18878687
Directional Coherence Interpolation For Three-Dimensional Gray-Level Images
A novel three-dimensional gray-level interpolation method called the Directional Coherence Interpolation (DCI) is presented in the paper. The principal advantage of the proposed approach is that it leads to significantly higher visual quality in 3D rendering when compared with traditional image interpolation methods. The basis of DCI is a form of directional image-space coherence. DCI interpolates the missing image data along the maximum coherence directions (MCD), which are estimated from the local image intensity yet constrained by a generic smoothness term. In order to further improve both the algorithm efficiency and robustness, we also propose to apply a pyramidal search strategy for MCD estimation. This coarse-to-fine scheme requires less computation time by starting with the reduced amount of data and propagating searching results to finer resolutions. DCI can incorporate image shape and structure information without the prior requirement of explicit representation of object boundary/surface. Extensive experiments were performed on both synthetic and real medical images to evaluate the proposed approaches. The experimental results show that the proposed methods are able to handle general object interpolation, while achieving both accuracy and efficiency in interpolation compared with the existing techniques.
5812669
Feature-based light field morphing
We present a feature-based technique for morphing 3D objects represented by light fields. Our technique enables morphing of image-based objects whose geometry and surface properties are too difficult to model with traditional vision and graphics techniques. Light field morphing is not based on 3D reconstruction; instead it relies on ray correspondence, i.e., the correspondence between rays of the source and target light fields. We address two main issues in light field morphing: feature specification and visibility changes. For feature specification, we develop an intuitive and easy-to-use user interface (UI). The key to this UI is feature polygons, which are intuitively specified as 3D polygons and are used as a control mechanism for ray correspondence in the abstract 4D ray space. For handling visibility changes due to object shape changes, we introduce ray-space warping. Ray-space warping can fill arbitrarily large holes caused by object shape changes; these holes are usually too large to be properly handled by traditional image warping. Our method can deal with non-Lambertian surfaces, including specular surfaces (with dense light fields). We demonstrate that light field morphing is an effective and easy-to-use technqiue that can generate convincing 3D morphing effects.
1498226
Approaches to implementing decision aggregation in multi-agent systems
1313086
Image-based surface detail transfer
Changing an object's appearance by adding geometric details is desirable in many real-world applications. Bump mapping has acted as an alternative to adding geometrical details, to an otherwise smooth object. But constructing visually interesting bump maps requires practice and artistic skills. Computer vision techniques have helped for modeling real-world objects and their surface details. In our approach, for cases where we only want to transfer geometrical details from one object to another, we might not need to explicitly compute 3D structures. In particular, our novel technique captures the geometrical details of an object from a single image in a way that is independent of the object's reflectance property. We can then transfer geometrical details to another surface, producing the appearance of a new surface with added geometrical details while preserving the object's reflectance property. Our method's advantages are that it's simple to implement, requires only a single image for each object, and produces effective results.
2845021
Incremental motion estimation through modified bundle adjustment
An incremental motion estimation scheme for long image sequence analysis is introduced. It applies to a sliding window of triplet images and maintains local motion consistency without resort to post-concatenation. This is possible thanks to our newly developed local process called three-view partial bundle adjustment. Unlike previous approaches that rely only on point matches across three or more views, our local process also takes into account all available two-view matches, leading to more accurate motion estimation. For sparse image sequences, two-view matches are very reliable and it becomes even more important to use them since the number of matches across more views decreases quickly. In this case, our incremental method can produce results very close to those obtained with a global bundle adjustment but in a fraction of time. Experiments with both synthetic and real data have been conducted to compare the proposed technique with other techniques, and have shown our technique to be clearly superior.
5858737
A Robust Technique for Matching two Uncalibrated Images Through the Recovery of the Unknown Epipolar Geometry
Abstract This paper proposes a robust approach to image matching by exploiting the only available geometric constraint, namely, the epipolar constraint. The images are uncalibrated, namely the motion between them and the camera parameters are not known. Thus, the images can be taken by different cameras or a single camera at different time instants. If we make an exhaustive search for the epipolar geometry, the complexity is prohibitively high. The idea underlying our approach is to use classical techniques (correlation and relaxation methods in our particular implementation) to find an initial set of matches, and then use a robust technique—the Least Median of Squares (LMedS)—to discard false matches in this set. The epipolar geometry can then be accurately estimated using a meaningful image criterion. More matches are eventually found, as in stereo matching, by using the recovered epipolar geometry. A large number of experiments have been carried out, and very good results have been obtained. Regarding the relaxation technique, we define a new measure of matching support, which allows a higher tolerance to deformation with respect to rigid transformations in the image plane and a smaller contribution for distant matches than for nearby ones. A new strategy for updating matches is developed, which only selects those matches having both high matching support and low matching ambiguity. The update strategy is different from the classical “winner-take-all”, which is easily stuck at a local minimum, and also from “loser-take-nothing”, which is usually very slow. The proposed algorithm has been widely tested and works remarkably well in a scene with many repetitive patterns.
29068146
PseudoPipe: an automated pseudogene identification pipeline
MOTIVATION
Mammalian genomes contain many 'genomic fossils' i.e. pseudogenes. These are disabled copies of functional genes that have been retained in the genome by gene duplication or retrotransposition events. Pseudogenes are important resources in understanding the evolutionary history of genes and genomes.


RESULTS
We have developed a homology-based computational pipeline ('PseudoPipe') that can search a mammalian genome and identify pseudogene sequences in a comprehensive and consistent manner. The key steps in the pipeline involve using BLAST to rapidly cross-reference potential "parent" proteins against the intergenic regions of the genome and then processing the resulting "raw hits" -- i.e. eliminating redundant ones, clustering together neighbors, and associating and aligning clusters with a unique parent. Finally, pseudogenes are classified based on a combination of criteria including homology, intron-exon structure, and existence of stop codons and frameshifts.