Description:
The free viewpoint video (FVV) allows users to interactively control the viewpoint and generate new views of a dynamic scene from any 3D position for better 3D visual experience with depth perception. Multiview video coding exploits both texture and depth video information from various angles to encode a number of views to facilitate FVV. The usual practice for the single view or multiview quality assessment is characterized by evolving the objective quality assessment metrics due to their simplicity and real time applications such as the peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) or the structural similarity index (SSIM). However, the PSNR or SSIM requires reference image for quality evaluation and could not be successfully employed in FVV as the new view in FVV does not have any reference view to compare with. Conversely, the widely used subjective estimator- mean opinion score (MOS) is often biased by the testing environment, viewers mode, domain knowledge, and many other factors that may actively influence on actual assessment. To address this limitation, in this work, we devise a no-reference subjective quality assessment metric by simply exploiting the pattern of human eye browsing on FVV. Over different quality contents of FVV, the participants eye-tracker recorded spatio-temporal gaze-data indicate more concentrated eye-traversing approach for relatively better quality. Thus, we calculate the Length, Angle, Pupil-size, and Gaze-duration features from the recorded gaze trajectory. The content and resolution invariant operation is carried out prior to synthesizing them using an adaptive weighted function to develop a new quality metric using eye traversal (QMET). Tested results reveal that the proposed QMET performs better than the SSIM and MOS in terms of assessing different aspects of coded video quality for a wide range of FVV contents.
Description:
Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Description:
Dynamic consolidation of Virtual Machines (VMs) can effectively enhance the resource utilization and energy-efficiency of the Cloud Data Centers (CDC). Existing research on Cloud resource reservation and scheduling signify that Cloud Service Users (CSUs) can play a crucial role in improving the resource utilization by providing valuable information to Cloud service providers. However, utilization of CSUs' provided information in minimization of energy consumption of CDC is a novel research direction. The challenges herein are twofold. First, finding the right benign information to be received from a CSU which can complement the energy-efficiency of CDC. Second, smart application of such information to significantly reduce the energy consumption of CDC. To address those research challenges, we have proposed a novel heuristic Dynamic VM Consolidation algorithm, RTDVMC, which minimizes the energy consumption of CDC through exploiting CSU provided information. Our research exemplifies the fact that if VMs are dynamically consolidated based on the time when a VM can be removed from CDC-a useful information to be received from respective CSU, then more physical machines can be turned into sleep state, yielding lower energy consumption. We have simulated the performance of RTDVMC with real Cloud workload traces originated from more than 800 PlanetLab VMs. The empirical figures affirm the superiority of RTDVMC over existing prominent Static and Adaptive Threshold based DVMC algorithms.
Description:
The popularly used subjective estimator- mean opinion score (MOS) is often biased by the testing environment, viewers mode, domain expertise, and many other factors that may actively influence on actual assessment. We therefore, devise a no- reference subjective quality assessment metric by exploiting the nature of human eye browsing on videos. The participants' eye-tracker recorded gaze-data indicate more concentrated eye- traversing approach for relatively better quality. We calculate the Length, Angle, Pupil-size, and Gaze-duration features from the recorded gaze trajectory. The content and resolution invariant operation is carried out prior to synthesizing them using an adaptive weighted function to develop a new quality metric using eye traversal (QMET). Tested results reveal that the quality evaluation carried out by QMET demonstrates a strong correlation with the most widely used peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), structural similarity index (SSIM), and the MOS.
Description:
DICTA 2017 - 2017 International Conference on Digital Image Computing: Techniques and Applications
Description:
Dynamic background frame based video coding using mixture of Gaussian (MoG) based background modelling has achieved better rate distortion performance compared to the H.264 standard. However, they suffer from high computation time, low coding efficiency for dynamic videos, and prior knowledge requirement of video content. In this paper, we introduce the application of the non-parametric (NP) background modelling approach for video coding domain. We present a novel background modelling technique, called weighted non-parametric (WNP) which balances the historical trend and the recent value of the pixel intensities adaptively based on the content and characteristics of any particular video. WNP is successfully embedded into the latest HEVC video coding standard for better rate-distortion performance. Moreover, a novel scene adaptive non-parametric (SANP) technique is also developed to handle video sequences with high dynamic background. Being non-parametric, the proposed techniques naturally exhibit superior performance in dynamic background modelling without a priori knowledge of video data distribution.
Description:
Dynamic background frame based video coding using mixture of Gaussian (MoG) based background modelling has achieved better rate distortion performance compared to the H.264 standard. However, they suffer from high computation time, low coding efficiency for dynamic videos, and prior knowledge requirement of video content. In this paper, we introduce the application of the non-parametric (NP) background modelling approach for video coding domain. We present a novel background modelling technique, called weighted non-parametric (WNP) which balances the historical trend and the recent value of the pixel intensities adaptively based on the content and characteristics of any particular video. WNP is successfully embedded into the latest HEVC video coding standard for better rate-distortion performance. Moreover, a novel scene adaptive non-parametric (SANP) technique is also developed to handle video sequences with high dynamic background. Being non-parametric, the proposed techniques naturally exhibit superior performance in dynamic background modelling without a priori knowledge of video data distribution.
Description:
Region-based image retrieval has been proven to be effective in finding relevant images. In this paper, we propose a cuboid im-age segmentation method which results in rectangle image partitions. Rectangle partitions are more suitable for image compression, retrieval and other image operations. We apply partitions in image retrieval in this paper. Our experimental results have shown that (1) the proposed partitioning method is effective in segmenting images into meaningful rectangles; (2) using colour partitions for image retrieval is more effective than using whole images; and (3) the partitioned approach has additional advantage of letting users to select certain objects/colours as queries to find more relevant images/objects. These three advantages could be important in crime scene investigation image indexing and retrieval. Moreover, the proposed technique is amenable to compressed-domain applications.
Description:
As envisioned by Leonard Kleinrock [1], Cloud computing has transformed the dream of “computing as a utility” into reality, so much so it has turned out as the latest computing paradigm [2]. Cloud computing is called as Service-on-demand, as Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) assure users about potentially unlimited amount of resources that can be chartered on demand. It is also known as elastic computing, since Cloud Service Users (CSUs) can dynamically scale, expand, or shrink their rented resources anytime and expect to pay for the exact tenure of resource usage under Service Level Agreements (SLA). Through such flexibilities and financial benefits, CSPs have been attracting millions of clients who are simultaneously sharing the underlying computing and storage resources that are collectively known as Cloud data centers.
Description:
The latest High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard has greatly improved the coding efficiency compared to its predecessor H.264. An important share of which is the adoption of hierarchical block partitioning structures and an extended number of modes. The structure of existing inter-modes is appropriate mainly to handle the rectangular and square aligned motion patterns. However, they could not be suitable for the block partitioning of depth objects having partial foreground motion with irregular edges and background. In such cases, the HEVC reference test model (HM) normally explores finer level block partitioning that requires more bits and encoding time to compensate large residuals. Since motion detection is the underlying criteria for mode selection, in this work, we use the energy concentration ratio feature of phase correlation to capture different types of motion in depth object. For better motion modeling focusing at depth edges, the proposed technique also uses an extra pattern mode comprising a group of templates with various rectangular and non-rectangular object shapes and edges. As the pattern mode could save bits by encoding only the foreground areas and beat all other inter-modes in a block once selected, the proposed technique could improve the rate-distortion performance. It could also reduce encoding time by skipping further branching using the pattern mode and selecting a subset of modes using innovative pre-processing criteria. Experimentally it could save 29% average encoding time and improve 0.10 dB Bjontegaard Delta peak signal-to-noise ratio compared to the HM.
Description:
This paper addresses the problem of stabilizing underwater videos with non-uniform geometric deformations or warping due to a wavy water surface. It presents an improved method to correct these geometric deformations of the frames, providing a high-quality stabilized video output. For this purpose, a non-rigid image registration technique is employed to accurately align the warped frames with respect to a prototype frame and to estimate the deformation parameters, which in turn, are applied in an image dewarping technique. The prototype frame is chosen from the video sequence based on a sharpness assessment. The effectiveness of the proposed method is validated by applying it on both synthetic and real- world sequences using various quality metrics. A performance comparison with an existing method confirms the higher efficacy of the proposed method.
Description:
In addition to the texture, multiview video employs the utilization of depth coding for the reconstruction of 3D video and Free viewpoint video. Standing on some texture-depth correlations, a number of methods in literature reuses texture motion vector for the corresponding depth coding to reduce encoding time by avoiding costly motion estimation process. However, texture similarity metric is not always equivalent to the corresponding depth similarity metric especially at edge levels. Since their approaches could not explicitly detect and encode acute edge motions of depth objects, eventually, could not reach the similar or improved rate-distortion (RD) performance against the High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) reference test model (HM). With a view to more accurate motion detection and modeling, the proposed technique exploits an extra Pattern Mode comprising a group of pattern templates (GPTs) with different rectangular and non-rectangular object shapes and edges compared to the existing HEVC block partitioning modes. Moreover, the proposed Pattern Mode only encodes the motion areas and skips the background areas. The experimental results show that the proposed technique could save 30% encoding time and improve average 0.1dB Bjontegard Delta peak signal-to-noise ratio (BD-PSNR) compared to the HM.
Description:
Participatory sensing is a revolutionary new paradigm where citizens voluntarily sense their surroundings using readily available sensing devices such as mobile phones and share this information for mutual benefit of community members. To encourage ample participation of users, ensuring their privacy is inevitable. Existing techniques that attempt to protect location privacy with spatial cloaking suffer from irrecoverable data quality degradation. To the best of our knowledge, very few works provided a solution preserving high data quality/utility at the destination server, however, suffered from unacceptable computational overhead. This paper presents an improved deterministic alternative and also a faster variant by exploiting several optimization issues. Theoretical formulations and extensive simulation results are presented to establish the applicability of our proposed techniques.
Description:
A Hyperspectral (HS) image provides observational powers beyond human vision capability but represents more than 100 times data compared to a traditional image. To transmit and store the huge volume of an HS image, we argue that a fundamental shift is required from the existing "original pixel intensity"based coding approaches using traditional image coders (e.g. JPEG) to the "residual" based approaches using a predictive coder exploiting band-wise correlation for better compression performance. Moreover, as HS images are used in detection or classification they need to be in original form; lossy schemes can trim off uninteresting data along with compression, which can be important to specific analysis purposes. A modified lossless HS coder is required to exploit spatial- spectral redundancy using predictive residual coding. Every spectral band of an HS image can be treated like they are the individual frame of a video to impose inter band prediction. In this paper, we propose a binary tree based lossless predictive HS coding scheme that arranges the residual frame into integer residual bitmap. High spatial correlation in HS residual frame is exploited by creating large homogeneous blocks of adaptive size, which are then coded as a unit using context based arithmetic coding. On the standard HS data set, the proposed lossless predictive coding has achieved compression ratio in the range of 1.92 to 7.94. In this paper, we compare the proposed method with mainstream lossless coders (JPEG-LS and lossless HEVC). For JPEG-LS, HEVCIntra and HEVCMain, proposed technique has reduced bit-rate by 35%, 40% and 6.79% respectively by exploiting spatial correlation in predicted HS residuals.
Description:
A Hyperspectral (HS) image provides observational powers beyond human vision capability but represents more than 100 times data compared to a traditional image. To transmit and store the huge volume of an HS image, we argue that a fundamental shift is required from the existing "original pixel intensity"based coding approaches using traditional image coders (e.g. JPEG) to the "residual" based approaches using a predictive coder exploiting band-wise correlation for better compression performance. Moreover, as HS images are used in detection or classification they need to be in original form; lossy schemes can trim off uninteresting data along with compression, which can be important to specific analysis purposes. A modified lossless HS coder is required to exploit spatial- spectral redundancy using predictive residual coding. Every spectral band of an HS image can be treated like they are the individual frame of a video to impose inter band prediction. In this paper, we propose a binary tree based lossless predictive HS coding scheme that arranges the residual frame into integer residual bitmap. High spatial correlation in HS residual frame is exploited by creating large homogeneous blocks of adaptive size, which are then coded as a unit using context based arithmetic coding. On the standard HS data set, the proposed lossless predictive coding has achieved compression ratio in the range of 1.92 to 7.94. In this paper, we compare the proposed method with mainstream lossless coders (JPEG-LS and lossless HEVC). For JPEG-LS, HEVCIntra and HEVCMain, proposed technique has reduced bit-rate by 35%, 40% and 6.79% respectively by exploiting spatial correlation in predicted HS residuals.
Description:
Participatory Sensing System (PSS) is an emerging technology for collection of useful information as the use of smart-phones has been increasing lately among community people. It has a wide range of applications like environmental monitoring, product price sharing, health monitoring etc. But people have to share their location and other information which is a high privacy risk. Our main contribution of this work is to develop a technique for PSS which can provide privacy protection for the participants in manageable time in real world.
Description:
The subjective quality assessment (SQA) is an ever demanding approach due to its in-depth interactivity to the human cognition. The addition of no-reference based scheme could equip the SQA techniques to tackle further challenges. Existing widely used objective metrics-peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), structural similarity index (SSIM) or the subjective estimator-mean opinion score (MOS) requires original image for quality evaluation that limits their uses for the situation having no-reference. In this work, we present a no-reference based SQA technique that could be an impressive substitute to the reference-based approaches for quality evaluation. The High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) reference test model (HM15.0) is first exploited to generate five different qualities of the HEVC recommended eight class sequences. To assess different aspects of coded video quality, a group of ten participants are employed and their eye-tracker (ET) recorded data demonstrate closer correlation among gaze plots for relatively better quality video contents. Therefore, we innovatively calculate the amount of approximation of smooth eye traversal (ASET) by using distance, angle, and pupil-size feature from recorded gaze trajectory data and develop a new-quality metric based on eye traversal (QMET). Experimental results show that the quality evaluation carried out by QMET is highly correlated to the HM recommended coding quality. The performance of the QMET is also compared with the PSNR and SSIM metrics to justify the effectiveness of each other.
Description:
International Conference Image and Vision Computing New Zealand
Description:
In event localization, wireless sensors try to locate the source of an event from its emitted power. This is more challenging than sensor localization as the power level at the source of an event is neither predictable with precision nor can be controlled. Considering the emerging trend of long sensing range for cost-effective sensor deployment, locating events within a region much smaller than the sensing area of a single sensor has gained research interest. This paper proposes the first range-free event localization framework, which avoids expensive hardware needed by the range-based counterparts. Our approach first develops a sensing range model from the statistical information on the emitted power of a type of events so that user-defined event-detection quality can be provisioned using a minimal network of static sensors. Then an accurate event location boundary estimation technique is developed from the sensing feedbacks, which also facilitates guided expansion of the area of possible event location (APEL) to deal with sensing errors. Finally, user-defined event-localization quality guarantee is provisioned cost-effectively by inviting mobile sensors on-demand to target positions. Analytical solutions are provided whenever appropriate and comprehensive simulations are carried out to evaluate localization performance. The proposed event localization technique outperforms the state-of-the-art range-based counterpart (Xu et al., 2011) in realistic environment with path loss, shadow fading, and sensor positioning errors.