Optical Flow Rendering
This paper proposes a new approach to image-based rendering that generates an image viewed from an arbitrary camera position and orientation by rendering optical flows extracted from reference images. To derive valid optical flows, we develop an analysis technique that improves the quality of stereo matching. Without using any special equipments such as range cameras, this technique constructs reliable optical flows from a sequence of matching results between reference images. We also derive validity conditions of optical flows and show that the obtained flows satisfy those conditions. Since environment geometry is inferred from the optical flows, we are able to generate more accurate images with this additional geometric information. Our approach makes it possible to combine an image rendered from optical flows with an image generated by a conventional rendering technique through a simple Z-buffer algorithm.

title: Local injectivity conditions of 2D and 3D uniform cubic B-spline functions
abstract: Uniform cubic B-spline functions have been used for mapping functions in various areas such as image warping and morphing, 3D deformation, and volume morphing. The injectivity (one-to-one property) of a mapping function is important to obtain good results in these areas. We consider the local injectivity conditions of 2D and 3D uniform cubic B-spline functions. We propose a geometric interpretation of the local injectivity of a uniform cubic B-spline function, with which 2D and 3D cases can be handled in a similar way. Based on the geometric interpretation, we present sufficient conditions for the local injectivity that are represented in terms of control point displacements. These sufficient conditions are simple and easy to check and will be useful to guarantee the injectivity of mapping functions in application areas.

title: Out-of-Core Remeshing of Large Polygonal Meshes
abstract: We propose an out-of-core method for creating semi-regular surface representations from large input surface meshes. Our approach is based on a streaming implementation of the MAPS remesher of Lee et al. Our remeshing procedure consists of two stages. First, a simplification process is used to obtain the base domain. During simplification, we maintain the mapping information between the input and the simplified meshes. The second stage of remeshing uses the mapping information to produce samples of the output semi-regular mesh. The out-of-core operation of our method is enabled by the synchronous streaming of a simplified mesh and the mapping information stored at the original vertices. The synchronicity of two streaming buffers is maintained using a specially designed write strategy for each buffer. Experimental results demonstrate the remeshing performance of the proposed method, as well as other applications that use the created mapping between the simplified and the original surface representations

title: Neural mesh ensembles
abstract: This work proposes the use of neural network ensembles to boost the performance of a neural network based surface reconstruction algorithm. Ensemble is a very popular and powerful statistical technique based on the idea of averaging several outputs of a probabilistic algorithm. In the context of surface reconstruction, two main problems arise. The first is finding an efficient way to average meshes with different connectivity, and the second is tuning the parameters for surface reconstruction to maximize the performance of the ensemble. We solve the first problem by voxelizing all the meshes on the same regular grid and taking majority vote on each voxel. We tune the parameters experimentally, borrowing ideas from weak learning methods.

title: Mesh parameterization with a virtual boundary
abstract: Parameterization of a 3D triangular mesh is a fundamental problem in various applications of meshes. The convex combination approach is widely used for parameterization because of its good properties, such as fast computation and one-to-one embedding. However, the approach has a drawback: most boundary triangles have high distortion in the embedding compared with interior ones. In this paper, we present an extension of the convex combination approach that resolves the drawback by using a virtual boundary. Since the virtual boundary is fixed onto a given convex polygon instead of the real boundary, the real boundary triangles can better reflect the shape of the corresponding 3D triangles. The proposedapproach obtains a parameterization of a 3D mesh with less d istortion than with the original convex combination approach.

title: Transitive Mesh Space of a Progressive Mesh
abstract: The paper investigates the set of all selectively refined meshes that can be obtained from a progressive mesh. We call the set the transitive mesh space of a progressive mesh and present a theoretical analysis of the space. We define selective edge collapse and vertex split transformations, which we use to traverse all selectively refined meshes in the transitive mesh space. We propose a complete selective refinement scheme for a progressive mesh based on the transformations and compare the scheme with previous selective refinement schemes in both theoretical and experimental ways. In our comparison, we show that the complete scheme always generates selectively refined meshes with smaller numbers of vertices and faces than previous schemes for a given refinement criterion. The concept of dual pieces of the vertices in the vertex hierarchy plays a central role in the analysis of the transitive mesh space and the design of selective edge collapse and vertex split transformations.

title: An interactive video delivery and caching system using video summarization
abstract: With the advance of high-speed network technologies, the availability and popularity of streaming media content over the Internet has grown rapidly in recent years. The delivery and caching of streaming media must be handled in a different fashion than that of traditional non-streaming objects such as HTML or image files, because of its distinct characteristics and user viewing patterns. We propose a novel scheme that provides users with the video summary (a number of key-frame images) before they download the file, and options for them to select the starting playback position. We introduce the content analysis service to achieve these functionalities. The video content analysis performs shot boundary detection, key-frame selection, and face detection and tracking. The results of the processing are a segmented video sequence and an XML-based meta-data describing the video content. We also design a caching system that utilizes our video abstraction and summarization technique. Our integrated video delivery and caching system combines content-aware segmentation, prefix caching, prefetching, and cooperative caching. We describe how our scheme can be applied in three proposed caching architectures.

title: Endomorphic modelling for two-dimensional time-varying autoregressive model signals
abstract: Physical signals are often non-stationary. We assume that images are non-stationary and each pixel is the output of a different set of two-dimensional autoregressive (AR) model coefficients; therefore, texture cannot be characterised by applying AR modelling techniques to the entire image. A multistage modelling technique, which appears in the literature as "endomorphic modelling", is applied to this kind of signal. The signal is divided into sub-sets of samples and each sub-set is modelled using an AR model. A new image is formed using the same AR model coefficient estimated from different blocks, then the new image is re-modelled using AR models again. This process ends when the variance of the estimated parameters is sufficiently small. The simulation results show that the variances obtained from the estimated coefficients at the second stage are much smaller than the ones from the first stage

title: Distributed and energy-efficient target localization and tracking in wireless sensor networks
abstract: In this paper, we propose and evaluate a distributed, energy-efficient, light-weight framework for target localization and tracking in wireless sensor networks. Since radio communication is the most energy-consuming operation, this framework aims to reduce the number of messages and the number of message collisions, while providing refined accuracy. The key element of the framework is a novel localization algorithm, called Ratiometric Vector Iteration (RVI). RVI is based on distance ratio estimates rather than absolute distance estimates which are often impossible to calculate. By iteratively updating the estimated location using the distance ratio, RVI localizes the target accurately with only three sensors' participation. After localization, the location of the target is reported to the subscriber. If the target is stationary or moves around within a small area, it is wasteful to report (almost) the same location estimates repeatedly. We, therefore, propose to dynamically adjust a reporting frequency considering the target's movement so that we can reduce the number of report messages while maintaining tracking quality. Extensive simulation results show that the proposed framework combining RVI and the movement-adaptive report scheduling algorithm reduces the localization error and total number of the transmitted messages up to half of those of the existing approaches.

title: Adaptive prefetching technique for shared virtual memory
abstract: Though shared virtual memory (SVM) systems promise low cost solutions for high performance computing, they suffer from long memory latencies. These latencies are usually caused by repetitive invalidation on shared data. Since shared data are accessed through synchronizations and the patterns by which threads synchronize are repetitive, a prefetching scheme based on such repetitiveness would reduce memory latencies. Based on this observation, we propose a prefetching technique which predicts future access behavior by analyzing access history per synchronization variable. Our technique was evaluated on an 8-node SVM system using the SPLASH-2 benchmark. The results show that our technique could achieve 34%-45% reduction in memory access latencies.

title: Creative Interface Design for Information Seeking
abstract: Inspired by Weisberg's argument that everyone is creative, and exists in varying degrees, this PhD proposal aims to investigate the relationship between creativity and information seeking, and explores implications for interface design with design features that might support users' information seeking behaviours. A holistic model of creativity was proposed synthesizing established models in creativity. Based on the model, five approaches investigating relationships between creativity and information seeking were highlighted. Initial work carried out attempted to understand users' information seeking behaviours to elicit supportive features. Discussion of on-going work is also presented to indicate approaches proposed to design, implement, and evaluate a prototype with design features to support information seeking.