Ricaurte P, Chilán C, Cristhian A. Aguilera, Boris X. Vintimilla, & Angel D. Sappa. (2014). Feature Point Descriptors: Infrared and Visible Spectra. Sensors Journal, Vol. 14, pp. 3690–3701.
Abstract: This manuscript evaluates the behavior of classical feature point descriptors when they are used in images from long-wave infrared spectral band and compare them with the results obtained in the visible spectrum. Robustness to changes in rotation, scaling, blur, and additive noise are analyzed using a state of the art framework. Experimental results using a cross-spectral outdoor image data set are presented and conclusions from these experiments are given.
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Angel D. Sappa, Juan A. Carvajal, Cristhian A. Aguilera, Miguel Oliveira, Dennis G. Romero, & Boris X. Vintimilla. (2016). Wavelet-Based Visible and Infrared Image Fusion: A Comparative Study. Sensors Journal, Vol. 16, pp. 1–15.
Abstract: This paper evaluates different wavelet-based cross-spectral image fusion strategies adopted to merge visible and infrared images. The objective is to find the best setup independently of the evaluation metric used to measure the performance. Quantitative performance results are obtained with state of the art approaches together with adaptations proposed in the current work. The options evaluated in the current work result from the combination of different setups in the wavelet image decomposition stage together with different fusion strategies for the final merging stage that generates the resulting representation. Most of the approaches evaluate results according to the application for which they are intended for. Sometimes a human observer is selected to judge the quality of the obtained results. In the current work, quantitative values are considered in order to find correlations between setups and performance of obtained results; these correlations can be used to define a criteria for selecting the best fusion strategy for a given pair of cross-spectral images. The whole procedure is evaluated with a large set of correctly registered visible and infrared image pairs, including both Near InfraRed (NIR) and LongWave InfraRed (LWIR).
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Ma. Paz Velarde, Erika Perugachi, Dennis G. Romero, Ángel D. Sappa, & Boris X. Vintimilla. (2015). Análisis del movimiento de las extremidades superiores aplicado a la rehabilitación física de una persona usando técnicas de visión artificial. Revista Tecnológica ESPOL-RTE, Vol. 28, pp. 1–7.
Abstract: Comúnmente durante la rehabilitación física, el diagnóstico dado por el especialista se basa en observaciones cualitativas que sugieren, en algunos casos, conclusiones subjetivas. El presente trabajo propone un enfoque cuantitativo, orientado a servir de ayuda a fisioterapeutas, a través de una herramienta interactiva y de bajo costo que permite medir los movimientos de miembros superiores. Estos movimientos son capturados por un sensor RGB-D y procesados mediante la metodología propuesta, dando como resultado una eficiente representación de movimientos, permitiendo la evaluación cuantitativa de movimientos de los miembros superiores.
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Patricia L. Suarez, Angel D. Sappa, & Boris X. Vintimilla. (2018). Adaptive Harris Corners Detector Evaluated with Cross-Spectral Images. In International Conference on Information Technology & Systems (ICITS 2018). ICITS 2018. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing (Vol. 721).
Abstract: This paper proposes a novel approach to use cross-spectral
images to achieve a better performance with the proposed Adaptive Harris
corner detector comparing its obtained results with those achieved
with images of the visible spectra. The images of urban, field, old-building
and country category were used for the experiments, given the variety of
the textures present in these images, with which the complexity of the
proposal is much more challenging for its verification. It is a new scope,
which means improving the detection of characteristic points using crossspectral
images (NIR, G, B) and applying pruning techniques, the combination
of channels for this fusion is the one that generates the largest
variance based on the intensity of the merged pixels, therefore, it is that
which maximizes the entropy in the resulting Cross-spectral images.
Harris is one of the most widely used corner detection algorithm, so
any improvement in its efficiency is an important contribution in the
field of computer vision. The experiments conclude that the inclusion of
a (NIR) channel in the image as a result of the combination of the spectra,
greatly improves the corner detection due to better entropy of the
resulting image after the fusion, Therefore the fusion process applied to
the images improves the results obtained in subsequent processes such as
identification of objects or patterns, classification and/or segmentation.
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Patricia L. Suarez, Angel D. Sappa, & Boris X. Vintimilla. (2018). Vegetation Index Estimation from Monospectral Images. In 15th International Conference, Image Analysis and Recognition (ICIAR 2018), Póvoa de Varzim, Portugal. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (Vol. 10882, pp. 353–362).
Abstract: This paper proposes a novel approach to estimate Normalized
Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) from just the red channel of
a RGB image. The NDVI index is defined as the ratio of the difference
of the red and infrared radiances over their sum. In other words, information
from the red channel of a RGB image and the corresponding
infrared spectral band are required for its computation. In the current
work the NDVI index is estimated just from the red channel by training a
Conditional Generative Adversarial Network (CGAN). The architecture
proposed for the generative network consists of a single level structure,
which combines at the final layer results from convolutional operations
together with the given red channel with Gaussian noise to enhance
details, resulting in a sharp NDVI image. Then, the discriminative model
estimates the probability that the NDVI generated index came from the
training dataset, rather than the index automatically generated. Experimental
results with a large set of real images are provided showing that
a Conditional GAN single level model represents an acceptable approach
to estimate NDVI index.
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Dennis G. Romero, A. Frizera, Angel D. Sappa, Boris X. Vintimilla, & T.F. Bastos. (2015). A predictive model for human activity recognition by observing actions and context. In ACIVS 2015 (Advanced Concepts for Intelligent Vision Systems), International Conference on, Catania, Italy, 2015 (pp. 323–333).
Abstract: This paper presents a novel model to estimate human activities – a human activity is defined by a set of human actions. The proposed approach is based on the usage of Recurrent Neural Networks (RNN) and Bayesian inference through the continuous monitoring of human actions and its surrounding environment. In the current work human activities are inferred considering not only visual analysis but also additional resources; external sources of information, such as context information, are incorporated to contribute to the activity estimation. The novelty of the proposed approach lies in the way the information is encoded, so that it can be later associated according to a predefined semantic structure. Hence, a pattern representing a given activity can be defined by a set of actions, plus contextual information or other kind of information that could be relevant to describe the activity. Experimental results with real data are provided showing the validity of the proposed approach.
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Julien Poujol, Cristhian A. Aguilera, Etienne Danos, Boris X. Vintimilla, Ricardo Toledo, & Angel D. Sappa. (2015). A visible-Thermal Fusion based Monocular Visual Odometry. In Iberian Robotics Conference (ROBOT 2015), International Conference on, Lisbon, Portugal, 2015 (Vol. 417, pp. 517–528).
Abstract: The manuscript evaluates the performance of a monocular visual odometry approach when images from different spectra are considered, both independently and fused. The objective behind this evaluation is to analyze if classical approaches can be improved when the given images, which are from different spectra, are fused and represented in new domains. The images in these new domains should have some of the following properties: i) more robust to noisy data; ii) less sensitive to changes (e.g., lighting); iii) more rich in descriptive information, among other. In particular in the current work two different image fusion strategies are considered. Firstly, images from the visible and thermal spectrum are fused using a Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) approach. Secondly, a monochrome threshold strategy is considered. The obtained representations are evaluated under a visual odometry framework, highlighting their advantages and disadvantages, using different urban and semi-urban scenarios. Comparisons with both monocular-visible spectrum and monocular-infrared spectrum, are also provided showing the validity of the proposed approach.
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Jorge L. Charco, A. D. S., Boris X. Vintimilla, Henry O. Velesaca. (2022). Human Body Pose Estimation in Multi-view Environments. In ICT Applications for Smart Cities Part of the Intelligent Systems Reference Library book series (Vol. 224, pp. 79–99).
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Angel D. Sappa, Cristhian A. Aguilera, Juan A. Carvajal Ayala, Miguel Oliveira, Dennis Romero, Boris X. Vintimilla, et al. (2016). Monocular visual odometry: a cross-spectral image fusion based approach. Robotics and Autonomous Systems Journal, Vol. 86, pp. 26–36.
Abstract: This manuscript evaluates the usage of fused cross-spectral images in a monocular visual odometry approach. Fused images are obtained through a Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) scheme, where the best setup is em- pirically obtained by means of a mutual information based evaluation met- ric. The objective is to have a exible scheme where fusion parameters are adapted according to the characteristics of the given images. Visual odom- etry is computed from the fused monocular images using an off the shelf approach. Experimental results using data sets obtained with two different platforms are presented. Additionally, comparison with a previous approach as well as with monocular-visible/infrared spectra are also provided showing the advantages of the proposed scheme.
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Rafael E. Rivadeneira, A. D. S., Boris X. Vintimilla, Jin Kim, Dogun Kim et al. (2022). Thermal Image Super-Resolution Challenge Results- PBVS 2022. In Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Workshops, (CVPRW 2022), junio 19-24. (Vol. 2022-June, pp. 349–357).
Abstract: This paper presents results from the third Thermal Image
Super-Resolution (TISR) challenge organized in the Perception Beyond the Visible Spectrum (PBVS) 2022 workshop.
The challenge uses the same thermal image dataset as the
first two challenges, with 951 training images and 50 validation images at each resolution. A set of 20 images was
kept aside for testing. The evaluation tasks were to measure
the PSNR and SSIM between the SR image and the ground
truth (HR thermal noisy image downsampled by four), and
also to measure the PSNR and SSIM between the SR image
and the semi-registered HR image (acquired with another
camera). The results outperformed those from last year’s
challenge, improving both evaluation metrics. This year,
almost 100 teams participants registered for the challenge,
showing the community’s interest in this hot topic.
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