|
|
|
| e-Pub |
Previous | 
Home
Section: Research Program
Image modeling
The key issue that arises in modeling the high-resolution image data generated in Ayin's applications, is how to include large-scale spatial, temporal, and spectral dependencies. Ayin investigates approaches to the construction of image models including such dependencies. A central question in teh use of such models is how to deal with the large data volumes arising both from the large size of the images involved, and the existence of large image collections. Fortunately, high dimensionality typically implies data redundancy, and so Ayin investigates methods for reducing the dimensionality of the data and describing the spatial, temporal, and spectral dependencies in ways that allow efficient data processing.
Markov random fields with long-range and higher-order interactions
One way to achieve large-scale dependencies is via explicit long-range interactions. MRFs with long-range interactions are also used in Ayin to model geometric spatial and temporal structure, and the techniques and algorithms developed there will also be applied to image modeling. In modeling image structures, however, other important properties, such as control of the relative phase of Fourier components, and spontaneous symmetry breaking, may also be required. These properties can only be achieved by higher-order interactions. These require specific techniques and algorithms, which are developed in parallel with the models.
Hierarchical models
Another way to achieve long-range dependencies is via shorter range interactions in a hierarchical structure. Ayin works on the development of models defined as a set of hierarchical image partitions represented by a binary forest structure. Key sub-problems include the development of multi-feature models of image regions as an ensemble of spectral, texture, geometrical, and classification features, where we search to optimize the ratio between discrimination capacity of the feature space and dimensionality of this space; and the development of similarity criteria between image regions, which would compute distances between regions in the designed feature space and would be data-driven and scale-independent. One way to proceed in the latter case consists in developing a composite kernel method, which would seek to project multi-feature data into a new space, where regions from different thematic categories become linearly or almost linearly separable. This involves developing kernel functions as a combination of basis kernels, and estimating kernel-based support vector machine parameters.