Multi-operator image retargeting with automatic integration of direct and indirect seam carving

Multi-operator image resizing can preserve important objects and structure in an image by combining multiple image resizing operators. However, traditional multi-operator methods do not take both horizontal and vertical content-aware resizing potential into consideration, which essentially leads to squeeze/stretch effect in the resultant images. In this paper, we propose a new multi-operator scheme that addresses aforementioned issue by integrating direct and indirect seam carving. Compared with previous methods, the proposed scheme remarkably reduces the cost of deciding when to change operators, by employing a newly defined image artifact measure. Furthermore, we propose a novel seam carving enhancement, named ACcumulated Energy Seam Carving (ACESC), as a basic operator to improve global structure preservation. By combining horizontal and vertical seam carving, our scheme preserves the shapes of important objects well. We present typical results to demonstrate the effectiveness of our method. User study shows that our method has high user preference.     

基于缝裁剪和变形的图像缩放方法

提出一种既能保持图像重要内容又能较好地保持重要物体形状的图像缩放算法。该方法结合传统的缝裁剪技术和变形技术来对图像进行缩放。首先利用当前公认效果良好的基于图模型的流形排序显著性检测算法得到图像的显著度图,结合图像梯度能量等信息来构造结构更为清晰的图像重要度图;其次利用之前构造的图像重要度图并按缩放尺度的大小来确定适当的缩放方法;最后根据度量比较结果来选择经典缝裁剪方法或基于能量优化的变形方法进行图像缩放。对比实验结果表明,该方法在图像缩放时能保持重要内容和显著物体形状结构。     

内容感知图像缩放技术综述

随着不同分辨率和纵横比的显示设备的迅猛增长,内容感知图像缩放技术逐渐成为图像处理领域新的研究热点之一。内容感知图像缩放的目标是在任意改变图像大小时保持图像中的主体特征不变。围绕其关键步骤:图像重要度识别和基于重要度的缩放,先概述重要度识别的相关方法,然后重点综述基于重要度的缩放技术。根据缩放是在像素级上操作还是亚像素级上操作,或者两者兼有,将其分为基于线裁剪缩放、基于图像变形缩放和多操作缩放3类,并比较各类方法的优缺点,同时给出各类方法所适合处理的图像类型。最后在分析各类研究方法的基础上,给出了内容感知缩放技术的可能发展方向。     

Real-time content-aware image resizing

Content-aware image resizing is a kind of new and effective approach for image resizing, which preserves image content well and does not cause obvious distortion when changing the aspect ratio of images. Recently, a seam based approach for content-aware image resizing was proposed by Avidan and Shamir. Their results are impressive, but because the method uses dynamic programming many times, it is slow. In this paper, we present a more efficient algorithm for seam based content-aware image resizing, which searches seams through establishing the matching relation between adjacent rows or columns. We give a linear algorithm to find the optimal matches within a weighted bipartite graph composed of the pixels in adjacent rows or columns. Therefore, our method is fast (e.g. our method needs only about 100 ms to reduce a 768 × 1024 image’s width to 1/3 while Avidan and Shamir’s method needs 12 s). This supports immediate image resizing whereas Avidan and Shamir’s method requires a more costly pre-processing step to enable subsequent real-time processing. A fast method such as the one proposed will be also needed for future real-time video resizing applications.     

A survey for image resizing

Image resizing is a key technique for displaying images on different devices, and has attracted much attention in the past few years. This paper reviews the image resizing methods proposed in recent years, gives a detailed comparison on their performance, and reveals the main challenges raised in several important issues such as preserving an important region, minimizing distortions, and improving efficiency. Furthermore, this paper discusses the research trends and points out the possible hotspots in this field. We believe this survey can give some guidance for researchers from relevant research areas, offering them an overall and novel view.     

基于罗伯茨梯度的彩色图像缩放新法

为了缩放图像而不改变图像中重要特征物的大小和比率,提出一种叫做缝络删增的缩放方法.一个缝络就是从顶到底或从左到右8-连接且仅连接一个像素的路径.最佳路径由图像的罗伯茨梯度函数来定义.通过在行列一个或二个方向重复删除或插入缝络就能改变图像的尺寸和比率.算法定义的缝络绕过了特征物边界,从而保护了图像的内容.理论分析和实验结果表明,该算法较其它算法能更有效地保护图像特征物.     

基于DCT域视觉显著性检测的图像缩放算法*

为适应不同终端显示多样化的要求,需对接收到的图像进行缩放调整。针对现有的基于内容感知(content-aware)的图像缩放方法中视觉内容的连贯性易被破环而出现失真的问题,提出了一个基于离散余弦变换(discrete cosine transform, DCT)域的视觉显著性检测的图像缩放算法。该算法利用DCT域的视觉显著性检测模型获取视觉显著图,然后结合视觉显著图和能量分布图进行线裁剪(Seam Carving),实现了图像的缩放。实验结果表明,该算法与现有的基于内容感知的图像缩放方法相比,不仅保护了视觉显著内容,还保证了图像内容的连贯性,算法质量指数也获得明显的提高。     

显著物体形状结构保持的图像缩放方法

针对传统的缝裁剪图像缩放方法中可能出现对图像中显著物体形状结构的破坏问题,提出一种既考虑到显著物体内容保持又考虑到显著物体形状结构保持的新的图像缩放方法。该方法首先利用经典的图像显著度图模型,结合图像梯度直方图等信息构建形状结构更加清晰的图像重要度图;然后利用已构建的重要度图,对图像进行分块,按显著块的大小来确定缩放方法;最后结合经典缝裁剪方法和基于共形能量的变形方法对图像进行缩放。实验结果显示,该方法能够在图像缩放时更好地保持显著物体的内容和形状结构。     

Seam Carving和显著性分析的图像缩放方法研究

提出一种基于Seam Carving和显著性分析相结合的图像缩放方法。通过不断移除（插入）缝合线来实现对图像尺寸的缩小（放大）。通过研究Seam Carving在图像缩放及目标保留移除中存在的问题,已有的基于像素点计算图像能量函数的方法会对某些图像失效,提出一种基于显著性区域求解图像能量函数的SDRS方法。实验结果表明,Seam Carving方法对自然图像的处理能够达到令人满意的效果。Seam Carving方法和SDRS方法的结合,也是一个创新点。     

Current status and key issues in image steganography: A survey

Steganography and steganalysis are the prominent research fields in information hiding paradigm. Steganography is the science of invisible communication while steganalysis is the detection of steganography. Steganography means “covered writing” that hides the existence of the message itself. Digital steganography provides potential for private and secure communication that has become the necessity of most of the applications in today’s world. Various multimedia carriers such as audio, text, video, image can act as cover media to carry secret information. In this paper, we have focused only on image steganography. This article provides a review of fundamental concepts, evaluation measures and security aspects of steganography system, various spatial and transform domain embedding schemes. In addition, image quality metrics that can be used for evaluation of stego images and cover selection measures that provide additional security to embedding scheme are also highlighted. Current research trends and directions to improve on existing methods are suggested.     

基于全局图像结构信息的Seam Carving算法*

本文提出了一种基于全局图像结构信息的Seam Carving算法,它根据像素的重要性修改图像尺寸和比例。通过从图像提取特定方向的边缘结构信息,再利用每个像素的梯度信息,从全局和局部两方面定义新的像素能量计算函数,以此来阻止Seam通路与特定方向图像边缘的交叉,避免边缘像素的不一致位移,以此保持图像的边缘结构。实验结果证明,本文算法减少了处理后图像的结构形变,有效改进了Seam Carving算法的处理效果。     

Methods for image authentication: a survey

Image authentication techniques have recently gained great attention due to its importance for a large number of multimedia applications. Digital images are increasingly transmitted over non-secure channels such as the Internet. Therefore, military, medical and quality control images must be protected against attempts to manipulate them; such manipulations could tamper the decisions based on these images. To protect the authenticity of multimedia images, several approaches have been proposed. These approaches include conventional cryptography, fragile and semi-fragile watermarking and digital signatures that are based on the image content. The aim of this paper is to present a survey and a comparison of emerging techniques for image authentication. Methods are classified according to the service they provide, that is strict or selective authentication, tamper detection, localization and reconstruction capabilities and robustness against different desired image processing operations. Furthermore, we introduce the concept of image content and discuss the most important requirements for an effective image authentication system design. Different algorithms are described and we focus on their comparison according to the properties cited above.

汉字部件的无失真缩放变换方法研究

针对部件组字过程中由于缩放变换造成的部件笔画粗细和衬线失真的问题, 提出了一种通过优化缩放变换直接生成目标字形的方法。通过部件变换序列的生成算法以及笔画变换操作算法实现了由原始部件直接生成目标部件的缩放变换。原型系统的实验结果表明, 该方法能够实现汉字部件的无失真缩放变换, 从而提高了汉字组字系统生成字形的质量以及字库自动化生成的效率。     

针对图像自适应显示的视觉注意力模型

图像在移动设备上的使用越来越广泛,但是各种不同的显示环境需要对图像进行自适应的显示,针对这个问题作者提出了基于视觉注意力的图像自适应显示的方法,而其基础是针对图像视觉注意力的建模。该文提出了一种有效地描述视觉注意力的模型,区别于把图像作为一个整体进行考虑的方法,把图像分解成一系列的注意力对象,并通过对视觉注意力对象的尺寸估计、区域约束分割、基于区域的显著度计算等步骤确定注意力对象的属性。实验结果证明了该模型的有效性。     

基于Wallis与距离权重增强的无人机影像拼接缝消除

针对无人机影像拼接缝消除困难的问题,提出了一种基于Wallis匀光和距离权重增强的拼接缝消除算法。首先,应用Wallis匀光消除亮度差异,给出Wallis参数设置方法。然后,提出了一种基于空间相关性的距离权重分配方法,通过增强距离对权重的影响,对拼接缝处的局部纹理错位进行全局优化,起到渐入渐出的平滑过渡效果,消除纹理拼接缝。最后,选取7种不同类型影像对本文方法和其他4种经典算法进行对比,并对8条行带影像进行拼接。实验结果表明：本文算法能高效地消除由于曝光差异与几何变形引起的拼接缝,适用于无人机影像快速处理。     

Medical image fusion: A survey of the state of the art

Medical image fusion is the process of registering and combining multiple images from single or multiple imaging modalities to improve the imaging quality and reduce randomness and redundancy in order to increase the clinical applicability of medical images for diagnosis and assessment of medical problems. Multi-modal medical image fusion algorithms and devices have shown notable achievements in improving clinical accuracy of decisions based on medical images. This review article provides a factual listing of methods and summarizes the broad scientific challenges faced in the field of medical image fusion. We characterize the medical image fusion research based on (1) the widely used image fusion methods, (2) imaging modalities, and (3) imaging of organs that are under study. This review concludes that even though there exists several open ended technological and scientific challenges, the fusion of medical images has proved to be useful for advancing the clinical reliability of using medical imaging for medical diagnostics and analysis, and is a scientific discipline that has the potential to significantly grow in the coming years.     

From computational attention to image fusion

We present in this paper a new fusion image scheme called as “Attention Fusion” (ATF). This scheme, developed in a multiresolution space, uses an attention map to define the level of activity for each one of the coefficients and so, to derive the rules of fusion. The multiresolution decomposition is done by using the dual-tree complex wavelet transform. The fusion method assumes that the highest attention level for the input images to be fused must be one of the main factors to establish the information to put in the fused image. The performance of the method is tested by an axiomatic score function. Two sets of experiments have been carried out: (a) fusion on multi-focus images and (b) fusion on multi-band images. In the first experiment, the proposed method has been compared with PYR, DWT, CWT and SR methods. In this kind of images the ATF method has a good performance. On the other hand, results in the second experiment with multi-band images, demonstrate that the ATF method has the best performance (across several sets of images) in comparison with the CWT, PYR and DWT methods, all of them also based in a multiresolution decomposition.     

A survey and experimental evaluation of image spam filtering techniques

In their arms race against developers of spam filters, spammers have recently introduced the image spam trick to make the analysis of emails’ body text ineffective. It consists in embedding the spam message into an attached image, which is often randomly modified to evade signature-based detection, and obfuscated to prevent text recognition by OCR tools. Detecting image spam turns out to be an interesting instance of the problem of content-based filtering of multimedia data in adversarial environments, which is gaining increasing relevance in several applications and media. In this paper we give a comprehensive survey and categorisation of computer vision and pattern recognition techniques proposed so far against image spam, and make an experimental analysis and comparison of some of them on real, publicly available data sets.     

A survey of browsing models for content based image retrieval

The problem of content based image retrieval (CBIR) has traditionally been investigated within a framework that emphasises the explicit formulation of a query: users initiate an automated search for relevant images by submitting an image or draw a sketch that exemplifies their information need. Often, relevance feedback is incorporated as a post-retrieval step for optimising the way evidence from different visual features is combined. While this sustained methodological focus has helped CBIR to mature, it has also brought out its limitations more clearly: There is often little support for exploratory search and scaling to very large collections is problematic. Moreover, the assumption that users are always able to formulate an appropriate query is questionable. An effective, albeit much less studied, method of accessing image collections based on visual content is that of browsing. The aim of this survey paper is to provide a structured overview of the different models that have been explored over the last one to two decades, to highlight the particular challenges of the browsing approach and to focus attention on a few interesting issues that warrant more intense research.