Target classification using SIFT sequence scale invariants

On the basis of scale invariant feature transform（SIFT） descriptors,a novel kind of local invariants based on SIFT sequence scale（SIFT-SS） is proposed and applied to target classification.First of all,the merits of using an SIFT algorithm for target classification are discussed.Secondly,the scales of SIFT descriptors are sorted by descending as SIFT-SS,which is sent to a support vector machine（SVM） with radial based function（RBF） kernel in order to train SVM classifier,which will be used for achieving target classification.Experimental results indicate that the SIFT-SS algorithm is efficient for target classification and can obtain a higher recognition rate than affine moment invariants（AMI） and multi-scale auto-convolution（MSA） in some complex situations,such as the situation with the existence of noises and occlusions.Moreover,the computational time of SIFT-SS is shorter than MSA and longer than AMI.

Scale invariant features extraction for stereo vision

Stable local feature detection is a fundamental component of many stereo vision problems such as 3-D reconstruction, object localization, and object tracking. A robust method for extracting scale-invariant feature points is presented. First, the Harris corners in three-level pyramid are extracted. Then, the points detected at the highest level of the pyramid are correctly propagated to the lower level by pyramid based scale invariant （PBSI） method. The corners detected repeatedly in different levels are chosen as final feature points. Finally, the characteristic scale is obtained based on maximum entropy method. The experimental results show that the algorithm has low computation cost, strong antinoise capability, and excellent performance in the presence of significant scale changes.

A DISCUSSION ABOUT SCALE INVARIANTS FOR TENSOR FUNCTIONS

It is found that in some cases the complete and irreducible scale invariants given by Ref.[1] are not independent. There are some implicit functional relations among them. The scale invariants for two different cases are calculated. The first case is an arbitrary second order tensor. The second case includes a symmetric tensor, an antisymmetric tensor and a vector. By using the eigentensor notation it is proved that in the first case there are only six independent scale invariants rather than seven as reported in Ref.[1] and in the second case there are only nine independent scale invariants which are less than that obtained in Ref.[1].

Robust Radiometric Normalization of the near Equatorial Satellite Images Using Feature Extraction and Remote Sensing Analysis

Relative radiometric normalization (RRN) minimizes radiometric differences among images caused by inconsistencies of acquisition conditions rather than changes in surface. Scale invariant feature transform (SIFT) has the ability to automatically extract control points (CPs) and is commonly used for remote sensing images. However, its results are mostly inaccurate and sometimes contain incorrect matching caused by generating a small number of false CP pairs. These CP pairs have high false alarm matching. This paper presents a modified method to improve the performance of SIFT CPs matching by applying sum of absolute difference (SAD) in a different manner for the new optical satellite generation called near-equatorial orbit satellite and multi-sensor images. The proposed method, which has a significantly high rate of correct matches, improves CP matching. The data in this study were obtained from the RazakSAT satellite a new near equatorial satellite system. The proposed method involves six steps: 1) data reduction, 2) applying the SIFT to automatically extract CPs, 3) refining CPs matching by using SAD algorithm with empirical threshold, and 4) calculation of true CPs intensity values over all image’ bands, 5) preforming a linear regression model between the intensity values of CPs locate in reverence and sensed image’ bands, 6) Relative radiometric normalization conducting using regression transformation functions. Different thresholds have experimentally tested and used in conducting this study (50 and 70), by followed the proposed method, and it removed the false extracted SIFT CPs to be from 775, 1125, 883, 804, 883 and 681 false pairs to 342, 424, 547, 706, 547, and 469 corrected and matched pairs, respectively.

Self-similarity of complex networks under centrality-based node removal strategy

Real-world networks exhibit complex topological interactions that pose a significant computational challenge to analyses of such networks.Due to limited resources,there is an urgent need to develop dimensionality reduction techniques that can significantly reduce the structural complexity of initial large-scale networks.In this paper,we propose a subgraph extraction method based on the node centrality measure to reduce the size of the initial network topology.Specifically,nodes with smaller centrality value are removed from the initial network to obtain a subgraph with a smaller size.Our results demonstrate that various real-world networks,including power grids,technology,transportation,biology,social,and language networks,exhibit self-similarity behavior during the reduction process.The present results reveal the selfsimilarity and scale invariance of real-world networks from a different perspective and also provide an effective guide for simplifying the topology of large-scale networks.

Fractal Studies on Dielectric Ageing

A stochastic model of conducting crack propagation is presented to provide a conceptual framework dedicated to the study of the formation of fractal structure of dielectric ageing patterns as a result of a competition between random fluctuation growth and applied electric strength enhanced deterministic growth. The necessary and sufficient conditions resulting in fractal behaviour in dielectric ageing are found.

Color Correction for Multi-view Video Using Energy Minimization of View Networks

Systems using numerous cameras are emerging in many fields due to their ease of production and reduced cost, and one of the fields where they are expected to be used more actively in the near future is in image-based rendering （IBR）. Color correction between views is necessary to use multi-view systems in IBR to make audiences feel comfortable when views are switched or when a free viewpoint video is displayed. Color correction usually involves two steps： the first is to adjust camera parameters such as gain, brightness, and aperture before capture, and the second is to modify captured videos through image processing. This paper deals with the latter, which does not need a color pattern board. The proposed method uses scale invariant feature transform （SIFT） to detect correspondences, treats RGB channels independently, calculates lookup tables with an energy-minimization approach, and corrects captured video with these tables. The experimental results reveal that this approach works well.

Image matching algorithm based on SIFT using color and exposure information

Image matching based on scale invariant feature transform（SIFT） is one of the most popular image matching algorithms, which exhibits high robustness and accuracy. Grayscale images rather than color images are generally used to get SIFT descriptors in order to reduce the complexity. The regions which have a similar grayscale level but different hues tend to produce wrong matching results in this case. Therefore, the loss of color information may result in decreasing of matching ratio. An image matching algorithm based on SIFT is proposed, which adds a color offset and an exposure offset when converting color images to grayscale images in order to enhance the matching ratio. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can effectively differentiate the regions with different colors but the similar grayscale level, and increase the matching ratio of image matching based on SIFT. Furthermore, it does not introduce much complexity than the traditional SIFT.

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.

An Approach to Parallelization of SIFT Algorithm on GPUs for Real-Time Applications

Scale Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT) algorithm is a widely used computer vision algorithm that detects and extracts local feature descriptors from images. SIFT is computationally intensive, making it infeasible for single threaded im-plementation to extract local feature descriptors for high-resolution images in real time. In this paper, an approach to parallelization of the SIFT algorithm is demonstrated using NVIDIA’s Graphics Processing Unit (GPU). The parallel-ization design for SIFT on GPUs is divided into two stages, a) Algorithm de-sign-generic design strategies which focuses on data and b) Implementation de-sign-architecture specific design strategies which focuses on optimally using GPU resources for maximum occupancy. Increasing memory latency hiding, eliminating branches and data blocking achieve a significant decrease in aver-age computational time. Furthermore, it is observed via Paraver tools that our approach to parallelization while optimizing for maximum occupancy allows GPU to execute memory bound SIFT algorithm at optimal levels.

Research on will-dimension SIFT algorithms for multi-attitude face recognition

The results of face recognition are often inaccurate due to factors such as illumination,noise intensity,and affine/projection transformation.In response to these problems,the scale invariant feature transformation(SIFT) is proposed,but its computational complexity and complication seriously affect the efficiency of the algorithm.In order to solve this problem,SIFT algorithm is proposed based on principal component analysis(PCA) dimensionality reduction.The algorithm first uses PCA algorithm,which has the function of screening feature points,to filter the feature points extracted in advance by the SIFT algorithm;then the high-dimensional data is projected into the low-dimensional space to remove the redundant feature points,thereby changing the way of generating feature descriptors and finally achieving the effect of dimensionality reduction.In this paper,through experiments on the public ORL face database,the dimension of SIFT is reduced to 20 dimensions,which improves the efficiency of face extraction;the comparison of several experimental results is completed and analyzed to verify the superiority of the improved algorithm.

Architectural Building Detection and Tracking in Video Sequences Taken by Unmanned Aircraft System （UAS）

An Unmanned Aircraft System （UAS） is an aircraft or ground station that can be either remote controlled manually or is capable of flying autonomously under the guidance of pre-programmed Global Positioning System （GPS） waypoint flight plans or more complex onboard intelligent systems. The UAS aircrafts have recently found extensive applications in military reconnaissance and surveillance, homeland security, precision agriculture, fire monitoring and analysis, and other different kinds of aids needed in disasters. Through surveillance videos captured by a UAS digital imaging payload over the interest areas, the corresponding UAS missions can be conducted. In this paper, the authors present an effective method to detect and extract architectural buildings under rural environment from UAS video sequences. The SIFT points are chosen as image features. The planar homography is adopted as the motion model between different image frames. The proposed algorithm is tested on real UAS video data.

Wide-baseline stereo matching based on multiple views

To solve the problem of wide-baseline stereo image matching based on multiple cameras,the paper puts forward an image matching method of combining maximally stable extremal regions (MSER) with Scale Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT) . It uses MSER to detect feature regions instead of difference of Gaussian. After fitted into elliptical regions,those regions will be normalized into unity circles and represented with SIFT descriptors. The method estimates fundamental matrix and removes outliers by auto-maximum a posteriori sample consensus after initial matching feature points. The experimental results indicate that the method is robust to viewpoint changes,can reduce computational complexity effectively and improve matching accuracy.

3D Object Visual Tracking for the 220 kV/330 kV High-Voltage Live-Line Insulator Cleaning Robot

The 3D object visual tracking problem is studied for the robot vision system of the 220kV/330kV high-voltage live-line insulator cleaning robot. The SUSAN Edge based Scale Invariant Feature (SESIF) algorithm based 3D objects visual tracking is achieved in three stages: the first frame stage,tracking stage,and recovering stage. An SESIF based objects recognition algorithm is proposed to find initial location at both the first frame stage and recovering stage. An SESIF and Lie group based visual tracking algorithm is used to track 3D object. Experiments verify the algorithm's robustness. This algorithm will be used in the second generation of the 220kV/330kV high-voltage live-line insulator cleaning robot.

A Note on Unification of Translational Shape Invariant Potential and Scaling Shape Invariant Potential

This article puts forward a general shape invariant potential, which includes the translational shape invariant potential and scaling shape invariant potential as two particular cases, and derives the set of linear differential equations for obtaining general solutions of the generalized shape invariance condition.

Objects Description and Extraction by the Use of Straight Line Segments in Digital Images

An advanced edge-based method of feature detection and extraction is developed for object description in digital images. It is useful for the comparison of different images of the same scene in aerial imagery, for describing and recognizing categories, for automatic building extraction and for finding the mutual regions in image matching. The method includes directional filtering and searching for straight edge segments in every direction and scale, taking into account edge gradient signs. Line segments are ordered with respect to their orientation and average gradients in the region in question. These segments are used for the construction of an object descriptor. A hierarchical set of feature descriptors is developed, taking into consideration the proposed straight line segment detector. Comparative performance is evaluated on the noisy model and in real aerial and satellite imagery.

General Operational Protocol for Coherence. Central Limit Theorem as Approximation

A general operational protocol which provides permanent macroscopic coherence of the response of any stable complex system put in an ever-changing environment is proposed. It turns out that the coherent response consists of two parts: 1) a specific discrete pattern, called by the author homeostatic one, whose characteristics are robust to the statistics of the environment;2) the rest part of the response forms a stationary homogeneous process whose coarse-grained structure obeys universal distribution which turns out to be scale-invariant. It is demonstrated that, for relatively short time series, a measurement, viewed as a solitary operation of coarse-graining, superimposed on the universal distribution results in a rich variety of behaviors ranging from periodic-like to stochastic-like, to a sequences of irregular fractal-like objects and sequences of random-like events. The relevance of the Central Limit theorem applies to the latter case. Yet, its application is still an approximation which holds for relatively short time series and for specific low resolution of the measurement equipment. It is proven that the asymptotic behavior in each and every of the above cases is provided by the recently proven decomposition theorem.

Scale variant vehicle object recognition by CNN module of multipooling- PCA process

The moving vehicles present different scales in the image due to the perspective effect of different viewpoint distances.The premise of advanced driver assistance system(ADAS)system for safety surveillance and safe driving is early identification of vehicle targets in front of the ego vehicle.The recognition of the same vehicle at different scales requires feature learning with scale invariance.Unlike existing feature vector methods,the normalized PCA eigenvalues calculated from feature maps are used to extract scale-invariant features.This study proposed a convolutional neural network(CNN)structure embedded with the module of multi-pooling-PCA for scale variant object recognition.The validation of the proposed network structure is verified by scale variant vehicle image dataset.Compared with scale invariant network algorithms of Scale-invariant feature transform(SIFT)and FSAF as well as miscellaneous networks,the proposed network can achieve the best recognition accuracy tested by the vehicle scale variant dataset.To testify the practicality of this modified network,the testing of public dataset ImageNet is done and the comparable results proved its effectiveness in general purpose of applications.

Robust Wide Baseline Point Matching Based on Scale Invariant Feature Descriptor

In order to obtain a large number of correct matches with high accuracy,this article proposes a robust wide baseline point matching method,which is based on Scott s proximity matrix and uses the scale invariant feature transform (SIFT). First,the distance between SIFT features is included in the equations of the proximity matrix to measure the similarity between two feature points; then the normalized cross correlation (NCC) used in Scott s method,which has been modified with adaptive scale and orientation,...

Analysis of Onset and Development of Ore Formation in Dajishan Tungsten Ore Area,Jiangxi Province,China

The ＂theory of self-similar oscillatory finite-time singularities＂ of Sornette reflects accurately the spatio-temporal evolution and trends of development of events and processes in complex systems approaching to the singularities, and the effect of prediction for catastrophic events has been tested to be satisfactory. The authors take the contents of the chemical element tungsten as the carrier of positive feedback （or activator） in the ore formation, then try to apply the theory to studying and analyzing the onset and development of ore formation in the Dajishan （大吉山） tungsten ore area, Jiangxi （江西） Province, China. The results of the study show that during the spatio-temporal evolution from outside the ore area to its center, the contents of the chemical element tungsten and their loga- rithmic derivatives （local fractal dimension） manifest an obvious regularity： by way of the process of oscillation and the transition to power-law accelerating growth, they eventually approach the center of ore formation. The regularity makes clear that in the complex ore-forming system of the Dajishan tungsten ore deposit, the chemical element tungsten plays the role of carrier of positive and negative feedback, and by competing with each other, approaches to singularity in finite time by virtue of self-similar log-periodic oscillations and succeeded by power-law accelerating growth. In this way the onset of ore formation is realized. This regularity reflects correctly the dynamic process of ore formation of the studied ore deposit. The authors hold that Sornette＇s theory can be further applied to the prediction of perspective areas.