Ioannis Pitas

Bio: Ioannis Pitas is an academic researcher from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. The author has contributed to research in topics: Facial recognition system & Digital watermarking. The author has an hindex of 76, co-authored 795 publications receiving 24787 citations. Previous affiliations of Ioannis Pitas include University of Bristol & University of York.

Stereoscopic video description for key-frame extraction in movie summarization

Abstract: A novel, low-level video frame description method is proposed that is able to compactly capture informative image statistics from luminance, color and stereoscopic disparity video data, both in a global and in various local scales. Thus, scene texture, illumination and geometry properties may succinctly be contained within a single frame feature descriptor, which can subsequently be employed as a building block in any key-frame extraction scheme, e.g., shot frame clustering. The computed key-frames are subsequently used to derive a movie summary in the form of a video skim, which is suitably post-processed to reduce stereoscopic video defects that cause visual fatigue and are a by-product of the summarization.

Real time facial expression recognition from image sequences using support vector machines

Abstract: In this paper, a real-time method is proposed as a solution to the problem of facial expression classiffication in video sequences. The user manually places some of the Candide grid nodes to the face depicted at the first frame. The grid adaptation system, based on deformable models, tracks the entire Candide grid as the facial expression evolves through time, thus producing a grid that corresponds to the greatest intensity of the facial expression, as shown at the last frame. Certain points that are involved into creating the Facial Action Units movements are selected. Their geometrical displacement information, de ned as the coordinates' difference between the last and the first frame, is extracted to be the input to a six class Support Vector Machine system. The output of the system is the facial expression recognized. The proposed real-time system, recognizes the 6 basic facial expressions with an approximately 98% accuracy.

2-D Feature-Point Selection and Tracking Using 3-D Physics-Based Deformable Surfaces

Abstract: This paper presents a novel approach for selecting and tracking feature points in video sequences. In this approach, the image intensity is represented by a 3-D deformable surface model. The proposed approach relies on selecting and tracking feature points by exploiting the so-called generalized displacement vector that appears in the explicit surface deformation governing equations. This vector is proven to be a combination of the output of various line- and edge-detection masks, thus leading to distinct, robust features. The proposed method was compared, in terms of tracking accuracy and robustness, with a well-known tracking algorithm, Kanade-Lucas-Tomasi (KLT), and a tracking algorithm based on scale-invariant feature transform (SIFT) features. The proposed method was experimentally shown to be more precise and robust than both KLT and SIFT tracking. Moreover, the feature-point selection scheme was tested against the SIFT and Harris feature points, and it was demonstrated to provide superior results.

I and i

Abstract: There is, I think, something ethereal about i —the square root of minus one. I remember first hearing about it at school. It seemed an odd beast at that time—an intruder hovering on the edge of reality. Usually familiarity dulls this sense of the bizarre, but in the case of i it was the reverse: over the years the sense of its surreal nature intensified. It seemed that it was impossible to write mathematics that described the real world in …

Face recognition: A literature survey

Abstract: As one of the most successful applications of image analysis and understanding, face recognition has recently received significant attention, especially during the past several years. At least two reasons account for this trend: the first is the wide range of commercial and law enforcement applications, and the second is the availability of feasible technologies after 30 years of research. Even though current machine recognition systems have reached a certain level of maturity, their success is limited by the conditions imposed by many real applications. For example, recognition of face images acquired in an outdoor environment with changes in illumination and/or pose remains a largely unsolved problem. In other words, current systems are still far away from the capability of the human perception system.This paper provides an up-to-date critical survey of still- and video-based face recognition research. There are two underlying motivations for us to write this survey paper: the first is to provide an up-to-date review of the existing literature, and the second is to offer some insights into the studies of machine recognition of faces. To provide a comprehensive survey, we not only categorize existing recognition techniques but also present detailed descriptions of representative methods within each category. In addition, relevant topics such as psychophysical studies, system evaluation, and issues of illumination and pose variation are covered.

Detecting faces in images: a survey

Abstract: Images containing faces are essential to intelligent vision-based human-computer interaction, and research efforts in face processing include face recognition, face tracking, pose estimation and expression recognition. However, many reported methods assume that the faces in an image or an image sequence have been identified and localized. To build fully automated systems that analyze the information contained in face images, robust and efficient face detection algorithms are required. Given a single image, the goal of face detection is to identify all image regions which contain a face, regardless of its 3D position, orientation and lighting conditions. Such a problem is challenging because faces are non-rigid and have a high degree of variability in size, shape, color and texture. Numerous techniques have been developed to detect faces in a single image, and the purpose of this paper is to categorize and evaluate these algorithms. We also discuss relevant issues such as data collection, evaluation metrics and benchmarking. After analyzing these algorithms and identifying their limitations, we conclude with several promising directions for future research.