In this paper, we propose a highly accurate method for estimating the quality of images compressed using fractal image compression. Using an iterated function system, fractal image compression compresses images by exploiting their self-similarity, thereby achieving high levels of performance; however, we cannot always use fractal image compression as a standard compression technique because some compressed images are of low quality. Generally, sufficient time is required for encoding and decoding an image before it can be determined whether the compressed image is of low quality or not. Therefore, in our previous study, we proposed a method to estimate the quality of images compressed using fractal image compression. Our previous method estimated the quality using image features of a given image without actually encoding and decoding the image, thereby providing an estimate rather quickly; however, estimation accuracy was not entirely sufficient. Therefore, in this paper, we extend our previously proposed method for improving estimation accuracy. Our improved method adopts a new image feature, namely lacunarity. Results of simulation showed that the proposed method achieves higher levels of accuracy than those of our previous method.

In this paper, a new method for clustering of players in order to analyze games in soccer videos is proposed. The proposed method classifies players who are closely related in terms of soccer tactics into one group. Considering soccer tactics, the players in one group are located near each other. For this reason, the Euclidean distance between the players is an effective measurement for the clustering of players. However, the distance is not sufficient to extract tactics-based groups. Therefore, we utilize a modified version of the community extraction method, which finds community structure by dividing a non-directed graph. The use of this method in addition to the distance enables accurate clustering of players.

An audio-based shot classification method for audiovisual indexing is proposed in this paper. The proposed method mainly consists of two parts, an audio analysis part and a shot classification part. In the audio analysis part, the proposed method utilizes both principal component analysis (PCA) and Mahalanobis generalized distance (MGD). The effective features for the analysis can be automatically obtained by using PCA, and these features are analyzed based on MGD, which can take into account the correlations of the data set. Thus, accurate analysis results can be obtained by the combined use of PCA and MGD. In the shot classification part, the proposed method utilizes a fuzzy algorithm. By using the fuzzy algorithm, the mixing rate of the multiple audio sources can be roughly measured, and thereby accurate shot classification can be attained. Results of experiments performed by applying the proposed method to actual audiovisual materials are shown to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.

In this paper, an accurate player tracking method in far-view soccer videos based on a composite energy function is presented. In far-view soccer videos, player tracking methods that perform processing based only on visual features cannot accurately track players since each player region becomes small, and video coding causes color bleeding between player regions and the soccer field. In order to solve this problem, the proposed method performs player tracking on the basis of the following three elements. First, we utilize visual features based on uniform colors and player shapes. Second, since soccer players play in such a way as to maintain a formation, which is a positional pattern of players, we use this characteristic for player tracking. Third, since the movement direction of each player tends to change smoothly in successive frames of soccer videos, we also focus on this characteristic. Then we adopt three energies: a potential energy based on visual features, an elastic energy based on formations and a movement direction-based energy. Finally, we define a composite energy function that consists of the above three energies and track players by minimizing this energy function. Consequently, the proposed method achieves accurate player tracking in far-view soccer videos.

An inpainting method via sparse representation based on a new phaseless quality metric is presented in this paper. Since power spectra, phaseless features, of local regions within images enable more successful representation of their texture characteristics compared to their pixel values, a new quality metric based on these phaseless features is newly derived for image representation. Specifically, the proposed method enables spare representation of target signals, i.e., target patches, including missing intensities by monitoring errors converged by phase retrieval as the novel phaseless quality metric. This is the main contribution of our study. In this approach, the phase retrieval algorithm used in our method has the following two important roles: (1) derivation of the new quality metric that can be derived even for images including missing intensities and (2) conversion of phaseless features, i.e., power spectra, to pixel values, i.e., intensities. Therefore, the above novel approach solves the existing problem of not being able to use better features or better quality metrics for inpainting. Results of experiments showed that the proposed method using sparse representation based on the new phaseless quality metric outperforms previously reported methods that directly use pixel values for inpainting.

In this paper, an insect classification method using scanning electron microphotographs is presented. Images taken by a scanning electron microscope (SEM) have a unique problem for classification in that visual features differ from each other by magnifications. Therefore, direct use of conventional methods results in inaccurate classification results. In order to successfully classify these images, the proposed method generates an optimal training dataset for constructing a classifier for each magnification. Then our method classifies images using the classifiers constructed by the optimal training dataset. In addition, several images are generally taken by an SEM with different magnifications from the same insect. Therefore, more accurate classification can be expected by integrating the results from the same insect based on Dempster-Shafer evidence theory. In this way, accurate insect classification can be realized by our method. At the end of this paper, we show experimental results to confirm the effectiveness of the proposed method.

This paper presents human-centered video feature selection via mRMR-SCMMCCA (minimum Redundancy and Maximum Relevance-Specific Correlation Maximization Multiset Canonical Correlation Analysis) algorithm for preference extraction. The proposed method derives SCMMCCA, which simultaneously maximizes two kinds of correlations, correlation between video features and users' viewing behavior features and correlation between video features and their corresponding rating scores. By monitoring the derived correlations, the selection of the optimal video features that represent users' individual preference becomes feasible.

In this paper, a Kalman filter-based method for restoration of video images acquired by an in-vehicle camera in foggy conditions is proposed. In order to realize Kalman filter-based restoration, the proposed method clips local blocks from the target frame by using a sliding window and regards the intensities in each block as elements of the state variable of the Kalman filter. Furthermore, the proposed method designs the following two models for restoration of foggy images. The first one is an observation model, which represents a fog deterioration model. The proposed method automatically determines all parameters of the fog deterioration model from only the foggy images to design the observation model. The second one is a non-linear state transition model, which represents the target frame in the original video image from its previous frame based on motion vectors. By utilizing the observation and state transition models, the correlation between successive frames can be effectively utilized for restoration, and accurate restoration of images obtained in foggy conditions can be achieved. Experimental results show that the proposed method has better performance than that of the traditional method based on the fog deterioration model.

In this paper, an ARMA order selection method is proposed with a fuzzy reasoning method. In order to identify the reference model with the ARMA model, we need to determine its ARMA order. A less or more ARMA order, other than a suitable order causes problems such as; lack of spectral information, increasing calculation cost, etc. Therefore, ARMA order selection is significant for a high accurate ARMA model identification. The proposed method attempts to select an ARMA order of a time-varying model with the following procedures: (1) Suppose the parameters of the reference model change slowly, by introducing recursive fuzzy reasoning method, the estimated order is selected. (2) By introducing a fuzzy c-mean clustering methed, the period of the time during which the reference model is changing is detected and the forgetting factor of the recursive fuzzy reasoning method is set. Further, membership functions used in our algorithm are original, which are realized by experiments. In this paper, experiments are documented in order to validate the performance of the proposed method.

This paper presents a method of searching for the shortest route via the most designated points with the length not exceeding the preset upper bound. The proposed algorithm can obtain the quasi-optimum route efficiently and its effectiveness is verified by applying the algorithm to the actual map data.

This letter proposes a map-matching method for automotive navigation systems. The proposed method utilizes the innovation of the Kalman filter algorithm and can achieve more accurate positioning than the correlation method which is generally used for the navigation systems. In this letter, the performance of the proposed algorithm is verified by some simulations.

This paper presents a method of determining a fitness function in a genetic algorithm for routing the shortest route via several designated points. We can search for the optimum route efficiently by using the proposed fitness function and its validity is verified by applying it to the actual map data.

In this paper, a new video frame interpolation method based on image morphing for frame rate up-conversion is proposed. In this method, image features are extracted by Scale-Invariant Feature Transform in each frame, and their correspondence in two contiguous frames is then computed separately in foreground and background regions. By using the above two functions, the proposed method accurately generates interpolation frames and thus achieves frame rate up-conversion.

Video reranking is an effective way for improving the retrieval performance of text-based video search engines. This paper proposes a graph-based Web video search reranking method with local and global consistency analysis. Generally, the graph-based reranking approach constructs a graph whose nodes and edges respectively correspond to videos and their pairwise similarities. A lot of reranking methods are built based on a scheme which regularizes the smoothness of pairwise relevance scores between adjacent nodes with regard to a user's query. However, since the overall consistency is measured by aggregating only the local consistency over each pair, errors in score estimation increase when noisy samples are included within query-relevant videos' neighbors. To deal with the noisy samples, the proposed method leverages the global consistency of the graph structure, which is different from the conventional methods. Specifically, in order to detect this consistency, the propose method introduces a spectral clustering algorithm which can detect video groups, in which videos have strong semantic correlation, on the graph. Furthermore, a new regularization term, which smooths ranking scores within the same group, is introduced to the reranking framework. Since the score regularization is performed by both local and global aspects simultaneously, the accurate score estimation becomes feasible. Experimental results obtained by applying the proposed method to a real-world video collection show its effectiveness.

Biomimetics is a new research field that creates innovation through the collaboration of different existing research fields. However, the collaboration, i.e., the exchange of deep knowledge between different research fields, is difficult for several reasons such as differences in technical terms used in different fields. In order to overcome this problem, we have developed a new retrieval platform, “Biomimetics image retrieval platform,” using a visualization-based image retrieval technique. A biological database contains a large volume of image data, and by taking advantage of these image data, we are able to overcome limitations of text-only information retrieval. By realizing such a retrieval platform that does not depend on technical terms, individual biological databases of various species can be integrated. This will allow not only the use of data for the study of various species by researchers in different biological fields but also access for a wide range of researchers in fields ranging from materials science, mechanical engineering and manufacturing. Therefore, our platform provides a new path bridging different fields and will contribute to the development of biomimetics since it can overcome the limitation of the traditional retrieval platform.

A new spatial and temporal error concealment method for three-dimensional discrete wavelet transform (3D DWT) video coding is analyzed. 3D DWT video coding employing dispersive grouping (DG) and two-step error concealment is an efficient method in a packet loss channel [20],[21]. In the two-step error concealment method, the interpolations are only spatially applied however, higher efficiency of the interpolation can be expected by utilizing spatial and temporal similarities. In this paper, we propose an enhanced spatial and temporal error concealment method in order to achieve higher error concealment (EC) performance in packet loss networks. In the temporal error concealment method, structural similarity (SSIM) index is employed for inter group of pictures (GOP) EC and minimum mean square error (MMSE) is used for intra GOP EC. Experimental results show that the proposed method can obtain remarkable performance compared with the conventional methods.

Binary sparse representation based on arbitrary quality metrics and its applications are presented in this paper. The novelties of the proposed method are twofold. First, the proposed method newly derives sparse representation for which representation coefficients are binary values, and this enables selection of arbitrary image quality metrics. This new sparse representation can generate quality metric-independent subspaces with simplification of the calculation procedures. Second, visual saliency is used in the proposed method for pooling the quality values obtained for all of the parts within target images. This approach enables visually pleasant approximation of the target images more successfully. By introducing the above two novel approaches, successful image approximation considering human perception becomes feasible. Since the proposed method can provide lower-dimensional subspaces that are obtained by better image quality metrics, realization of several image reconstruction tasks can be expected. Experimental results showed high performance of the proposed method in terms of two image reconstruction tasks, image inpainting and super-resolution.

In this paper, a novel framework for extracting visual feature-based keyword relationships from an image database is proposed. From the characteristic that a set of relevant keywords tends to have common visual features, the keyword relationships in a target image database are extracted by using the following two steps. First, the relationship between each keyword and its corresponding visual features is modeled by using a classifier. This step enables detection of visual features related to each keyword. In the second step, the keyword relationships are extracted from the obtained results. Specifically, in order to measure the relevance between two keywords, the proposed method removes visual features related to one keyword from training images and monitors the performance of the classifier obtained for the other keyword. This measurement is the biggest difference from other conventional methods that focus on only keyword co-occurrences or visual similarities. Results of experiments conducted using an image database showed the effectiveness of the proposed method.

In this study, we propose a novel dataset distillation method based on parameter pruning. The proposed method can synthesize more robust distilled datasets and improve distillation performance by pruning difficult-to-match parameters during the distillation process. Experimental results on two benchmark datasets show the superiority of the proposed method.

A new framework for reconstruction of missing textures in digital images is introduced in this paper. The framework is based on a projection onto convex sets (POCS) algorithm including a novel constraint. In the proposed method, a nonlinear eigenspace of each cluster obtained by classification of known textures within the target image is applied to the constraint. The main advantage of this approach is that the eigenspace can approximate the textures classified into the same cluster in the least-squares sense. Furthermore, by monitoring the errors converged by the POCS algorithm, a selection of the optimal cluster to reconstruct the target texture including missing intensities can be achieved. This POCS-based approach provides a solution to the problem in traditional methods of not being able to perform the selection of the optimal cluster due to the missing intensities within the target texture. Consequently, all of the missing textures are successfully reconstructed by the selected cluster's eigenspaces which correctly approximate the same kinds of textures. Experimental results show subjective and quantitative improvement of the proposed reconstruction technique over previously reported reconstruction techniques.