Topological triangle characterization with application to object detection from images

A novel mathematical framework inspired on Morse Theory for topological triangle characterization in 2D meshes is introduced that is useful for applications involving the creation of mesh models of objects whose geometry is not known a priori. The framework guarantees a precise control of topological changes introduced as a result of triangle insertion/removal operations and enables the definition of intuitive high-level operators for managing the mesh while keeping its topological integrity. An application is described in the implementation of an innovative approach for the detection of 2D objects from images that integrates the topological control enabled by geometric modeling with traditional image processing techniques. (C) 2008 Published by Elsevier B.V.

Chaotic phase synchronization and desynchronization in an oscillator network for object selection

Object selection refers to the mechanism of extracting objects of interest while ignoring other objects and background in a given visual scene. It is a fundamental issue for many computer vision and image analysis techniques and it is still a challenging task to artificial Visual systems. Chaotic phase synchronization takes place in cases involving almost identical dynamical systems and it means that the phase difference between the systems is kept bounded over the time, while their amplitudes remain chaotic and may be uncorrelated. Instead of complete synchronization, phase synchronization is believed to be a mechanism for neural integration in brain. In this paper, an object selection model is proposed. Oscillators in the network representing the salient object in a given scene are phase synchronized, while no phase synchronization occurs for background objects. In this way, the salient object can be extracted. In this model, a shift mechanism is also introduced to change attention from one object to another. Computer simulations show that the model produces some results similar to those observed in natural vision systems.