Probabilistic and Biologically Inspired Feature Representations (Synthesis Lectures on Computer Vision)

Under the title "Probabilistic and Biologically Inspired Feature Representations," this text collects a substantial amount of work on the topic of channel representations. Channel representations are a biologically motivated, wavelet-like approach to visual feature descriptors: they are local and compact, they form a computational framework, and the represented information can be reconstructed. The first property is shared with many histogram- and signature-based descriptors, the latter property with the related concept of population codes. In their unique combination of properties, channel representations become a visual Swiss army knife―they can be used for image enhancement, visual object tracking, as 2D and 3D descriptors, and for pose estimation. In the chapters of this text, the framework of channel representations will be introduced and its attributes will be elaborated, as well as further insight into its probabilistic modeling and algorithmic implementation will be given. Channel representations are a useful toolbox to represent visual information for machine learning, as they establish a generic way to compute popular descriptors such as HOG, SIFT, and SHOT. Even in an age of deep learning, they provide a good compromise between hand-designed descriptors and a-priori structureless feature spaces as seen in the layers of deep networks.

Michael Felsberg received the Ph.D. in engineering from the University of Kiel, Germany, in 2002. Since 2008, he has been a Full Professor and the Head of the Computer Vision Laboratory at Linköping University, Sweden. His current research interests include signal processing methods for image analysis, computer and robot vision, and machine learning. He has published more than 150 reviewed conference papers, journal articles, and book contributions. He was a recipient of awards from the German Pattern Recognition Society in 2000, 2004, and 2005, from the Swedish Society for Automated Image Analysis in 2007 and 2010, from the Conference on Information Fusion in 2011 (Honorable Mention), from the CVPR Workshop on Mobile Vision 2014, and from the ICPR 2016 track on Computer Vision (Best Paper). He has achieved top ranks on various challenges (VOT: 3rd 2013, 1st 2014, 2nd 2015, 1st 2016, 1st 2017 (sequestered test); VOT-TIR: 1st 2015, 1st 2016, 3rd 2017; OpenCV Tracking: 1st 2015; KITTI Stereo Odometry: 1st 2015, March). He has coordinated the EU projects COSPAL and DIPLECS and has been an Associate Editor of the Journal of Mathematical Imaging and Vision and the Journal of Image and Vision Computing. He was Publication Chair of the International Conference on Pattern Recognition 2014 and served as Track Chair in 2016, has been a VOT-committee member since 2015, was the General Co-Chair of the DAGM symposium in 2011 and General Chair of CAIP 2017, and will be Area Chair at ECCV 2018 and Program Chair of SCIA 2019.

Gérard Medioni received the Diplôme d'Ingenieur in Information at The École Nationale Supérieure es Télécommunications, in 1977, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from the University of Southern California, in 1980 and 1983, respectively. He has been at USC since then, and is currently Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, co-director of the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Systems (IRIS), and co-director of the USC Games Institute. He served as Chairman of the Computer Science Department from 2001 to 2007. Prior to this, he was President and CEO of I.C. Vision, in Los Angeles, California, and held positions of Associate Professor, from 1992-1999, Assistant Professor, from 1987-1992, and Research Assistant Professor, from 1983-1987, at the Departments of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, at the University of Southern California. From 1979-1983, he was a Research Assistant in the Intelligent Systems Group at the University of Southern California. Prior to his academic career, he was a research engineer at Underwater Signal Processing Division at Thomson-CSF, in Cagnes sur Mer, France. From 2000 to 2001, while on sabbatical leave, he was Chief Technical Officer at Geometrix, Inc. in San Jose, California. Professor Medioni has made significant contributions to the field of computer vision. His research covers a broad spectrum of the field, such as edge detection, stereo and motion analysis, shape inference and description, and system integration. He has published 3 books, over 50 journal papers and 150 conference articles, and is the recipient of 8 international patents. Prof. Medioni is associate editor of the Image and Vision Computing Journal, associate editor of the Pattern Recognition and Image Analysis Journal, and associate editor of the International Journal of Image and Video Processing. Prof. Medioni served as program co-chair of the 1991 IEEE CVPR Conference in Hawaii, of the 1995 IEEE Symposium on Computer Vision in Miami, general co-chair of the1997 IEEE CVPR Conference in Puerto Rico, conference co-chair of the 1998 ICPR Conference in Australia, general co-chair of the 2001 IEEE CVPR Conference in Kauai, general co-chair of the 2007 IEEE CVPR Conference in Minneapolis, and general co-chair of the upcoming 2009 IEEE CVPR Conference in Miami. He is a Fellow of IAPR, a Fellow of the IEEE, and a Fellow of AAAI.

Sven Dickinson received the B.A.Sc. degree in Systems Design Engineering from the University of Waterloo in 1983, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from the University of Maryland, in 1988 and 1991, respectively. He is currently Professor of Computer Science at the University of Toronto, where he serves as Acting Chair. Prior to that, he served as Departmental Vice Chair, from 2003-2006, and as Associate Professor, from 2000-2007. From 1995-2000, he was an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Rutgers University, where he also held a joint appointment in the Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science (RuCCS) and membership in the Center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science (DIMACS). From 1994-1995, he was a Research Assistant Professor in the Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science, and from 1991-1994, a Research Associate at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, University of Toronto. He has held affiliations with the MIT Media Laboratory (Visiting Scientist, 1992-1994), the University of Toronto (Visiting Assistant Professor, 1994 1997), and the Computer Vision Laboratory of the Center for Automation Research at the University of Maryland (Assistant Research Scientist, 1993-1994, Visiting Assistant Professor, 1994 1997). Prior to his academic career, he worked in the computer vision industry, designing image processing systems for Grinnell Systems Inc., San Jose, CA, 1983-1984, and optical character recognition systems for DEST, Inc., Milpitas, CA, 1984-1985. His research interests revolve around the problem of object recognition, in general, and generic object recognition, in particular. He has explored a multitude of generic shape representations, and their common representation as hierarchical graphs has led to his interest in inexact graph indexing and matching. His interest in shape representation and matching has also led to his research in object tracking, vision-based navigation, content based image retrieval, and the use of language to guide perceptual grouping, object recognition, and motion analysis. One of the focal points of his research is the problem of image abstraction, which he believes is critical in bridging the representational gap between exemplar-based and generic object recognition. He has published over 100 papers on these topics in refereed journals, conferences, and edited collections. In 1996, he received the NSF CAREER award for his work in generic object recognition, and in 2002, received the Government of Ontario Premiere's Research Excellence Award (PREA), also for his work in generic object recognition. He was co-chair of the 1997, 1999, 2004, and 2007 IEEE International Workshops on Generic Object Recognition (or Object Categorization), co chaired the DIMACS Workshop on Graph Theoretic Methods in Computer Vision in 1999, and co-chaired the First International Workshop on Shape Perception in Human and Computer Vision in 2008. From 1998-2002, he served as Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, in which he also co-edited a special issue on graph algorithms and computer vision, which appeared in 2001. He currently serves as Associate Editor for the journals: International Journal of Computer Vision; Image and Vision Computing; Pattern Recognition Letters; IET Computer Vision; and the Journal of Electronic Imaging.