6942556
Multi-camera spatio-temporal fusion and biased sequence-data learning for security surveillance
We present a framework for multi-camera video surveillance. The framework consists of three phases: detection, representation, and recognition. The detection phase handles multi-source spatio-temporal data fusion for efficiently and reliably extracting motion trajectories from video. The representation phase summarizes raw trajectory data to construct hierarchical, invariant, and content-rich descriptions of the motion events. Finally, the recognition phase deals with event classification and identification on the data descriptors. Because of space limits, we describe only briefly how we detect and represent events, but we provide in-depth treatment on the third phase: event recognition. For effective recognition, we devise a sequence-alignment kernel function to perform sequence data learning for identifying suspicious events. We show that when the positive training instances (i.e., suspicious events) are significantly outnumbered by the negative training instances (benign events), then SVMs (or any other learning methods) can suffer a high incidence of errors. To remedy this problem, we propose the kernel boundary alignment (KBA) algorithm to work with the sequence-alignment kernel. Through empirical study in a parking-lot surveillance setting, we show that our spatio-temporal fusion scheme and biased sequence-data learning method are highly effective in identifying suspicious events.
18150673
The anatomy of a multimodal information filter
The proliferation of objectionable information on the Internet has reached a level of serious concern. To empower end-users with the choice of blocking undesirable and offensive websites, we propose a multimodal information filter, named MORF. In this paper, we present MORF's core components: its confidence-based classifier, a Cross-bagging ensemble scheme, and multimodal classification algorithm. Empirical studies and initial statistics collected from the MORF filters deployed at sites in the U.S. and Asia show that MORF is both efficient and effective, due to our classification methods.
9408458
PBIR-MM: multimodal image retrieval and annotation
We demonstrate PBIR-MM, an integrated system that we have built for conducting multimodal image retrieval. The system combines the strengths of content-based soft annotation (CBSA), multimodal relevance feedback through active learning, and perceptual distance formulation and indexing. PBIR-MM supports multimodal query and annotation in any combination of its three basic modes: seed-by-nothing, seed-by-keywords, and seed-by-content. We demonstrate PBIR-MM on a couple of very large image sets provided by image vendors and crawled from the Internet.
7236137
Efficient top-k hyperplane query processing for multimedia information retrieval
A query can be answered by a binary classifier, which separates the instances that are relevant to the query from the ones that are not. When kernel methods are employed to train such a classifier, the class boundary is represented as a hyperplane in a projected space. Data instances that are farthest from the hyperplane are deemed to be most relevant to the query, and that are nearest to the hyperplane to be most uncertain to the query. In this paper, we address the twin problems of efficient retrieval of the approximate set of instances (a) farthest from and (b) nearest to a query hyperplane. Retrieval of instances for this hyperplane-based query scenario is mapped to the range-query problem allowing for the reuse of existing index structures. Empirical evaluation on large image datasets confirms the effectiveness of our approach.
2439726
Concept boundary detection for speeding up SVMs
Support Vector Machines (SVMs) suffer from an O(n2) training cost, where n denotes the number of training instances. In this paper, we propose an algorithm to select boundary instances as training data to substantially reduce n. Our proposed algorithm is motivated by the result of (Burges, 1999) that, removing non-support vectors from the training set does not change SVM training results. Our algorithm eliminates instances that are likely to be non-support vectors. In the concept-independent preprocessing step of our algorithm, we prepare nearest-neighbor lists for training instances. In the concept-specific sampling step, we can then effectively select useful training data for each target concept. Empirical studies show our algorithm to be effective in reducing n, outperforming other competing downsampling algorithms without significantly compromising testing accuracy.
10743717
Support vector machine active learning for image retrieval
Relevance feedback is often a critical component when designing image databases. With these databases it is difficult to specify queries directly and explicitly. Relevance feedback interactively determinines a user's desired output or query concept by asking the user whether certain proposed images are relevant or not. For a relevance feedback algorithm to be effective, it must grasp a user's query concept accurately and quickly, while also only asking the user to label a small number of images. We propose the use of a support vector machine active learning algorithm for conducting effective relevance feedback for image retrieval. The algorithm selects the most informative images to query a user and quickly learns a boundary that separates the images that satisfy the user's query concept from the rest of the dataset. Experimental results show that our algorithm achieves significantly higher search accuracy than traditional query refinement schemes after just three to four rounds of relevance feedback.
6661888
A wavelet approach to foveating images
Motivated by applications of foveated images in visualization, we introduce the foveation transform of an image. We study the basic properties of these transforms using the multiresolution framework of Mallat. We also consider practical methods of realizing such transforms. In particular, we introduce a new method for foveating images based on wavelets. Preliminary experimental results are shown.
11249256
A unified framework for resolving ambiguity in copy detection
Copy detection is an important component of digital rights management and can be implemented using a retrieval-based approach. Under this approach, a query image, suspected to be a copy, is compared against all the images in the owner database. The comparison is done based on a distance metric in feature space. The performance of such a system depends on the mutual separation of the feature representation of the images in the database. In this paper we propose a framework that increases this mutual separation by literally shifting them away from each other. The idea of modifying the features derives its inspiration from the field of watermarking. It is also important to make sure that the semantics of the images do not change after modification. Thus the focus of this paper is on how to modify the images in the database, so that the mutual separation between the images in feature space is above a certain threshold and the distortion induced is minimized. This problem can be formulated as a non-convex optimization problem which is difficult to solve. We propose a restriction of the problem and solve it using second-order cone programming. We present a practical implementation of our framework, named RAM, which uses AFMT as the feature representation. We conduct experiments to test the performance of RAM.
9884959
Watermarking with retrieval systems
Abstract.We are interested in the problem of associating messages with multimedia content for the purpose of identifying them. This problem can be addressed by a watermarking system that embeds the associated messages into the multimedia content (also called Work). A drawback of watermarking is that the content will be distorted during embedding. On the other hand, if we assume that the database is available, the problem can be addressed by a retrieval system. Although no undesirable distortion is introduced when a retrieval system is used, the overhead of searching in large databases is fundamentally difficult (also known as the dimensionality curse). In this paper we present a novel framework that strikes a trade-off between watermarking and retrieval systems. Our framework avoids the dimensionality curse by introducing small distortions (watermark) into the multimedia content. From another perspective, the framework improves the watermarking performance, marked by significant reduction in distortion, by introducing searching ability in the message detection stage. To prove the concept, we give an algorithm based on the proposed notion of “active clustering”.
2005681
Hiding Secret Points Amidst Chaff
Motivated by the representation of biometric and multimedia objects, we consider the problem of hiding noisy point-sets using a secure sketch. A point-set X consists of s points from a d-dimensional discrete domain [0,N – 1]d. Under permissible noises, for every point $\left \langle x_1,..,x_d\right \rangle \in X$, each xi may be perturbed by a value of at most δ. In addition, at most t points in X may be replaced by other points in [0,N – 1]d. Given an original X, we want to compute a secure sketch P. A known method constructs the sketch by adding a set of random points R, and the description of (X∪R) serves as part of the sketch. However, the dependencies among the random points are difficult to analyze, and there is no known non-trivial bound on the entropy loss. In this paper, we first give a general method to generate R and show that the entropy loss of (X∪R) is at most s(dlogΔ+ d + 0.443), where Δ= 2δ+1. We next give improved schemes for d = 1, and special cases for d = 2. Such improvements are achieved by pre-rounding, and careful partition of the domains into cells. It is possible to make our sketch short, and avoid using randomness during construction. We also give a method in d = 1 to demonstrate that, using the size of R as the security measure would be misleading.
3079245
Statistics- and Spatiality-Based Feature Distance Measure for Error Resilient Image Authentication
Content-based image authentication typically assesses authenticity based on a distance measure between the image to be tested and its original. Commonly employed distance measures such as the Minkowski measures (including Hamming and Euclidean distances) may not be adequate for content-based image authentication since they do not exploit statistical and spatial properties in features. This paper proposes a feature distance measure for content-based image authentication based on statistical and spatial properties of the feature differences. The proposed statistics- and spatiality-based measure (SSM) is motivated by an observation that most malicious manipulations are localized whereas acceptable manipulations result in global distortions. A statistical measure, kurtosis, is used to assess the shape of the feature difference distribution; a spatial measure, the maximum connected component size, is used to assess the degree of object concentration of the feature differences. The experimental results have confirmed that our proposed measure is better than previous measures in distinguishing malicious manipulations from acceptable ones.