Compression of Lumigraph with multiple reference frame (MRF) prediction and just-in-time rendering
In the form of a 2D image array, Lumigraph captures the complete appearance of an object or a scene, and is able to quickly render a novel view independent of the scene/object complexity. Since the data amount of Lumigraph is huge, efficient storage and access for Lumigraph are essential. In this paper, we propose a multiple reference frame (MRF) structure to compress the Lumigraph data. By predicting the Lumigraph view from multiple neighbor views, a higher compression ratio is achieved. We also implement the key functionality of just-in-time (JIT) Lumigraph rendering, in which only a small portion of the compressed bitstream necessary for rendering the current view is accessed and decoded. JIT rendering eliminates the need to predecode the entire Lumigraph data set, thus greatly reduces the memory requirement of Lumigraph rendering. A decoder cache has been implemented to speed up rendering by reusing the decoded data. The trade off between the computational speed and cache size of the decoder is discussed in the paper.

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: Arbitrarily shaped video-object coding by wavelet
abstract: Video-object coding is one of the most important functionalities proposed by MPEG-4. We propose a new wavelet method to encode the texture of an arbitrarily shaped object, both for the still and for the video-object. The method uses the shape adaptive wavelet transform (SA-DWT) in MPEG-4 still object coding, but with a computationally more efficient lifting implementation. The transformed object coefficients are then quantized and entropy encoded with a partial bit-plane embedded coder, which greatly improves the coding efficiency. We denote the coding algorithm as the video-object wavelet (VOW) coder. Experimental results show that VOW significantly outperforms MPEG-4 in still-object coding, and achieves a comparable performance in video-object coding in terms of PSNR. Moreover, the VOW decoded object looks better subjectively, with less annoying blocking artifacts than that of MPEG-4.

title: On the compression and streaming of concentric mosaic data for free wandering in a realistic environment over the Internet
abstract: In this paper, we describe a system for wandering in a realistic environment over the Internet. The environment is captured by the concentric mosaic, compressed via the reference block coder (RBC), and accessed and delivered over the Internet through the virtual media (Vmedia) access protocol. One of the key contributions of the paper is the proposal of the RBC concentric mosaic coder. The RBC coder not only compresses the huge dataset of the concentric mosaic very efficiently, but also produces a well-organized bitstream that can be accessed just-in-time (JIT). To reconstruct a virtual view, only a portion of the RBC bitstream needs to be accessed and decoded. This greatly reduces the memory and computation requirement of the viewer compared with first decoding the entire concentric mosaic data set and then rendering from the decoded data. Our second contribution is the employment of the Vmedia protocol to deliver the compressed concentric mosaic bitstream just-in-time over the Internet. Only the bitstream segments corresponding to the current view are streamed over the Internet. The delivered bitstream segments are managed by a local Vmedia cache, so that frequently used bitstream segments do not need to be streamed over the Internet repeatedly, and a RBC bitstream larger than the memory capacity can be easily handled. Combining RBC and Vmedia, a concentric mosaic interactive browser is developed through which the user can freely wander in a realistic environment, e.g., rotate around, walk forward/backward, and sidestep, even under a tight bandwidth.

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: The seamlessly multiplexed embedded codec (SMEC) and its application in image coding
abstract: The landmark JPEG 2000 image compression standard offers not only superior compression performance, but also incredible flexibility. The compressed bitstream of JPEG 2000 can be flexibly reorganized to another bitstream of different bitrate, resolution, and spatial region of interest (ROI) or a combination of any of the above. Such flexibility is achieved by multiplexing the compressed bitstream pieces of multiple code-blocks together into a combined bitstream, with the length of the code-block bitstream piece (LOCB) embedded in the combined bitstream. The LOCB serves both to reorganize the bitstream, and to decode the bitstream. It represents a significant overhead, especially since there is no correlation between the neighbor LOCBs. In this work, we introduce seamless multiplexing, and separate the information needed for the reorganization, i.e., the LOCB, from the compressed bitstream itself by using the decoder pointer to multiplex the bitstream pieces. As a result, the compressed bitstream consists of code-block bitstream pieces seamlessly concatenated to each other. With seamless multiplexing, only the compressed bitstream (without LOCB) needs to be delivered to the receiving client. It results in better compression performance and higher granularity of access. Another benefit of seamless multiplexing is that the relative coding orders of the code-blocks are preserved in the bitstream reorganization. As a result, the seamlessly multiplexed embedded codec (SMEC) may utilize the dependencies among the code-blocks in the coding, thus further boost the compression performance.

title: (α, k)-anonymity: an enhanced k-anonymity model for privacy preserving data publishing
abstract: Privacy preservation is an important issue in the release of data for mining purposes. The k-anonymity model has been introduced for protecting individual identification. Recent studies show that a more sophisticated model is necessary to protect the association of individuals to sensitive information. In this paper, we propose an (α, k)-anonymity model to protect both identifications and relationships to sensitive information in data. We discuss the properties of (α, k)-anonymity model. We prove that the optimal (α, k)-anonymity problem is NP-hard. We first presentan optimal global-recoding method for the (α, k)-anonymity problem. Next we propose a local-recoding algorithm which is more scalable and result in less data distortion. The effectiveness and efficiency are shown by experiments. We also describe how the model can be extended to more general case.

title: Genescene: biomedical text and data mining
abstract: To access the content of digital texts efficiently, it is necessary to provide more sophisticated access than keyword based searching. Genescene provides biomedical researchers with research findings and background relations automatically extracted from text and experimental data. These provide a more detailed overview of the information available. The extracted relations were evaluated by qualified researchers and are precise. A qualitative ongoing evaluation of the current online interface indicates that this method to search the literature is more useful and efficient than keyword based searching.

title: Direct incremental transmission of boundary representation
abstract: The real-time transmission of the boundary representation (B-rep) is necessitated by collaborative design. However, it is difficult since the B-rep is very complex and the current network bandwidth is limited. Incremental transmission, which can significantly decrease the data to be delivered, makes it possible to transmit the B-rep in real time during collaborative design.In this paper, we propose an approach to direct incremental transmission of the B-rep over Internet. The algorithm consists of three steps: Identify and encode the incremental model of the B-rep once a modeling operation is performed; Then, transmit the incremental model as well as the related geometric information to other remote site; Finally, decode the received codes of incremental model and directly embed the restored entities into the local B-rep. The traits of the approach lie in: (a) The incremental B-rep is identified, transmitted and restored completely based on the B-rep data structure without the support of any other auxiliary model; (b) Topological entity hierarchy chain is put forward to enable the simple and direct recovery of the transmitted incremental B-rep.

title: Evaluating Information Sharing Strategies in Supply Chains
abstract: This paper evaluates the impact of information sharing strategies on the performance of a supply chain. We consider three forms of information sharing strategies: (1) order information sharing where every stage of the supply chain only knows the orders from its immediate downstream stage; (2) demand information sharing where every stage has full information about the market demand; (3) inventory information sharing where each stage shares its inventory levels and demand information with its immediate upstream stage. Our results indicate that information sharing improves supply chain performance when demand is relatively stable. More importantly, we find that a hybrid information sharing strategy, which uses demand information sharing in the distribution network of the supply chain while using inventory information sharing in the supplier network, is the ideal strategy to improve supply chain performance when demand mix is volatile.

title: Designing Quality XML Schemas from E-R Diagrams
abstract: XML has emerged as the standard for representing, exchanging and integrating data on the Web. To guarantee the quality of XML documents, the design of quality XML Schemas becomes essentially important. In this paper, we look into this problem by designing quality XML Schemas from given E-R diagrams. We first discuss several criteria in designing a good XML Schema. Following these criteria, transformation rules are then devised that take all constructs of an E-R diagram into account. Finally, a recursive algorithm is developed to transform an E-R diagram to a corresponding quality XML Schema.