Objective methods for assessing perceptual image quality traditionally attempted to quantify the visibility of errors (differences) between a distorted image and a reference image using a variety of known properties of the human visual system. Under the assumption that human visual perception is highly adapted for extracting structural information from a scene, we introduce an alternative complementary framework for quality assessment based on the degradation of structural information. As a specific example of this concept, we develop a structural similarity index and demonstrate its promise through a set of intuitive examples, as well as comparison to both subjective ratings and state-of-the-art objective methods on a database of images compressed with JPEG and JPEG2000. A MATLAB implementation of the proposed algorithm is available online at http://www.cns.nyu.edu//spl sim/lcv/ssim/.

/pdf/image-quality-assessment-from-error-visibility-to-structural-1rlwcqe34t.pdf

Image quality assessment: from error visibility to structural similarity

Introduction to a Transient World. Fourier Kingdom. Discrete Revolution. Time Meets Frequency. Frames. Wavelet Zoom. Wavelet Bases. Wavelet Packet and Local Cosine Bases. An Approximation Tour. Estimations are Approximations. Transform Coding. Appendix A: Mathematical Complements. Appendix B: Software Toolboxes.

http://ahvazdownload.persiangig.com/document/article/39.pdf

A wavelet tour of signal processing

We investigate conditional adversarial networks as a general-purpose solution to image-to-image translation problems. These networks not only learn the mapping from input image to output image, but also learn a loss function to train this mapping. This makes it possible to apply the same generic approach to problems that traditionally would require very different loss formulations. We demonstrate that this approach is effective at synthesizing photos from label maps, reconstructing objects from edge maps, and colorizing images, among other tasks. Moreover, since the release of the pix2pix software associated with this paper, hundreds of twitter users have posted their own artistic experiments using our system. As a community, we no longer hand-engineer our mapping functions, and this work suggests we can achieve reasonable results without handengineering our loss functions either.

/pdf/image-to-image-translation-with-conditional-adversarial-5058t24et2.pdf

Image-to-Image Translation with Conditional Adversarial Networks

We investigate conditional adversarial networks as a general-purpose solution to image-to-image translation problems. These networks not only learn the mapping from input image to output image, but also learn a loss function to train this mapping. This makes it possible to apply the same generic approach to problems that traditionally would require very different loss formulations. We demonstrate that this approach is effective at synthesizing photos from label maps, reconstructing objects from edge maps, and colorizing images, among other tasks. Indeed, since the release of the pix2pix software associated with this paper, a large number of internet users (many of them artists) have posted their own experiments with our system, further demonstrating its wide applicability and ease of adoption without the need for parameter tweaking. As a community, we no longer hand-engineer our mapping functions, and this work suggests we can achieve reasonable results without hand-engineering our loss functions either.

Deposits of clastic carbonate-dominated (calciclastic) sedimentary slope systems in the rock record have been identified mostly as linearly-consistent carbonate apron deposits, even though most ancient clastic carbonate slope deposits fit the submarine fan systems better. Calciclastic submarine fans are consequently rarely described and are poorly understood. Subsequently, very little is known especially in mud-dominated calciclastic submarine fan systems. Presented in this study are a sedimentological core and petrographic characterisation of samples from eleven boreholes from the Lower Carboniferous of Bowland Basin (Northwest England) that reveals a >250 m thick calciturbidite complex deposited in a calciclastic submarine fan setting. Seven facies are recognised from core and thin section characterisation and are grouped into three carbonate turbidite sequences. They include: 1) Calciturbidites, comprising mostly of highto low-density, wavy-laminated bioclast-rich facies; 2) low-density densite mudstones which are characterised by planar laminated and unlaminated muddominated facies; and 3) Calcidebrites which are muddy or hyper-concentrated debrisflow deposits occurring as poorly-sorted, chaotic, mud-supported floatstones. These

Phd by thesis

This paper presents an improved motion compensated version of the Visual Pattern Image Sequence Coding (VPISC) paradigm. It is a high performance video codec that is easily implemented in software. Software video codecs are not only cheaper, but are more flexible system solutions because they enable multi-vendor computers to exchange encoded video information without requiring on-board protocol compatible video codec hardware. The codec is intended for real-time desktop computer applications like multimedia delivery, and local area network (as well as point-to-point) televideo conferencing. We describe a version of motion compensated VPISC (MCVPISC) that has achieved bit rates of 0.025 bpp or better for MPEG test sequences (source coding has further reduced the bit rate by about half). The computational complexity of the encoder is less than 3 integer operations per pixel. The decoder is bounded between 0.016 and 0.125 logical and integer operations per pixel.© (1994) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.

Motion-compensated visual pattern image sequence coding

Order statistic (OS) filters are noted for their robust properties for smoothing or estimating signals immersed in noise. The effect of coefficient censoring on the smoothing performance of OS filters is considered. Coefficient censoring can be effected either by adding zero coefficients to an existing filter, or by computing the optimal (MSE) censored coefficients for a set filter span. The second possibility is considered. In both cases, censoring can yield increased robustness and improved edge retention. OS filters in common use which can be interpreted as censored OS filters include the median filter, rank-order filters, and the trimmed mean filters. While optimal censored filters are generally suboptimal relative to optimal uncensored filters, they often yield superior performance for signals containing edge discontinuities. >

Optimal order statistic filters with coefficient censoring

SUMMARY

We discuss and give examples of the use of selective laser sintering to fabricate solid macroscopic models of microscopic specimens that have been imaged with a confocal microscope. The digital image processing necessary to create structurally sound models of both translucent and opaque specimens is presented. The fabricated models offer the ultimate in data visualization since they can be physically handled and manipulated to investigate the shape and features of the specimen. Such a powerful visualization tool is useful in both research and educational environments.

Fabrication of macroscopic solid models of three-dimensional microscopic data by selective laser sintering

Benefited from the rapid development of the digital game industry, the growing popularity of online user-generated content (UGC) videos for games has accelerated the development of perceptual video quality assessment (VQA) models specifically for gaming videos. As a novel UGC type, gaming videos are recorded by gamers and uploaded to major streaming media platforms such as YouTube and Twitch, and have been extremely popular among the audience. However, there is little work on VQA research related to gaming videos and understanding their characteristics. In order to promote the development of the gaming VQA model, we created a new UGC gaming video VQA resource, named LIVE-YouTube Gaming video quality (LIVE-YT-Gaming) database, composed of 600 authentic UGC gaming videos and 18,600 subjective quality ratings collected from an online subjective study. We also compared and analyzed several state-of-the-art (SOTA) VQA models on the new database. To support work in this field, the new database will be publicly available through the link: https://live.ece.utexas.edu/research/LIVE-YT-Gaming/index.html.

Subjective Quality Assessment of User-Generated Content Gaming Videos

In this paper, we introduce an unequal error protection technique for foveation-based error resilience over highly error-prone mobile networks. For point-to-point visual communications, visual quality can be significantly increased by using foveation-based error resilience where each frame is divided into foveated and background layers according to the gaze direction of the human eye, and two bitstreams are generated. In an effort to increase the source throughput of the foveated layer, we employ unequal delay-constrained ARQ and RCPC (rate compatible punctured convolutional) codes in H.223 Annex C. In the simulation, the visual quality is increased in the range of 0.3 dB to 1 dB over channel SNR 5 dB to 15 dB.

Alan C. Bovik

Papers

Motion-compensated visual pattern image sequence coding

Optimal order statistic filters with coefficient censoring

Fabrication of macroscopic solid models of three-dimensional microscopic data by selective laser sintering

Subjective Quality Assessment of User-Generated Content Gaming Videos

Unequal error protection for foveation-based error resilience over mobile networks