Shape-based indexing scheme for camera view invariant 3-D object retrieval

Camera view invariant 3-D object retrieval is an important issue in many traditional and emerging applications such as security, surveillance, computer-aided design (CAD), virtual reality, and place recognition. One straightforward method for camera view invariant 3-D object retrieval is to consider all the possible camera views of 3-D objects. However, capturing and maintaining such views require an enormous amount of time and labor. In addition, all camera views should be indexed for reasonable retrieval performance, which requires extra storage space and maintenance overhead. In the case of shape-based 3-D object retrieval, such overhead could be relieved by considering the symmetric shape feature of most objects. In this paper, we propose a new shape-based indexing and matching scheme of real or rendered 3-D objects for camera view invariant object retrieval. In particular, in order to remove redundant camera views to be indexed, we propose a camera view skimming scheme, which includes: i) mirror shape pairing and ii) camera view pruning according to the symmetrical patterns of object shapes. Since our camera view skimming scheme considerably reduces the number of camera views to be indexed, it could relieve the storage requirement and improve the matching speed without sacrificing retrieval accuracy. Through various experiments, we show that our proposed scheme can achieve excellent performance.     

目标边界点集的层次化描述及其形状检索应用

提出用于轮廓线形状和区域形状图像检索的形状描述方法,该方法将目标形状的边界（包括内边界）表示为一个无序的点集,沿各方向对点集的迭代分割,建立层次化的边界点集描述模型.通过对各层形状边界的分割比和分散度的几何特征度量,产生各层的形状特征描述,对它们进行组合,建立对目标形状的层次化描述.两个目标形状的差异性度量定义为它们的层次化描述子的L-1距离.该方法具有：（1）通用性.能够描述轮廓线形状和区域形状这两种不同类型的形状;（2）可扩展性.基于所提出的分层描述框架,可以将分割比和分散度这两种几何度量进行扩展,纳入更多其他几何特征度量,以进一步提高形状描述的精度;（3）多尺度描述特性.提出的分层的描述机制,使得描述子具有内在的由粗到细的形状表征能力;（4）较低的计算复杂性.由于仅仅计算目标图像的边界像素点,使得算法具有较高的计算效率.用MPEG-7 CE-2区域形状图像库和MPEG-7 CE-1轮廓线形状图像库这两个标准测试集对该方法进行评估,并与同类的其他形状描述方法进行比较,实验结果表明：提出的方法在综合考虑检索精确率、检索效率和一般应用能力等指标的情况下,其性能上要优于各种参与比较的方法.     

Visual object retrieval via block-based visual-pattern matching

This paper presents an object-based image retrieval using a method based on visual-pattern matching. A visual pattern is obtained by detecting the line edge from a square block using the moment-preserving edge detector. It is desirable and yet remains as a challenge for querying multimedia data by finding an object inside a target image. Given an object model, an added difficulty is that the object might be translated, rotated, and scaled inside a target image. Object segmentation and recognition is the primary step of computer vision for applying to image retrieval of higher-level image analysis. However, automatic segmentation and recognition of objects via object models is a difficult task without a priori knowledge about the shape of objects. Instead of segmentation and detailed object representation, the objective of this research is to develop and apply computer vision methods that explore the structure of an image object by visual-pattern detection to retrieve images from a database. A voting scheme based on generalized Hough transform is proposed to provide object search method, which is invariant to the translation, rotation, scaling of image data, and hence, invariant to orientation and position. Computer simulation results show that the proposed method gives good performance in terms of retrieval accuracy and robustness.     

融合信息熵和CNN 的基于手绘的三维模型检索

基于手绘草图的三维模型检索(SBSR)已成为三维模型检索、模式识别与计算机视 觉领域的一个研究热点。与传统方法相比,基于卷积神经网络(CNN)的三维深度表示方法在三 维模型检索任务中性能优势非常明显。本文提出了一种基于手绘图像融合信息熵和CNN 的三 维模型检索方法。首先,通过计算模型投影图的信息熵得到模型的代表性视图,并将代表性视 图经过边缘检测等处理得到三维模型投影图的轮廓图像;然后,将轮廓图像和手绘草图输入到 CNN 中提取特征描述子,并进行特征匹配。本文方法在Shape Retrieval Contest (SHREC) 2012 数据库和SHREC 2013 数据库上进行实验。实验证明,该方法的效果较其他传统方法检索准确 度更高。     

A new shape decomposition scheme for graph-based representation

Nowadays, the part-based representation of a given shape plays a significant role in shape-related applications, such as those involving content-based retrieval, object recognition, and so on. In this paper, to represent both 2-D and 3-D shapes as a relational structure, i.e. a graph, a new shape decomposition scheme, which recursively performs constrained morphological decomposition (CMD), is proposed. The CMD method adopts the use of the opening operation with the ball-shaped structuring element, and weighted convexity to select the optimal decomposition. For the sake of providing a compact representation, the merging criterion is applied using the weighted convexity difference. Therefore, the proposed scheme uses the split-and-merge approach. Finally, we present experimental results for various, modified 2-D shapes, as well as 3-D shapes represented by triangular meshes. Based on the experimental results, it is believed that the decomposition of a given shape coincides with that based on human insight for both 2-D and 3-D shapes, and also provides robustness to scaling, rotation, noise, shape deformation, and occlusion.     

Local association based recognition of two-dimensional objects

A model based two-dimensional object recognition system capable of performing under occlusion and geometric transformation is described in this paper. The system is based on the concept of associative search using overlapping local features. During the training phase, the local features are hashed to set up the associations between the features and models. In the recognition phase, the same hashing procedure is used to retrieve associations that participate in a voting process to determine the identity of the shape. Two associative retrieval techniques for discrete and continuous features, respectively, are described in the paper. The performance of the system is studied using a test set of 1,000 shapes that are corrupted versions of 100 models in the shape database. It is shown that the incorporation of a verification phase to confirm the retrieved associations can provide zero error performance with a small reject rate.     

Learning context-sensitive similarity by shortest path propagation

In this paper, we introduce a novel shape/object retrieval algorithm shortest path propagation (SSP). Given a query object q and a target database object p, we explicitly find the shortest path between them in the distance manifold of the database objects. Then a new distance measure between q and p is learned based on the database objects on the shortest path to replace the original distance measure. The promising results on both MEPG-7 shape dataset and a protein dataset demonstrate that our method can significantly improve the ranking of the object retrieval.     

Retrieving articulated 3-D models using medial surfaces

We consider the use of medial surfaces to represent symmetries of 3-D objects. This allows for a qualitative abstraction based on a directed acyclic graph of components and also a degree of invariance to a variety of transformations including the articulation of parts. We demonstrate the use of this representation for 3-D object model retrieval. Our formulation uses the geometric information associated with each node along with an eigenvalue labeling of the adjacency matrix of the subgraph rooted at that node. We present comparative retrieval results against the techniques of shape distributions (Osada et al.) and harmonic spheres (Kazhdan et al.) on 425 models from the McGill Shape Benchmark, representing 19 object classes. For objects with articulating parts, the precision vs recall curves using our method are consistently above and to the right of those of the other two techniques, demonstrating superior retrieval performance. For objects that are rigid, our method gives results that compare favorably with these methods. A preliminary version of this article was published in EMMCVPR 2005. In this extended version we have included results on the significantly larger McGill Shape Benchmark, making a stronger case for the advantages of our method for models with articulating parts. We have also included expanded introduction, medial surface computation, matching, indexing, experimental results, and discussion sections, along with several new figures.     

基于改进多尺度乘积LoG算子的仿射不变形状匹配算法

目标在成像过程中发生的几何变形多数情况下可用仿射变换来描述。据此,提出一种利用角点进行仿射不变形状匹配的算法。首先引入多尺度乘积LoG(MPLoG)算子检测轮廓角点,并根据角点间距自适应地提取轮廓特征点,从而获取形状关键特征;为解决目标的仿射变形问题,采用Grassmann流形Gr(2,n)来表征和度量两形状之间的相似度;最后通过迭代式序列移位匹配算法来克服Grassmann流形对起始点的依赖并完成形状的匹配。对形状数据进行仿真实验的结果表明,所提算法能够有效地实现形状检索和识别,并对噪声有较强的鲁棒性。     

Query-by-Gesture: An Alternative Content-Based Image Retrieval Query Scheme

Current research on content-based image retrieval (CBIR) is centered on designing efficient query schemes in order to provide a user with effective mechanisms for image database search. Among representative CBIR query schemes, query-by-sketch has been one of the attractive query tools that are highly adaptive to user's subjectivity. However, query-by-sketch has a few limitations. That is, most sketch tools demand expertise in image processing or computer vision of the user to provide good enough sketches that can be used as query. Furthermore, sketching the exact shape of an object using a mouse can be a burden on the user. To overcome some of the limitations associated with query-by-sketch, we propose a new query method for CBIR, query-by-gesture, that does not require sketches, thereby minimizing user interaction. In our system, the user does not need to use a mouse to make a sketch. Instead, the user draws the shape of the object that heshe intends to search in front of a camera by hand. In addition, our query-by-gesture technique uses relevance feedback to interactively improve retrieval performance and allow progressive refinement of query results according to the user's specification. The efficacy of our proposed method is validated using images from the Corel-Photo CD.     

Medical Sign Recognition of Lung Nodules Based on Image Retrieval with Semantic Features and Supervised Hashing

Sign recognition is important for identifying benign and malignant nodules. This paper proposes a new sign recognition method based on image retrieval for lung nodules. First, we construct a deep learning framework to extract semantic features that can effectively represent sign information. Second, we translate the high-dimensional image features into compact binary codes with principal component analysis (PCA) and supervised hashing. Third, we retrieve similar lung nodule images with the presented adaptive-weighted similarity calculation method. Finally, we recognize nodule signs from the retrieval results, which can also provide decision support for diagnosis of lung lesions. The proposed method is validated on the publicly available databases: lung image database consortium and image database resource initiative (LIDC-IDRI) and lung computed tomography (CT) imaging signs (LISS). The experimental results demonstrate our retrieval method substantially improves retrieval performance compared with those using traditional Hamming distance, and the retrieval precision can achieve 87.29% when the length of hash code is 48 bits. The entire recognition rate on the basis of the retrieval results can achieve 93.52%. Moreover, our method is also effective for real-life diagnosis data.     

Supporting electronic ink databases

The emergence of the pen as the main interface device for personal digital assistants and pen-computers has made handwritten text, and more generally ink, a first-class object. As for any other type of data, the need of retrieval is a prevailing one. Retrieval of handwritten text is more difficult than that of conventional data since it is necessary to identify a handwritten word given slightly different variations in its shape. The current way of addressing this is by using handwriting recognition, which is prone to errors and limits the expressiveness of ink. Alternatively, one can retrieve from the database handwritten words that are similar to a query handwritten word using techniques borrowed from pattern and speech recognition. In this paper, an indexing technique based on Hidden Markov Models is proposed. Its implementation and its performance is reported in this paper.     

Intraclass retrieval of nonrigid 3D objects: application to face recognition

As the size of the available collections of 3D objects grows, database transactions become essential for their management with the key operation being retrieval (query). Large collections are also precategorized into classes so that a single class contains objects of the same type (e.g., human faces, cars, four-legged animals). It is shown that general object retrieval methods are inadequate for intraclass retrieval tasks. We advocate that such intraclass problems require a specialized method that can exploit the basic class characteristics in order to achieve higher accuracy. A novel 3D object retrieval method is presented which uses a parameterized annotated model of the shape of the class objects, incorporating its main characteristics. The annotated subdivision-based model is fitted onto objects of the class using a deformable model framework, converted to a geometry image and transformed into the wavelet domain. Object retrieval takes place in the wavelet domain. The method does not require user interaction, achieves high accuracy, is efficient for use with large databases, and is suitable for nonrigid object classes. We apply our method to the face recognition domain, one of the most challenging intraclass retrieval tasks. We used the Face Recognition Grand Challenge v2 database, yielding an average verification rate of 95.2 percent at 10-3 false accept rate. The latest results of our work can be found at http://www.cbl.uh.edu/UR8D/.