Langis Gagnon

Bio: Langis Gagnon is an academic researcher from Laval University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Image segmentation & Nonlinear system. The author has an hindex of 28, co-authored 106 publications receiving 3189 citations. Previous affiliations of Langis Gagnon include Lockheed Martin Canada & Lockheed Martin Corporation.

Fast and robust optic disc detection using pyramidal decomposition and Hausdorff-based template matching

Abstract: Reports on the design and test of an image processing algorithm for the localization of the optic disk (OD) in low-resolution (about 20 /spl mu//pixel) color fundus images The design relies on the combination of two procedures: 1) a Hausdorff-based template matching technique on edge map, guided by 2) a pyramidal decomposition for large scale object tracking The two approaches are tested against a database of 40 images of various visual quality and retinal pigmentation, as well as of normal and small pupils An average error of 7% on OD center positioning is reached with no false detection In addition, a confidence level is associated to the final detection that indicates the "level of difficulty" the detector has to identify the OD position and shape

Speckle filtering of SAR images: a comparative study between complex-wavelet-based and standard filters

Abstract: We present a comparative study between a complex Wavelet Coefficient Shrinkage (WCS) filter and several standard speckle filters that are widely used in the radar imaging community. The WCS filter is based on the use of Symmetric Daubechies wavelets which share the same properties as the real Daubechies wavelets but with an additional symmetry property. The filtering operation is an elliptical soft- thresholding procedure with respect to the principal axes of the 2D complex wavelet coefficient distributions. Both qualitative and quantitative results (signal to mean square error ratio, equivalent number of looks, edgemap figure of merit) are reported. Tests have been performed using simulated speckle noise as well as real radar images. It is found that the WCS filter performs equally well as the standard filters for low-level noise and slightly outperforms them for higher-level noise.© (1997) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.

Procedure to detect anatomical structures in optical fundus images

Abstract: We present an overview of the design and test of an image processing procedure for detecting all important anatomical structures in color fundus images. These structures are the optic disk, the macula and the retinal network. The algorithm proceeds through five main steps: (1) automatic mask generation using pixels value statistics and color threshold, (2) visual image quality assessment using histogram matching and Canny edge distribution modeling, (3) optic disk localization using pyramidal decomposition, Hausdorff-based template matching and confidence assignment, (4) macula localization using pyramidal decomposition and (5) bessel network tracking using recursive dual edge tracking and connectivity recovering. The procedure has been tested on a database of about 40 color fundus images acquired from a digital non-mydriatic fundus camera. The database is composed of images of various types (macula- and optic disk-centered) and of various visual quality (with or without abnormal bright or dark regions, blurred, etc).© (2001) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.

Registration and fusion of retinal images-an evaluation study

Abstract: We present the results of a study on the application of registration and pixel-level fusion techniques to retinal images. The images are of different modalities (color, fluorescein angiogram), different resolutions, and taken at different times (from a few minutes during an angiography examination to several years between two examinations). We propose a new registration method based on global point mapping with blood vessel bifurcations as control points and a search for control point matches that uses local structural information of the retinal network. Three transformation types (similarity, affine, and second-order polynomial) are evaluated on each image pair. Fourteen pixel-level fusion techniques have been tested and classified according to their qualitative and quantitative performance. Four quantitative fusion performance criteria are used to evaluate the gain obtained with the grayscale fusion.

Solitary pulses in an amplified nonlinear dispersive medium

Abstract: An analytical solution is obtained for solitary pulse propagation in an amplified nonlinear dispersive system. For a homogeneously broadened gain medium, this solitary pulse has a hyperbolic secant amplitude and a hyperbolic tangent instantaneous frequency variation. The pulse is a gain-guided pulse in either the positive or the negative dispersion regime as well as in the self-focusing or self-defocusing regime. A dark solitary pulse that has a hyperbolic tangent amplitude and a similar instantaneous frequency variation is also obtained.

Pattern formation outside of equilibrium

Abstract: A comprehensive review of spatiotemporal pattern formation in systems driven away from equilibrium is presented, with emphasis on comparisons between theory and quantitative experiments. Examples include patterns in hydrodynamic systems such as thermal convection in pure fluids and binary mixtures, Taylor-Couette flow, parametric-wave instabilities, as well as patterns in solidification fronts, nonlinear optics, oscillatory chemical reactions and excitable biological media. The theoretical starting point is usually a set of deterministic equations of motion, typically in the form of nonlinear partial differential equations. These are sometimes supplemented by stochastic terms representing thermal or instrumental noise, but for macroscopic systems and carefully designed experiments the stochastic forces are often negligible. An aim of theory is to describe solutions of the deterministic equations that are likely to be reached starting from typical initial conditions and to persist at long times. A unified description is developed, based on the linear instabilities of a homogeneous state, which leads naturally to a classification of patterns in terms of the characteristic wave vector q0 and frequency ω0 of the instability. Type Is systems (ω0=0, q0≠0) are stationary in time and periodic in space; type IIIo systems (ω0≠0, q0=0) are periodic in time and uniform in space; and type Io systems (ω0≠0, q0≠0) are periodic in both space and time. Near a continuous (or supercritical) instability, the dynamics may be accurately described via "amplitude equations," whose form is universal for each type of instability. The specifics of each system enter only through the nonuniversal coefficients. Far from the instability threshold a different universal description known as the "phase equation" may be derived, but it is restricted to slow distortions of an ideal pattern. For many systems appropriate starting equations are either not known or too complicated to analyze conveniently. It is thus useful to introduce phenomenological order-parameter models, which lead to the correct amplitude equations near threshold, and which may be solved analytically or numerically in the nonlinear regime away from the instability. The above theoretical methods are useful in analyzing "real pattern effects" such as the influence of external boundaries, or the formation and dynamics of defects in ideal structures. An important element in nonequilibrium systems is the appearance of deterministic chaos. A greal deal is known about systems with a small number of degrees of freedom displaying "temporal chaos," where the structure of the phase space can be analyzed in detail. For spatially extended systems with many degrees of freedom, on the other hand, one is dealing with spatiotemporal chaos and appropriate methods of analysis need to be developed. In addition to the general features of nonequilibrium pattern formation discussed above, detailed reviews of theoretical and experimental work on many specific systems are presented. These include Rayleigh-Benard convection in a pure fluid, convection in binary-fluid mixtures, electrohydrodynamic convection in nematic liquid crystals, Taylor-Couette flow between rotating cylinders, parametric surface waves, patterns in certain open flow systems, oscillatory chemical reactions, static and dynamic patterns in biological media, crystallization fronts, and patterns in nonlinear optics. A concluding section summarizes what has and has not been accomplished, and attempts to assess the prospects for the future.

Ridge-based vessel segmentation in color images of the retina

Abstract: A method is presented for automated segmentation of vessels in two-dimensional color images of the retina. This method can be used in computer analyses of retinal images, e.g., in automated screening for diabetic retinopathy. The system is based on extraction of image ridges, which coincide approximately with vessel centerlines. The ridges are used to compose primitives in the form of line elements. With the line elements an image is partitioned into patches by assigning each image pixel to the closest line element. Every line element constitutes a local coordinate frame for its corresponding patch. For every pixel, feature vectors are computed that make use of properties of the patches and the line elements. The feature vectors are classified using a kNN-classifier and sequential forward feature selection. The algorithm was tested on a database consisting of 40 manually labeled images. The method achieves an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.952. The method is compared with two recently published rule-based methods of Hoover et al. and Jiang et al. . The results show that our method is significantly better than the two rule-based methods (p<0.01). The accuracy of our method is 0.944 versus 0.947 for a second observer.

Robot vision

Abstract: A scheme is developed for classifying the types of motion perceived by a humanlike robot. It is assumed that the robot receives visual images of the scene using a perspective system model. Equations, theorems, concepts, clues, etc., relating the objects, their positions, and their motion to their images on the focal plane are presented. >

A 3-dimensional sift descriptor and its application to action recognition

Abstract: In this paper we introduce a 3-dimensional (3D) SIFT descriptor for video or 3D imagery such as MRI data. We also show how this new descriptor is able to better represent the 3D nature of video data in the application of action recognition. This paper will show how 3D SIFT is able to outperform previously used description methods in an elegant and efficient manner. We use a bag of words approach to represent videos, and present a method to discover relationships between spatio-temporal words in order to better describe the video data.

Display screen or portion thereof with graphical user interface

Abstract: Newness and distinctiveness is claimed in the features of ornamentation as shown inside the broken line circle in the accompanying representation.