Comparison of Computer-Based and Optical Face Recognition Paradigms

The main objectives of this thesis are to validate an improved principal components analysis (IPCA) algorithm on images; designing and simulating a digital model for image compression, face recognition and image detection by using a principal components analysis (PCA) algorithm and the IPCA algorithm; designing and simulating an optical model for face recognition and object detection by using the joint transform correlator (JTC); establishing detection and recognition thresholds for each model; comparing between the performance of the PCA algorithm and the performance of the IPCA algorithm in compression, recognition and, detection; and comparing between the performance of the digital model and the performance of the optical model in recognition and detection. The MATLAB © software was used for simulating the models. PCA is a technique used for identifying patterns in data and representing the data in order to highlight any similarities or differences. The identification of patterns in data of high dimensions (more than three dimensions) is too difficult because the graphical representation of data is impossible. Therefore, PCA is a powerful method for analyzing data. IPCA is another statistical tool for identifying patterns in data. It uses information theory for improving PCA. The joint transform correlator (JTC) is an optical correlator used for synthesizing a frequency plane filter for coherent optical systems. The IPCA algorithm, in general, behaves better than the PCA algorithm in the most of the applications. It is better than the PCA algorithm in image compression because it obtains higher compression, more accurate reconstruction, and faster processing speed with acceptable errors; in addition, it is better than the PCA algorithm in real-time image detection due to the fact that it achieves the smallest error rate as well as remarkable speed. On the other hand, the PCA algorithm performs better than the IPCA algorithm in face recognition because it offers an acceptable error rate, easy calculation, and a reasonable speed. Finally, in detection and recognition, the performance of the digital model is better than the performance of the optical model.

Semantic and fuzzy modelling for human behaviour recognition in smart spaces : a case study on ambient assisted living.

Human activity recognition in everyday environments is a critical, but challenging task in Ambient Intelligence applications to achieve proper Ambient Assisted Living, and key challenges still remain to be dealt with to realize robust methods. One of the major limitations of the Ambient Intelligence systems today is the lack of semantic models of those activities on the environment, so that the system can recognize the speci c activity being performed by the user(s) and act accordingly. In this context, this thesis addresses the general problem of knowledge representation in Smart Spaces. The main objective is to develop knowledge-based models, equipped with semantics to learn, infer and monitor human behaviours in Smart Spaces. Moreover, it is easy to recognize that some aspects of this problem have a high degree of uncertainty, and therefore, the developed models must be equipped with mechanisms to manage this type of information. A fuzzy ontology and a semantic hybrid system are presented to allow modelling and recognition of a set of complex real-life scenarios where vagueness and uncertainty are inherent to the human nature of the users that perform it. The handling of uncertain, incomplete and vague data (i.e., missing sensor readings and activity execution variations, since human behaviour is non-deterministic) is approached for the rst time through a fuzzy ontology validated on real-time settings within a hybrid data-driven and knowledgebased architecture. The semantics of activities, sub-activities and real-time object interaction are taken into consideration. The proposed framework consists of two main modules: the low-level sub-activity recognizer and the high-level activity recognizer. The rst module detects sub-activities (i.e., actions or basic activities) that take input data directly from a depth sensor (Kinect). The main contribution of this thesis tackles the second component of the hybrid system, which lays on top of the previous one, in a superior level of abstraction, and acquires the input data from the rst module's output, and executes ontological inference to provide users, activities and their in uence in the environment, with semantics. This component is thus knowledge-based, and a fuzzy ontology was designed to model the high-level activities. Since activity recognition requires context-awareness and the ability to discriminate among activities in di erent environments, the semantic framework allows for modelling common-sense knowledge in the form of a rule-based system that supports expressions close to natural language in the form of fuzzy linguistic labels. The framework advantages have been evaluated with a challenging and new public dataset, CAD-120, achieving an accuracy of 90.1% and 91.1% respectively for low and high-level activities. This entails an improvement over both, entirely data-driven approaches, and merely ontology-based approaches. As an added value, for the system to be su ciently simple and exible to be managed by non-expert users, and thus, facilitate the transfer of research to industry, a development framework composed by a programming toolbox, a hybrid crisp and fuzzy architecture, and graphical models to represent and con gure human behaviour in Smart Spaces, were developed in order to provide the framework with more usability in the nal application. As a result, human behaviour recognition can help assisting people with special needs such as in healthcare, independent elderly living, in remote rehabilitation monitoring, industrial process guideline control, and many other cases. This thesis shows use cases in these areas.

The Role of Experience in the Organization and Refinement of Face Space

Adults code faces in reference to category-specific norms that represent the different face categories encountered in the environment (e.g., race, age). Reliance on such norm-based coding appears to aid recognition, but few studies have examined the development of separable prototypes and the way in which experience influences the refinement of the coding dimensions associated with different face categories. The present dissertation was thus designed to investigate the organization and refinement of face space and the role of experience in shaping sensitivity to its underlying dimensions. In Study 1, I demonstrated that face space is organized with regard to norms that reflect face categories that are both visually and socially distinct. These results provide an indication of the types of category-specific prototypes that can conceivably exist in face space. Study 2 was designed to investigate whether children rely on category-specific prototypes and the extent to which experience facilitates the development of separable norms. I demonstrated that unlike adults and older children, 5-year-olds rely on a relatively undifferentiated face space, even for categories with which they receive ample experience. These results suggest that the dimensions of face space undergo significant refinement throughout childhood; 5 years of experience with a face category is not sufficient to facilitate the development of separable norms. In Studies 3 through 5, I examined how early and continuous exposure to young adult faces may optimize the face processing system for the dimensions of young relative to older adult faces. In Study 3, I found evidence for a young adult bias in attentional allocation among young and older adults. However, whereas young adults showed an own-age recognition advantage, older adults exhibited comparable recognition for young and older faces. These results suggest that despite the significant experience that older adults have with older faces, the early and continuous exposure they received with young faces continues to influence their recognition, perhaps because face space is optimized for young faces. In Studies 4 and 5, I examined whether sensitivity to deviations from the norm is superior for young relative to older adult faces. I used normality/attractiveness judgments as a measure of this sensitivity; to examine whether biases were specific to norm-based coding, I asked participants to discriminate between the same faces. Both young and older adults were more accurate when tested with young relative to older faces—but only when judging normality. Like adults, 3- and 7-year-olds were more accurate in judging the attractiveness of young faces; however, unlike adults, this bias extended to the discrimination task. Thus by 3 years of age children are more sensitive to differences among young relative to older faces, suggesting that young children's perceptual system is more finely tuned for young than older adult faces. Collectively, the results of this dissertation help elucidate the development of category-specific norms and clarify the role of experience in shaping sensitivity to the dimensions of face space.

Psychocentricity and participant profiles: implications for lexical processing among multilinguals

Lexical processing among bilinguals is often affected by complex patterns of individual experience. In this paper we discuss the psychocentric perspective on language representation and processing, which highlights the centrality of individual experience in psycholinguistic experimentation. We discuss applications to the investigation of lexical processing among multilinguals and explore the advantages of using high-density experiments with multilinguals. High density experiments are designed to co-index measures of lexical perception and production, as well as participant profiles. We discuss the challenges associated with the characterization of participant profiles and present a new data visualization technique, that we term Facial Profiles. This technique is based on Chernoff faces developed over 40 years ago. The Facial Profile technique seeks to overcome some of the challenges associated with the use of Chernoff faces, while maintaining the core insight that recoding multivariate data as facial features can engage the human face recognition system and thus enhance our ability to detect and interpret patterns within multivariate datasets. We demonstrate that Facial Profiles can code participant characteristics in lexical processing studies by recoding variables such as reading ability, speaking ability, and listening ability into iconically-related relative sizes of eye, mouth, and ear, respectively. The balance of ability in bilinguals can be captured by creating composite facial profiles or Janus Facial Profiles. We demonstrate the use of Facial Profiles and Janus Facial Profiles in the characterization of participant effects in the study of lexical perception and production.

A Prototype for a Multimodal Biometric Security system based on Face and Audio Signatures

Any automatically measurable, robust and distinctive physical characteristic or personal trait that can be used to identify an individual or verify the claimed identity of an individual, referred to as biometrics, has gained significant interest in the wake of heightened concerns about security and rapid advancements in networking, communication and mobility. Multimodal biometrics is expected to be ultra-secure and reliable, due to the presence of multiple and independent—verification clues. In this study, a multimodal biometric system utilising audio and facial signatures has been implemented and error analysis has been carried out. A total of one thousand face images and 250 sound tracks of 50 users are used for training the proposed system. To account for the attempts of the unregistered signatures data of 25 new users are tested. The short term spectral features were extracted from the sound data and Vector Quantization was done using K-means algorithm. Face images are identified based on Eigen face approach using Principal Component Analysis. The success rate of multimodal system using speech and face is higher when compared to individual unimodal recognition systems

The firm. Techno-organizational changes, industrial relations and performances. An enquiry on Reggio Emilia local industrial system

It is not unknown that the evolution of firm theories has been developed along a path paved by an increasing awareness of the organizational structure importance. From the early “neoclassical” conceptualizations that intended the firm as a rational actor whose aim is to produce that amount of output, given the inputs at its disposal and in accordance to technological or environmental constraints, which maximizes the revenue (see Boulding, 1942 for a past mid century state of the art discussion) to the knowledge based theory of the firm (Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995; Nonaka & Toyama, 2005), which recognizes in the firm a knnowledge creating entity, with specific organizational capabilities (Teece, 1996; Teece & Pisano, 1998) that allow to sustaine competitive advantages. Tracing back a map of the theory of the firm evolution, taking into account the several perspectives adopted in the history of thought, would take the length of many books. Because of that a more fruitful strategy is circumscribing the focus of the description of the literature evolution to one flow connected to a crucial question about the nature of firm’s behaviour and about the determinants of competitive advantages. In so doing I adopt a perspective that allows me to consider the organizational structure of the firm as an element according to which the different theories can be discriminated. The approach adopted starts by considering the drawbacks of the standard neoclassical theory of the firm. Discussing the most influential theoretical approaches I end up with a close examination of the knowledge based perspective of the firm. Within this perspective the firm is considered as a knowledge creating entity that produce and mange knowledge (Nonaka, Toyama, & Nagata, 2000; Nonaka & Toyama, 2005). In a knowledge intensive organization, knowledge is clearly embedded for the most part in the human capital of the individuals that compose such an organization. In a knowledge based organization, the management, in order to cope with knowledge intensive productions, ought to develop and accumulate capabilities that shape the organizational forms in a way that relies on “cross-functional processes, extensive delayering and empowerment” (Foss 2005, p.12). This mechanism contributes to determine the absorptive capacity of the firm towards specific technologies and, in so doing, it also shape the technological trajectories along which the firm moves. After having recognized the growing importance of the firm’s organizational structure in the theoretical literature concerning the firm theory, the subsequent point of the analysis is that of providing an overview of the changes that have been occurred at micro level to the firm’s organization of production. The economic actors have to deal with challenges posed by processes of internationalisation and globalization, increased and increasing competitive pressure of less developed countries on low value added production activities, changes in technologies and increased environmental turbulence and volatility. As a consequence, it has been widely recognized that the main organizational models of production that fitted well in the 20th century are now partially inadequate and processes aiming to reorganize production activities have been widespread across several economies in recent years. Recently, the emergence of a “new” form of production organization has been proposed both by scholars, practitioners and institutions: the most prominent characteristic of such a model is its recognition of the importance of employees commitment and involvement. As a consequence it is characterized by a strong accent on the human resource management and on those practices that aim to widen the autonomy and responsibility of the workers as well as increasing their commitment to the organization (Osterman, 1994; 2000; Lynch, 2007). This “model” of production organization is by many defined as High Performance Work System (HPWS). Despite the increasing diffusion of workplace practices that may be inscribed within the concept of HPWS in western countries’ companies, it is an hazard, to some extent, to speak about the emergence of a “new organizational paradigm”. The discussion about organizational changes and the diffusion of HPWP the focus cannot abstract from a discussion about the industrial relations systems, with a particular accent on the employment relationships, because of their relevance, in the same way as production organization, in determining two major outcomes of the firm: innovation and economic performances. The argument is treated starting from the issue of the Social Dialogue at macro level, both in an European perspective and Italian perspective. The model of interaction between the social parties has repercussions, at micro level, on the employment relationships, that is to say on the relations between union delegates and management or workers and management. Finding economic and social policies capable of sustaining growth and employment within a knowledge based scenario is likely to constitute the major challenge for the next generation of social pacts, which are the main social dialogue outcomes. As Acocella and Leoni (2007) put forward the social pacts may constitute an instrument to trade wage moderation for high intensity in ICT, organizational and human capital investments. Empirical evidence, especially focused on the micro level, about the positive relation between economic growth and new organizational designs coupled with ICT adoption and non adversarial industrial relations is growing. Partnership among social parties may become an instrument to enhance firm competitiveness. The outcome of the discussion is the integration of organizational changes and industrial relations elements within a unified framework: the HPWS. Such a choice may help in disentangling the potential existence of complementarities between these two aspects of the firm internal structure on economic and innovative performance. With the third chapter starts the more original part of the thesis. The data utilized in order to disentangle the relations between HPWS practices, innovation and economic performance refer to the manufacturing firms of the Reggio Emilia province with more than 50 employees. The data have been collected through face to face interviews both to management (199 respondents) and to union representatives (181 respondents). Coupled with the cross section datasets a further data source is constituted by longitudinal balance sheets (1994-2004). Collecting reliable data that in turn provide reliable results needs always a great effort to which are connected uncertain results. Data at micro level are often subjected to a trade off: the wider is the geographical context to which the population surveyed belong the lesser is the amount of information usually collected (low level of resolution); the narrower is the focus on specific geographical context, the higher is the amount of information usually collected (high level of resolution). For the Italian case the evidence about the diffusion of HPWP and their effects on firm performances is still scanty and usually limited to local level studies (Cristini, et al., 2003). The thesis is also devoted to the deepening of an argument of particular interest: the existence of complementarities between the HPWS practices. It has been widely shown by empirical evidence that when HPWP are adopted in bundles they are more likely to impact on firm’s performances than when adopted in isolation (Ichniowski, Prennushi, Shaw, 1997). Is it true also for the local production system of Reggio Emilia? The empirical analysis has the precise aim of providing evidence on the relations between the HPWS dimensions and the innovative and economic performances of the firm. As far as the first line of analysis is concerned it must to be stressed the fundamental role that innovation plays in the economy (Geroski & Machin, 1993; Stoneman & Kwoon 1994, 1996; OECD, 2005; EC, 2002). On this point the evidence goes from the traditional innovations, usually approximated by R&D investment expenditure or number of patents, to the introduction and adoption of ICT, in the recent years (Brynjolfsson & Hitt, 2000). If innovation is important then it is critical to analyse its determinants. In this work it is hypothesised that organizational changes and firm level industrial relations/employment relations aspects that can be put under the heading of HPWS, influence the propensity to innovate in product, process and quality of the firm. The general argument may goes as follow: changes in production management and work organization reconfigure the absorptive capacity of the firm towards specific technologies and, in so doing, they shape the technological trajectories along which the firm moves; cooperative industrial relations may lead to smother adoption of innovations, because not contrasted by unions. From the first empirical chapter emerges that the different types of innovations seem to respond in different ways to the HPWS variables. The underlying processes of product, process and quality innovations are likely to answer to different firm’s strategies and needs. Nevertheless, it is possible to extract some general results in terms of the most influencing HPWS factors on innovative performance. The main three aspects are training coverage, employees involvement and the diffusion of bonuses. These variables show persistent and significant relations with all the three innovation types. The same do the components having such variables at their inside. In sum the aspects of the HPWS influence the propensity to innovate of the firm. At the same time, emerges a quite neat (although not always strong) evidence of complementarities presence between HPWS practices. In terns of the complementarity issue it can be said that some specific complementarities exist. Training activities, when adopted and managed in bundles, are related to the propensity to innovate. Having a sound skill base may be an element that enhances the firm’s capacity to innovate. It may enhance both the capacity to absorbe exogenous innovation and the capacity to endogenously develop innovations. The presence and diffusion of bonuses and the employees involvement also spur innovative propensity. The former because of their incentive nature and the latter because direct workers participation may increase workers commitment to the organizationa and thus their willingness to support and suggest inovations. The other line of analysis provides results on the relation between HPWS and economic performances of the firm. There have been a bulk of international empirical studies on the relation between organizational changes and economic performance (Black & Lynch 2001; Zwick 2004; Janod & Saint-Martin 2004; Huselid 1995; Huselid & Becker 1996; Cappelli & Neumark 2001), while the works aiming to capture the relations between economic performance and unions or industrial relations aspects are quite scant (Addison & Belfield, 2001; Pencavel, 2003; Machin & Stewart, 1990; Addison, 2005). In the empirical analysis the integration of the two main areas of the HPWS represent a scarcely exploited approach in the panorama of both national and international empirical studies. As remarked by Addison “although most analysis of workers representation and employee involvement/high performance work practices have been conducted in isolation – while sometimes including the other as controls – research is beginning to consider their interactions” (Addison, 2005, p.407). The analysis conducted exploiting temporal lags between dependent and covariates, possibility given by the merger of cross section and panel data, provides evidence in favour of the existence of HPWS practices impact on firm’s economic performance, differently measured. Although it does not seem to emerge robust evidence on the existence of complementarities among HPWS aspects on performances there is evidence of a general positive influence of the single practices. The results are quite sensible to the time lags, inducing to hypothesize that time varying heterogeneity is an important factor in determining the impact of organizational changes on economic performance. The implications of the analysis can be of help both to management and local level policy makers. Although the results are not simply extendible to other local production systems it may be argued that for contexts similar to the Reggio Emilia province, characterized by the presence of small and medium enterprises organized in districts and by a deep rooted unionism, with strong supporting institutions, the results and the implications here obtained can also fit well. However, a hope for future researches on the subject treated in the present work is that of collecting good quality information over wider geographical areas, possibly at national level, and repeated in time. Only in this way it is possible to solve the Gordian knot about the linkages between innovation, performance, high performance work practices and industrial relations.

Visual-somatosensory interactions in mental representations of the body and the face

The body is represented in the brain at levels that incorporate multisensory information. This thesis focused on interactions between vision and cutaneous sensations (i.e., touch and pain). Experiment 1 revealed that there are partially dissociable pathways for visual enhancement of touch (VET) depending upon whether one sees one’s own body or the body of another person. This indicates that VET, a seeming low-level effect on spatial tactile acuity, is actually sensitive to body identity. Experiments 2-4 explored the effect of viewing one’s own body on pain perception. They demonstrated that viewing the body biases pain intensity judgments irrespective of actual stimulus intensity, and, more importantly, reduces the discriminative capacities of the nociceptive pathway encoding noxious stimulus intensity. The latter effect only occurs if the pain-inducing event itself is not visible, suggesting that viewing the body alone and viewing a stimulus event on the body have distinct effects on cutaneous sensations. Experiment 5 replicated an enhancement of visual remapping of touch (VRT) when viewing fearful human faces being touched, and further demonstrated that VRT does not occur for observed touch on non-human faces, even fearful ones. This suggests that the facial expressions of non-human animals may not be simulated within the somatosensory system of the human observer in the same way that the facial expressions of other humans are. Finally, Experiment 6 examined the enfacement illusion, in which synchronous visuo-tactile inputs cause another’s face to be assimilated into the mental self-face representation. The strength of enfacement was not affected by the other’s facial expression, supporting an asymmetric relationship between processing of facial identity and facial expressions. Together, these studies indicate that multisensory representations of the body in the brain link low-level perceptual processes with the perception of emotional cues and body/face identity, and interact in complex ways depending upon contextual factors.

Dissociation between overt and unconscious face processing in fusiform face area

The precise role of the fusiform face area (FFA) in face processing remains controversial. In this study, we investigated to what degree FFA activation reflects additional functions beyond face perception. Seven volunteers underwent rapid event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging while they performed a face-encoding and a face-recognition task. During face encoding, activity in the FFA for individual faces predicted whether the individual face was subsequently remembered or forgotten. However, during face recognition, no difference in FFA activity between consciously remembered and forgotten faces was observed, but the activity of FFA differentiated if a face had been seen previously or not. This demonstrated a dissociation between overt recognition and unconscious discrimination of stimuli, suggesting that physiological processes of face recognition can take place, even if not all of its operations are made available to consciousness.

Detection and pattern recognition applied to leaves and chromosomes

The Project you are about to see it is based on the technologies used on object detection and recognition, especially on leaves and chromosomes. To do so, this document contains the typical parts of a scientific paper, as it is what it is. It is composed by an Abstract, an Introduction, points that have to do with the investigation area, future work, conclusions and references used for the elaboration of the document. The Abstract talks about what are we going to find in this paper, which is technologies employed on pattern detection and recognition for leaves and chromosomes and the jobs that are already made for cataloguing these objects. In the introduction detection and recognition meanings are explained. This is necessary as many papers get confused with these terms, specially the ones talking about chromosomes. Detecting an object is gathering the parts of the image that are useful and eliminating the useless parts. Summarizing, detection would be recognizing the objects borders. When talking about recognition, we are talking about the computers or the machines process, which says what kind of object we are handling. Afterwards we face a compilation of the most used technologies in object detection in general. There are two main groups on this category: Based on derivatives of images and based on ASIFT points. The ones that are based on derivatives of images have in common that convolving them with a previously created matrix does the treatment of them. This is done for detecting borders on the images, which are changes on the intensity of the pixels. Within these technologies we face two groups: Gradian based, which search for maximums and minimums on the pixels intensity as they only use the first derivative. The Laplacian based methods search for zeros on the pixels intensity as they use the second derivative. Depending on the level of details that we want to use on the final result, we will choose one option or the other, because, as its logic, if we used Gradian based methods, the computer will consume less resources and less time as there are less operations, but the quality will be worse. On the other hand, if we use the Laplacian based methods we will need more time and resources as they require more operations, but we will have a much better quality result. After explaining all the derivative based methods, we take a look on the different algorithms that are available for both groups. The other big group of technologies for object recognition is the one based on ASIFT points, which are based on 6 image parameters and compare them with another image taking under consideration these parameters. These methods disadvantage, for our future purposes, is that it is only valid for one single object. So if we are going to recognize two different leaves, even though if they refer to the same specie, we are not going to be able to recognize them with this method. It is important to mention these types of technologies as we are talking about recognition methods in general. At the end of the chapter we can see a comparison with pros and cons of all technologies that are employed. Firstly comparing them separately and then comparing them all together, based on our purposes. Recognition techniques, which are the next chapter, are not really vast as, even though there are general steps for doing object recognition, every single object that has to be recognized has its own method as the are different. This is why there is not a general method that we can specify on this chapter. We now move on into leaf detection techniques on computers. Now we will use the technique explained above based on the image derivatives. Next step will be to turn the leaf into several parameters. Depending on the document that you are referring to, there will be more or less parameters. Some papers recommend to divide the leaf into 3 main features (shape, dent and vein] and doing mathematical operations with them we can get up to 16 secondary features. Next proposition is dividing the leaf into 5 main features (Diameter, physiological length, physiological width, area and perimeter] and from those, extract 12 secondary features. This second alternative is the most used so it is the one that is going to be the reference. Following in to leaf recognition, we are based on a paper that provides a source code that, clicking on both leaf ends, it automatically tells to which specie belongs the leaf that we are trying to recognize. To do so, it only requires having a database. On the tests that have been made by the document, they assure us a 90.312% of accuracy over 320 total tests (32 plants on the database and 10 tests per specie]. Next chapter talks about chromosome detection, where we shall pass the metaphasis plate, where the chromosomes are disorganized, into the karyotype plate, which is the usual view of the 23 chromosomes ordered by number. There are two types of techniques to do this step: the skeletonization process and swiping angles. Skeletonization progress consists on suppressing the inside pixels of the chromosome to just stay with the silhouette. This method is really similar to the ones based on the derivatives of the image but the difference is that it doesnt detect the borders but the interior of the chromosome. Second technique consists of swiping angles from the beginning of the chromosome and, taking under consideration, that on a single chromosome we cannot have more than an X angle, it detects the various regions of the chromosomes. Once the karyotype plate is defined, we continue with chromosome recognition. To do so, there is a technique based on the banding that chromosomes have (grey scale bands] that make them unique. The program then detects the longitudinal axis of the chromosome and reconstructs the band profiles. Then the computer is able to recognize this chromosome. Concerning the future work, we generally have to independent techniques that dont reunite detection and recognition, so our main focus would be to prepare a program that gathers both techniques. On the leaf matter we have seen that, detection and recognition, have a link as both share the option of dividing the leaf into 5 main features. The work that would have to be done is to create an algorithm that linked both methods, as in the program, which recognizes leaves, it has to be clicked both leaf ends so it is not an automatic algorithm. On the chromosome side, we should create an algorithm that searches for the beginning of the chromosome and then start to swipe angles, to later give the parameters to the program that searches for the band profiles. Finally, on the summary, we explain why this type of investigation is needed, and that is because with global warming, lots of species (animals and plants] are beginning to extinguish. That is the reason why a big database, which gathers all the possible species, is needed. For recognizing animal species, we just only have to have the 23 chromosomes. While recognizing a plant, there are several ways of doing it, but the easiest way to input a computer is to scan the leaf of the plant. RESUMEN. El proyecto que se puede ver a continuación trata sobre las tecnologías empleadas en la detección y reconocimiento de objetos, especialmente de hojas y cromosomas. Para ello, este documento contiene las partes típicas de un paper de investigación, puesto que es de lo que se trata. Así, estará compuesto de Abstract, Introducción, diversos puntos que tengan que ver con el área a investigar, trabajo futuro, conclusiones y biografía utilizada para la realización del documento. Así, el Abstract nos cuenta qué vamos a poder encontrar en este paper, que no es ni más ni menos que las tecnologías empleadas en el reconocimiento y detección de patrones en hojas y cromosomas y qué trabajos hay existentes para catalogar a estos objetos. En la introducción se explican los conceptos de qué es la detección y qué es el reconocimiento. Esto es necesario ya que muchos papers científicos, especialmente los que hablan de cromosomas, confunden estos dos términos que no podían ser más sencillos. Por un lado tendríamos la detección del objeto, que sería simplemente coger las partes que nos interesasen de la imagen y eliminar aquellas partes que no nos fueran útiles para un futuro. Resumiendo, sería reconocer los bordes del objeto de estudio. Cuando hablamos de reconocimiento, estamos refiriéndonos al proceso que tiene el ordenador, o la máquina, para decir qué clase de objeto estamos tratando. Seguidamente nos encontramos con un recopilatorio de las tecnologías más utilizadas para la detección de objetos, en general. Aquí nos encontraríamos con dos grandes grupos de tecnologías: Las basadas en las derivadas de imágenes y las basadas en los puntos ASIFT. El grupo de tecnologías basadas en derivadas de imágenes tienen en común que hay que tratar a las imágenes mediante una convolución con una matriz creada previamente. Esto se hace para detectar bordes en las imágenes que son básicamente cambios en la intensidad de los píxeles. Dentro de estas tecnologías nos encontramos con dos grupos: Los basados en gradientes, los cuales buscan máximos y mínimos de intensidad en la imagen puesto que sólo utilizan la primera derivada; y los Laplacianos, los cuales buscan ceros en la intensidad de los píxeles puesto que estos utilizan la segunda derivada de la imagen. Dependiendo del nivel de detalles que queramos utilizar en el resultado final nos decantaremos por un método u otro puesto que, como es lógico, si utilizamos los basados en el gradiente habrá menos operaciones por lo que consumirá más tiempo y recursos pero por la contra tendremos menos calidad de imagen. Y al revés pasa con los Laplacianos, puesto que necesitan más operaciones y recursos pero tendrán un resultado final con mejor calidad. Después de explicar los tipos de operadores que hay, se hace un recorrido explicando los distintos tipos de algoritmos que hay en cada uno de los grupos. El otro gran grupo de tecnologías para el reconocimiento de objetos son los basados en puntos ASIFT, los cuales se basan en 6 parámetros de la imagen y la comparan con otra imagen teniendo en cuenta dichos parámetros. La desventaja de este método, para nuestros propósitos futuros, es que sólo es valido para un objeto en concreto. Por lo que si vamos a reconocer dos hojas diferentes, aunque sean de la misma especie, no vamos a poder reconocerlas mediante este método. Aún así es importante explicar este tipo de tecnologías puesto que estamos hablando de técnicas de reconocimiento en general. Al final del capítulo podremos ver una comparación con los pros y las contras de todas las tecnologías empleadas. Primeramente comparándolas de forma separada y, finalmente, compararemos todos los métodos existentes en base a nuestros propósitos. Las técnicas de reconocimiento, el siguiente apartado, no es muy extenso puesto que, aunque haya pasos generales para el reconocimiento de objetos, cada objeto a reconocer es distinto por lo que no hay un método específico que se pueda generalizar. Pasamos ahora a las técnicas de detección de hojas mediante ordenador. Aquí usaremos la técnica explicada previamente explicada basada en las derivadas de las imágenes. La continuación de este paso sería diseccionar la hoja en diversos parámetros. Dependiendo de la fuente a la que se consulte pueden haber más o menos parámetros. Unos documentos aconsejan dividir la morfología de la hoja en 3 parámetros principales (Forma, Dentina y ramificación] y derivando de dichos parámetros convertirlos a 16 parámetros secundarios. La otra propuesta es dividir la morfología de la hoja en 5 parámetros principales (Diámetro, longitud fisiológica, anchura fisiológica, área y perímetro] y de ahí extraer 12 parámetros secundarios. Esta segunda propuesta es la más utilizada de todas por lo que es la que se utilizará. Pasamos al reconocimiento de hojas, en la cual nos hemos basado en un documento que provee un código fuente que cucando en los dos extremos de la hoja automáticamente nos dice a qué especie pertenece la hoja que estamos intentando reconocer. Para ello sólo hay que formar una base de datos. En los test realizados por el citado documento, nos aseguran que tiene un índice de acierto del 90.312% en 320 test en total (32 plantas insertadas en la base de datos por 10 test que se han realizado por cada una de las especies]. El siguiente apartado trata de la detección de cromosomas, en el cual se debe de pasar de la célula metafásica, donde los cromosomas están desorganizados, al cariotipo, que es como solemos ver los 23 cromosomas de forma ordenada. Hay dos tipos de técnicas para realizar este paso: Por el proceso de esquelotonización y barriendo ángulos. El proceso de esqueletonización consiste en eliminar los píxeles del interior del cromosoma para quedarse con su silueta; Este proceso es similar a los métodos de derivación de los píxeles pero se diferencia en que no detecta bordes si no que detecta el interior de los cromosomas. La segunda técnica consiste en ir barriendo ángulos desde el principio del cromosoma y teniendo en cuenta que un cromosoma no puede doblarse más de X grados detecta las diversas regiones de los cromosomas. Una vez tengamos el cariotipo, se continua con el reconocimiento de cromosomas. Para ello existe una técnica basada en las bandas de blancos y negros que tienen los cromosomas y que son las que los hacen únicos. Para ello el programa detecta los ejes longitudinales del cromosoma y reconstruye los perfiles de las bandas que posee el cromosoma y que lo identifican como único. En cuanto al trabajo que se podría desempeñar en el futuro, tenemos por lo general dos técnicas independientes que no unen la detección con el reconocimiento por lo que se habría de preparar un programa que uniese estas dos técnicas. Respecto a las hojas hemos visto que ambos métodos, detección y reconocimiento, están vinculados debido a que ambos comparten la opinión de dividir las hojas en 5 parámetros principales. El trabajo que habría que realizar sería el de crear un algoritmo que conectase a ambos ya que en el programa de reconocimiento se debe clicar a los dos extremos de la hoja por lo que no es una tarea automática. En cuanto a los cromosomas, se debería de crear un algoritmo que busque el inicio del cromosoma y entonces empiece a barrer ángulos para después poder dárselo al programa que busca los perfiles de bandas de los cromosomas. Finalmente, en el resumen se explica el por qué hace falta este tipo de investigación, esto es que con el calentamiento global, muchas de las especies (tanto animales como plantas] se están empezando a extinguir. Es por ello que se necesitará una base de datos que contemple todas las posibles especies tanto del reino animal como del reino vegetal. Para reconocer a una especie animal, simplemente bastará con tener sus 23 cromosomas; mientras que para reconocer a una especie vegetal, existen diversas formas. Aunque la más sencilla de todas es contar con la hoja de la especie puesto que es el elemento más fácil de escanear e introducir en el ordenador.

Robust thermal face recognition using region classifiers

This paper presents a robust approach for recognition of thermal face images based on decision level fusion of 34 different region classifiers. The region classifiers concentrate on local variations. They use singular value decomposition (SVD) for feature extraction. Fusion of decisions of the region classifier is done by using majority voting technique. The algorithm is tolerant against false exclusion of thermal information produced by the presence of inconsistent distribution of temperature statistics which generally make the identification process difficult. The algorithm is extensively evaluated on UGC-JU thermal face database, and Terravic facial infrared database and the recognition performance are found to be 95.83% and 100%, respectively. A comparative study has also been made with the existing works in the literature.

Face recognition robust to head pose from one sample image

Most face recognition systems only work well under quite constrained environments. In particular, the illumination conditions, facial expressions and head pose must be tightly controlled for good recognition performance. In 2004, we proposed a new face recognition algorithm, Adaptive Principal Component Analysis (APCA) [4], which performs well against both lighting variation and expression change. But like other eigenface-derived face recognition algorithms, APCA only performs well with frontal face images. The work presented in this paper is an extension of our previous work to also accommodate variations in head pose. Following the approach of Cootes et al, we develop a face model and a rotation model which can be used to interpret facial features and synthesize realistic frontal face images when given a single novel face image. We use a Viola-Jones based face detector to detect the face in real-time and thus solve the initialization problem for our Active Appearance Model search. Experiments show that our approach can achieve good recognition rates on face images across a wide range of head poses. Indeed recognition rates are improved by up to a factor of 5 compared to standard PCA.

Development of face recognition: Infancy to early childhood

Perception and recognition of faces are fundamental cognitive abilities that form a basis for our social interactions. Research has investigated face perception using a variety of methodologies across the lifespan. Habituation, novelty preference, and visual paired comparison paradigms are typically used to investigate face perception in young infants. Storybook recognition tasks and eyewitness lineup paradigms are generally used to investigate face perception in young children. These methodologies have introduced systematic differences including the use of linguistic information for children but not infants, greater memory load for children than infants, and longer exposure times to faces for infants than for older children, making comparisons across age difficult. Thus, research investigating infant and child perception of faces using common methods, measures, and stimuli is needed to better understand how face perception develops. According to predictions of the Intersensory Redundancy Hypothesis (IRH; Bahrick & Lickliter, 2000, 2002), in early development, perception of faces is enhanced in unimodal visual (i.e., silent dynamic face) rather than bimodal audiovisual (i.e., dynamic face with synchronous speech) stimulation. The current study investigated the development of face recognition across children of three ages: 5 – 6 months, 18 – 24 months, and 3.5 – 4 years, using the novelty preference paradigm and the same stimuli for all age groups. It also assessed the role of modality (unimodal visual versus bimodal audiovisual) and memory load (low versus high) on face recognition. It was hypothesized that face recognition would improve across age and would be enhanced in unimodal visual stimulation with a low memory load. Results demonstrated a developmental trend (F(2, 90) = 5.00, p = 0.009) with older children showing significantly better recognition of faces than younger children. In contrast to predictions, no differences were found as a function of modality of presentation (bimodal audiovisual versus unimodal visual) or memory load (low versus high). This study was the first to demonstrate a developmental improvement in face recognition from infancy through childhood using common methods, measures and stimuli consistent across age.

Creating proactive interference in immediate recall: Building a DOG from a DART, a MOP, and a FIG

Phonemic codes are accorded a privileged role in most current models of immediate serial recall, although their effects are apparent in short-term proactive interference (PI) effects as well. The present research looks at how assumptions concerning distributed representation and distributed storage involving both semantic and phonemic codes might be operationalized to produce PI in a short-term cued recall task. The four experiments reported here attempted to generate the phonemic characteristics of a nonrhyming, interfering foil from unrelated filler items in the same list. PI was observed when a rhyme of the foil was studied or when the three phonemes of the foil were distributed across three studied filler items. The results suggest that items in short-term memory are stored in terms of feature bundles and that all items are simultaneously available at retrieval.

Dual processes in recognition: Does a focus on measurement operations provide a sufficient foundation?

Current theoretical thinking about dual processes in recognition relies heavily on the measurement operations embodied within the process dissociation procedure. We critically evaluate the ability of this procedure to support this theoretical enterprise. We show that there are alternative processes that would produce a rough invariance in familiarity (a key prediction of the dual-processing approach) and that the process dissociation procedure does not have the power to differentiate between these alternative possibilities. We also show that attempts to relate parameters estimated by the process dissociation procedure to subjective reports (remember-know judgments) cannot differentiate between alternative dual-processing models and that there are problems with some of the historical evidence and with obtaining converging evidence. Our conclusion is that more specific theories incorporating ideas about representation and process are required.

Social anxiety disorder women easily recognize fearfull, sad and happy faces: The influence of gender

Background: It has been suggested that individuals with social anxiety disorder (SAD) are exaggeratedly concerned about approval and disapproval by others. Therefore, we assessed the recognition of facial expressions by individuals with SAD, in an attempt to overcome the limitations of previous studies. Methods: The sample was formed by 231 individuals (78 SAD patients and 153 healthy controls). All individuals were treatment naive, aged 18-30 years and with similar socioeconomic level. Participants judged which emotion (happiness, sadness, disgust, anger, fear, and surprise) was presented in the facial expression of stimuli displayed on a computer screen. The stimuli were manipulated in order to depict different emotional intensities, with the initial image being a neutral face (0%) and, as the individual moved on across images, the expressions increased their emotional intensity until reaching the total emotion (100%). The time, accuracy, and intensity necessary to perform judgments were evaluated. Results: The groups did not show statistically significant differences in respect to the number of correct judgments or to the time necessary to respond. However, women with SAD required less emotional intensity to recognize faces displaying fear (p = 0.002), sadness (p = 0.033) and happiness (p = 0.002), with no significant differences for the other emotions or men with SAD. Conclusions: The findings suggest that women with SAD are hypersensitive to threat-related and approval-related social cues. Future studies investigating the neural basis of the impaired processing of facial emotion in SAD using functional neuroimaging would be desirable and opportune. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.