Seong Whan Lee

Thinning methodologies-a comprehensive survey

A comprehensive survey of thinning methodologies is presented. A wide range of thinning algorithms, including iterative deletion of pixels and nonpixel-based methods, is covered. Skeletonization algorithms based on medial axis and other distance transforms are not considered. An overview of the iterative thinning process and the pixel-deletion criteria needed to preserve the connectivity of the image pattern is given first. Thinning algorithms are then considered in terms of these criteria and their modes of operation. Nonpixel-based methods that usually produce a center line of the pattern directly in one pass without examining all the individual pixels are discussed. The algorithms are considered in great detail and scope, and the relationships among them are explored. >

The Role of Context for Object Detection and Semantic Segmentation in the Wild

In this paper we study the role of context in existing state-of-the-art detection and segmentation approaches. Towards this goal, we label every pixel of PASCAL VOC 2010 detection challenge with a semantic category. We believe this data will provide plenty of challenges to the community, as it contains 520 additional classes for semantic segmentation and object detection. Our analysis shows that nearest neighbor based approaches perform poorly on semantic segmentation of contextual classes, showing the variability of PASCAL imagery. Furthermore, improvements of existing contextual models for detection is rather modest. In order to push forward the performance in this difficult scenario, we propose a novel deformable part-based model, which exploits both local context around each candidate detection as well as global context at the level of the scene. We show that this contextual reasoning significantly helps in detecting objects at all scales.

Applications of Support Vector Machines for Pattern Recognition: A Survey

In this paper, we present a comprehensive survey on applications of Support Vector Machines (SVMs) for pattern recognition. Since SVMs show good generalization performance on many real-life data and the approach is properly motivated theoretically, it has been applied to wide range of applications. This paper describes a brief introduction of SVMs and summarizes its numerous applications.

Sign Language Spotting with a Threshold Model Based on Conditional Random Fields

Sign language spotting is the task of detecting and recognizing signs in a signed utterance, in a set vocabulary. The difficulty of sign language spotting is that instances of signs vary in both motion and appearance. Moreover, signs appear within a continuous gesture stream, interspersed with transitional movements between signs in a vocabulary and nonsign patterns (which include out-of-vocabulary signs, epentheses, and other movements that do not correspond to signs). In this paper, a novel method for designing threshold models in a conditional random field (CRF) model is proposed which performs an adaptive threshold for distinguishing between signs in a vocabulary and nonsign patterns. A short-sign detector, a hand appearance-based sign verification method, and a subsign reasoning method are included to further improve sign language spotting accuracy. Experiments demonstrate that our system can spot signs from continuous data with an 87.0 percent spotting rate and can recognize signs from isolated data with a 93.5 percent recognition rate versus 73.5 percent and 85.4 percent, respectively, for CRFs without a threshold model, short-sign detection, subsign reasoning, and hand appearance-based sign verification. Our system can also achieve a 15.0 percent sign error rate (SER) from continuous data and a 6.4 percent SER from isolated data versus 76.2 percent and 14.5 percent, respectively, for conventional CRFs.

Hierarchical feature representation and multimodal fusion with deep learning for AD/MCI diagnosis

For the last decade, it has been shown that neuroimaging can be a potential tool for the diagnosis of Alzheimers Disease (AD) and its prodromal stage, Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI), and also fusion of different modalities can further provide the complementary information to enhance diagnostic accuracy. Here, we focus on the problems of both feature representation and fusion of multimodal information from Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and Positron Emission Tomography (PET). To our best knowledge, the previous methods in the literature mostly used hand-crafted features such as cortical thickness, gray matter densities from MRI, or voxel intensities from PET, and then combined these multimodal features by simply concatenating into a long vector or transforming into a higher-dimensional kernel space. In this paper, we propose a novel method for a high-level latent and shared feature representation from neuroimaging modalities via deep learning. Specifically, we use Deep Boltzmann Machine (DBM)(2), a deep network with a restricted Boltzmann machine as a building block, to find a latent hierarchical feature representation from a 3D patch, and then devise a systematic method for a joint feature representation from the paired patches of MRI and PET with a multimodal DBM. To validate the effectiveness of the proposed method, we performed experiments on ADNI dataset and compared with the state-of-the-art methods. In three binary classification problems of AD vs. healthy Normal Control (NC), MCI vs. NC, and MCI converter vs. MCI non-converter, we obtained the maximal accuracies of 95.35%, 85.67%, and 74.58%, respectively, outperforming the competing methods. By visual inspection of the trained model, we observed that the proposed method could hierarchically discover the complex latent patterns inherent in both MRI and PET.

A SURVEY ON PATTERN RECOGNITION APPLICATIONS OF SUPPORT VECTOR MACHINES

In this paper, we present a survey on pattern recognition applications of Support Vector Machines (SVMs). Since SVMs show good generalization performance on many real-life data and the approach is properly motivated theoretically, it has been applied to wide range of applications. This paper describes a brief introduction of SVMs and summarizes its various pattern recognition applications.

Hand gesture recognition based on dynamic Bayesian network framework

In this paper, we propose a new method for recognizing hand gestures in a continuous video stream using a dynamic Bayesian network or DBN model. The proposed method of DBN-based inference is preceded by steps of skin extraction and modelling, and motion tracking. Then we develop a gesture model for one- or two-hand gestures. They are used to define a cyclic gesture network for modeling continuous gesture stream. We have also developed a DP-based real-time decoding algorithm for continuous gesture recognition. In our experiments with 10 isolated gestures, we obtained a recognition rate upwards of 99.59% with cross validation. In the case of recognizing continuous stream of gestures, it recorded 84% with the precision of 80.77% for the spotted gestures. The proposed DBN-based hand gesture model and the design of a gesture network model are believed to have a strong potential for successful applications to other related problems such as sign language recognition although it is a bit more complicated requiring analysis of hand shapes.

AdaBoost for Text Detection in Natural Scene

Detecting text regions in natural scenes is an important part of computer vision. We propose a novel text detection algorithm that extracts six different classes features of text, and uses Modest AdaBoost with multi-scale sequential search. Experiments show that our algorithm can detect text regions with a f= 0.70, from the ICDAR 2003 datasets which include images with text of various fonts, sizes, colors, alphabets and scripts.

Human action recognition using shape and CLG-motion flow from multi-view image sequences

In this paper, we present a method for human action recognition from multi-view image sequences that uses the combined motion and shape flow information with variability consideration. A combined local-global (CLG) optic flow is used to extract motion flow feature and invariant moments with flow deviations are used to extract the global shape flow feature from the image sequences. In our approach, human action is represented as a set of multidimensional CLG optic flow and shape flow feature vectors in the spatial-temporal action boundary. Actions are modeled by using a set of multidimensional HMMs for multiple views using the combined features, which enforce robust view-invariant operation. We recognize different human actions in daily life successfully in the indoor and outdoor environment using the maximum likelihood estimation approach. The results suggest robustness of the proposed method with respect to multiple views action recognition, scale and phase variations, and invariant analysis of silhouettes.

Gesture Spotting and Recognition for Human–Robot Interaction

Visual interpretation of gestures can be useful in accomplishing natural human-robot interaction (HRI). Previous HRI research focused on issues such as hand gestures, sign language, and command gesture recognition. Automatic recognition of whole-body gestures is required in order for HRI to operate naturally. This presents a challenging problem, because describing and modeling meaningful gesture patterns from whole-body gestures is a complex task. This paper presents a new method for recognition of whole-body key gestures in HRI. A human subject is first described by a set of features, encoding the angular relationship between a dozen body parts in 3-D. A feature vector is then mapped to a codeword of hidden Markov models. In order to spot key gestures accurately, a sophisticated method of designing a transition gesture model is proposed. To reduce the states of the transition gesture model, model reduction which merges similar states based on data-dependent statistics and relative entropy is used. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method can be efficient and effective in HRI, for automatic recognition of whole-body key gestures from motion sequences