BSc / MSc Project Suggestions

 

Dr Pengwei Hao

Office : DCS 320, Dept of Computer Science

Tel: 0044 20 7882 5207

email: phao@dcs.qmul.ac.uk

 

Currently, I have the following suggestions:

1)      Video database management system

2)      A management system for video retrieval

3)      Video summarization/skimming for video surveillance

4)      Ambiguous Image Generation

5)      Harmony Index of Images

6)      Dimensionality reduction for hyperspectral data

7)      3D shape matching and error estimation (co-supervised with Dr Lifong Zou, the QM Institute of Dentistry)

8)      Perfect 3D surface data (co-supervised with Dr Lifong Zou)

9)      Progressive 3D mesh coding

 

 

 

1) Video database management system

 

To design a user-friendly GUI for video database management with menu, large/medium/small iconic display of video clips, video information display, add/update/delete/split/merge video clips or information. Video information includes when and where the video was taken, length of the video, some annotations that users or providers added. Video clips are provided as individual video files. Video display can be used to view single video clip in a subwindow, to parallelly view multiple video clips with alignment in multiple subwindows, to successively and seamlessly view multiple video clips in a subwindow, and to view from a given time point and at different speeds, e.g. 1/8x, 1/4x,1/2x, 1x, 2x, 4x, 8x,16x the normal speed.

 

The outcomes should include:

1)      A user-friendly GUI

2)      A programme for video file and information management and manipulation

3)      An integrated programme with video database management for video display for various requirements

 

 

 

2) A management system for video retrieval

 

To design a user-friendly GUI management system for video retrieval, with menu, large/medium/small iconic display of video clips, video information display, add/update/delete/indexing/search video clips or information. Video information includes when and where the video was taken, length of the video, some annotations that users or providers added. Video clips are provided as individual video files. By video indexing/retrieval, video clips should be sorted and displayed in multiple subwindows, and could be viewed parallelly with alignment in multiple subwindows and and viewed from a given time point and at different speeds, e.g. 1/8x, 1/4x,1/2x, 1x, 2x, 4x, 8x,16x the normal speed.

 

The outcomes should include:

1)      A user-friendly GUI

2)      A programme for video and video information indexing/retrieval

3)      An integrated programme with video indexing/retrieval for various requirements

 

 

 

3) Video summarization/skimming for video surveillance

 

Video summarization/skimming is to identify high-value information events in a video stream and to present it to a user. This project is for surveillance video summarization/skimming using detection and clustering of important events. Assuming that events are main source of energy change between consecutive frames set of interesting frames is extracted and then clustered. Based on the structure of clusters, video summaries can be created static and dynamic. Static summary is build of key frames that are organized in clusters. Dynamic summary is created from short video segments representing each cluster and is used to lead user to the event of interest captures in key frames. Some experiments are needed for the implementation.

Reference:

U. Damnjanovic, V. Fernandez, E. Izquierdo, J.M. Martinez, "Event Detection and Clustering for Surveillance Video Summarization", Ninth International Workshop on Image Analysis for Multimedia Interactive Services(WIAMIS), 7-9 May 2008, pp. 63 - 66.

 

The outcomes should include:

1)      A user-friendly GUI

2)      A programme for video skimming, especially for simple surveillance video clips

3)      A programme for video skimming with improved performance and comparable to other programmes available on web

 

 

 

4) Ambiguous Image Generation

 

Ambiguous images are visual illusion images, crafted to exploit graphical similarities and other properties of visual system interpretation between two or more distinct image forms due to the phenomenon of multistable perception. Ambiguous images were previously created purposefully by artists, such as Salvador Dalí in his paintings. With recent development in visual psychology and image processing, it is now possible for us to develop algorithms to generate ambiguous images. We can start with some simple constraints and simple ambiguity. For example, the outline of the ambiguity can be given, then we can find some objects in a big segmented dataset whose outline is similar to the given, and finally we can reshape the retrieved image objects and fill into the defined outline.

 

 

Summary:

Problem: Find the matched curves and images

Methods: Curve registration, image processing and image retrieval (similarity measuring)

Resource: The Berkeley Segmentation Dataset (http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Research/Projects/CS/vision/bsds/), etc.

 

 

 

5) Harmony Index of Images

 

Digital cameras are so popular and cheap that almost everyone can become a photographer. However, not all of us are professional, and the photos are often badly taken. How can we tell a camera what a good picture is? We need find some features to compute and give a number for image quality the assessment – harmony index – how harmonious a good picture is. It should depend on nice-looking colour/intensity distribution, beautiful object geometry, etc. However, some bad photography may be difficult to find, such as a headless people picture.