Motion compensated lifting wavelet and its application in video coding
A motion compensated lifting (MCLIFT) framework is proposed for the 3D wavelet video coder. By using bi-directional motion compensation in each lifting step of the temporal direction, the video frames are effectively de-correlated. With proper entropy coding and bitstream packaging schemes, the MCLIFT wavelet video coder can be scalable in frame rate and quality level. Experimental results show that the MCLIFT video coder outperforms the 3D wavelet video coder with the same entropy coding scheme by an average of 1.1-1.6dB, and outperforms MPEG-4 coder by an average of 0.9-

title: Scalable audio streaming over the internet with network-aware rate-distortion optimization
abstract: Reliable audio streaming over the unreliable Internet is a challenging task. Because during a connected session, the bandwidth can vary greatly and the data packets can be lost in the transmission, it is difficult to guarantee a smooth quality of the delivered audio over the Internet. In this work, a system for streaming of scalable coded audio over the Internet is proposed. Scalable audio coding generates a bitstream consisting a number of data units (DUs), where a subset of the DUs can be extracted to reconstruct audio at a lower quality level. A network aware ratedistortion optimization model is proposed so that the server can easily adapt to the network bandwidth fluctuation by sending less packets when the network is congested. The server can also deal with severe packet loss by only retransmitting the more important data packets. By using the scalable audio coding and network aware delivery scheme, the quality of the audio streaming over severe network condition is improved dramatically.

title: Smart rebinning for the compression of concentric mosaic
abstract: The concentric mosaic offers a quick solution to construct a virtual copy of a real environment, and to navigate in that virtual environment. However, the huge amount of data associated with the concentric mosaic is a heavy burden for its application. A three-dimensional (3D) wavelet-based compressor has been proposed in a previous work to compress the concentric mosaic. In this paper, we greatly improve the compression efficiency of the 3D wavelet coder by a data rearrangement mechanism called "smart rebinning". The proposed scheme first aligns the concentric mosaic image shots along the horizontal direction and then rebins the shots into multiperspective panoramas. Smart rebinning effectively enhances the correlation in the 3D data volume, translating the data into a representation that is more suitable for 3D wavelet compression. Experimental results show that the performance of the 3D wavelet coder is improved by an average of 4.3 dB with the use of the smart rebinning. The proposed coder outperforms MPEG-2 coding of the concentric mosaic by an average of 3.7 dB.

title: Image compression with a hybrid wavelet-fractal coder
abstract: A hybrid wavelet-fractal coder (WFC) for image compression is proposed. The WFC uses the fractal contractive mapping to predict the wavelet coefficients of the higher resolution from those of the lower resolution and then encode the prediction residue with a bitplane wavelet coder. The fractal prediction is adaptively applied only to regions where the rate saving offered by fractal prediction justifies its overhead. A rate-distortion criterion is derived to evaluate the fractal rate saving and used to select the optimal fractal parameter set for WFC. The superior performance of the WFC is demonstrated with extensive experimental results.

title: Distributed hosting of Web content with erasure coding and unequal weight assignment
abstract: By sharing and hosting personal Web content in a peer-to-peer (P2P) fashion, we may increase the bandwidth of retrieval and improve the reliability of retrieval. The cost is that the Web content has to be replicated to and stored in the peers, consuming valuable network bandwidth and peer storage space. In this work, we develop two technologies, namely hierarchical content organization with unequal weight assignment and erasure coding, to reduce the amount of content to be distributed, yet still maintain the retrieval speed up and reliability. Significant improvement over the ordinary Web server is demonstrated.

title: Compression of the layered depth image
abstract: A layered depth image (LDI) is a new popular representation and rendering method for objects with complex geometries. Similar to a 2D image, the LDI consists of an array of pixels. However, unlike the 2D image, an LDI pixel has depth information, and there are multiple layers at a pixel location. In this paper, we develop a novel LDI compression algorithm that handles the multiple layers and the depth coding. The algorithm records the number of LDI layers at each pixel location, and compresses LDI color and depth components separately. For LDI layer with sparse pixels, the data is aggregated and then encoded. An empirical rate-distortion model is used to optimally allocate bits among different components. Compared with benchmark compression tools such as JPEG-2000 and MPEG-4, our scheme improves the compression performance significantly.

title: Automatic patent classification using citation network information: an experimental study in nanotechnology
abstract: Classifying and organizing documents in repositories is an active research topic in digital library studies. Manually classifying the large volume of patents and patent applications managed by patent offices is a labor-intensive task. Many previous studies have employed patent contents for patent classification with the aim of automating this process. In this research we propose to use patent citation information, especially the citation network structure information, to address the patent classification problem. We adopt a kernel-based approach and design kernel functions to capture content information and various citation-related information in patents. These kernels. performances are evaluated on a testbed of patents related to nanotechnology. Evaluation results show that our proposed labeled citation graph kernel, which utilized citation network structures, significantly outperforms the kernels that use no citation information or only direct citation information.

title: Mining the smallest association rule set for predictions
abstract: Mining transaction databases for association rules usually generates a large number of rules, most of which are unnecessary when used for subsequent prediction. In this paper we define a rule set for a given transaction database that is much smaller than the association rule set but makes the same predictions as the association rule set by the confidence priority. We call this subset the informative rule set. The informative rule set is not constrained to particular target items; and it is smaller than the non-redundant association rule set. We present an algorithm to directly generate the informative rule set, i.e., without generating all frequent itemsets first, and that accesses the database less often than other unconstrained direct methods. We show experimentally that the informative rule set is much smaller than both the association rule set and the non-redundant association rule set, and that it can be generated more efficiently.

title: Image classification based on a multiresolution two dimensional hidden Markov model
abstract: This paper presents an image classification algorithm based upon a two dimensional multiresolution hidden Markov model (MHMM). This model represents an image by feature vectors in several resolutions and considers the feature vectors statistically dependent through an underlying state process assumed to be a multiscale Markov mesh. To estimate the model by the maximum likelihood criterion, approximations are made successively based on the EM algorithm to reach feasible computation. To classify an image, the algorithm attempts to find the optimal set of states with the maximum a posteriori probability. The states are then mapped into classes. The multiresolution model enables multiscale context information to be incorporated into classification. Suboptimal algorithms based on the model provide progressive classification which greatly speeds up classification based on single resolution HMMs.

title: Online estimation of trifocal tensors for augmenting live video
abstract: We propose a method to augment live video based on the tracking of natural features, and the online estimation of the trinocular geometry. Previous without-marker approaches require the computation of camera pose to render virtual objects. The strength of our proposed method is that it doesn 7 require tracking of camera pose, and exploits the usual advantages of marker-based approaches for a fast implementation. A 3-view AR system is used to demonstrate our approach. It consists of an uncalibrated camera that moves freely inside the scene of interest, and of three reference frames taken at the time of system initialization. As the camera is moving, image features taken from an initial triplet set are tracked throughout the video sequence. And the trifocal tensor associated with each frame is estimated online. With this tensor, the square pattern that was visible in the reference frames is transferred to the video. This invisible pattern is then used by the ARToolkit to embed virtual objects.

title: Observations on versioning of off-the-shelf components in industrial projects (short paper)
abstract: Using OTS (Off-The-Shelf) components in software projects has become increasing popular in the IT industry. After project managers opt for OTS components, they can decide to use COTS (Commercial-Off-The-Shelf) components or OSS (Open Source Software) components. We have done a series of interviews and surveys to document and understand industrial practice with OTS-based development in Norwegian, German, and Italian IT industry. The perspective is that of a software architect or system integrator, not a developer or maintainer of such components. The study object is a completed development project using one or several OTS components. This paper reports on the versioning aspects of OTS components in such projects. We found that one third of the COTS components actually provided source code, in addition to all OSS components. However, OTS components were seldom modified (i.e. re-used "as-is"), even if source code was available. Although backward compatibility of new releases did not cause noticeable problems for a single OTS component, using several different OTS components in a project caused difficulties in maintenance planning of asynchronous releases and system integration of new releases. Several new research questions have been formulated based on the results of this study.