A estética da imagem na TV digital

This text reflects on the techniques and the process of image production and its artistic composition to digital television in high defini- tion, whereas the 4:3 and 16:9 formats will exist until shutdown of the analog signal. Within this period, consumers of television programming that have analog receivers will continue to see the images in 4:3 format. That fact determines that the productions in high definition, while capturing images with larger viewing area and have high contrast ratio (>1000:1) must be main- tain the elements of visual storytelling within the smallest area and with the contrast ratio of the analog tv (30:1), at the risk of distorting visually the messages produced by the directors.

Localización de contornos con precisión sub-pixel en imágenes bidimensionales y tridimensionales

Programa de Doctorado en Percepción Artificial y Aplicaciones

Parallel implementation of a robust optical flow technique

[EN] The accuracy and performance of current variational optical ow methods have considerably increased during the last years. The complexity of these techniques is high and enough care has to be taken for the implementation. The aim of this work is to present a comprehensible implementation of recent variational optical flow methods. We start with an energy model that relies on brightness and gradient constancy terms and a ow-based smoothness term. We minimize this energy model and derive an e cient implicit numerical scheme. In the experimental results, we evaluate the accuracy and performance of this implementation with the Middlebury benchmark database. We show that it is a competitive solution with respect to current methods in the literature. In order to increase the performance, we use a simple strategy to parallelize the execution on multi-core processors.

Computing inverse optical flow

[EN] We propose four algorithms for computing the inverse optical flow between two images. We assume that the forward optical flow has already been obtained and we need to estimate the flow in the backward direction. The forward and backward flows can be related through a warping formula, which allows us to propose very efficient algorithms. These are presented in increasing order of complexity. The proposed methods provide high accuracy with low memory requirements and low running times.In general, the processing reduces to one or two image passes. Typically, when objects move in a sequence, some regions may appear or disappear. Finding the inverse flows in these situations is difficult and, in some cases, it is not possible to obtain a correct solution. Our algorithms deal with occlusions very easy and reliably. On the other hand, disocclusions have to be overcome as a post-processing step. We propose three approaches for filling disocclusions. In the experimental results, we use standard synthetic sequences to study the performance of the proposed methods, and show that they yield very accurate solutions. We also analyze the performance of the filling strategies. 

Arte digital

[ES] El ordenador es una herramienta de enorme potencial para el arte visual [Spalter99], tanto en el marco de la imagen estática, como en el contexto del video o imagen en movimiento. Las imágenes son fácilmente comprendidas por los humanos, motivo por el cual es un ámbito válido de trabajo creativo. Por otro lado, ocupa también a multitud de científicos del campo de la Visión por Computador en su búsqueda de técnicas para detectar y reconocer objetos. La tecnología digital, presenta la singularidad de la no existencia de un original único, de disponer del original en cualquier parte y ser copiable hasta la saciedad sin pérdida. Por otro lado, la introducción de la interactividad a través del uso de las tecnologías de visión por computador aporta un nuevo canal expresivo y unas posibilidades para la generación de sensaciones a través del concepto de obra interactiva [Krueger85]. La obra se puede convertir en única y cambiante, reactiva a la interacción en cada momento, recuperando su exclusividad. Este enfoque se relaciona con el concepto de instalación donde una obra es instalación si dialoga con el espacio que la circunda [Iges99]. La motivación de este proyecto es investigar el uso de capacidades actuales de Visión por Computador e Inteligencia Artificial para su integración en instalaciones artísticas. Se destaca que nuestra experiencia se relaciona fundamentalmente con el mundo tecnológico, nuestro objetivo es mostrar las posibilidades interactivas que la Inteligencia Artificial puede introducir y explorar las posibilidades de interfaces y formas de interacción hombre-máquina.

Optic flow estimation in fluid images II

[EN] In this report we study a number of fluid optic flow sequences in the context of the FLUID Specific Targeted Research Project - Contract No 513633 founded by the EEC. The main goal of this report is to analyse the behaviour of classical computer vision optic flow techniques when we deal with fluid sequences. We use the optic flow sequences provided by other partners of the FLUID project.

Reliable estimation of dense optical flow fields with large displacements

[EN] In this paper we show that a classic optical flow technique by Nagel and Enkelmann can be regarded as an early anisotropic diffusion method with a diffusion tensor. We introduce three improvements into the model formulation that avoid inconsistencies caused by centering the brightness term and the smoothness term in different images use a linear scale-space focusing strategy from coarse to fine scales for avoiding convergence to physically irrelevant local minima, and create an energy functional that is invariant under linear brightness changes.  Applying a gradient descent method to the resulting energy functional leads to a system of diffusion-reaction equations. We prove that this system has a unique solution under realistic assumptions on the initial data, and we present an efficient linear implicit numerical scheme in detail. Our method creates flow fields with 100% density over the entire image domain, it is robust under a large range of parameter variations, and it can recover displacement fields that are far beyond the typical one-pixel limits which are characteristic for many differential methods for determining optical flow. We show that it performs better than the classic optical flow methods with 100%  density that are evaluated by Barron et al. (1994). Our software is available from the Internet.

3-D geometry reconstruction using a color image stereo pair and partial differential equations

[EN] In this work, we present a new model for a dense disparity estimation and the 3-D geometry reconstruction using a color image stereo pair. First, we present a brief introduction to the 3-D Geometry of a camera system. Next, we propose a new model for the disparity estimation based on an energy functional. We look for the local minima of the energy using the associate Euler-Langrage partial differential equations. This model is a generalization to color image of the model developed in, with some changes in the strategy to avoid the irrelevant local minima. We present some numerical experiences of 3-D reconstruction, using this method some real stereo pairs.

3D reconstruction from a vascular tree model

[EN] In this paper, we present a vascular tree model made with synthetic materials and which allows us to obtain images to make a 3D reconstruction.We have used PVC tubes of several diameters and lengths that will let us evaluate the accuracy of our 3D reconstruction. In order to calibrate the camera we have used a corner detector. Also we have used Optical Flow techniques to follow the points through the images going and going back. We describe two general techniques to extract a sequence of corresponding points from multiple views of an object. The resulting sequence of points will be used later to reconstruct a set of 3D points representing the object surfaces on the scene. We have made the 3D reconstruction choosing by chance a couple of images and we have calculated the projection error. After several repetitions, we have found the best 3D location for the point.

Model of vessels for the 3D reconstruction

[EN] In this paper, we present a vascular tree model made with synthetic materials and which allows us to obtain images to make a 3D reconstruction. In order to create this model, we have used PVC tubes of several diameters and lengths that will let us evaluate the accuracy of our 3D reconstruction. We have made the 3D reconstruction from a series of images that we have from our model and after we have calibrated the camera. In order to calibrate it we have used a corner detector. Also we have used Optical Flow techniques to follow the points through the images going and going back. Once we have the set of images where we have located a point, we have made the 3D reconstruction choosing by chance a couple of images and we have calculated the projection error. After several repetitions, we have found the best 3D location for the point.

A variational approach to 3D geometry reconstruction from two or multiple views

[EN] In the last years we have developed some methods for 3D reconstruction. First we began with the problem of reconstructing a 3D scene from a stereoscopic pair of images. We developed some methods based on energy functionals which produce dense disparity maps by preserving discontinuities from image boundaries. Then we passed to the problem of reconstructing a 3D scene from multiple views (more than 2). The method for multiple view reconstruction relies on the method for stereoscopic reconstruction. For every pair of consecutive images we estimate a disparity map and then we apply a robust method that searches for good correspondences through the sequence of images. Recently we have proposed several methods for 3D surface regularization. This is a postprocessing step necessary for smoothing the final surface, which could be afected by noise or mismatch correspondences. These regularization methods are interesting because they use the information from the reconstructing process and not only from the 3D surface. We have tackled all these problems from an energy minimization approach. We investigate the associated Euler-Lagrange equation of the energy functional, and we approach the solution of the underlying partial differential equation (PDE) using a gradient descent method.

A PDE model for computing the optical flow

[EN] In this paper we present a new model for optical flow calculation using a variational formulation which preserves discontinuities of the flow much better than classical methods. We study the Euler-Lagrange equations asociated to the variational problem. In the case of quadratic energy, we show the existence and uniqueness of the corresponding evolution problem. Since our method avoid linearization in the optical flow constraint, it can recover large displacement in the scene. We avoid convergence to irrelevant local minima by embedding our method into a linear scale-space framework and using a focusing strategy from coarse to fine scales.

Sobre un problema de optimización no-lineal en visión estereoscópica

[EN] Presentamos un método no lineal para la estimación de la geometría 3-D de una escena a partir de imágenes esteroscópicas. El problema principal consiste en calcular la posición relativa de las 2 cámaras a partir de un número de puntos que se corresponden en ambas cámaras. La posición relativa de las 2 cámaras viene dada por un vector de 7 parámetros : -X=(s,l,m,n,tx,ty,tz)-. Para calcular estos parámetros hay que minimizar una energía no-lineal del tipo E(x)=kAqxj donde A es una matriz 9x9 y q(X) es un vector función de X. En este trabajo presentamos un algoritmo para la busqueda de mínimos locales de E(X) basado en una modifcación del método de gradiente de paso óptimo. Presentamos algunas experiencias comparativas con otros métodos clásicos.

Reconstrucción 3-D a partir de un par estéreo de imágenes en color utilizando ecuaciones en derivadas parciales

[ES] En este trabajo proponemos un nuevo modelo para el cálculo de la disparidad y la reconstrucción 3-D a partir de un sistema estéreo compuesto por 2 imágenes en color. Proponemos un nuevo modelo para el cálculo de la disparidad basado en un criterio de energía. Para calcular los mínimos de este funcional de energía utilizamos la ecuación en derivadas parciales de Euler-Langrage asociada. Este modelo es una extensión a imágenes color del modelo desarrollado en "L. Alvarez, R. Deriche, J. Sánchez and J. Weickert, Dense disparity map estimation respecting image discontinuities : A PDE and Scale-Space Based Approach. INRIA Rapport de Recherche Nº 3874, 2000". Con algunos cambios en la estrategia parav evitar caer en mínimos locales de la energía. Por último presentamos algunas experiencias numéricas de la reconstrucción 3-D obtenida con este método en algunos pares estéreos de imágenes reales.