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.

Facial feature extraction using adaptive Hough transform, template matching and active contour models

Abstract: The present paper describes an extension to the methods proposed by Sobottka and Pitas (see Proc. of the IEEE Int. Conf. on Image Processing, Lausanne, Switzerland, p.483-6, 1996) for the extraction of facial features with the ultimate goal to be used in defining a sufficient set of distances between them so that a unique description of the structure of a face is obtained. Eyebrows, eyes, nostrils, mouth, cheeks and chin are considered as interesting features. Candidate for eyes, nostrils, mouth are determined by searching for minima and maxima on the x- and y-projections of the grey-level relief. Candidates for cheeks and chin are determined by performing adaptive Hough transform on a relevant subimage defined according to the position of the eyes and mouth and the ellipse containing the main connected components of the image. A deforming technique is also applied to the ellipse representing the main face region, in order to acquire a more accurate model of the face. Candidates for eyebrows are determined by adapting a proper grey-level template to an area restricted by the position of the eyes. The algorithms presented were tested on a set of 37 different color images containing features such as beard, glasses and changing facial expressions.

A global energy function for the alignment of serially acquired slices

Abstract: An accurate, computationally efficient, and fully automated algorithm for the alignment of two-dimensional (2-D) serially acquired sections forming a three-dimensional (3-D) volume is presented. The approach relies on the optimization of a global energy function, based on the object shape, measuring the similarity between a slice and its neighborhood in the 3-D volume. Slice similarity is computed using the distance transform measure in both directions. No particular direction is privileged in the method avoiding global offsets, biases in the estimation and error propagation. The method was evaluated on real images [medical, biological, and other computerized tomography (CT) scanned 3-D data] and the experimental results demonstrated its accuracy as reconstuction errors are less than one degree in rotation and less than one pixel in translation.

Enhanced transform-domain correlation-based audio watermarking

Abstract: Various watermarking techniques have been proposed so far, aiming at the copyright protection of audio signals. Little effort has been made, however, in taking under consideration the spectrum of the watermark sequence itself and exploiting its frequency properties. An enhanced audio watermarking technique, based on correlation detection, is introduced in this paper, where high-frequency chaotic watermarks are multiplicatively embedded in the low frequencies of the DFT domain. A series of experiments have been conducted to demonstrate both detection reliability and robustness against attacks.

Piecewise Linear Digital Curve Representation and Compression Using Graph Theory and a Line Segment Alphabet

Abstract: The use of an alphabet of line segments to compose a curve is a possible approach for curve data compression. Many approaches are developed with the drawback that they can process simple curves only. Curves having more sophisticated topology with self-intersections can be handled by methods considering recursive decomposition of the canvas containing the curve. In this paper, we propose a graph theory-based algorithm for tracing the curve directly to eliminate the decomposition needs. This approach obviously improves the compression performance, as longer line segments can be used. We tune our method further by selecting optimal turns at junctions during tracing the curve. We assign a polygon approximation to the curve which consists of letters coming from an alphabet of line segments. We also discuss how other application fields can take advantage of the provided curve description scheme.

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.