A general method is developed to generate fuzzy rules from numerical data. The method consists of five steps: divide the input and output spaces of the given numerical data into fuzzy regions; generate fuzzy rules from the given data; assign a degree of each of the generated rules for the purpose of resolving conflicts among the generated rules; create a combined fuzzy rule base based on both the generated rules and linguistic rules of human experts; and determine a mapping from input space to output space based on the combined fuzzy rule base using a defuzzifying procedure. The mapping is proved to be capable of approximating any real continuous function on a compact set to arbitrary accuracy. Applications to truck backer-upper control and time series prediction problems are presented. >

Generating fuzzy rules by learning from examples

A fuzzy logic system (FLS) is unique in that it is able to simultaneously handle numerical data and linguistic knowledge. It is a nonlinear mapping of an input data (feature) vector into a scalar output, i.e., it maps numbers into numbers. Fuzzy set theory and fuzzy logic establish the specifics of the nonlinear mapping. This tutorial paper provides a guided tour through those aspects of fuzzy sets and fuzzy logic that are necessary to synthesize an FLS. It does this by starting with crisp set theory and dual logic and demonstrating how both can be extended to their fuzzy counterparts. Because engineering systems are, for the most part, causal, we impose causality as a constraint on the development of the FLS. After synthesizing a FLS, we demonstrate that it can be expressed mathematically as a linear combination of fuzzy basis functions, and is a nonlinear universal function approximator, a property that it shares with feedforward neural networks. The fuzzy basis function expansion is very powerful because its basis functions can be derived from either numerical data or linguistic knowledge, both of which can be cast into the forms of IF-THEN rules. >

Fuzzy logic systems for engineering: a tutorial

A morphable model for the synthesis of 3D faces

We explore the effect of dimensionality on the nearest neighbor problem. We show that under a broad set of conditions (much broader than independent and identically distributed dimensions), as dimensionality increases, the distance to the nearest data point approaches the distance to the farthest data point. To provide a practical perspective, we present empirical results on both real and synthetic data sets that demonstrate that this effect can occur for as few as 10-15 dimensions. These results should not be interpreted to mean that high-dimensional indexing is never meaningful; we illustrate this point by identifying some high-dimensional workloads for which this effect does not occur. However, our results do emphasize that the methodology used almost universally in the database literature to evaluate high-dimensional indexing techniques is flawed, and should be modified. In particular, most such techniques proposed in the literature are not evaluated versus simple linear scan, and are evaluated over workloads for which nearest neighbor is not meaningful. Often, even the reported experiments, when analyzed carefully, show that linear scan would outperform the techniques being proposed on the workloads studied in high (10-15) dimensionality!.

When is nearest neighbor meaningful

Hyperspectral imaging (HSI) is an emerging imaging modality for medical applications, especially in disease diagnosis and image-guided surgery. HSI acquires a three-dimensional dataset called hypercube, with two spatial dimensions and one spectral dimension. Spatially resolved spectral imaging obtained by HSI provides diagnostic information about the tissue physiology, morphology, and composition. This review paper presents an overview of the literature on medical hyperspectral imaging technology and its applications. The aim of the survey is threefold: an introduction for those new to the field, an overview for those working in the field, and a reference for those searching for literature on a specific application.

https://www.spiedigitallibrary.org/journals/journal-of-biomedical-optics/volume-19/issue-1/010901/Medical-hyperspectral-imaging-a-review/10.1117/1.JBO.19.1.010901.pdf

Medical hyperspectral imaging: a review

https://imaging.utk.edu/publications/papers/2005/kong_cviu05.pdf

Recent advances in visual and infrared face recognition: a review

Fuzzy control systems and neural-network control systems for backing up a simulated truck, and truck-and-trailer, to a loading dock in a parking lot are presented. The supervised backpropagation learning algorithm trained the neural network systems. The robustness of the neural systems was tested by removing random subsets of training data in learning sequences. The neural systems performed well but required extensive computation for training. The fuzzy systems performed well until over 50% of their fuzzy-associative-memory (FAM) rules were removed. They also performed well when the key FAM equilibration rule was replaced with destructive, or 'sabotage', rules. Unsupervised differential competitive learning (DCL) and product-space clustering adaptively generated FAM rules from training data. The original fuzzy control systems and neural control systems generated trajectory data. The DCL system rapidly recovered the underlying FAM rules. Product-space clustering converted the neural truck systems into structured sets of FAM rules that approximated the neural system's behavior. >

/pdf/adaptive-fuzzy-systems-for-backing-up-a-truck-and-trailer-1puqj4xekc.pdf

Adaptive fuzzy systems for backing up a truck-and-trailer

This paper describes a new software-based registration and fusion of visible and thermal infrared (IR) image data for face recognition in challenging operating environments that involve illumination variations. The combined use of visible and thermal IR imaging sensors offers a viable means for improving the performance of face recognition techniques based on a single imaging modality. Despite successes in indoor access control applications, imaging in the visible spectrum demonstrates difficulties in recognizing the faces in varying illumination conditions. Thermal IR sensors measure energy radiations from the object, which is less sensitive to illumination changes, and are even operable in darkness. However, thermal images do not provide high-resolution data. Data fusion of visible and thermal images can produce face images robust to illumination variations. However, thermal face images with eyeglasses may fail to provide useful information around the eyes since glass blocks a large portion of thermal energy. In this paper, eyeglass regions are detected using an ellipse fitting method, and replaced with eye template patterns to preserve the details useful for face recognition in the fused image. Software registration of images replaces a special-purpose imaging sensor assembly and produces co-registered image pairs at a reasonable cost for large-scale deployment. Face recognition techniques using visible, thermal IR, and data-fused visible-thermal images are compared using a commercial face recognition software (FaceIt®) and two visible-thermal face image databases (the NIST/Equinox and the UTK-IRIS databases). The proposed multiscale data-fusion technique improved the recognition accuracy under a wide range of illumination changes. Experimental results showed that the eyeglass replacement increased the number of correct first match subjects by 85% (NIST/Equinox) and 67% (UTK-IRIS).

https://imaging.utk.edu/publications/papers/2006/241_IJCV_Kong07.pdf

Multiscale Fusion of Visible and Thermal IR Images for Illumination-Invariant Face Recognition

This paper presents visual analysis of eye state and head pose (HP) for continuous monitoring of alertness of a vehicle driver. Most existing approaches to visual detection of nonalert driving patterns rely either on eye closure or head nodding angles to determine the driver drowsiness or distraction level. The proposed scheme uses visual features such as eye index (EI), pupil activity (PA), and HP to extract critical information on nonalertness of a vehicle driver. EI determines if the eye is open, half closed, or closed from the ratio of pupil height and eye height. PA measures the rate of deviation of the pupil center from the eye center over a time period. HP finds the amount of the driver's head movements by counting the number of video segments that involve a large deviation of three Euler angles of HP, i.e., nodding, shaking, and tilting, from its normal driving position. HP provides useful information on the lack of attention, particularly when the driver's eyes are not visible due to occlusion caused by large head movements. A support vector machine (SVM) classifies a sequence of video segments into alert or nonalert driving events. Experimental results show that the proposed scheme offers high classification accuracy with acceptably low errors and false alarms for people of various ethnicity and gender in real road driving conditions.

Visual Analysis of Eye State and Head Pose for Driver Alertness Monitoring

Detection, tracking, and understanding of moving objects of interest in dynamic scenes have been active research areas in computer vision over the past decades. Intelligent visual surveillance (IVS) refers to an automated visual monitoring process that involves analysis and interpretation of object behaviors, as well as object detection and tracking, to understand the visual events of the scene. Main tasks of IVS include scene interpretation and wide area surveillance control. Scene interpretation aims at detecting and tracking moving objects in an image sequence and understanding their behaviors. In wide area surveillance control task, multiple cameras or agents are controlled in a cooperative manner to monitor tagged objects in motion. This paper reviews recent advances and future research directions of these tasks. This article consists of two parts: The first part surveys image enhancement, moving object detection and tracking, and motion behavior understanding. The second part reviews wide-area surveillance techniques based on the fusion of multiple visual sensors, camera calibration and cooperative camera systems.

Seong G. Kong

Papers

Recent advances in visual and infrared face recognition: a review

Adaptive fuzzy systems for backing up a truck-and-trailer

Multiscale Fusion of Visible and Thermal IR Images for Illumination-Invariant Face Recognition

Visual Analysis of Eye State and Head Pose for Driver Alertness Monitoring

Intelligent visual surveillance — A survey