Tone Reproduction: A Perspective from Luminance-Driven Perceptual Grouping

We address the tone reproduction problem by integrating the local adaptation effect with the consistency in global contrast impression. Many previous works on tone reproduction have focused on investigating the local adaptation mechanism of human eyes to compress high-dynamic-range (HDR) luminance into a displayable range. Nevertheless, while the realization of local adaptation properties is not theoretically defined, exaggerating such effects often leads to unnatural visual impression of global contrast. We propose to perceptually decompose the luminance into a small number of regions that sequentially encode the overall impression of an HDR image. A piecewise tone mapping can then be constructed to region-wise perform HDR compressions, using local mappings constrained by the estimated global perception. Indeed, in our approach, the region information is used not only to practically approximate the local properties of luminance, but more importantly to retain the global impression. Besides, it is worth mentioning that the proposed algorithm is efficient, and mostly does not require excessive parameter fine-tuning. Our experimental results and comparisons indicate that the described framework gives a good balance in both preserving local details and maintaining global perceptual impression of HDR scenes. First online version published in October, 2005     

基于视觉注意机制的彩色图像分割

提出一种基于视觉注意机制的彩色图像分割方法。受生物学启发,该方法模仿人类自下而上的视觉选择性注意过程,提取图像的底层特征,构造相应的显著图。根据显著图,检测出图像中的显著区域;将显著区域和背景分离,即得到图像分割结果。在多幅自然图像上进行实验,结果表明,该方法能够取得与人类视觉系统一致的分割结果。     

基于视觉注意的医学图像感兴趣区域提取*

提出一种基于视觉注意机制的医学图像感兴趣区域提取方法。受生物学启发,该方法模仿人类自下而上的视觉选择性注意过程,通过计算图像中每个像素的全局对比度,构造相应的显著图,并根据显著图,检测出图像中的显著区域。利用多幅医学图像对本方法进行评估,结果表明,该方法能够快速、精确地提取图像中的感兴趣区域,在提取结果和运算速度上均取得了令人满意的效果。     

Rendering of HDR images to improve brightness discrimination

The impression of quality of images can be enhanced on a high dynamic range (HDR) displays. Generally, a conventional 8‐bit image can be processed to an HDR image by inverse tone mapping operators. Among the operators, brightness discrimination mapping by applying brightness adaptation model attempted to mimic the human visual system. In this paper, we use a brightness adaptation model to derive a brightness discrimination mapping algorithm for HDR displays. The proposed algorithm maximizes a function, which represents the local and global brightness discrimination range by exploiting characteristics of the human visual system. Enhancement of details is verified by visualizing HDR images from dark to bright regions. Improvement of dynamic range is quantified by measuring increased discrimination ratio.     

基于视觉注意机制的交通路标检测方法

提出一种基于视觉注意机制的交通路标检测方法,该方法在图像灰度变换的基础上,引入自下而上的视觉注意模型,提取图像的初级特征,构造相应的显著图,根据总显著图,检测出图像中的显著区域,定位路标在图像中的位置。对多幅实时路况图像的实验结果表明,该方法能够适应户外自然环境检测,具有较高的准确性和实时性。     

Modeling a Generic Tone-mapping Operator

Although several new tone‐mapping operators are proposed each year, there is no reliable method to validate their performance or to tell how different they are from one another. In order to analyze and understand the behavior of tone‐mapping operators, we model their mechanisms by fitting a generic operator to an HDR image and its tone‐mapped LDR rendering. We demonstrate that the majority of both global and local tone‐mapping operators can be well approximated by computationally inexpensive image processing operations, such as a per‐pixel tone curve, a modulation transfer function and color saturation adjustment. The results produced by such a generic tone‐mapping algorithm are often visually indistinguishable from much more expensive algorithms, such as the bilateral filter. We show the usefulness of our generic tone‐mapper in backward‐compatible HDR image compression, the black‐box analysis of existing tone mapping algorithms and the synthesis of new algorithms that are combination of existing operators.     

Backlight dimming based on saliency map acquired by visual attention analysis

Displays have been used in various applications from mobile phones to tablets, and the low power consumption is one of their most important factors. Backlight dimming is the most promising technique to achieve this because it significantly reduces the display power by controlling only the transmittance of liquid crystal. This paper proposes a new backlight dimming algorithm using visual attention analysis. Conventional algorithms have a serious saturation error in some images when performing backlight dimming, thereby degrading image quality. In contrast, the proposed algorithm analyzes image characteristics based on the saliency map, which considers human visual attention. It then truncates the meaningless information of the saliency map using an adaptive saliency level selection approach and calculates the maximum amount of saturation error that humans will not perceive. In addition, the proposed algorithm defines the objective function and computes the optimal starting gray level in that function to calculate the saturation error. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm using the adaptive saliency level selection approach performs best. In addition, the average peak signal-to-noise ratio of the proposed algorithm was up to 3.762 dB higher than that of the conventional algorithm while slightly increasing the power consumption.     

融合双目多维感知特征的立体视频显著性检测

目的 立体视频能提供身临其境的逼真感而越来越受到人们的喜爱,而视觉显著性检测可以自动预测、定位和挖掘重要视觉信息,可以帮助机器对海量多媒体信息进行有效筛选。为了提高立体视频中的显著区域检测性能,提出了一种融合双目多维感知特性的立体视频显著性检测模型。方法 从立体视频的空域、深度以及时域3个不同维度出发进行显著性计算。首先,基于图像的空间特征利用贝叶斯模型计算2D图像显著图;接着,根据双目感知特征获取立体视频图像的深度显著图;然后,利用Lucas-Kanade光流法计算帧间局部区域的运动特征,获取时域显著图;最后,将3种不同维度的显著图采用一种基于全局-区域差异度大小的融合方法进行相互融合,获得最终的立体视频显著区域分布模型。结果 在不同类型的立体视频序列中的实验结果表明,本文模型获得了80%的准确率和72%的召回率,且保持了相对较低的计算复杂度,优于现有的显著性检测模型。结论 本文的显著性检测模型能有效地获取立体视频中的显著区域,可应用于立体视频/图像编码、立体视频/图像质量评价等领域。     

A novel optimization framework for salient object detection

Visual saliency aims to locate the noticeable regions or objects in an image. In this paper, a coarse-to-fine measure is developed to model visual saliency. In the proposed approach, we firstly use the contrast and center bias to generate an initial prior map. Then, we weight the initial prior map with boundary contrast to obtain the coarse saliency map. Finally, a novel optimization framework that combines the coarse saliency map, the boundary contrast and the smoothness prior is introduced with the intention of refining the map. Experiments on three public datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.     

结合立体视觉舒适度的立体图像显著性检测

针对先前的立体图像显著性检测模型未充分考虑立体视觉舒适度和视差图分布特征对显著区域检测的影响,提出了一种结合立体视觉舒适度因子的显著性计算模型.该模型在彩色图像显著性提取中,首先利用SLIC算法对输入图像进行超像素分割,随后进行颜色相似区域合并后再进行二维图像显著性计算;在深度显著性计算中,首先对视差图进行预处理;然后基于区域对比度进行显著性计算;最后,结合立体视觉舒适度因子对二维显著图和深度显著图进行融合,得到立体图像显著图.在不同类型立体图像上的实验结果表明,该模型获得了85%的准确率和78%的召回率,优于现有常用的显著性检测模型,并与人眼立体视觉注意力机制保持良好的一致性.     

Salient objects detection in dynamic scenes using color and texture features

Visual saliency is an important research topic in the field of computer vision due to its numerous possible applications. It helps to focus on regions of interest instead of processing the whole image or video data. Detecting visual saliency in still images has been widely addressed in literature with several formulations. However, visual saliency detection in videos has attracted little attention, and is a more challenging task due to additional temporal information. A common approach for obtaining a spatio-temporal saliency map is to combine a static saliency map and a dynamic saliency map. In our work, we model the dynamic textures in a dynamic scene with local binary patterns to compute the dynamic saliency map, and we use color features to compute the static saliency map. Both saliency maps are computed using a bio-inspired mechanism of human visual system with a discriminant formulation known as center surround saliency, and are fused in a proper way. The proposed model has been extensively evaluated with diverse publicly available datasets which contain several videos of dynamic scenes, and comparison with state-of-the art methods shows that it achieves competitive results.     

Revertible tone mapping of high dynamic range imagery: Integration to JPEG 2000

This paper presents a revertible tone mapping approach based on subband architecture where the dynamic range of the HDR (High Dynamic Range) image is decreased to LDR (Low Dynamic Range) to fit several types of applications. The LDR image can be later expanded to get back the original HDR content. One important benefit of the proposed approach is its backward compatibility with low dynamic (LDR) image applications since no extra information is needed to perform a very efficient HDR reconstruction. In order to improve the efficiency of our TM (Tone Mapping), we couple it with an optimisation procedure to minimize the reconstruction error. Subjective and objective comparisons with state-of-the-art methods have shown superior quality results of both tone mapped and reconstructed images. As a potential application, the integration of the proposed tone mapping to JPEG 2000 encoder achieved competitive performance compared to reference HDR image encoders.     

Evaluation of HDR tone‐mapping algorithms using a high‐dynamic‐range display to emulate real scenes

Abstract— Current HDR display technology approaches the dynamic‐range capabilities of the fully adapted human visual system. As such, this technology has potential for performing as a surrogate for real‐world scenes in the perceptual evaluation of high‐dynamic‐range (HDR) image‐reproduction algorithms that aim to map HDR scenes to the limited dynamic ranges available in typical display and print technology. Compared with direct image assessment in comparison with real‐world scenes, it is clear that use of HDR display technology has the benefit of simplicity in experimental design while maintaining the HDR of the original scene. To evaluate this potential application of HDR display technology, seven published versions of well‐known HDR tone‐mapping algorithms were benchmarked for perceptual rendering accuracy against each of four real‐world scenes constructed in the laboratory and against corresponding images on an HDR display. The results illustrate that visual assessments obtained from the HDR display and those obtained from real‐world scenes are in good agreement, validating the potential for HDR display technology as an evaluation tool in this context.     

多先验特征与综合对比度的图像显著性检测

目的 图像的显著性检测在计算机视觉中应用非常广泛,现有的方法通常在复杂背景区域下表现不佳,由于显著性检测的低层特征并不可靠,同时单一的特征也很难得到高质量的显著图。提出了一种通过增加特征的多样性来实现显著性检测的方法。方法 在高层先验知识的基础上,对背景先验特征和中心先验特征重新进行了定义,并考虑人眼视觉一般会对暖色调更为关注,从而加入颜色先验。另外在图像低层特征上使用目前较为流行的全局对比度和局部对比度特征,在特征融合时针对不同情况分别采取线性和非线性的一种新的融合策略,得到高质量的显著图。结果 在MSRA-1000和DUT-OMRON两个公开数据库进行对比验证,实验结果表明,基于多先验特征与综合对比度的图像显著性检测算法具有较高的查准率、召回率和F-measure值,相较于RBD算法均提高了1.5%以上,综合性能均优于目前的10种主流算法。结论 相较于基于低层特征和单一先验特征的算法,本文算法充分利用了图像信息,能在突出全局对比度的同时也保留较多的局部信息,达到均匀突出显著性区域的效果,有效地抑制复杂的背景区域,得到更加符合视觉感知的显著图。     

基于互导滤波和显著性映射的红外可见光图像融合

为了解决传统多尺度红外可见光融合图像边缘模糊、对比度低和目标不显著的问题,提出一种基于互导滤波和显著性映射的红外可见光图像融合算法。由于互导滤波器能将图像一致结构和不一致结构分离并且具有尺度和保边意识,因此首先利用互导滤波器将原图像分解为具有冗余信息的结构层和不同尺度上具有互补信息的纹理层;其次根据过明或过暗区域更容易引起注意的视觉特点构造图像显著性映射函数对结构层和不同尺度的纹理层进行显著性映射;最后根据不同尺度的结构和纹理特性对图像进行融合重构。在两个数据集上的实验结果表明与传统的多尺度融合方法相比提出的方法在保持图像边缘、增强图像对比度、突出目标方面具有较好的主客观评价效果。     

A learning-based visual saliency prediction model for stereoscopic 3D video (LBVS-3D)

Saliency prediction models provide a probabilistic map of relative likelihood of an image or video region to attract the attention of the human visual system. Over the past decade, many computational saliency prediction models have been proposed for 2D images and videos. Considering that the human visual system has evolved in a natural 3D environment, it is only natural to want to design visual attention models for 3D content. Existing monocular saliency models are not able to accurately predict the attentive regions when applied to 3D image/video content, as they do not incorporate depth information. This paper explores stereoscopic video saliency prediction by exploiting both low-level attributes such as brightness, color, texture, orientation, motion, and depth, as well as high-level cues such as face, person, vehicle, animal, text, and horizon. Our model starts with a rough segmentation and quantifies several intuitive observations such as the effects of visual discomfort level, depth abruptness, motion acceleration, elements of surprise, size and compactness of the salient regions, and emphasizing only a few salient objects in a scene. A new fovea-based model of spatial distance between the image regions is adopted for considering local and global feature calculations. To efficiently fuse the conspicuity maps generated by our method to one single saliency map that is highly correlated with the eye-fixation data, a random forest based algorithm is utilized. The performance of the proposed saliency model is evaluated against the results of an eye-tracking experiment, which involved 24 subjects and an in-house database of 61 captured stereoscopic videos. Our stereo video database as well as the eye-tracking data are publicly available along with this paper. Experiment results show that the proposed saliency prediction method achieves competitive performance compared to the state-of-the-art approaches.

     

High dynamic range image tone mapping and retexturing using fast trilateral filtering

Using fast trilateral filtering we present a novel tone mapping and retexturing method for high dynamic range (HDR) images. Our new trilateral filtering-based tone mapping is about seven to ten times faster than that in [3]. Firstly, a novel tone mapping algorithm for HDR images is presented. It is based on fast bilateral filtering and two newly developed filters: the quasi-Cauchy function kernel filter and the fourth degree Taylor polynomial kernel filter. Secondly, a new gradient-based image retexturing method is introduced, which consists of three steps: 1) converting HDR images into low dynamic range (LDR) images using our fast trilateral filtering-based tone mapping method; 2) recovering the gradient luminance maps for the region to be retextured; 3) reconstructing the final retextured image by solving the Poisson equation. The proposed approach is suitable for HDR image tone mapping and retexturing, and experimental results have demonstrated the satisfactory performance of our method.     

特征融合与objectness加强的显著目标检测

显著目标检测是计算机视觉的重要组成部分,目的是检测图像中最吸引人眼的目标区域。针对显著检测中特征的适应性不足以及当前一些算法出现多检与漏检的问题,提出从“目标在哪儿”与“背景在哪儿”两个角度描述显著性的框架,进行特征融合来提高显著目标检测的准确率。从这两个角度分别提取图像的颜色区别性特征与边界先验特征并进行特征融合,使用objectness特征加强显著性,最终得到显著图。在MSRA-1000数据集上的评估中,该算法达到平均92.4%的准确率,能和最先进算法相媲美;而在CSSD、ECSSD数据集上的实验,该算法有更高的准确率,优势明显。实验结果表明所使用的特征之间能够互相补充,互相弥补,“目标在哪儿”与“背景在哪儿”的检测框架描述图像显著性具有合理性。     

分形理论引导的图像临界差异感知阈值估计

目的 图像的临界差异(just noticeable difference, JND)阈值估计对提升图像压缩比以及信息隐藏效率具有重要意义。亮度适应性和空域掩蔽效应是决定JND阈值大小的两大核心因素。现有的空域掩蔽模型主要考虑对比度掩蔽和纹理掩蔽两方面。然而,当前采用的纹理掩蔽模型不能有效地描述与纹理粗糙度相关的掩蔽效应对图像JND阈值的影响。对此,本文提出一种基于分形理论的JND阈值估计模型。方法 首先,考虑到人眼视觉系统对具有粗糙表面的图像内容变化具有较低的分辨能力,通过经典的分形理论来计算图像局部区域的分形维数,并以此作为对纹理粗糙度的度量,并在此基础上提出一种新的基于纹理粗糙度的纹理掩蔽模型。然后,将提出的纹理掩蔽模型与传统的亮度适应性相结合估计得到初步的JND阈值。最后,考虑到人眼的视觉注意机制,进一步考虑图像内容的视觉显著性,对JND阈值进行感知一致性修正,估计得到最终的JND阈值。结果 选取4种相关方法进行对比,结果表明,在注入相同甚至更多噪声的情况下,相较于对比方法中的最优结果,本文方法的平均VSI(visual saliency-induced index)和平均MO...     

基于封闭先验的图像显著度检测

颜色对比度是图像关注区域检测的重要线索,准确地提取反映图像不同颜色特征的区域,非常有助于计算各个区域的对比度.为了得到有效的对比图,首先利用封闭先验通过检测位平面中的连通性来提取具有不同颜色特征的封闭区域.其次,利用背景先验消除与图像边界连通的封闭区域并得到封闭区域掩膜.然后利用对比度先验与封闭先验,提出某区域在各个位平面中表现为封闭的次数越多越有可能是关注区域的假设,并通过封闭区域掩膜的叠加计算各个封闭区域的对比度.同时,结合人眼对小面积的封闭区域与封闭轮廓的感知特性,以及对关注区域视觉资源的分配特性,在获取对比度图的关键环节采取形态学滤波和高斯模糊,最终实现面向凝视点估计的图像显著度检测.与多种经典的检测模型相比,提出的方法取得了较好的性能.