OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
GraphCLIP: Enhancing Transferability in Graph Foundation Models for Text-Attributed Graphs
Venue: Conference WWW 2025
Year: 2025

Recently, research on Text-Attributed Graphs (TAGs) has gained significant attention due to the prevalence of free-text node features in real-world applications and the advancements in Large Language Models (LLMs) that bolster TAG methodologies. However, current TAG approaches face two primary challenges: (i) Heavy reliance on label information and (ii) Limited cross-domain zero/few-shot transferability. These issues constrain the scaling of both data and model size, owing to high labor costs and scaling laws, complicating the development of graph foundation models with strong transferability. In this work, we propose the GraphCLIP framework to address these challenges by learning graph foundation models with strong cross-domain zero/few-shot transferability through a self-supervised contrastive graph-summary pretraining method. Specifically, we generate and curate large-scale graph-summary pair data with the assistance of LLMs, and introduce a novel graph-summary pretraining method, combined with invariant learning, to enhance graph foundation models with strong cross-domain zero-shot transferability. For few-shot learning, we propose a novel graph prompt tuning technique aligned with our pretraining objective to mitigate catastrophic forgetting and minimize learning costs. Extensive experiments show the superiority of GraphCLIP in both zero-shot and few-shot settings, while evaluations across various downstream tasks confirm the versatility of GraphCLIP. Our code is available at: https://github.com/ZhuYun97/GraphCLIP
Collaborative Retrieval for Large Language Model-based Conversational Recommender Systems
Venue: Conference WWW 2025
Year: 2025

Conversational recommender systems (CRS) aim to provide personalized recommendations via interactive dialogues with users. While large language models (LLMs) enhance CRS with their superior understanding of context-aware user preferences, they typically struggle to leverage behavioral data, which have proven to be important for classical collaborative filtering (CF)-based approaches. For this reason, we propose CRAG, Collaborative Retrieval Augmented Generation for LLM-based CRS. To the best of our knowledge, CRAG is the first approach that combines state-of-the-art LLMs with CF for conversational recommendations. Our experiments on two publicly available movie conversational recommendation datasets, i.e., a refined Reddit dataset (which we name Reddit-v2) as well as the Redial dataset, demonstrate the superior item coverage and recommendation performance of CRAG, compared to several CRS baselines. Moreover, we observe that the improvements are mainly due to better recommendation accuracy on recently released movies. The code and data are available at https://github.com/yaochenzhu/CRAG.
Discretization of Parametrizable Signal Manifolds
Venue: Journal TIP 2011
Year: 2011

Transformation-invariant analysis of signals often requires the computation of the distance from a test pattern to a transformation manifold. In particular, the estimation of the distances between a transformed query signal and several transformation manifolds representing different classes provides essential information for the classification of the signal. In many applications the computation of the exact distance to the manifold is costly, whereas an efficient practical solution is the approximation of the manifold distance with the aid of a manifold grid. In this paper, we consider a setting with transformation manifolds of known parameterization. We first present an algorithm for the selection of samples from a single manifold that permits to minimize the average error in the manifold distance estimation. Then we propose a method for the joint discretization of multiple manifolds that represent different signal classes, where we optimize the transformation-invariant classification accuracy yielded by the discrete manifold representation. Experimental results show that sampling each manifold individually by minimizing the manifold distance estimation error outperforms baseline sampling solutions with respect to registration and classification accuracy. Performing an additional joint optimization on all samples improves the classification performance further. Moreover, given a fixed total number of samples to be selected from all manifolds, an asymmetric distribution of samples to different manifolds depending on their geometric structures may also increase the classification accuracy in comparison with the equal distribution of samples.
Fast O 1 Bilateral Filtering Using Trigonometric Range Kernels
Venue: Journal TIP 2011
Year: 2011

It is well-known that spatial averaging can be realized (in space or frequency domain) using algorithms whose complexity does not depend on the size or shape of the filter. These fast algorithms are generally referred to as constant-time or O(1) algorithms in the image processing literature. Along with the spatial filter, the edge-preserving bilateral filter [Tomasi1998] involves an additional range kernel. This is used to restrict the averaging to those neighborhood pixels whose intensity are similar or close to that of the pixel of interest. The range kernel operates by acting on the pixel intensities. This makes the averaging process non-linear and computationally intensive, especially when the spatial filter is large. In this paper, we show how the O(1) averaging algorithms can be leveraged for realizing the bilateral filter in constant-time, by using trigonometric range kernels. This is done by generalizing the idea in [Porikli2008] of using polynomial range kernels. The class of trigonometric kernels turns out to be sufficiently rich, allowing for the approximation of the standard Gaussian bilateral filter. The attractive feature of our approach is that, for a fixed number of terms, the quality of approximation achieved using trigonometric kernels is much superior to that obtained in [Porikli2008] using polynomials.
Posterior-Mean Super-Resolution With a Causal Gaussian Markov Random Field Prior
Venue: Journal TIP 2012
Year: 2012

We propose a Bayesian image super-resolution (SR) method with a causal Gaussian Markov random field (MRF) prior. SR is a technique to estimate a spatially high-resolution image from given multiple low-resolution images. An MRF model with the line process supplies a preferable prior for natural images with edges. We improve the existing image transformation model, the compound MRF model, and its hyperparameter prior model. We also derive the optimal estimator -- not the joint maximum a posteriori (MAP) or marginalized maximum likelihood (ML), but the posterior mean (PM) -- from the objective function of the L2-norm (mean square error) -based peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR). Point estimates such as MAP and ML are generally not stable in ill-posed high-dimensional problems because of overfitting, while PM is a stable estimator because all the parameters in the model are evaluated as distributions. The estimator is numerically determined by using variational Bayes. Variational Bayes is a widely used method that approximately determines a complicated posterior distribution, but it is generally hard to use because it needs the conjugate prior. We solve this problem with simple Taylor approximations. Experimental results have shown that the proposed method is more accurate or comparable to existing methods.
Improvements on Fast Space-Variant Elliptical Filtering Using Box Splines
Venue: Journal TIP 2012
Year: 2012

It is well-known that box filters can be efficiently computed using pre-integrations and local finite-differences [Crow1984,Heckbert1986,Viola2001]. By generalizing this idea and by combining it with a non-standard variant of the Central Limit Theorem, a constant-time or O(1) algorithm was proposed in [Chaudhury2010] that allowed one to perform space-variant filtering using Gaussian-like kernels. The algorithm was based on the observation that both isotropic and anisotropic Gaussians could be approximated using certain bivariate splines called box splines. The attractive feature of the algorithm was that it allowed one to continuously control the shape and size (covariance) of the filter, and that it had a fixed computational cost per pixel, irrespective of the size of the filter. The algorithm, however, offered a limited control on the covariance and accuracy of the Gaussian approximation. In this work, we propose some improvements by appropriately modifying the algorithm in [Chaudhury2010].
Analysis Operator Learning and its Application to Image Reconstruction
Venue: Journal TIP 2013
Year: 2013

Exploiting a priori known structural information lies at the core of many image reconstruction methods that can be stated as inverse problems. The synthesis model, which assumes that images can be decomposed into a linear combination of very few atoms of some dictionary, is now a well established tool for the design of image reconstruction algorithms. An interesting alternative is the analysis model, where the signal is multiplied by an analysis operator and the outcome is assumed to be the sparse. This approach has only recently gained increasing interest. The quality of reconstruction methods based on an analysis model severely depends on the right choice of the suitable operator. In this work, we present an algorithm for learning an analysis operator from training images. Our method is based on an $\ell_p$-norm minimization on the set of full rank matrices with normalized columns. We carefully introduce the employed conjugate gradient method on manifolds, and explain the underlying geometry of the constraints. Moreover, we compare our approach to state-of-the-art methods for image denoising, inpainting, and single image super-resolution. Our numerical results show competitive performance of our general approach in all presented applications compared to the specialized state-of-the-art techniques.
Sparse Image Reconstruction on the Sphere Implications of a New Sampling Theorem
Venue: Journal TIP 2013
Year: 2013

We study the impact of sampling theorems on the fidelity of sparse image reconstruction on the sphere. We discuss how a reduction in the number of samples required to represent all information content of a band-limited signal acts to improve the fidelity of sparse image reconstruction, through both the dimensionality and sparsity of signals. To demonstrate this result we consider a simple inpainting problem on the sphere and consider images sparse in the magnitude of their gradient. We develop a framework for total variation (TV) inpainting on the sphere, including fast methods to render the inpainting problem computationally feasible at high-resolution. Recently a new sampling theorem on the sphere was developed, reducing the required number of samples by a factor of two for equiangular sampling schemes. Through numerical simulations we verify the enhanced fidelity of sparse image reconstruction due to the more efficient sampling of the sphere provided by the new sampling theorem.
Navigation Domain Representation For Interactive Multiview Imaging
Venue: Journal TIP 2013
Year: 2013

Enabling users to interactively navigate through different viewpoints of a static scene is a new interesting functionality in 3D streaming systems. While it opens exciting perspectives towards rich multimedia applications, it requires the design of novel representations and coding techniques in order to solve the new challenges imposed by interactive navigation. Interactivity clearly brings new design constraints: the encoder is unaware of the exact decoding process, while the decoder has to reconstruct information from incomplete subsets of data since the server can generally not transmit images for all possible viewpoints due to resource constrains. In this paper, we propose a novel multiview data representation that permits to satisfy bandwidth and storage constraints in an interactive multiview streaming system. In particular, we partition the multiview navigation domain into segments, each of which is described by a reference image and some auxiliary information. The auxiliary information enables the client to recreate any viewpoint in the navigation segment via view synthesis. The decoder is then able to navigate freely in the segment without further data request to the server; it requests additional data only when it moves to a different segment. We discuss the benefits of this novel representation in interactive navigation systems and further propose a method to optimize the partitioning of the navigation domain into independent segments, under bandwidth and storage constraints. Experimental results confirm the potential of the proposed representation; namely, our system leads to similar compression performance as classical inter-view coding, while it provides the high level of flexibility that is required for interactive streaming. Hence, our new framework represents a promising solution for 3D data representation in novel interactive multimedia services.
Insights Into Analysis Operator Learning From Patch-Based Sparse Models to Higher Order MRFs
Venue: Journal TIP 2014
Year: 2014

This paper addresses a new learning algorithm for the recently introduced co-sparse analysis model. First, we give new insights into the co-sparse analysis model by establishing connections to filter-based MRF models, such as the Field of Experts (FoE) model of Roth and Black. For training, we introduce a technique called bi-level optimization to learn the analysis operators. Compared to existing analysis operator learning approaches, our training procedure has the advantage that it is unconstrained with respect to the analysis operator. We investigate the effect of different aspects of the co-sparse analysis model and show that the sparsity promoting function (also called penalty function) is the most important factor in the model. In order to demonstrate the effectiveness of our training approach, we apply our trained models to various classical image restoration problems. Numerical experiments show that our trained models clearly outperform existing analysis operator learning approaches and are on par with state-of-the-art image denoising algorithms. Our approach develops a framework that is intuitive to understand and easy to implement.
Group-Based Sparse Representation for Image Restoration
Venue: Journal TIP 2014
Year: 2014

Traditional patch-based sparse representation modeling of natural images usually suffer from two problems. First, it has to solve a large-scale optimization problem with high computational complexity in dictionary learning. Second, each patch is considered independently in dictionary learning and sparse coding, which ignores the relationship among patches, resulting in inaccurate sparse coding coefficients. In this paper, instead of using patch as the basic unit of sparse representation, we exploit the concept of group as the basic unit of sparse representation, which is composed of nonlocal patches with similar structures, and establish a novel sparse representation modeling of natural images, called group-based sparse representation (GSR). The proposed GSR is able to sparsely represent natural images in the domain of group, which enforces the intrinsic local sparsity and nonlocal self-similarity of images simultaneously in a unified framework. Moreover, an effective self-adaptive dictionary learning method for each group with low complexity is designed, rather than dictionary learning from natural images. To make GSR tractable and robust, a split Bregman based technique is developed to solve the proposed GSR-driven minimization problem for image restoration efficiently. Extensive experiments on image inpainting, image deblurring and image compressive sensing recovery manifest that the proposed GSR modeling outperforms many current state-of-the-art schemes in both PSNR and visual perception.
Monte Carlo Non-Local Means Random Sampling for Large-Scale Image Filtering
Venue: Journal TIP 2014
Year: 2014

We propose a randomized version of the non-local means (NLM) algorithm for large-scale image filtering. The new algorithm, called Monte Carlo non-local means (MCNLM), speeds up the classical NLM by computing a small subset of image patch distances, which are randomly selected according to a designed sampling pattern. We make two contributions. First, we analyze the performance of the MCNLM algorithm and show that, for large images or large external image databases, the random outcomes of MCNLM are tightly concentrated around the deterministic full NLM result. In particular, our error probability bounds show that, at any given sampling ratio, the probability for MCNLM to have a large deviation from the original NLM solution decays exponentially as the size of the image or database grows. Second, we derive explicit formulas for optimal sampling patterns that minimize the error probability bound by exploiting partial knowledge of the pairwise similarity weights. Numerical experiments show that MCNLM is competitive with other state-of-the-art fast NLM algorithms for single-image denoising. When applied to denoising images using an external database containing ten billion patches, MCNLM returns a randomized solution that is within 0.2 dB of the full NLM solution while reducing the runtime by three orders of magnitude.
Efficient Semidefinite Spectral Clustering via Lagrange Duality
Venue: Journal TIP 2014
Year: 2014

We propose an efficient approach to semidefinite spectral clustering (SSC), which addresses the Frobenius normalization with the positive semidefinite (p.s.d.) constraint for spectral clustering. Compared with the original Frobenius norm approximation based algorithm, the proposed algorithm can more accurately find the closest doubly stochastic approximation to the affinity matrix by considering the p.s.d. constraint. In this paper, SSC is formulated as a semidefinite programming (SDP) problem. In order to solve the high computational complexity of SDP, we present a dual algorithm based on the Lagrange dual formalization. Two versions of the proposed algorithm are proffered: one with less memory usage and the other with faster convergence rate. The proposed algorithm has much lower time complexity than that of the standard interior-point based SDP solvers. Experimental results on both UCI data sets and real-world image data sets demonstrate that 1) compared with the state-of-the-art spectral clustering methods, the proposed algorithm achieves better clustering performance; and 2) our algorithm is much more efficient and can solve larger-scale SSC problems than those standard interior-point SDP solvers.
Large-Margin Learning of Compact Binary Image Encodings
Venue: Journal TIP 2014
Year: 2014

The use of high-dimensional features has become a normal practice in many computer vision applications. The large dimension of these features is a limiting factor upon the number of data points which may be effectively stored and processed, however. We address this problem by developing a novel approach to learning a compact binary encoding, which exploits both pair-wise proximity and class-label information on training data set. Exploiting this extra information allows the development of encodings which, although compact, outperform the original high-dimensional features in terms of final classification or retrieval performance. The method is general, in that it is applicable to both non-parametric and parametric learning methods. This generality means that the embedded features are suitable for a wide variety of computer vision tasks, such as image classification and content-based image retrieval. Experimental results demonstrate that the new compact descriptor achieves an accuracy comparable to, and in some cases better than, the visual descriptor in the original space despite being significantly more compact. Moreover, any convex loss function and convex regularization penalty (e.g., $ \ell_p $ norm with $ p \ge 1 $) can be incorporated into the framework, which provides future flexibility.
Patchwise Joint Sparse Tracking With Occlusion Detection
Venue: Journal TIP 2014
Year: 2014

This paper presents a robust tracking approach to handle challenges such as occlusion and appearance change. Here, the target is partitioned into a number of patches. Then, the appearance of each patch is modeled using a dictionary composed of corresponding target patches in previous frames. In each frame, the target is found among a set of candidates generated by a particle filter, via a likelihood measure that is shown to be proportional to the sum of patch-reconstruction errors of each candidate. Since the target's appearance often changes slowly in a video sequence, it is assumed that the target in the current frame and the best candidates of a small number of previous frames, belong to a common subspace. This is imposed using joint sparse representation to enforce the target and previous best candidates to have a common sparsity pattern. Moreover, an occlusion detection scheme is proposed that uses patch-reconstruction errors and a prior probability of occlusion, extracted from an adaptive Markov chain, to calculate the probability of occlusion per patch. In each frame, occluded patches are excluded when updating the dictionary. Extensive experimental results on several challenging sequences shows that the proposed method outperforms state-of-the-art trackers.
Compressive Sensing of Sparse Tensors
Venue: Journal TIP 2014
Year: 2014

Compressive sensing (CS) has triggered enormous research activity since its first appearance. CS exploits the signal's sparsity or compressibility in a particular domain and integrates data compression and acquisition, thus allowing exact reconstruction through relatively few non-adaptive linear measurements. While conventional CS theory relies on data representation in the form of vectors, many data types in various applications such as color imaging, video sequences, and multi-sensor networks, are intrinsically represented by higher-order tensors. Application of CS to higher-order data representation is typically performed by conversion of the data to very long vectors that must be measured using very large sampling matrices, thus imposing a huge computational and memory burden. In this paper, we propose Generalized Tensor Compressive Sensing (GTCS)--a unified framework for compressive sensing of higher-order tensors which preserves the intrinsic structure of tensor data with reduced computational complexity at reconstruction. GTCS offers an efficient means for representation of multidimensional data by providing simultaneous acquisition and compression from all tensor modes. In addition, we propound two reconstruction procedures, a serial method (GTCS-S) and a parallelizable method (GTCS-P). We then compare the performance of the proposed method with Kronecker compressive sensing (KCS) and multi way compressive sensing (MWCS). We demonstrate experimentally that GTCS outperforms KCS and MWCS in terms of both reconstruction accuracy (within a range of compression ratios) and processing speed. The major disadvantage of our methods (and of MWCS as well), is that the compression ratios may be worse than that offered by KCS.