm.     

基于卷积神经网络的随机因子重采样图像检测

图像重采样检测是图像取证领域的重要任务,其目的是检测图像是否经过重采样操作。现有的基于深度学习的重采样检测方法大多只针对特定的重采样因子进行研究,而较少考虑重采样因子完全随机的情况。本文根据重采样操作中所涉及的插值技术原理设计了一组高效互补的图像预处理结构以避免图像内容的干扰,并通过可变形卷积层和高效通道注意力机制(efficient channel attention, ECA)分别提取和筛选重采样特征,从而有效提高了卷积神经网络整合提取不同重采样因子的重采样特征的能力。实验结果表明,无论对于未压缩的重采样图像还是JPEG压缩后处理的重采样图像,本文方法都可以有效检测,且预测准确率相比现有方法均有较大提升。     

High-Fidelity Data Embedding for Image Annotation

High fidelity is a demanding requirement for data hiding, especially for images with artistic or medical value. This correspondence proposes a high-fidelity image watermarking for annotation with robustness to moderate distortion. To achieve the high fidelity of the embedded image, we introduce a visual perception model that aims at quantifying the local tolerance to noise for arbitrary imagery. Based on this model, we embed two kinds of watermarks: a pilot watermark that indicates the existence of the watermark and an information watermark that conveys a payload of several dozen bits. The objective is to embed 32 bits of metadata into a single image in such a way that it is robust to JPEG compression and cropping. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the visual model and the application of the proposed annotation technology using a database of challenging photographic and medical images that contain a large amount of smooth regions.     

An improved wavelet-based image coder for embedded greyscale and colour image compression

The embedded zero-tree wavelet (EZW) coding algorithm is a very effective technique for low bitrate still image compression. In this paper, an improved EZW algorithm is proposed to achieve a high compression performance in terms of PSNR and bitrate for lossy and lossless image compression, respectively. To reduce the number of zerotrees, the scanning and symbol redundancy of the existing EZW; the proposed method is based on the use of a new significant symbol map which is represented in a more efficient way. Furthermore, we develop a new EZW-based schemes for achieving a scalable colour image coding by exploiting efficiently the interdependency of colour planes. Numerical results demonstrate a significant superiority of our scheme over the conventional EZW and other improved EZW schemes with respect to both objective and subjective criteria for lossy and lossless compression applications of greyscale and colour images.     

Hardware implementation of a disparity estimation scheme for real-time compression in 3D imaging applications

This paper presents a novel hardware implementation of a disparity estimation scheme targeted to real-time Integral Photography (IP) image and video sequence compression. The software developed for IP image compression achieves high quality ratios over classic methodologies by exploiting the inherent redundancy that is present in IP images. However, there are certain time constraints to the software approach that must be confronted in order to address real-time applications. Our main effort is to achieve real-time performance by implementing in hardware the most time-consuming parts of the compression algorithm. The proposed novel digital architecture features minimized memory read operations and extensive simultaneous processing, while taking into concern the memory and data bandwidth limitations of a single FPGA implementation. Our results demonstrate that the implemented hardware system can successfully process high resolution IP video sequences in real-time, addressing a vast range of applications, from mobile systems to demanding desktop displays.     

Blind method for rescaling detection and rescale factor estimation in digital images using periodic properties of interpolation

Availability of the powerful image editing softwares and advancement in digital cameras has given rise to large amount of manipulated images without any traces of tampering, generating a great demand for automatic forgery detection algorithms in order to determine its authenticity. When altering an image like copy–paste or splicing to conceal traces of tampering, it is often necessary to resize the pasted portion of the image. The resampling operation may highly likely disturb the underlying inconsistency of the pasted portion that can be used to detect the forgery. In this paper, an algorithm is presented that blindly detects global rescaling operation and estimate the rescaling factor based on the autocovariance sequence of zero-crossings of second difference of the tampered image. Experimental results using UCID and USC-SIPI database show the validity of the algorithm under different interpolation schemes. The technique is robust and successfully detects rescaling operation for images that have been subjected to various forms of attacks like JPEG compression and arbitrary cropping. As expected, some degradation in detection accuracy is observed as the JPEG quality factor decreased.     

FIRE: fractal indexing with robust extensions for image databases

As already documented in the literature, fractal image encoding is a family of techniques that achieves a good compromise between compression and perceived quality by exploiting the self-similarities present in an image. Furthermore, because of its compactness and stability, the fractal approach can be used to produce a unique signature, thus obtaining a practical image indexing system. Since fractal-based indexing systems are able to deal with the images in compressed form, they are suitable for use with large databases. We propose a system called FIRE, which is then proven to be invariant under three classes of pixel intensity transformations and under geometrical isometries such as rotations by multiples of /spl pi//2 and reflections. This property makes the system robust with respect to a large class of image transformations that can happen in practical applications: the images can be retrieved even in the presence of illumination and/or color alterations. Additionally, the experimental results show the effectiveness of FIRE in terms of both compression and retrieval accuracy.     

Resampling of data between arbitrary grids using convolutioninterpolation

For certain medical applications resampling of data is required. In magnetic resonance tomography (MRT) or computer tomography (CT), e.g., data may be sampled on nonrectilinear grids in the Fourier domain. For the image reconstruction a convolution-interpolation algorithm, often called gridding, can be applied for resampling of the data onto a rectilinear grid. Resampling of data from a rectilinear onto a nonrectilinear grid are needed, e.g., if projections of a given rectilinear data set are to be obtained. In this paper we introduce the application of the convolution interpolation for resampling of data from one arbitrary grid onto another. The basic algorithm can be split into two steps. First, the data are resampled from the arbitrary input grid onto a rectilinear grid and second, the rectilinear data is resampled onto the arbitrary output grid. Furthermore, we like to introduce a new technique to derive the sampling density function needed for the first step of our algorithm. For fast, sampling-pattern-independent determination of the sampling density function the Voronoi diagram of the sample distribution is calculated. The volume of the Voronoi cell around each sample is used as a measure for the sampling density. It is shown that the introduced resampling technique allows fast resampling of data between arbitrary grids. Furthermore, it is shown that the suggested approach to derive the sampling density function is suitable even for arbitrary sampling patterns. Examples are given in which the proposed technique has been applied for the reconstruction of data acquired along spiral, radial, and arbitrary trajectories and for the fast calculation of projections of a given rectilinearly sampled image.     

Rotation, scale, and translation resilient watermarking for images

Many electronic watermarks for still images and video content are sensitive to geometric distortions. For example, simple rotation, scaling, and/or translation (RST) of an image can prevent blind detection of a public watermark. In this paper, we propose a watermarking algorithm that is robust to RST distortions. The watermark is embedded into a one-dimensional (1-D) signal obtained by taking the Fourier transform of the image, resampling the Fourier magnitudes into log-polar coordinates, and then summing a function of those magnitudes along the log-radius axis. Rotation of the image results in a cyclical shift of the extracted signal. Scaling of the image results in amplification of the extracted signal, and translation of the image has no effect on the extracted signal. We can therefore compensate for rotation with a simple search, and compensate for scaling by using the correlation coefficient as the detection measure. False positive results on a database of 10 000 images are reported. Robustness results on a database of 2000 images are described. It is shown that the watermark is robust to rotation, scale, and translation. In addition, we describe tests examining the watermarks resistance to cropping and JPEG compression.     

A parallel decoding algorithm for IFS codes without transientbehavior

Iterated function systems (IFSs) have received great attention in encoding and decoding fractal images. Barnsley (1988) has shown that IFSs for image compression can achieve a very high compression ratio for a single image. However, the major drawback of such a technique is the large computation load required to both encode and decode a fractal image. We provide a novel algorithm to decode IFS codes. The main features of this algorithm are that it is very suitable for parallel implementation and has no transient behavior. Also, from the decoding process of this method we can understand the encoding procedure explicitly. One example is illustrated to demonstrate the quality of its performance.     

Lossless compression of multispectral image data

While spatial correlations are adequately exploited by standard lossless image compression techniques, little success has been attained in exploiting spectral correlations when dealing with multispectral image data. The authors present some new lossless image compression techniques that capture spectral correlations as well as spatial correlation in a simple and elegant manner. The schemes are based on the notion of a prediction tree, which defines a noncausal prediction model for an image. The authors present a backward adaptive technique and a forward adaptive technique. They then give a computationally efficient way of approximating the backward adaptive technique. The approximation gives good results and is extremely easy to compute. Simulation results show that for high spectral resolution images, significant savings can be made by using spectral correlations in addition to spatial correlations. Furthermore, the increase in complexity incurred in order to make these gains is minimal     

Upscaling factor estimation on pre-JPEG compressed images based on difference histogram of spectral peaks

Image is one of the most widely used information carrier exchanged in the Internet, which raises a problem of privacy leakage. Private images are vulnerable to be intercepted and altered by an attacker, violating the owner’s privacy. When an image is tampered maliciously, it is often necessary to perform geometric transformations such as scaling to hide the traces of tampering, introducing resampling traces. In the last two decades, spectral analysis is the most commonly used method for resampling detection. However, since JPEG compression severely interferes the statistical characteristics of resampled images and introduces blocking artifacts, the robustness is really poor for most classical spectrum-based methods in the presence of JPEG compression. In this paper, we propose a method to estimate the upscaling factors of upscaled images in the presence of JPEG compression. A comprehensive analysis in spectrum of scaled images is given. We find that both the location and their difference of spectral peaks in the spectrum of the upscaled pre-JPEG images are related to the upscaling factor. Hence, we adopt the difference histogram of spectral peaks to screen candidate upscaling factors and obtain the final estimation by additional verification step according to the location of the spectral peaks. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.     

Three-dimensional encoding/two-dimensional decoding of medical data

We propose a fully three-dimensional (3-D) wavelet-based coding system featuring 3-D encoding/two-dimensional (2-D) decoding functionalities. A fully 3-D transform is combined with context adaptive arithmetic coding; 2-D decoding is enabled by encoding every 2-D subband image independently. The system allows a finely graded up to lossless quality scalability on any 2-D image of the dataset. Fast access to 2-D images is obtained by decoding only the corresponding information thus avoiding the reconstruction of the entire volume. The performance has been evaluated on a set of volumetric data and compared to that provided by other 3-D as well as 2-D coding systems. Results show a substantial improvement in coding efficiency (up to 33%) on volumes featuring good correlation properties along the z axis. Even though we did not address the complexity issue, we expect a decoding time of the order of one second/image after optimization. In summary, the proposed 3-D/2-D multidimensional layered zero coding system provides the improvement in compression efficiency attainable with 3-D systems without sacrificing the effectiveness in accessing the single images characteristic of 2-D ones.     

Foveation scalable video coding with automatic fixation selection

Image and video coding is an optimization problem. A successful image and video coding algorithm delivers a good tradeoff between visual quality and other coding performance measures, such as compression, complexity, scalability, robustness, and security. In this paper, we follow two recent trends in image and video coding research. One is to incorporate human visual system (HVS) models to improve the current state-of-the-art of image and video coding algorithms by better exploiting the properties of the intended receiver. The other is to design rate scalable image and video codecs, which allow the extraction of coded visual information at continuously varying bit rates from a single compressed bitstream. Specifically, we propose a foveation scalable video coding (FSVC) algorithm which supplies good quality-compression performance as well as effective rate scalability. The key idea is to organize the encoded bitstream to provide the best decoded video at an arbitrary bit rate in terms of foveated visual quality measurement. A foveation-based HVS model plays an important role in the algorithm. The algorithm is adaptable to different applications, such as knowledge-based video coding and video communications over time-varying, multiuser and interactive networks.     

Channel estimation using complementary sequence pairs for UWB/OFDM systems

It is well known that time domain channel estimation can achieve better performance than frequency domain channel estimation with a time-multiplexed preamble in common OFDM systems. When it is applied to UWB/OFDM systems, however, its high complexity becomes the main obstacle because of the large number of resolvable paths. To solve this problem, a low-complexity channel estimation scheme is presented by exploiting a special construction of complementary sequence pairs.     

Cascaded differential and wavelet compression of chromosome images

This paper proposes a new method for chromosome image compression based on an important characteristic of these images: the regions of interest (ROIs) to cytogeneticists for evaluation and diagnosis are well determined and segmented. Such information is utilized to advantage in our compression algorithm, which combines lossless compression of chromosome ROIs with lossy-to-lossless coding of the remaining image parts. This is accomplished by first performing a differential operation on chromosome ROIs for decorrelation, followed by critically sampled integer wavelet transforms on these regions and the remaining image parts. The well-known set partitioning in hierarchical trees (SPIHT) (Said and Perlman, 1996) algorithm is modified to generate separate embedded bit streams for both chromosome ROIs and the rest of the image that allow continuous lossy-to-lossless compression of both (although lossless compression of the former is commonly used in practice). Experiments on two sets of sample chromosome spread and karyotype images indicate that the proposed approach significantly outperforms current compression techniques used in commercial karyotyping systems and JPEG-2000 compression, which does not provide the desirable support for lossless compression of arbitrary ROIs.     

Peak transform for efficient image representation and coding.

In this work, we introduce a nonlinear geometric transform, called peak transform (PT), for efficient image representation and coding. The proposed PT is able to convert high-frequency signals into low-frequency ones, making them much easier to be compressed. Coupled with wavelet transform and subband decomposition, the PT is able to significantly reduce signal energy in high-frequency subbands and achieve a significant transform coding gain. This has important applications in efficient data representation and compression. To maximize the transform coding gain, we develop a dynamic programming solution for optimum PT design. Based on PT, we design an image encoder, called the PT encoder, for efficient image compression. Our extensive experimental results demonstrate that, in wavelet-based subband decomposition, the signal energy in high-frequency subbands can be reduced by up to 60% if a PT is applied. The PT image encoder outperforms state-of-the-art JPEG2000 and H.264 (INTRA) encoders by up to 2-3 dB in peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), especially for images with a significant amount of high-frequency components. Our experimental results also show that the proposed PT is able to efficiently capture and preserve high-frequency image features (e.g., edges) and yields significantly improved visual quality. We believe that the concept explored in this work, designing a nonlinear transform to convert hard-to-compress signals into easy ones, is very useful. We hope this work would motivate more research work along this direction.