The seamlessly multiplexed embedded codec (SMEC) and its application in image coding
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: An embedded still image coder with rate-distortion optimization
abstract: It is well known that the fixed rate coder achieves optimality when all coefficients are coded with the same rate-distortion (R-D) slope. In this paper, we show that the performance of the embedded coder can be optimized in a rate-distortion sense by coding the coefficients with decreasing R-D slope. We denote such a coding strategy as rate-distortion optimized embedding (RDE). RDE allocates the available coding bits first to the coefficient with the steepest R-D slope, i.e., the largest distortion decrease per coding bit. The resultant coding bitstream can be truncated at any point and still maintain an optimal R-D performance. To avoid the overhead of coding order transmission, we use the expected R-D slope, which can be calculated from the coded bits and is available in both the encoder and the decoder. With the probability estimation table of the QM-coder, the calculation of the R-D slope can be just a lookup table operation. Experimental results show that the rate-distortion optimization significantly improves the coding efficiency in a wide bit rate range.

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: 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: Motion compensated lifting wavelet and its application in video coding
abstract: 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: 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: Face Recognition Based on Multiple Region Features
abstract: For face recognition, face feature selection is an important step. Better features should result in better performance. This paper describes a robust face recognition algorithm using multiple face region features selected by the AdaBoost algorithm. In conventional face recognition algorithms, the face region is dealt with as a whole. In this paper we show that dividing a face into a number of sub-regions can improve face recognition performance. We use conventional AdaBoost with a weak learner based on multiple region orthogonal component principal component analysis (OCPCA) features. The regions are selected areas of the face (such as eye, mouth, nose etc.). The AdaBoost algorithm generates a strong classifier from the combination of these region features. Experiments have been done to evaluate the performance on the CMU Pose Illumination Expression (PIE) databases. Performance comparisons between single region OCPCA, our multiple region OCPCA, and published results from Visionics' FaceIt are given. Significant performance improvement is demonstrated using multiple facial region OCPCA features.

title: FedGrid: An HLA Approach to Federating Grids
abstract: Research on Grids has received considerable attention in recent years. Whereas existing work on connecting the grids primarily focused on grid services, in our work we propose a unified approach, so-called FederationGrid (or FedGrid for short), which integrates both virtual organization (VO) and grid services, thus enabling formation of virtual communities on top of grids. FedGrid is based on the standard High Level Architecture (HLA) that enjoys the advantages of high-level information modeling, including re-usability of software components and real-time performance of the overall systems. In addition, FedGrid is a fractal grid, comprised of hierarchical HLA federations, e.g. Realms and Lobby, which supports well the concept of virtual communities and scalability.

title: A new Mallows distance based metric for comparing clusterings
abstract: Despite of the large number of algorithms developed for clustering, the study on comparing clustering results is limited. In this paper, we propose a measure for comparing clustering results to tackle two issues insufficiently addressed or even overlooked by existing methods: (a) taking into account the distance between cluster representatives when assessing the similarity of clustering results; (b) constructing a unified framework for defining a distance based on either hard or soft clustering and ensuring the triangle inequality under the definition. Our measure is derived from a complete and globally optimal matching between clusters in two clustering results. It is shown that the distance is an instance of the Mallows distance---a metric between probability distributions in statistics. As a result, the defined distance inherits desirable properties from the Mallows distance. Experiments show that our clustering distance measure successfully handles cases difficult for other measures.

title: Securing distributed adaptation
abstract: Open architecture networks provide applications with fine-grained control over network elements. With this control comes the risk of misuse and new challenges to security beyond those present in conventional networks. One particular security requirement is the ability of applications to protect the secrecy and integrity of transmitted data while still allowing trusted active elements within the network to operate on that data. This paper describes mechanisms for identifying trusted nodes within a network and securely deploying adaptation instructions to those nodes while protecting application data from unauthorized access and modification. Promising experimental results of our implementation within the conductor adaptation framework are also presented, suggesting that such features can be incorporated into real networks.

title: Modeling the effects of elevation data resolution on the performance of topography-based watershed runoff simulation
abstract: The spatial uncertainty of a topography based rainfall runoff model (TOPMODEL) is addressed in this study to assess its variability in simulating watershed hydrologic response with regards to the change of digital elevation model (DEM) resolution. Twelve DEM realizations of different grid sizes ranging from 30m to 3000m for each of two case watersheds are used for comparative examinations. The study shows that DEM grid size has significant influence on the topographic index distribution which represents the effect of topography on watershed hydrology in TOPMODEL. The smoothing effect of grid size increase may result in deteriorated topographic index distributions at coarse resolutions as the ratio of grid cell area to watershed area gets larger. The simulated discharges and model efficiencies using a same set of TOPMODEL parameters are sensitive to DEM grid size especially at coarse resolutions. This sensitivity, however, can be moderated by parameter calibrations as the optimization runs show that fairly equal efficiencies can be preserved by the compensation effect of transmissivity parameter T"0 within a large extent of DEM resolution for each watershed. The interaction between T"0 and the topographic index distribution with respect to TOPMDOEL model performance is also examined. It is found that both study watersheds demonstrate a similar pattern of change in model performance along with the increase of the grid-to-watershed ratio. The analysis reveals that the ratio poses an important factor in controlling the effect of DEM grid size on TOPMODEL performance. A ratio of less than 5% is suggested in DEM resolution selection for TOPMODEL applications based on the results of this study.