Two-Staged Method for Ice Channel Identification Based on Image Segmentation and Corner Point Regression

Identification of the ice channel is the basic technology for developing intelligent ships in ice-covered waters,which is important to ensure the safety and economy of navigation.In the Arctic,merchant ships with low ice class often navigate in channels opened up by icebreakers.Navigation in the ice channel often depends on good maneuverability skills and abundant experience from the captain to a large extent.The ship may get stuck if steered into ice fields off the channel.Under this circumstance,it is very important to study how to identify the boundary lines of ice channels with a reliable method.In this paper,a two-staged ice channel identification method is developed based on image segmentation and corner point regression.The first stage employs the image segmentation method to extract channel regions.In the second stage,an intelligent corner regression network is proposed to extract the channel boundary lines from the channel region.A non-intelligent angle-based filtering and clustering method is proposed and compared with corner point regression network.The training and evaluation of the segmentation method and corner regression network are carried out on the synthetic and real ice channel dataset.The evaluation results show that the accuracy of the method using the corner point regression network in the second stage is achieved as high as 73.33%on the synthetic ice channel dataset and 70.66%on the real ice channel dataset,and the processing speed can reach up to 14.58frames per second.

Intelligent extraction of road cracks based on vehicle laser point cloud and panoramic sequence images

In light of the limited efficacy of conventional methods for identifying pavement cracks and the absence of comprehensive depth and location data in two-dimensional photographs,this study presents an intelligent strategy for extracting road cracks.This methodology involves the integration of laser point cloud data obtained from a vehicle-mounted system and a panoramic sequence of images.The study employs a vehicle-mounted LiDAR measurement system to acquire laser point cloud and panoramic sequence image data simultaneously.A convolutional neural network is utilized to extract cracks from the panoramic sequence image.The extracted sequence image is then aligned with the laser point cloud,enabling the assignment of RGB information to the vehicle-mounted three dimensional(3D)point cloud and location information to the two dimensional(2D)panoramic image.Additionally,a threshold value is set based on the crack elevation change to extract the aligned roadway point cloud.The three-dimensional data pertaining to the cracks can be acquired.The experimental findings demonstrate that the use of convolutional neural networks has yielded noteworthy outcomes in the extraction of road cracks.The utilization of point cloud and image alignment techniques enables the extraction of precise location data pertaining to road cracks.This approach exhibits superior accuracy when compared to conventional methods.Moreover,it facilitates rapid and accurate identification and localization of road cracks,thereby playing a crucial role in ensuring road maintenance and traffic safety.Consequently,this technique finds extensive application in the domains of intelligent transportation and urbanization development.The technology exhibits significant promise for use in the domains of intelligent transportation and city development.

A Visual Indoor Localization Method Based on Efficient Image Retrieval

The task of indoor visual localization, utilizing camera visual information for user pose calculation, was a core component of Augmented Reality (AR) and Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM). Existing indoor localization technologies generally used scene-specific 3D representations or were trained on specific datasets, making it challenging to balance accuracy and cost when applied to new scenes. Addressing this issue, this paper proposed a universal indoor visual localization method based on efficient image retrieval. Initially, a Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP) was employed to aggregate features from intermediate layers of a convolutional neural network, obtaining a global representation of the image. This approach ensured accurate and rapid retrieval of reference images. Subsequently, a new mechanism using Random Sample Consensus (RANSAC) was designed to resolve relative pose ambiguity caused by the essential matrix decomposition based on the five-point method. Finally, the absolute pose of the queried user image was computed, thereby achieving indoor user pose estimation. The proposed indoor localization method was characterized by its simplicity, flexibility, and excellent cross-scene generalization. Experimental results demonstrated a positioning error of 0.09 m and 2.14° on the 7Scenes dataset, and 0.15 m and 6.37° on the 12Scenes dataset. These results convincingly illustrated the outstanding performance of the proposed indoor localization method.

Triplet Label Based Image Retrieval Using Deep Learning in Large Database

Recent days,Image retrieval has become a tedious process as the image database has grown very larger.The introduction of Machine Learning(ML)and Deep Learning(DL)made this process more comfortable.In these,the pair-wise label similarity is used tofind the matching images from the database.But this method lacks of limited propose code and weak execution of misclassified images.In order to get-rid of the above problem,a novel triplet based label that incorporates context-spatial similarity measure is proposed.A Point Attention Based Triplet Network(PABTN)is introduced to study propose code that gives maximum discriminative ability.To improve the performance of ranking,a corre-lating resolutions for the classification,triplet labels based onfindings,a spatial-attention mechanism and Region Of Interest(ROI)and small trial information loss containing a new triplet cross-entropy loss are used.From the experimental results,it is shown that the proposed technique exhibits better results in terms of mean Reciprocal Rank(mRR)and mean Average Precision(mAP)in the CIFAR-10 and NUS-WIPE datasets.

A Review of Point Feature Based Medical Image Registration

Point features, as the basis of lines, surfaces, and bodies, are commonly used in medical image registration. To obtain an elegant spatial transformation of extracted feature points, many point set matching algorithms(PMs) have been developed to match two point sets by optimizing multifarious distance functions. There are ample reviews related to medical image registration and PMs which summarize their basic principles and main algorithms separately. However,to data, detailed summary of PMs used in medical image registration in different clinical environments has not been published. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive review of the existing key techniques of the PMs applied to medical image registration according to the basic principles and clinical applications. As the core technique of the PMs, geometric transformation models are elaborated in this paper, demonstrating the mechanism of point set registration. We also focus on the clinical applications of the PMs and propose a practical classification method according to their applications in different clinical surgeries. The aim of this paper is to provide a summary of pointfeaturebased methods used in medical image registration and to guide doctors or researchers interested in this field to choose appropriate techniques in their research.

Image Feature Extraction and Matching of Augmented Solar Images in Space Weather

Augmented solar images were used to research the adaptability of four representative image extraction and matching algorithms in space weather domain.These include the scale-invariant feature transform algorithm,speeded-up robust features algorithm,binary robust invariant scalable keypoints algorithm,and oriented fast and rotated brief algorithm.The performance of these algorithms was estimated in terms of matching accuracy,feature point richness,and running time.The experiment result showed that no algorithm achieved high accuracy while keeping low running time,and all algorithms are not suitable for image feature extraction and matching of augmented solar images.To solve this problem,an improved method was proposed by using two-frame matching to utilize the accuracy advantage of the scale-invariant feature transform algorithm and the speed advantage of the oriented fast and rotated brief algorithm.Furthermore,our method and the four representative algorithms were applied to augmented solar images.Our application experiments proved that our method achieved a similar high recognition rate to the scale-invariant feature transform algorithm which is significantly higher than other algorithms.Our method also obtained a similar low running time to the oriented fast and rotated brief algorithm,which is significantly lower than other algorithms.

Point Reg Net: Invariant Features for Point Cloud Registration Using in Image-Guided Radiation Therapy

In image-guided radiation therapy, extracting features from medical point cloud is the key technique for multimodality registration. This novel framework, denoted Control Point Net (CPN), provides an alternative to the common applications of manually designed keypoint descriptors for coarse point cloud registration. The CPN directly consumes a point cloud, divides it into equally spaced 3D voxels and transforms the points within each voxel into a unified feature representation through voxel feature encoding (VFE) layer. Then all volumetric representations are aggregated by Weighted Extraction Layer which selectively extracts features and synthesize into global descriptors and coordinates of control points. Utilizing global descriptors instead of local features allows the available geometrical data to be better exploited to improve the robustness and precision. Specifically, CPN unifies feature extraction and clustering into a single network, omitting time-consuming feature matching procedure. The algorithm is tested on point cloud datasets generated from CT images. Experiments and comparisons with the state-of-the-art descriptors demonstrate that CPN is highly discriminative, efficient, and robust to noise and density changes.

Landslide data mosaicking based on an airborne laser point cloud and multi-beam sonar images

Landslides are one of the most disastrous geological hazards in southwestern China.Once a landslide becomes unstable,it threatens the lives and safety of local residents.However,empirical studies on landslides have predominantly focused on landslides that occur on land.To this end,we aim to investigate ashore and underwater landslide data synchronously.This study proposes an optimized mosaicking method for ashore and underwater landslide data.This method fuses an airborne laser point cloud with multi-beam depth sounder images.Owing to their relatively high efficiency and large coverage area,airborne laser measurement systems are suitable for emergency investigations of landslides.Based on the airborne laser point cloud,the traversal of the point with the lowest elevation value in the point set can be used to perform rapid extraction of the crude channel boundaries.Further meticulous extraction of the channel boundaries is then implemented using the probability mean value optimization method.In addition,synthesis of the integrated ashore and underwater landslide data angle is realized using the spatial guide line between the channel boundaries and the underwater multibeam sonar images.A landslide located on the right bank of the middle reaches of the Yalong River is selected as a case study to demonstrate that the proposed method has higher precision thantraditional methods.The experimental results show that the mosaicking method in this study can meet the basic needs of landslide modeling and provide a basis for qualitative and quantitative analysis and stability prediction of landslides.

AUTOMATED IMAGE MATCHING WITH CODED POINTS IN STEREOVISION MEASUREMENT

A coding-based method to solve the image matching problems in stereovision measurement is presented. The solution is to add and append an identity ID to the retro-reflect point, so it can be identified efficiently under the complicated circumstances and has the characteristics of rotation, zooming, and deformation independence. Its design architecture and implementation process in details based on the theory of stereovision measurement are described. The method is effective on reducing processing data time, improving accuracy of image matching and automation of measuring system through experiments.

A Fast Aerial Image Matching Method Using Airborne LiDAR Point Cloud and POS Data

A novel tie point matching algorithm of aerial images with the assistance of airborne LiDAR point clouds and POS data is proposed Firstly,the conjugate point searching strategy used in traditional correlation coefficient matching is improved and a fast algorithm is presented.Secondly,an automatic camera boresight misalignment calibration method based on virtual ground control points is proposed,and then the searching range of image matching is adaptively determined and applied to the image matching of the entire surveying area.Test results verified that the fast correlation coefficient matching algorithm proposed in this paper can reduce approximately 25% of the matching time without the loss of matching accuracy.The camera boresight misalignment calibration method can effectively increase the accuracy of exterior orientation elements of images calculated from POS data,and thus can significantly improve the predicted position of conjugate point for tie point matching.Our proposed image matching algorithm can achieve superior matching accuracy with multi-scale,multi-view,and cross-flight aerial images.

HESSIAN MATRIX BASED SADDLE POINT DETECTION FOR GRANULES SEGMENTATION IN 2D IMAGE

Segmenting the touching objects in an image has been remaining as a hot subject due to the problematic complexities, and a vast number of algorithms designed to tackle this issue have come into being since a decade ago. In this paper, a new granule segmentation algorithm is developed using saddle point as the cutting point. The image is binarized and then sequentially eroded to form a gray-scale topographic counterpart, followed by using Hessian matrix computation to search for the saddle point. The segmentation is performed by cutting through the saddle point and along the maximal gradient path on the topographic surface. The results of the algorithm test on the given real images indicate certain superiorities in both the segmenting robustness and execution time to the referenced methods.

AUTOMATIC SEARCHING OF CONTROL POINT IN NOAA AVHRR IMAGE

This paper discusses the approaches for automatical searching of control points in the NOAA AVHRR image on the basis of data rearrangement in the form of latitude and longitude grid. The vegetation index transformation and multi-level matching strategies have been proven effective and successful as the experiments show while the control point database is established.

Image Relaxation Matching Based on Feature Points for DSM Generation

In photogrammetry and remote sensing, image matching is a basic and crucial process for automatic DEM generation. In this paper we presented a image relaxation matching method based on feature points. This method can be considered as an extention of regular grid point based matching. It avoids the shortcome of grid point based matching. For example, with this method, we can avoid low or even no texture area where errors frequently appear in cross correlaton matching. In the mean while, it makes full use of some mature techniques such as probability relaxation, image pyramid and the like which have already been successfully used in grid point matching process. Application of the technique to DEM generaton in different regions proved that it is more reasonable and reliable.

On REE and EER Methods for Mining Corner Points on the Images

This paper reviews, implements and compares two corner detection algorithms for mining corner points on the generic shapes. These corner detectors detect corners by using combination of one rectangle (R) and two ellipses (EE). These algorithms have been used with different combinations: REE and EER together with different parameter settings in their descriptions. REE and EER combinations slide along the boundary of the shape and record number of boundary points in each rectangle and ellipses. REE and EER setup represent both local and global views of the image outlines and present natural corner detection methodologies to detect and mine all true corners accurately. A comparative study demonstrates the superiority of the REE and EER over some of the existing algorithms.

Modified SIFT descriptor and key-point matching for fast and robust image mosaic

To improve the performance of the scale invariant feature transform （ SIFT）, a modified SIFT （M-SIFT） descriptor is proposed to realize fast and robust key-point extraction and matching. In descriptor generation, 3 rotation-invariant concentric-ring grids around the key-point location are used instead of 16 square grids used in the original SIFT. Then, 10 orientations are accumulated for each grid, which results in a 30-dimension descriptor. In descriptor matching, rough rejection mismatches is proposed based on the difference of grey information between matching points. The per- formance of the proposed method is tested for image mosaic on simulated and real-worid images. Experimental results show that the M-SIFT descriptor inherits the SIFT＇ s ability of being invariant to image scale and rotation, illumination change and affine distortion. Besides the time cost of feature extraction is reduced by 50% compared with the original SIFT. And the rough rejection mismatches can reject at least 70% of mismatches. The results also demonstrate that the performance of the pro- posed M-SIFT method is superior to other improved SIFT methods in speed and robustness.

New Approach in Processing of the Infrared Image Sequence for Moving Dim Point Targets Detection

The development of an efficient moving target detection algorithm in IR-image sequence is considered one of the most critical research fields in modern IRST (Infrared Search and Track) systems, especially when dealing with moving dim point targets. In this paper we propose a new approach in processing of the Infrared image sequence for moving dim point targets detection built on the transformation of the IR-image sequence into 4-vectors for each frame in the sequence. The results of testing the proposed approach on a set of frames having a simple single pixel target performing a different motion patterns show the validity of the approach for detecting the motion, with simplicity in calculation and low time consumption.

SIFT-based automatic tie-points extraction for airborne InSAR images

The scale-invariant feature transform (SIFT) is often applied to extract tie-points for airborne SAR images. When a pair of airborne SAR images differs with look angles obviously, shadow sizes and shapes of same objects will differ obviously. In main and slave SAR images, key-points around shadows often match as tie-points, although they are not homologous points. The phenomenon worsens the performance of SIFT on SAR images. On the basis of SIFT, a modified matching method is proposed to decrease the number of incorrect tie-points. High-resolution airborne SAR images are used in Experiments. Experiment results show that the proposed method is very effective to extract correct tie-points for SAR images.

AUTO-IDENTIFICATION OF FOREST FIRE-POINTS IN NOAA IMAGES BASED ON NEURAL NETWORK

Identification of forest fire_points in NOAA images is the basis of monitoring forest fire using NOAA satellite data.Traditional visual interpretation is difficult to settle for auto_identification with computer.The artificial neural network technique provides a new means for solving this problem.In this paper,the principles and method of using neural network technique to automatically identify fire_points in NOAA images are discussed and the test in the range of Hubei province is presented.The result of the test shows that the disciplined neural network has collected the character of fire_points and has ability to identify fire_points in NOAA images.Comparing neural network with visual interpretation,the conclusion is drawn that by using neural network the purpose of auto_identification of forest fire_points in NOAA images can be realized with the almost same precision.

An invariant interest point detector under image affine transformation

For vision-based mobile robot navigation, images of the same scene may undergo a general affine transformation in the case of significant viewpoint changes. So, a novel method for detecting affine invariant interest points is proposed to obtain the invariant local features, which is coined polynomial local orientation tensor(PLOT). The new detector is based on image local orientation tensor that is constructed from the polynomial expansion of image signal. Firstly, the properties of local orientation tensor of PLOT are analyzed, and a suitable tuning parameter of local orientation tensor is chosen so as to extract invariant features. The initial interest points are detected by local maxima search for the smaller eigenvalues of the orientation tensor. Then, an iterative procedure is used to allow the initial interest points to converge to affine invariant interest points and regions. The performances of this detector are evaluated on the repeatability criteria and recall versus 1-precision graphs, and then are compared with other existing approaches. Experimental results for PLOT show strong performance under affine transformation in the real-world conditions.

The Associations for Vaginal Point Doses of Vaginal Stenosis in Image-Guided Brachytherapy

Purpose: To evaluate the associations for vaginal dose points of vaginal stricture in image-guided brachytherapy. Materials and Methods: Twenty-six patients of locally advanced cervical cancer were treated with Image-Guided Brachytherapy (IGBT) with the dose at least 7 Gy per fraction to the D90 of High-Risk Clinical Target Volume (HR-CTV). The vaginal dose points of recommendations of the American Brachytherapy Society (ABS) were added into the plan and cumulative dose to these points was evaluated in Equivalent Dose of 2 Gy (EQD2) concepts. Results: The mean doses to right vaginal dose point (VR), left vaginal dose point (VL) and average dose of VR/VL ((VR + VL)/2) were 101.5 Gy, 98.2 Gy and 99.8 Gy in EQD2 concepts, respectively. Volume-based planning significantly reduced the cumulative dose in EQD2 concepts at vaginal points. At the median follow-up time of 22 months, grade-2 vaginal stricture was observed in two patients. The incidences of vaginal stricture were not differed between the cumulative dose to vaginal dose points in EQD2 concepts of ≤90 Gy versus >90 Gy (P = 1.000) and ≤100 Gy versus >100 Gy (P = 0.815). Conclusion: No association for cumulative vaginal doses and events of vaginal stricture was found.