Showing papers on "Feature (computer vision) published in 2013"

Rich feature hierarchies for accurate object detection and semantic segmentation

Abstract: Object detection performance, as measured on the canonical PASCAL VOC dataset, has plateaued in the last few years. The best-performing methods are complex ensemble systems that typically combine multiple low-level image features with high-level context. In this paper, we propose a simple and scalable detection algorithm that improves mean average precision (mAP) by more than 30% relative to the previous best result on VOC 2012---achieving a mAP of 53.3%. Our approach combines two key insights: (1) one can apply high-capacity convolutional neural networks (CNNs) to bottom-up region proposals in order to localize and segment objects and (2) when labeled training data is scarce, supervised pre-training for an auxiliary task, followed by domain-specific fine-tuning, yields a significant performance boost. Since we combine region proposals with CNNs, we call our method R-CNN: Regions with CNN features. We also compare R-CNN to OverFeat, a recently proposed sliding-window detector based on a similar CNN architecture. We find that R-CNN outperforms OverFeat by a large margin on the 200-class ILSVRC2013 detection dataset. Source code for the complete system is available at this http URL.

Recent developments in openSMILE, the munich open-source multimedia feature extractor

Abstract: We present recent developments in the openSMILE feature extraction toolkit. Version 2.0 now unites feature extraction paradigms from speech, music, and general sound events with basic video features for multi-modal processing. Descriptors from audio and video can be processed jointly in a single framework allowing for time synchronization of parameters, on-line incremental processing as well as off-line and batch processing, and the extraction of statistical functionals (feature summaries), such as moments, peaks, regression parameters, etc. Postprocessing of the features includes statistical classifiers such as support vector machine models or file export for popular toolkits such as Weka or HTK. Available low-level descriptors include popular speech, music and video features including Mel-frequency and similar cepstral and spectral coefficients, Chroma, CENS, auditory model based loudness, voice quality, local binary pattern, color, and optical flow histograms. Besides, voice activity detection, pitch tracking and face detection are supported. openSMILE is implemented in C++, using standard open source libraries for on-line audio and video input. It is fast, runs on Unix and Windows platforms, and has a modular, component based architecture which makes extensions via plug-ins easy. openSMILE 2.0 is distributed under a research license and can be downloaded from http://opensmile.sourceforge.net/.

Salient Object Detection: A Discriminative Regional Feature Integration Approach

Abstract: Salient object detection has been attracting a lot of interest, and recently various heuristic computational models have been designed. In this paper, we regard saliency map computation as a regression problem. Our method, which is based on multi-level image segmentation, uses the supervised learning approach to map the regional feature vector to a saliency score, and finally fuses the saliency scores across multiple levels, yielding the saliency map. The contributions lie in two-fold. One is that we show our approach, which integrates the regional contrast, regional property and regional background ness descriptors together to form the master saliency map, is able to produce superior saliency maps to existing algorithms most of which combine saliency maps heuristically computed from different types of features. The other is that we introduce a new regional feature vector, background ness, to characterize the background, which can be regarded as a counterpart of the objectness descriptor [2]. The performance evaluation on several popular benchmark data sets validates that our approach outperforms existing state-of-the-arts.

Learning a Deep Compact Image Representation for Visual Tracking

Abstract: In this paper, we study the challenging problem of tracking the trajectory of a moving object in a video with possibly very complex background. In contrast to most existing trackers which only learn the appearance of the tracked object online, we take a different approach, inspired by recent advances in deep learning architectures, by putting more emphasis on the (unsupervised) feature learning problem. Specifically, by using auxiliary natural images, we train a stacked de-noising autoencoder offline to learn generic image features that are more robust against variations. This is then followed by knowledge transfer from offline training to the online tracking process. Online tracking involves a classification neural network which is constructed from the encoder part of the trained autoencoder as a feature extractor and an additional classification layer. Both the feature extractor and the classifier can be further tuned to adapt to appearance changes of the moving object. Comparison with the state-of-the-art trackers on some challenging benchmark video sequences shows that our deep learning tracker is more accurate while maintaining low computational cost with real-time performance when our MATLAB implementation of the tracker is used with a modest graphics processing unit (GPU).

OverFeat: Integrated Recognition, Localization and Detection using Convolutional Networks

Abstract: We present an integrated framework for using Convolutional Networks for classification, localization and detection. We show how a multiscale and sliding window approach can be efficiently implemented within a ConvNet. We also introduce a novel deep learning approach to localization by learning to predict object boundaries. Bounding boxes are then accumulated rather than suppressed in order to increase detection confidence. We show that different tasks can be learned simultaneously using a single shared network. This integrated framework is the winner of the localization task of the ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challenge 2013 (ILSVRC2013) and obtained very competitive results for the detection and classifications tasks. In post-competition work, we establish a new state of the art for the detection task. Finally, we release a feature extractor from our best model called OverFeat.

Particle Swarm Optimization for Feature Selection in Classification: A Multi-Objective Approach

Abstract: Classification problems often have a large number of features in the data sets, but not all of them are useful for classification. Irrelevant and redundant features may even reduce the performance. Feature selection aims to choose a small number of relevant features to achieve similar or even better classification performance than using all features. It has two main conflicting objectives of maximizing the classification performance and minimizing the number of features. However, most existing feature selection algorithms treat the task as a single objective problem. This paper presents the first study on multi-objective particle swarm optimization (PSO) for feature selection. The task is to generate a Pareto front of nondominated solutions (feature subsets). We investigate two PSO-based multi-objective feature selection algorithms. The first algorithm introduces the idea of nondominated sorting into PSO to address feature selection problems. The second algorithm applies the ideas of crowding, mutation, and dominance to PSO to search for the Pareto front solutions. The two multi-objective algorithms are compared with two conventional feature selection methods, a single objective feature selection method, a two-stage feature selection algorithm, and three well-known evolutionary multi-objective algorithms on 12 benchmark data sets. The experimental results show that the two PSO-based multi-objective algorithms can automatically evolve a set of nondominated solutions. The first algorithm outperforms the two conventional methods, the single objective method, and the two-stage algorithm. It achieves comparable results with the existing three well-known multi-objective algorithms in most cases. The second algorithm achieves better results than the first algorithm and all other methods mentioned previously.

Scene Coordinate Regression Forests for Camera Relocalization in RGB-D Images

Abstract: We address the problem of inferring the pose of an RGB-D camera relative to a known 3D scene, given only a single acquired image. Our approach employs a regression forest that is capable of inferring an estimate of each pixel's correspondence to 3D points in the scene's world coordinate frame. The forest uses only simple depth and RGB pixel comparison features, and does not require the computation of feature descriptors. The forest is trained to be capable of predicting correspondences at any pixel, so no interest point detectors are required. The camera pose is inferred using a robust optimization scheme. This starts with an initial set of hypothesized camera poses, constructed by applying the forest at a small fraction of image pixels. Preemptive RANSAC then iterates sampling more pixels at which to evaluate the forest, counting inliers, and refining the hypothesized poses. We evaluate on several varied scenes captured with an RGB-D camera and observe that the proposed technique achieves highly accurate relocalization and substantially out-performs two state of the art baselines.

Blessing of Dimensionality: High-Dimensional Feature and Its Efficient Compression for Face Verification

Abstract: Making a high-dimensional (e.g., 100K-dim) feature for face recognition seems not a good idea because it will bring difficulties on consequent training, computation, and storage. This prevents further exploration of the use of a high dimensional feature. In this paper, we study the performance of a high dimensional feature. We first empirically show that high dimensionality is critical to high performance. A 100K-dim feature, based on a single-type Local Binary Pattern (LBP) descriptor, can achieve significant improvements over both its low-dimensional version and the state-of-the-art. We also make the high-dimensional feature practical. With our proposed sparse projection method, named rotated sparse regression, both computation and model storage can be reduced by over 100 times without sacrificing accuracy quality.

A review of feature selection methods on synthetic data

Abstract: With the advent of high dimensionality, adequate identification of relevant features of the data has become indispensable in real-world scenarios. In this context, the importance of feature selection is beyond doubt and different methods have been developed. However, with such a vast body of algorithms available, choosing the adequate feature selec- tion method is not an easy-to-solve question and it is necessary to check their effectiveness on different situations. Nevertheless, the assessment of relevant features is difficult in real datasets and so an interesting option is to use artificial data. In this paper, several synthetic datasets are employed for this purpose, aiming at reviewing the performance of feature selec- tion methods in the presence of a crescent number or irrelevant features, noise in the data, redundancy and interaction between attributes, as well as a small ratio between number of samples and number of features. Seven filters, two embedded methods, and two wrappers are applied over eleven synthetic datasets, tested by four classifiers, so as to be able to choose a robust method, paving the way for its application to real datasets.

Locally Aligned Feature Transforms across Views

Abstract: In this paper, we propose a new approach for matching images observed in different camera views with complex cross-view transforms and apply it to person re-identification. It jointly partitions the image spaces of two camera views into different configurations according to the similarity of cross-view transforms. The visual features of an image pair from different views are first locally aligned by being projected to a common feature space and then matched with softly assigned metrics which are locally optimized. The features optimal for recognizing identities are different from those for clustering cross-view transforms. They are jointly learned by utilizing sparsity-inducing norm and information theoretical regularization. This approach can be generalized to the settings where test images are from new camera views, not the same as those in the training set. Extensive experiments are conducted on public datasets and our own dataset. Comparisons with the state-of-the-art metric learning and person re-identification methods show the superior performance of our approach.

A Fast Clustering-Based Feature Subset Selection Algorithm for High-Dimensional Data

Abstract: Feature selection involves identifying a subset of the most useful features that produces compatible results as the original entire set of features. A feature selection algorithm may be evaluated from both the efficiency and effectiveness points of view. While the efficiency concerns the time required to find a subset of features, the effectiveness is related to the quality of the subset of features. Based on these criteria, a fast clustering-based feature selection algorithm (FAST) is proposed and experimentally evaluated in this paper. The FAST algorithm works in two steps. In the first step, features are divided into clusters by using graph-theoretic clustering methods. In the second step, the most representative feature that is strongly related to target classes is selected from each cluster to form a subset of features. Features in different clusters are relatively independent, the clustering-based strategy of FAST has a high probability of producing a subset of useful and independent features. To ensure the efficiency of FAST, we adopt the efficient minimum-spanning tree (MST) clustering method. The efficiency and effectiveness of the FAST algorithm are evaluated through an empirical study. Extensive experiments are carried out to compare FAST and several representative feature selection algorithms, namely, FCBF, ReliefF, CFS, Consist, and FOCUS-SF, with respect to four types of well-known classifiers, namely, the probability-based Naive Bayes, the tree-based C4.5, the instance-based IB1, and the rule-based RIPPER before and after feature selection. The results, on 35 publicly available real-world high-dimensional image, microarray, and text data, demonstrate that the FAST not only produces smaller subsets of features but also improves the performances of the four types of classifiers.

Feature location in source code: a taxonomy and survey

Abstract: SUMMARY Feature location is the activity of identifying an initial location in the source code that implements functionality in a software system. Many feature location techniques have been introduced that automate some or all of this process, and a comprehensive overview of this large body of work would be beneficial to researchers and practitioners. This paper presents a systematic literature survey of feature location techniques. Eighty-nine articles from 25 venues have been reviewed and classified within the taxonomy in order to organize and structure existing work in the field of feature location. The paper also discusses open issues and defines future directions in the field of feature location. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Visual saliency estimation by nonlinearly integrating features using region covariances.

Abstract: To detect visually salient elements of complex natural scenes, computational bottom-up saliency models commonly examine several feature channels such as color and orientation in parallel. They compute a separate feature map for each channel and then linearly combine these maps to produce a master saliency map. However, only a few studies have investigated how different feature dimensions contribute to the overall visual saliency. We address this integration issue and propose to use covariance matrices of simple image features (known as region covariance descriptors in the computer vision community; Tuzel, Porikli, & Meer, 2006) as meta-features for saliency estimation. As low-dimensional representations of image patches, region covariances capture local image structures better than standard linear filters, but more importantly, they naturally provide nonlinear integration of different features by modeling their correlations. We also show that first-order statistics of features could be easily incorporated to the proposed approach to improve the performance. Our experimental evaluation on several benchmark data sets demonstrate that the proposed approach outperforms the state-of-art models on various tasks including prediction of human eye fixations, salient object detection, and image-retargeting.

A Global Human Settlement Layer From Optical HR/VHR RS Data: Concept and First Results

Abstract: A general framework for processing high and very-high resolution imagery in support of a Global Human Settlement Layer (GHSL) is presented together with a discussion on the results of the first operational test of the production workflow. The test involved the mapping of 24.3 million km2 of the Earth surface spread in four continents, corresponding to an estimated population of 1.3 billion people in 2010. The resolution of the input image data ranges from 0.5 to 10 meters, collected by a heterogeneous set of platforms including satellite SPOT (2 and 5), CBERS 2B, RapidEye (2 and 4), WorldView (1 and 2), GeoEye 1, QuickBird 2, Ikonos 2, and airborne sensors. Several imaging modes were tested including panchromatic, multispectral and pan-sharpened images. A new fully automatic image information extraction, generalization and mosaic workflow is presented that is based on multiscale textural and morphological image features extraction. New image feature compression and optimization are introduced, together with new learning and classification techniques allowing for the processing of HR/VHR image data using low-resolution thematic layers as reference. A new systematic approach for quality control and validation allowing global spatial and thematic consistency checking is proposed and applied. The quality of the results are discussed by sensor, band, resolution, and eco-regions. Critical points, lessons learned and next steps are highlighted.

Fast and scalable polynomial kernels via explicit feature maps

Abstract: Approximation of non-linear kernels using random feature mapping has been successfully employed in large-scale data analysis applications, accelerating the training of kernel machines. While previous random feature mappings run in O(ndD) time for $n$ training samples in d-dimensional space and D random feature maps, we propose a novel randomized tensor product technique, called Tensor Sketching, for approximating any polynomial kernel in O(n(d+D \log{D})) time. Also, we introduce both absolute and relative error bounds for our approximation to guarantee the reliability of our estimation algorithm. Empirically, Tensor Sketching achieves higher accuracy and often runs orders of magnitude faster than the state-of-the-art approach for large-scale real-world datasets.

Feature Mining for Hyperspectral Image Classification

Abstract: Hyperspectral sensors record the reflectance from the Earth's surface over the full range of solar wavelengths with high spectral resolution. The resulting high-dimensional data contain rich information for a wide range of applications. However, for a specific application, not all the measurements are important and useful. The original feature space may not be the most effective space for representing the data. Feature mining, which includes feature generation, feature selection (FS), and feature extraction (FE), is a critical task for hyperspectral data classification. Significant research effort has focused on this issue since hyperspectral data became available in the late 1980s. The feature mining techniques which have been developed include supervised and unsupervised, parametric and nonparametric, linear and nonlinear methods, which all seek to identify the informative subspace. This paper provides an overview of both conventional and advanced feature reduction methods, with details on a few techniques that are commonly used for analysis of hyperspectral data. A general form that represents several linear and nonlinear FE methods is also presented. Experiments using two widely available hyperspectral data sets are included to illustrate selected FS and FE methods.

Joint Angles Similarities and HOG2 for Action Recognition

Abstract: We propose a set of features derived from skeleton tracking of the human body and depth maps for the purpose of action recognition. The descriptors proposed are easy to implement, produce relatively small-sized feature sets, and the multi-class classification scheme is fast and suitable for real-time applications. We intuitively characterize actions using pairwise affinities between view-invariant joint angles features over the performance of an action. Additionally, a new descriptor for spatio-temporal feature extraction from color and depth images is introduced. This descriptor involves an application of a modified histogram of oriented gradients (HOG) algorithm. The application produces a feature set at every frame, and these features are collected into a 2D array which then the same algorithm is applied to again (the approach is termed HOG2). Both feature sets are evaluated in a bag-of-words scheme using a linear SVM, showing state-of-the-art results on public datasets from different domains of human-computer interaction.

Geographic Image Retrieval Using Local Invariant Features

Abstract: This paper investigates local invariant features for geographic (overhead) image retrieval. Local features are particularly well suited for the newer generations of aerial and satellite imagery whose increased spatial resolution, often just tens of centimeters per pixel, allows a greater range of objects and spatial patterns to be recognized than ever before. Local invariant features have been successfully applied to a broad range of computer vision problems and, as such, are receiving increased attention from the remote sensing community particularly for challenging tasks such as detection and classification. We perform an extensive evaluation of local invariant features for image retrieval of land-use/land-cover (LULC) classes in high-resolution aerial imagery. We report on the effects of a number of design parameters on a bag-of-visual-words (BOVW) representation including saliency- versus grid-based local feature extraction, the size of the visual codebook, the clustering algorithm used to create the codebook, and the dissimilarity measure used to compare the BOVW representations. We also perform comparisons with standard features such as color and texture. The performance is quantitatively evaluated using a first-of-its-kind LULC ground truth data set which will be made publicly available to other researchers. In addition to reporting on the effects of the core design parameters, we also describe interesting findings such as the performance-efficiency tradeoffs that are possible through the appropriate pairings of different-sized codebooks and dissimilarity measures. While the focus is on image retrieval, we expect our insights to be informative for other applications such as detection and classification.

HOGgles: Visualizing Object Detection Features

Abstract: We introduce algorithms to visualize feature spaces used by object detectors. The tools in this paper allow a human to put on 'HOG goggles' and perceive the visual world as a HOG based object detector sees it. We found that these visualizations allow us to analyze object detection systems in new ways and gain new insight into the detector's failures. For example, when we visualize the features for high scoring false alarms, we discovered that, although they are clearly wrong in image space, they do look deceptively similar to true positives in feature space. This result suggests that many of these false alarms are caused by our choice of feature space, and indicates that creating a better learning algorithm or building bigger datasets is unlikely to correct these errors. By visualizing feature spaces, we can gain a more intuitive understanding of our detection systems.

Visual Tracking via Locality Sensitive Histograms

Abstract: This paper presents a novel locality sensitive histogram algorithm for visual tracking. Unlike the conventional image histogram that counts the frequency of occurrences of each intensity value by adding ones to the corresponding bin, a locality sensitive histogram is computed at each pixel location and a floating-point value is added to the corresponding bin for each occurrence of an intensity value. The floating-point value declines exponentially with respect to the distance to the pixel location where the histogram is computed, thus every pixel is considered but those that are far away can be neglected due to the very small weights assigned. An efficient algorithm is proposed that enables the locality sensitive histograms to be computed in time linear in the image size and the number of bins. A robust tracking framework based on the locality sensitive histograms is proposed, which consists of two main components: a new feature for tracking that is robust to illumination changes and a novel multi-region tracking algorithm that runs in real time even with hundreds of regions. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the proposed tracking framework outperforms the state-of-the-art methods in challenging scenarios, especially when the illumination changes dramatically.

Being Bayesian about Network Structure

Abstract: In many domains, we are interested in analyzing the structure of the underlying distribution, e.g., whether one variable is a direct parent of the other. Bayesian model-selection attempts to find the MAP model and use its structure to answer these questions. However, when the amount of available data is modest, there might be many models that have non-negligible posterior. Thus, we want compute the Bayesian posterior of a feature, i.e., the total posterior probability of all models that contain it. In this paper, we propose a new approach for this task. We first show how to efficiently compute a sum over the exponential number of networks that are consistent with a fixed ordering over network variables. This allows us to compute, for a given ordering, both the marginal probability of the data and the posterior of a feature. We then use this result as the basis for an algorithm that approximates the Bayesian posterior of a feature. Our approach uses a Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method, but over orderings rather than over network structures. The space of orderings is much smaller and more regular than the space of structures, and has a smoother posterior `landscape'. We present empirical results on synthetic and real-life datasets that compare our approach to full model averaging (when possible), to MCMC over network structures, and to a non-Bayesian bootstrap approach.

On Similarity Preserving Feature Selection

Abstract: In the literature of feature selection, different criteria have been proposed to evaluate the goodness of features. In our investigation, we notice that a number of existing selection criteria implicitly select features that preserve sample similarity, and can be unified under a common framework. We further point out that any feature selection criteria covered by this framework cannot handle redundant features, a common drawback of these criteria. Motivated by these observations, we propose a new "Similarity Preserving Feature Selection” framework in an explicit and rigorous way. We show, through theoretical analysis, that the proposed framework not only encompasses many widely used feature selection criteria, but also naturally overcomes their common weakness in handling feature redundancy. In developing this new framework, we begin with a conventional combinatorial optimization formulation for similarity preserving feature selection, then extend it with a sparse multiple-output regression formulation to improve its efficiency and effectiveness. A set of three algorithms are devised to efficiently solve the proposed formulations, each of which has its own advantages in terms of computational complexity and selection performance. As exhibited by our extensive experimental study, the proposed framework achieves superior feature selection performance and attractive properties.

Seeking the Strongest Rigid Detector

Abstract: The current state of the art solutions for object detection describe each class by a set of models trained on discovered sub-classes (so called "components"), with each model itself composed of collections of interrelated parts (deformable models). These detectors build upon the now classic Histogram of Oriented Gradients+linear SVM combo. In this paper we revisit some of the core assumptions in HOG+SVM and show that by properly designing the feature pooling, feature selection, preprocessing, and training methods, it is possible to reach top quality, at least for pedestrian detections, using a single rigid component. Abstract We provide experiments for a large design space, that give insights into the design of classifiers, as well as relevant information for practitioners. Our best detector is fully feed-forward, has a single unified architecture, uses only histograms of oriented gradients and colour information in monocular static images, and improves over 23 other methods on the INRIA, ETH and Caltech-USA datasets, reducing the average miss-rate over HOG+SVM by more than 30%.

Tensor Discriminative Locality Alignment for Hyperspectral Image Spectral–Spatial Feature Extraction

Abstract: In this paper, we propose a method for the dimensionality reduction (DR) of spectral-spatial features in hyperspectral images (HSIs), under the umbrella of multilinear algebra, i.e., the algebra of tensors. The proposed approach is a tensor extension of conventional supervised manifold-learning-based DR. In particular, we define a tensor organization scheme for representing a pixel's spectral-spatial feature and develop tensor discriminative locality alignment (TDLA) for removing redundant information for subsequent classification. The optimal solution of TDLA is obtained by alternately optimizing each mode of the input tensors. The methods are tested on three public real HSI data sets collected by hyperspectral digital imagery collection experiment, reflective optics system imaging spectrometer, and airborne visible/infrared imaging spectrometer. The classification results show significant improvements in classification accuracies while using a small number of features.

xMSanalyzer: automated pipeline for improved feature detection and downstream analysis of large-scale, non-targeted metabolomics data

Abstract: Detection of low abundance metabolites is important for de novo mapping of metabolic pathways related to diet, microbiome or environmental exposures. Multiple algorithms are available to extract m/z features from liquid chromatography-mass spectral data in a conservative manner, which tends to preclude detection of low abundance chemicals and chemicals found in small subsets of samples. The present study provides software to enhance such algorithms for feature detection, quality assessment, and annotation. xMSanalyzer is a set of utilities for automated processing of metabolomics data. The utilites can be classified into four main modules to: 1) improve feature detection for replicate analyses by systematic re-extraction with multiple parameter settings and data merger to optimize the balance between sensitivity and reliability, 2) evaluate sample quality and feature consistency, 3) detect feature overlap between datasets, and 4) characterize high-resolution m/z matches to small molecule metabolites and biological pathways using multiple chemical databases. The package was tested with plasma samples and shown to more than double the number of features extracted while improving quantitative reliability of detection. MS/MS analysis of a random subset of peaks that were exclusively detected using xMSanalyzer confirmed that the optimization scheme improves detection of real metabolites. xMSanalyzer is a package of utilities for data extraction, quality control assessment, detection of overlapping and unique metabolites in multiple datasets, and batch annotation of metabolites. The program was designed to integrate with existing packages such as apLCMS and XCMS, but the framework can also be used to enhance data extraction for other LC/MS data software.

A Review on Image Feature Extraction and Representation Techniques

Abstract: Feature extraction and representation is a crucial step for multimedia processing. How to extract ideal features that can reflect the intrinsic content of the images as complete as possible is still a challenging problem in computer vision. However, very little research has paid attention to this problem in the last decades. So in this paper, we focus our review on the latest development in image feature extraction and provide a comprehensive survey on image feature representation techniques. In particular, we analyze the effectiveness of the fusion of global and local features in automatic image annotation and content based image retrieval community, including some classic models and their illustrations in the literature. Finally, we summarize this paper with some important conclusions and point out the future potential research directions.

Multifractal Texture Estimation for Detection and Segmentation of Brain Tumors

Abstract: A stochastic model for characterizing tumor texture in brain magnetic resonance (MR) images is proposed. The efficacy of the model is demonstrated in patient-independent brain tumor texture feature extraction and tumor segmentation in magnetic resonance images (MRIs). Due to complex appearance in MRI, brain tumor texture is formulated using a multiresolution-fractal model known as multifractional Brownian motion (mBm). Detailed mathematical derivation for mBm model and corresponding novel algorithm to extract spatially varying multifractal features are proposed. A multifractal feature-based brain tumor segmentation method is developed next. To evaluate efficacy, tumor segmentation performance using proposed multifractal feature is compared with that using Gabor-like multiscale texton feature. Furthermore, novel patient-independent tumor segmentation scheme is proposed by extending the well-known AdaBoost algorithm. The modification of AdaBoost algorithm involves assigning weights to component classifiers based on their ability to classify difficult samples and confidence in such classification. Experimental results for 14 patients with over 300 MRIs show the efficacy of the proposed technique in automatic segmentation of tumors in brain MRIs. Finally, comparison with other state-of-the art brain tumor segmentation works with publicly available low-grade glioma BRATS2012 dataset show that our segmentation results are more consistent and on the average outperforms these methods for the patients where ground truth is made available.

Online Feature Selection with Streaming Features

Abstract: We propose a new online feature selection framework for applications with streaming features where the knowledge of the full feature space is unknown in advance. We define streaming features as features that flow in one by one over time whereas the number of training examples remains fixed. This is in contrast with traditional online learning methods that only deal with sequentially added observations, with little attention being paid to streaming features. The critical challenges for Online Streaming Feature Selection (OSFS) include 1) the continuous growth of feature volumes over time, 2) a large feature space, possibly of unknown or infinite size, and 3) the unavailability of the entire feature set before learning starts. In the paper, we present a novel Online Streaming Feature Selection method to select strongly relevant and nonredundant features on the fly. An efficient Fast-OSFS algorithm is proposed to improve feature selection performance. The proposed algorithms are evaluated extensively on high-dimensional datasets and also with a real-world case study on impact crater detection. Experimental results demonstrate that the algorithms achieve better compactness and higher prediction accuracy than existing streaming feature selection algorithms.

Learning Coupled Feature Spaces for Cross-Modal Matching

Abstract: Cross-modal matching has recently drawn much attention due to the widespread existence of multimodal data. It aims to match data from different modalities, and generally involves two basic problems: the measure of relevance and coupled feature selection. Most previous works mainly focus on solving the first problem. In this paper, we propose a novel coupled linear regression framework to deal with both problems. Our method learns two projection matrices to map multimodal data into a common feature space, in which cross-modal data matching can be performed. And in the learning procedure, the ell_21-norm penalties are imposed on the two projection matrices separately, which leads to select relevant and discriminative features from coupled feature spaces simultaneously. A trace norm is further imposed on the projected data as a low-rank constraint, which enhances the relevance of different modal data with connections. We also present an iterative algorithm based on half-quadratic minimization to solve the proposed regularized linear regression problem. The experimental results on two challenging cross-modal datasets demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms the state-of-the-art approaches.