Lei Zhang

Bio: Lei Zhang is an academic researcher from Chinese Academy of Sciences. The author has contributed to research in topics: Medicine & Computer science. The author has an hindex of 130, co-authored 2312 publications receiving 86950 citations. Previous affiliations of Lei Zhang include Harbin University & Harbin Engineering University.

Beyond a Gaussian Denoiser: Residual Learning of Deep CNN for Image Denoising

Abstract: The discriminative model learning for image denoising has been recently attracting considerable attentions due to its favorable denoising performance. In this paper, we take one step forward by investigating the construction of feed-forward denoising convolutional neural networks (DnCNNs) to embrace the progress in very deep architecture, learning algorithm, and regularization method into image denoising. Specifically, residual learning and batch normalization are utilized to speed up the training process as well as boost the denoising performance. Different from the existing discriminative denoising models which usually train a specific model for additive white Gaussian noise at a certain noise level, our DnCNN model is able to handle Gaussian denoising with unknown noise level (i.e., blind Gaussian denoising). With the residual learning strategy, DnCNN implicitly removes the latent clean image in the hidden layers. This property motivates us to train a single DnCNN model to tackle with several general image denoising tasks, such as Gaussian denoising, single image super-resolution, and JPEG image deblocking. Our extensive experiments demonstrate that our DnCNN model can not only exhibit high effectiveness in several general image denoising tasks, but also be efficiently implemented by benefiting from GPU computing.

FSIM: A Feature Similarity Index for Image Quality Assessment

Abstract: Image quality assessment (IQA) aims to use computational models to measure the image quality consistently with subjective evaluations. The well-known structural similarity index brings IQA from pixel- to structure-based stage. In this paper, a novel feature similarity (FSIM) index for full reference IQA is proposed based on the fact that human visual system (HVS) understands an image mainly according to its low-level features. Specifically, the phase congruency (PC), which is a dimensionless measure of the significance of a local structure, is used as the primary feature in FSIM. Considering that PC is contrast invariant while the contrast information does affect HVS' perception of image quality, the image gradient magnitude (GM) is employed as the secondary feature in FSIM. PC and GM play complementary roles in characterizing the image local quality. After obtaining the local quality map, we use PC again as a weighting function to derive a single quality score. Extensive experiments performed on six benchmark IQA databases demonstrate that FSIM can achieve much higher consistency with the subjective evaluations than state-of-the-art IQA metrics.

The map-based sequence of the rice genome

Abstract: Rice, one of the world's most important food plants, has important syntenic relationships with the other cereal species and is a model plant for the grasses. Here we present a map-based, finished quality sequence that covers 95% of the 389 Mb genome, including virtually all of the euchromatin and two complete centromeres. A total of 37,544 non-transposable-element-related protein-coding genes were identified, of which 71% had a putative homologue in Arabidopsis. In a reciprocal analysis, 90% of the Arabidopsis proteins had a putative homologue in the predicted rice proteome. Twenty-nine per cent of the 37,544 predicted genes appear in clustered gene families. The number and classes of transposable elements found in the rice genome are consistent with the expansion of syntenic regions in the maize and sorghum genomes. We find evidence for widespread and recurrent gene transfer from the organelles to the nuclear chromosomes. The map-based sequence has proven useful for the identification of genes underlying agronomic traits. The additional single-nucleotide polymorphisms and simple sequence repeats identified in our study should accelerate improvements in rice production.

Sparse representation or collaborative representation: Which helps face recognition?

Abstract: As a recently proposed technique, sparse representation based classification (SRC) has been widely used for face recognition (FR). SRC first codes a testing sample as a sparse linear combination of all the training samples, and then classifies the testing sample by evaluating which class leads to the minimum representation error. While the importance of sparsity is much emphasized in SRC and many related works, the use of collaborative representation (CR) in SRC is ignored by most literature. However, is it really the l 1 -norm sparsity that improves the FR accuracy? This paper devotes to analyze the working mechanism of SRC, and indicates that it is the CR but not the l1-norm sparsity that makes SRC powerful for face classification. Consequently, we propose a very simple yet much more efficient face classification scheme, namely CR based classification with regularized least square (CRC_RLS). The extensive experiments clearly show that CRC_RLS has very competitive classification results, while it has significantly less complexity than SRC.

A Completed Modeling of Local Binary Pattern Operator for Texture Classification

Abstract: In this correspondence, a completed modeling of the local binary pattern (LBP) operator is proposed and an associated completed LBP (CLBP) scheme is developed for texture classification. A local region is represented by its center pixel and a local difference sign-magnitude transform (LDSMT). The center pixels represent the image gray level and they are converted into a binary code, namely CLBP-Center (CLBP_C), by global thresholding. LDSMT decomposes the image local differences into two complementary components: the signs and the magnitudes, and two operators, namely CLBP-Sign (CLBP_S) and CLBP-Magnitude (CLBP_M), are proposed to code them. The traditional LBP is equivalent to the CLBP_S part of CLBP, and we show that CLBP_S preserves more information of the local structure than CLBP_M, which explains why the simple LBP operator can extract the texture features reasonably well. By combining CLBP_S, CLBP_M, and CLBP_C features into joint or hybrid distributions, significant improvement can be made for rotation invariant texture classification.

Going deeper with convolutions

Abstract: We propose a deep convolutional neural network architecture codenamed Inception that achieves the new state of the art for classification and detection in the ImageNet Large-Scale Visual Recognition Challenge 2014 (ILSVRC14). The main hallmark of this architecture is the improved utilization of the computing resources inside the network. By a carefully crafted design, we increased the depth and width of the network while keeping the computational budget constant. To optimize quality, the architectural decisions were based on the Hebbian principle and the intuition of multi-scale processing. One particular incarnation used in our submission for ILSVRC14 is called GoogLeNet, a 22 layers deep network, the quality of which is assessed in the context of classification and detection.

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 …

SARS-CoV-2 Cell Entry Depends on ACE2 and TMPRSS2 and Is Blocked by a Clinically Proven Protease Inhibitor

Abstract: The recent emergence of the novel, pathogenic SARS-coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in China and its rapid national and international spread pose a global health emergency. Cell entry of coronaviruses depends on binding of the viral spike (S) proteins to cellular receptors and on S protein priming by host cell proteases. Unravelling which cellular factors are used by SARS-CoV-2 for entry might provide insights into viral transmission and reveal therapeutic targets. Here, we demonstrate that SARS-CoV-2 uses the SARS-CoV receptor ACE2 for entry and the serine protease TMPRSS2 for S protein priming. A TMPRSS2 inhibitor approved for clinical use blocked entry and might constitute a treatment option. Finally, we show that the sera from convalescent SARS patients cross-neutralized SARS-2-S-driven entry. Our results reveal important commonalities between SARS-CoV-2 and SARS-CoV infection and identify a potential target for antiviral intervention.