3D motion estimation of bubbles of gas in fluid glass,using an optical flow gradient technique extended to a third dimension

To solve the problem of estimating velocities of gas bubbles in melted glass, a method based on optical flow constraint (OFC) has been extended to the 3D case. A single camera, whose distance to the fluid is variable in time, is used to capture a sequence of frames at different depths. Since objects are not static, we cannot obtain two frames of different height values at the same time, and to our knowledge, this prevents the use of common 3D motion estimation techni ques. Since the information will be rather sparse, our estimation takes several measures around a given pixel and discards the erroneous ones, using a robust estimator. Along with the exposition of the practical application, the estimation proposed here is first contrasted in the 2D case to common benchmarks and then evaluated for a synthetic problem where velocities are known. Received: 9 July 2001 / Accepted: 5 August 2002 Published online: 3 June 2003 This work has been supported by Saint Gobain Cristaleria S.A., under contract FUO-EM-034-01 with Oviedo University, Spain.     

A curvature-based multiresolution automatic karyotyping system

This paper presents a method to segment, characterise and pair a set of chromosomes in a cell of an eukaryotic organism. This method yields several new features: (i) chromosomes are captured at non-uniform resolution to minimise the problem instance; (ii) segmentation is adaptively conducted by means of a hierarchical structure in a fast way; (iii) the curvature of each chromosome is studied at high resolution by means of attentive steps; (iv) a very short and uncorrelated feature vector is extracted from curvature by analysing its spectral components; and (v) a multistage benchmark classifier is used to pair chromosomes according to shape and banding. The method has been tested with publicly available databases. Results were successfully compared to manual karyotypes. Received: 26 June 2000 / Accepted: 4 December 2001 Published online: 3 June 2003 Correspondence to: Cristina Urdiales García (e-mail: cris@dte.uma.es, Tel.: +34-952-132757, Fax: +34-952-131447)     

A color object recognition scheme: application to cellular sorting

This paper presents a color object recognition scheme which proceeds in three sequential steps: segmentation, features extraction and classification. We mainly focus on the first and the third steps here. A color watershed using global and local criteria is first described. A color contrast value is defined to select the best color space for segmenting color objects. Then, an architecture of binary neural networks is described. Its properties relies on the simplification of the recognition problem, leading to a noticeable increase in the classification rate. We conclude with the abilities of such a recognition scheme and present an automated cell sorting system. Received: 15 June 2001 / Accepted: 1 July 2002 Published online: 23 April 2003 Correspondence to: O. Lezoray (e-mail: Olivier.Lezoray@info.unicaen.fr)     

Synchronous,asynchronous, and causally ordered communication

Summary.  This article studies characteristic properties of synchronous and asynchronous message communications in distributed systems. Based on the causality relation between events in computations with asynchronous communications, we characterize computations which are realizable with synchronous communications, which respect causal order, or where messages between two processes are always received in the order sent. It is shown that the corresponding computation classes form a strict hierarchy. Furthermore, an axiomatic definition of distributed computations with synchronous communications is given, and it is shown that several informal characterizations of such computations are equivalent when they are formalized appropriately. As an application, we use our results to show that the distributed termination detection algorithm by Dijkstra et al. is correct under a weaker synchrony assumption than originally stated. Received: November 1992/Accepted: July 1995     

The influence of mask substrate thickness on exposure and development times for the LIGA process

Optimizing mask substrate thickness is an important practical concern in the X-ray exposure of PMMA resists for LIGA. An overly thick substrate necessitates long exposure times due to excessive beam filtering, while a substrate too thin leads to long development times due to low absorbed doses at the PMMA bottom surface. To assist in this optimization, we have developed numerical models describing both the exposure and development of a PMMA resist. These exposure and development models are coupled in a single interactive code, permitting automated adjustment of mask substrate thickness to yield the minimum of a prescribed cost object function that depends on both the exposure and development times. Results are presented for several synchrotron sources and over a wide range of the PMMA thickness. Received: 15 July 1999/Accepted: 23: August 1999     

Etching through silicon wafer in inductively coupled plasma

 Inductively coupled plasma reactor (ICP) has been used to etch holes, trenches and other shapes completely through 380 and 525 μm thick silicon wafers. Bosch/STS process of gas flow pulsing with SF₆ etch step and C₄F₈ sidewall passivation step was employed. Etch rate reduction due to aspect ratio dependence and pattern size and shape effects have been explored. Etch stop has been studied both on bulk and SOI wafers. Notching effect was observed for high aspect ratio features but it was absent in large, low aspect ratio features. Aluminum etch stop layer has been shown to eliminate notching. Received: 7 July 1999/Accepted: 22 October 1999     

Shape‐from‐Operator: Recovering Shapes from Intrinsic Operators

We formulate the problem of shape‐from‐operator (SfO), recovering an embedding of a mesh from intrinsic operators defined through the discrete metric (edge lengths). Particularly interesting instances of our SfO problem include: shape‐from‐Laplacian, allowing to transfer style between shapes; shape‐from‐difference operator, used to synthesize shape analogies; and shape‐from‐eigenvectors, allowing to generate ‘intrinsic averages’ of shape collections. Numerically, we approach the SfO problem by splitting it into two optimization sub‐problems: metric‐from‐operator (reconstruction of the discrete metric from the intrinsic operator) and embedding‐from‐metric (finding a shape embedding that would realize a given metric, a setting of the multidimensional scaling problem). We study numerical properties of our problem, exemplify it on several applications, and discuss its imitations.     

Modeling and Control of Head Raising Snake Robots by Using Kinematic Redundancy

In this paper, we consider trajectory tracking control of a head raising snake robot on a flat plane by using kinematic redundancy. We discuss the motion control requirements to accomplish trajectory tracking and other tasks, such as singular configuration avoidance and obstacle avoidance, for the snake robot. The features of the internal motion caused by kinematic redundancy are considered, and a kinematic model and a dynamic model of the snake robot are derived by introducing two types of shape controllable point. The first is the head shape controllable point, and the other is the base shape controllable point. We analyzed the features of the two kinds of shape controllable point and proposed a controller to accomplish the trajectory tracking of the robot’s head as its main task along with several sub-tasks by using redundancy. The proposed method to accomplish several sub-tasks is useful for both the kinematic model and the dynamic model. Experimental results using a head raising snake robot which can control the angular velocity of its joints show the effectiveness of the proposed controller.     

基于多阈值的FY2E对流云识别方法

介绍一种基于多个阈值的FY2E对流云识别方法。首先利用不同的阈值对2010年6~7月的FY2E云图进行识别,并统计识别出云团数量、尺度信息以及形状。根据统计结果,确定选择3个不同级别的亮温阈值,并以此逐步识别出对流云。最后根据识别出来的对流云的尺度、形状和〖JP2〗云顶最低亮温,将对流云划分为18个类别。从应用结果来看,该方法不仅能够有效地识别从梅雨锋、台风等大尺度云系中的对流系统,而且还能在大范围的片状云系中检测出中小尺度的对流系统。〖JP〗     

Geodesic Matching with Free Extremities

In this paper, we describe how to use geodesic energies defined on various sets of objects to solve several distance related problems. We first present the theory of metamorphoses and the geodesic distances it induces on a Riemannian manifold, followed by classical applications in landmark and image matching. We then explain how to use the geodesic distance for new issues, which can be embedded in a general framework of matching with free extremities. This is illustrated by results on image and shape averaging and unlabeled landmark matching. Laurent Garcin is a former student of the Ecole Polytechnique. He obtained his Ph.D. in 2004 at the Ecole Normale de Cachan, working on matching methods for landmarks and images. He is an engineer at the French National Geographic Institute. Laurent Younes is a former student of the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris. He was awarded the Ph.D. from the University Paris Sud in 1989, and the thesis advisor certification from the same university in 1995. He works on the statistical analysis of images and shapes, and on modeling shape deformations and shape spaces. Laurent Younes entered CNRS, the French National Research Center in October 1991, in which he has been a “Directeur de Recherche" until 2003. He is now a professor at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics Department and the Center for Imaging Science at Johns Hopkins University in July 2003.     

Optimal multiple-seams search for image resizing with smoothness and shape prior

Content-aware image resizing is of increasing relevance to allow high-quality image and video to be displayed on devices with different resolution. We present a novel method to find multiple seams simultaneously with global optimality for image resizing, incorporating both region smoothness and seam shape prior using a 3-D graph-theoretic approach. The globally optimal seams can be simultaneously achieved by solving a maximum flow problem based on an arc-weighted graph representation. Representing the resizing problem in an arc-weighted graph, we can incorporate a wide spectrum of constraints into the formulation, thus improving resizing results. By removing or inserting those multiple seams, the goal of content-aware image resizing is achieved. Due to simultaneous detection of multiple seams, our algorithm exhibits several good features: the ability to handle both crossing and non-crossing-seam cases, the ability to incorporate various feasible geometry constraints, and the ability to incorporate the seams importance, region smoothness and shape prior information. The proposed method was implemented and experimented on a variety of image data and compared with the state of the art in image resizing.     

Large scale address recognition systems Truthing,testing, tools,and other evaluation issues

This paper describes the issues involved in the design of a system for evaluating improvements in the performance of a real-time address recognition system being used by the United States Postal Service for processing mail-piece images. Evaluation of the performance of recognition systems is normally carried out by measuring the performance of the system on a representative sample of images. Designing a comprehensive and valid testing scenario is a complex task that requires careful attention. Sampling live mail-stream to generate a deck of images representative of the general mail-stream for testing, truthing (generating reference data on a significant number of images), grading and evaluation, and designing tools to facilitate these functions are important topics that need to be addressed. This paper describes the efforts of the United States Postal Service and CEDAR towards developing an infrastructure for sampling, truthing, and testing of mail-stream images. Received: July 25, 2000 / Revised version: July 31, 2001     

A linear-time optimal-message distributed algorithm for minimum spanning trees

In an earlier paper, Awerbuch presented an innovative distributed algorithm for solving minimum spanning tree (MST) problems that achieved optimal time and message complexity through the introduction of several advanced features. In this paper, we show that there are some cases where his algorithm can create cycles or fail to achieve optimal time complexity. We then show how to modify the algorithm to avoid these problems, and demonstrate both the correctness and optimality of the revised algorithm.Received: 9 February 2003, Accepted: 2 April 2004, Published online: 20 July 2004Mart Molle: This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under CAREER Grant No. 9985195, and Nortel Networks and UC CoRe fund C99-14.     

Automatic extraction of roads from aerial images based on scale space and snakes

Abstract. We propose a new approach for automatic road extraction from aerial imagery with a model and a strategy mainly based on the multi-scale detection of roads in combination with geometry-constrained edge extraction using snakes. A main advantage of our approach is, that it allows for the first time a bridging of shadows and partially occluded areas using the heavily disturbed evidence in the image. Additionally, it has only few parameters to be adjusted. The road network is constructed after extracting crossings with varying shape and topology. We show the feasibility of the approach not only by presenting reasonable results but also by evaluating them quantitatively based on ground truth. Received: 22 July 1999 / Accepted: 20 March 2000     

基于分层弹性运动分析的非刚体跟踪方法

采用时--空分层的弹性运动跟踪策略, 提出了一种分析长时运动稳定结构与短时运动局部变化的非刚体运动跟踪方法. 首先, 基于序贯形状聚类的分段弹性运动跟踪模型, 将整段图像序列分割成若干子段, 并利用弹性运动分析方法得到子段内各帧边缘点的对应关系和各类的平均形状, 获取短时局部运动变化细节. 然后, 通过基于贝叶斯网的整体搜索算法寻找时序上相邻聚类平均形状之间的对应关系, 进而得到整段运动的公共形状, 用于表示长时运动稳定结构. 通过计算公共形状与各类平均形状之间的变形关系, 可以建立各聚类平均形状之间的对应关系, 实现分段运动的连接. 本方法的特点是不依赖先验模型、 通用性好、 目标的描述能力强. 实验表明, 本方法与现有不依赖模型的方法相比,具有更好的长时稳定性和更高的跟踪精确度.