5601548
Visual information retrieval from large distributed online repositories
Digital images and video are becoming an integral part of human communications. The ease of capturing and creating digital images has caused most on-line information sources look more “visual”. We use more and more visual content in expressing ideas, reporting, education, and entertainment. With the tremendous amount of visual information becoming on-line, how does one find visual information from distributed repositories efficiently, at least to the same extent as that of existing information retrieval systems. With the growing number of on-line users, how does one design a system with performance scalable to a large extent?
15943562
Content-based transcoding of images in the Internet
We present a system for transcoding images in the Internet in order to improve their delivery to client devices with a wide range of communication, processing, storage and display capabilities. The content-based image transcoder analyzes the images in order to classify them into image type and image purpose classes. The system then utilizes transcoding policies based on the content classes to manipulate and transcode the images. We describe the image transcoding process for a variety of client devices, including PDAs, hand-held computers (HHCs), TV browsers and color PCs, and demonstrate improvements in delivery speed and accessibility of the images in the Internet.
2339969
Interactive search fusion methods for video database retrieval
In this paper, we investigate a new method for video database retrieval using interactive search fusion. Recent video analysis techniques have enabled the extraction of a variety of descriptors of features, concepts, clusters, classification results, speech and textual terms, MPEG-7 metadata, and so on. However, given an information need users are faced with a daunting task of trying to formulate queries over these multiple disparate data sources in order to retrieve the desired video content. In this paper, we explore a novel approach based on search fusion in which the user interactively builds a query by sequentially choosing among the descriptors and data sources and by selecting from various combining and score aggregation functions to fuse results of individual searches. For example, the system allows building of queries such as "retrieve video clips that have color of beach scenes, the detection of sky, and detection of water". In this paper we present the search fusion method and evaluate the performance on a large video database.
20964781
Special Issue on Image Understanding for Digital Photographs
30741426
Multimedia database management systems
Introduction. Multimedia Data Types and Formats. Multimedia Database Design Issues. Text Document Indexing and Retrieval. Indexing and Retrieval of Audio. Image Indexing and Retrieval. Video Indexing and Retrieval. Integrated Multimedia Indexing and Retrieval. Techniques and Data Structures for Efficient Multimedia Similarity Search. System Support for Distributed Multimedia Databases. Measurement of Multimedia Information Retrieval Effectiveness. Products, Applications, and New Developments.
1805433
MPEG-7 MDS Content Description Tools and Applications
In this paper, we present the tools specified by the MDS part of the MPEG-7 standard for describing multimedia data such as images and video. In particular, we focus on the description tools that represent the structure and semantics of multimedia data to whose development we have actively contributed. We also describe some of our research prototype systems dealing with the extraction and application of MPEG-7 structural and semantic descriptions. These systems are AMOS, a video object segmentation and retrieval system, and IMKA, an intelligent multimedia knowledge application using the MediaNet knowledge representation framework.
932967
Modulation and Information Hiding in Images
We use concepts from communication theory to characterize information hiding schemes: the amount of information that can be hidden, its perceptibility, and its robustness to removal can be modeled using the quantities channel capacity, signal-to-noise ratio, and jamming margin. We then introduce new information hiding schemes whose parameters can easily be adjusted to trade off capacity, imperceptibility, and robustness as required in the application. The theory indicates the most aggressive feasible parameter settings. We also introduce a technique called predistortion for increasing resistance to JPEG compression. Analogous tactics are presumably possible whenever a model of anticipated distortion is available.
7878072
Imperceptible Sensory Channels
System designers can use imperceptible sensory channels to create smarter, safer, and more secure environments. Beyond their diverse applications, imperceptible sensory channels suggest a new approach to the problem of machine perception. In adapting a video camera a device designed to capture human-readable images for use by the PDP-6, Minsky and Papert had to match perceptual algorithms to the sensor's capabilities. In contrast, for sensory channels such as electric field imaging that have no human analog, the sensor hardware can be designed to support perceptual algorithms.
18179112
Balancing performance and flexibility with hardware support for network architectures
The goals of performance and flexibility are often at odds in the design of network systems. The tension is common enough to justify an architectural solution, rather than a set of context-specific solutions. The Programmable Protocol Processing Pipeline (P4) design uses programmable hardware to selectively accelerate protocol processing functions. A set of field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and an associated library of network processing modules implemented in hardware are augmented with software support for function selection and composition, and applied to processing-intensive portions of a user-programmable protocol stack. The system is sufficiently flexible to support protocol stacks that are dynamically altered in reaction to changing network conditions or user needs.The P4 can be transparently inserted into a conventional protocol architecture, such as that of TCP/IP. This experimental demonstration shows that the P4's programmability can be used to significantly improve the performance of TCP/IP under operating conditions where the protocol would perform poorly without augmentation. Generalizing from these experiments, the P4 is shown to have many applications as an open platform for implementing adaptive and programmable networks, and has illustrated new security issues that arise in FPGA-based architectures.The P4 and closely-related systems, such as network processors, are attractive architectural solutions to balancing performance and flexibility.
1781725
Developments in Steganography
This paper presents two main results. The first is a new approach to steganography in which data is encoded in correlations among the pixels in an image. Almost all previous steganographic methods encode data in correlations between the pixels and a known external reference signal. This method hints at the existence of public key watermarking techniques, which will be defined.
796697
A tutorial for competent memetic algorithms: model, taxonomy, and design issues
The combination of evolutionary algorithms with local search was named "memetic algorithms" (MAs) (Moscato, 1989). These methods are inspired by models of natural systems that combine the evolutionary adaptation of a population with individual learning within the lifetimes of its members. Additionally, MAs are inspired by Richard Dawkin's concept of a meme, which represents a unit of cultural evolution that can exhibit local refinement (Dawkins, 1976). In the case of MA's, "memes" refer to the strategies (e.g., local refinement, perturbation, or constructive methods, etc.) that are employed to improve individuals. In this paper, we review some works on the application of MAs to well-known combinatorial optimization problems, and place them in a framework defined by a general syntactic model. This model provides us with a classification scheme based on a computable index D, which facilitates algorithmic comparisons and suggests areas for future research. Also, by having an abstract model for this class of metaheuristics, it is possible to explore their design space and better understand their behavior from a theoretical standpoint. We illustrate the theoretical and practical relevance of this model and taxonomy for MAs in the context of a discussion of important design issues that must be addressed to produce effective and efficient MAs.