A Two-Stage Algorithm of High Resolution Image Alignment for Mobile Applications

Global motion estimation (GME) algorithms are widely applied to computer vision and video processing. In the previous works, the image resolutions are usually low for the real-time requirement (e.g. video stabilization). However, in some mobile devices applications (e.g. image sequence panoramic stitching), the high resolution is necessary to obtain satisfactory quality of panoramic image. However, the computational cost will become too expensive to be suitable for the low power consumption requirement of mobile device. The full search algorithm can obtain the global minimum with extremely computational cost, while the typical fast algorithms may suffer from the local minimum problem. This paper proposed a fast algorithm to deal with 2560 × 1920 high-resolution (HR) image sequences. The proposed method estimates the motion vector by a two-level coarse-to-fine scheme which only exploits sparse reference blocks (25 blocks in this paper) in each level to determine the global motion vector, thus the computational costs are significantly decreased. In order to increase the effective search range and robustness, the predictive motion vector (PMV) technique is used in this work. By the comparisons of computational complexity, the proposed algorithm costs less addition operations than the typical Three-Step Search algorithm (TSS) for estimating the global motion of the HR images without the local minimum problem. The quantitative evaluations show that our method is comparable to the full search algorithm (FSA) which is considered to be the golden baseline.

Implementation of Shock Filter for Digital X-Ray Image Processing

X-ray image might be corrupted by noise or blurring because of signal transmission or the bad X- ray lens. This paper presents a two-stage shock filter based on Partial Differential Equations (PDE) to restore noisy blurred X-ray image. Shock filters are popular morphological methods. They are used for noise removal, edge enhancement and image segmentation. Our experimental results show that the performances of shock filter are excellent in X-ray image. The peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) values are 38 dB at least in restoring the noisy X-ray image. The sharpness of image’s edges increase in enhancing the blurred X-ray image. Furthermore, this paper proposes a VLSI architecture for accelerating the high-definition (HD) X-ray image (944 p) process. This paper implements the architecture in FPGA. The hardware cost is low because the computation of shock filter is low complex. To achieve the real-time processing specification, this paper uses a 5-series shock filter architecture to implement computation of HD X-ray image. This paper demonstrates a 944 p, 43.1-fps solution on 100 MHz with 133 k gate counts in Design Compiler, and with 2904 logic elements in FPGA.

A Multiple Random Feature Extraction Algorithm for Image Object Tracking

This paper proposes an object-tracking algorithm with multiple randomly-generated features. We mainly improve the tracking performance which is sometimes good and sometimes bad in compressive tracking. In compressive tracking, the image features are generated by random projection. The resulting image features are affected by the random numbers so that the results of each execution are different. If the obvious features of the target are not captured, the tracker is likely to fail. Therefore the tracking results are inconsistent for each execution. The proposed algorithm uses a number of different image features to track, and chooses the best tracking result by measuring the similarity with the target model. It reduces the chances to determine the target location by the poor image features. In this paper, we use the Bhattacharyya coefficient to choose the best tracking result. The experimental results show that the proposed tracking algorithm can greatly reduce the tracking errors. The best performance improvements in terms of center location error, bounding box overlap ratio and success rate are from 63.62 pixels to 15.45 pixels, from 31.75% to 64.48% and from 38.51% to 82.58%, respectively.

A Hierarchical Grab Cut Image Segmentation Algorithm

This paper aims to speed up a segmentation algorithm “Grab Cut” by separating the process of segmentation into hierarchical steps. The Grab Cut algorithm segments images by means of the color clustering concept and the process requires a lot of iteration for it to get converged. Therefore, it is a time-consuming process which we are interested in improving this process. In this study, we adopt the idea of hierarchical processing. The first step is to compute at low resolution to make the iteration much faster, and the second step use the result of the first step to carry on iteration at original resolution so that the total execution time can be reduced. Specifically speaking, segmentation of a low resolution image will lead to high-speed and similar-segmentation result to the segmentation at original resolution. Hence, once the iterations at low resolution have converged, we can utilize the parameters of segmentation result to initialize the next segmentation on original resolution. This way, the number of iteration of segmentation at original resolution will be reduced through the initialization of those parameters. Since the execution time of low resolution images is relatively short, the total hierarchical execution time will be reduced consequently. Also, we made a comparison among the four methods of reduction on image resolution. Finally, we found that reducing the number of basins by “Median Filter” resulted in best segmentation speed.

3-D EIT Image Reconstruction Using a Block-Based Compressed Sensing Approach

Electrical impedance tomography (EIT) is a fast and cost-effective technique that provides a tomographic conductivity image of a subject from boundary current-voltage data. This paper proposes a time and memory efficient method for solving a large scale 3D EIT image reconstruction problem and the ill-posed linear inverse problem. First, we use block-based sampling for a large number of measured data from many electrodes. This method will reduce the size of Jacobian matrix and can improve accuracy of reconstruction by using more electrodes. And then, a sparse matrix reduction technique is proposed using thresholding to set very small values of the Jacobian matrix to zero. By adjusting the Jacobian matrix into a sparse format, the element with zeros would be eliminated, which results in a saving of memory requirement. Finally, we built up the relationship between compressed sensing and EIT definitely and induce the CS: two-step Iterative Shrinkage/Thresholding and block-based method into EIT image reconstruction algorithm. The results show that block-based compressed sensing enables the large scale 3D EIT problem to be efficient. For a 72-electrodes EIT system, our proposed method could save at least 61% of memory and reduce time by 72% than compressed sensing method only. The improvements will be obvious by using more electrodes. And this method is not only better at anti-noise, but also faster and better resolution.

Implementation of RANSAC Algorithm for Feature-Based Image Registration

This paper describes the hardware implementation of the RANdom Sample Consensus (RANSAC) algorithm for featured-based image registration applications. The Multiple-Input Signature Register (MISR) and the index register are used to achieve the random sampling effect. The systolic array architecture is adopted to implement the forward elimination step in the Gaussian elimination. The computational complexity in the forward elimination is reduced by sharing the coefficient matrix. As a result, the area of the hardware cost is reduced by more than 50%. The proposed architecture is realized using Verilog and achieves real-time calculation on 30 fps 1024 * 1024 video stream on 100 MHz clock.

Design of High-Utilization Current-Sharing Controller for Battery-Ultracapacitor Hybrid Energy Storage System

In this paper, a new control strategy of battery-ultracapacitor hybrid energy storage system (HESS) is proposed for hybrid electric drive vehicles (HEVs). Compared to the stand, alone battery system may not be sufficient to satisfy peak demand periods during transients in HEVs, the ultracapacitor pack can supply or recover the peak power and it can be used in high C-rates. However, the problem of battery-ultracapacitor hybrid energy storage system (HESS) is how to interconnect the battery and ultracapacitor and how to control the power distribution. This paper reviewed some battery-ultracapacitor hybrid energy storage system topology and investigated the advantages and disadvantages, then proposed a new control strategy. The proposed control strategy can improve the system performance and ultracapacitor utilization, while also decreasing the battery pack size to avoid the thermal runaway problems and increase the life of the battery. The experiment results showed the proposed control strategy can improve 3% - 4% ultracapacitor utilization.