pwc-archive/papers-with-abstracts huggingface dataset:
PPEA-Depth: Progressive Parameter-Efficient Adaptation for Self-Supervised Monocular Depth Estimation
Authors: Yue-Jiang Dong, Yuan-Chen Guo, Ying-Tian Liu, Fang-Lue Zhang, Song-Hai Zhang
Date: 2023-12-20 00:00:00
Tasks: Autonomous Driving, Decoder, Depth Estimation, Monocular Depth Estimation

Self-supervised monocular depth estimation is of significant importance with applications spanning across autonomous driving and robotics. However, the reliance on self-supervision introduces a strong static-scene assumption, thereby posing challenges in achieving optimal performance in dynamic scenes, which are prevalent in most real-world situations. To address these issues, we propose PPEA-Depth, a Progressive Parameter-Efficient Adaptation approach to transfer a pre-trained image model for self-supervised depth estimation. The training comprises two sequential stages: an initial phase trained on a dataset primarily composed of static scenes, succeeded by an expansion to more intricate datasets involving dynamic scenes. To facilitate this process, we design compact encoder and decoder adapters to enable parameter-efficient tuning, allowing the network to adapt effectively. They not only uphold generalized patterns from pre-trained image models but also retain knowledge gained from the preceding phase into the subsequent one. Extensive experiments demonstrate that PPEA-Depth achieves state-of-the-art performance on KITTI, CityScapes and DDAD datasets.
Quantifying Bias in Text-to-Image Generative Models
Authors: Jordan Vice, Naveed Akhtar, Richard Hartley, Ajmal Mian
Date: 2023-12-20 00:00:00
Tasks: Hallucination, Marketing

Bias in text-to-image (T2I) models can propagate unfair social representations and may be used to aggressively market ideas or push controversial agendas. Existing T2I model bias evaluation methods only focus on social biases. We look beyond that and instead propose an evaluation methodology to quantify general biases in T2I generative models, without any preconceived notions. We assess four state-of-the-art T2I models and compare their baseline bias characteristics to their respective variants (two for each), where certain biases have been intentionally induced. We propose three evaluation metrics to assess model biases including: (i) Distribution bias, (ii) Jaccard hallucination and (iii) Generative miss-rate. We conduct two evaluation studies, modelling biases under general, and task-oriented conditions, using a marketing scenario as the domain for the latter. We also quantify social biases to compare our findings to related works. Finally, our methodology is transferred to evaluate captioned-image datasets and measure their bias. Our approach is objective, domain-agnostic and consistently measures different forms of T2I model biases. We have developed a web application and practical implementation of what has been proposed in this work, which is at https://huggingface.co/spaces/JVice/try-before-you-bias. A video series with demonstrations is available at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCk-0xyUyT0MSd_hkp4jQt1Q
Doubly Perturbed Task Free Continual Learning
Authors: Byung Hyun Lee, Min-hwan Oh, Se Young Chun
Date: 2023-12-20 00:00:00
Tasks: Continual Learning, Decision Making, Scheduling

Task Free online continual learning (TF-CL) is a challenging problem where the model incrementally learns tasks without explicit task information. Although training with entire data from the past, present as well as future is considered as the gold standard, naive approaches in TF-CL with the current samples may be conflicted with learning with samples in the future, leading to catastrophic forgetting and poor plasticity. Thus, a proactive consideration of an unseen future sample in TF-CL becomes imperative. Motivated by this intuition, we propose a novel TF-CL framework considering future samples and show that injecting adversarial perturbations on both input data and decision-making is effective. Then, we propose a novel method named Doubly Perturbed Continual Learning (DPCL) to efficiently implement these input and decision-making perturbations. Specifically, for input perturbation, we propose an approximate perturbation method that injects noise into the input data as well as the feature vector and then interpolates the two perturbed samples. For decision-making process perturbation, we devise multiple stochastic classifiers. We also investigate a memory management scheme and learning rate scheduling reflecting our proposed double perturbations. We demonstrate that our proposed method outperforms the state-of-the-art baseline methods by large margins on various TF-CL benchmarks.
DiffPortrait3D: Controllable Diffusion for Zero-Shot Portrait View Synthesis
Authors: Yuming Gu, You Xie, Hongyi Xu, Guoxian Song, Yichun Shi, Di Chang, Jing Yang, Linjie Luo
Date: 2023-12-20 00:00:00
Proceeding: CVPR 2024 1
Tasks: Denoising

We present DiffPortrait3D, a conditional diffusion model that is capable of synthesizing 3D-consistent photo-realistic novel views from as few as a single in-the-wild portrait. Specifically, given a single RGB input, we aim to synthesize plausible but consistent facial details rendered from novel camera views with retained both identity and facial expression. In lieu of time-consuming optimization and fine-tuning, our zero-shot method generalizes well to arbitrary face portraits with unposed camera views, extreme facial expressions, and diverse artistic depictions. At its core, we leverage the generative prior of 2D diffusion models pre-trained on large-scale image datasets as our rendering backbone, while the denoising is guided with disentangled attentive control of appearance and camera pose. To achieve this, we first inject the appearance context from the reference image into the self-attention layers of the frozen UNets. The rendering view is then manipulated with a novel conditional control module that interprets the camera pose by watching a condition image of a crossed subject from the same view. Furthermore, we insert a trainable cross-view attention module to enhance view consistency, which is further strengthened with a novel 3D-aware noise generation process during inference. We demonstrate state-of-the-art results both qualitatively and quantitatively on our challenging in-the-wild and multi-view benchmarks.
Aggregating Multiple Bio-Inspired Image Region Classifiers For Effective And Lightweight Visual Place Recognition
Authors: Bruno Arcanjo, Bruno Ferrarini, Maria Fasli, Michael Milford, Klaus D. McDonald-Maier, Shoaib Ehsan
Date: 2023-12-20 00:00:00
Tasks: Computational Efficiency, Retrieval, Visual Place Recognition

Visual place recognition (VPR) enables autonomous systems to localize themselves within an environment using image information. While VPR techniques built upon a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) backbone dominate state-of-the-art VPR performance, their high computational requirements make them unsuitable for platforms equipped with low-end hardware. Recently, a lightweight VPR system based on multiple bio-inspired classifiers, dubbed DrosoNets, has been proposed, achieving great computational efficiency at the cost of reduced absolute place retrieval performance. In this work, we propose a novel multi-DrosoNet localization system, dubbed RegionDrosoNet, with significantly improved VPR performance, while preserving a low-computational profile. Our approach relies on specializing distinct groups of DrosoNets on differently sliced partitions of the original image, increasing extrinsic model differentiation. Furthermore, we introduce a novel voting module to combine the outputs of all DrosoNets into the final place prediction which considers multiple top refence candidates from each DrosoNet. RegionDrosoNet outperforms other lightweight VPR techniques when dealing with both appearance changes and viewpoint variations. Moreover, it competes with computationally expensive methods on some benchmark datasets at a small fraction of their online inference time.
Multi-task Learning To Improve Semantic Segmentation Of CBCT Scans Using Image Reconstruction
Authors: Maximilian Ernst Tschuchnig, Julia Coste-Marin, Philipp Steininger, Michael Gadermayr
Date: 2023-12-20 00:00:00
Tasks: Denoising, Image Reconstruction, Multi-Task Learning, Segmentation, Semantic Segmentation, Tumor Segmentation

Semantic segmentation is a crucial task in medical image processing, essential for segmenting organs or lesions such as tumors. In this study we aim to improve automated segmentation in CBCTs through multi-task learning. To evaluate effects on different volume qualities, a CBCT dataset is synthesised from the CT Liver Tumor Segmentation Benchmark (LiTS) dataset. To improve segmentation, two approaches are investigated. First, we perform multi-task learning to add morphology based regularization through a volume reconstruction task. Second, we use this reconstruction task to reconstruct the best quality CBCT (most similar to the original CT), facilitating denoising effects. We explore both holistic and patch-based approaches. Our findings reveal that, especially using a patch-based approach, multi-task learning improves segmentation in most cases and that these results can further be improved by our denoising approach.
D3Former: Jointly Learning Repeatable Dense Detectors and Feature-enhanced Descriptors via Saliency-guided Transformer
Authors: Junjie Gao, Pengfei Wang, Qiujie Dong, Qiong Zeng, Shiqing Xin, Caiming Zhang
Date: 2023-12-20 00:00:00
Tasks: Point Cloud Registration

Establishing accurate and representative matches is a crucial step in addressing the point cloud registration problem. A commonly employed approach involves detecting keypoints with salient geometric features and subsequently mapping these keypoints from one frame of the point cloud to another. However, methods within this category are hampered by the repeatability of the sampled keypoints. In this paper, we introduce a saliency-guided trans\textbf{former}, referred to as \textit{D3Former}, which entails the joint learning of repeatable \textbf{D}ense \textbf{D}etectors and feature-enhanced \textbf{D}escriptors. The model comprises a Feature Enhancement Descriptor Learning (FEDL) module and a Repetitive Keypoints Detector Learning (RKDL) module. The FEDL module utilizes a region attention mechanism to enhance feature distinctiveness, while the RKDL module focuses on detecting repeatable keypoints to enhance matching capabilities. Extensive experimental results on challenging indoor and outdoor benchmarks demonstrate that our proposed method consistently outperforms state-of-the-art point cloud matching methods. Notably, tests on 3DLoMatch, even with a low overlap ratio, show that our method consistently outperforms recently published approaches such as RoReg and RoITr. For instance, with the number of extracted keypoints reduced to 250, the registration recall scores for RoReg, RoITr, and our method are 64.3\%, 73.6\%, and 76.5\%, respectively.
Radar Fields: An Extension of Radiance Fields to SAR
Authors: Thibaud Ehret, Roger Marí, Dawa Derksen, Nicolas Gasnier, Gabriele Facciolo
Date: 2023-12-20 00:00:00
Tasks: Inverse Rendering, Novel View Synthesis

Radiance fields have been a major breakthrough in the field of inverse rendering, novel view synthesis and 3D modeling of complex scenes from multi-view image collections. Since their introduction, it was shown that they could be extended to other modalities such as LiDAR, radio frequencies, X-ray or ultrasound. In this paper, we show that, despite the important difference between optical and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image formation models, it is possible to extend radiance fields to radar images thus presenting the first "radar fields". This allows us to learn surface models using only collections of radar images, similar to how regular radiance fields are learned and with the same computational complexity on average. Thanks to similarities in how both fields are defined, this work also shows a potential for hybrid methods combining both optical and SAR images.
TADAP: Trajectory-Aided Drivable area Auto-labeling with Pre-trained self-supervised features in winter driving conditions
Authors: Eerik Alamikkotervo, Risto Ojala, Alvari Seppänen, Kari Tammi
Date: 2023-12-20 00:00:00
Tasks: Autonomous Driving, Drivable Area Detection

Detection of the drivable area in all conditions is crucial for autonomous driving and advanced driver assistance systems. However, the amount of labeled data in adverse driving conditions is limited, especially in winter, and supervised methods generalize poorly to conditions outside the training distribution. For easy adaption to all conditions, the need for human annotation should be removed from the learning process. In this paper, Trajectory-Aided Drivable area Auto-labeling with Pre-trained self-supervised features (TADAP) is presented for automated annotation of the drivable area in winter driving conditions. A sample of the drivable area is extracted based on the trajectory estimate from the global navigation satellite system. Similarity with the sample area is determined based on pre-trained self-supervised visual features. Image areas similar to the sample area are considered to be drivable. These TADAP labels were evaluated with a novel winter-driving dataset, collected in varying driving scenes. A prediction model trained with the TADAP labels achieved a +9.6 improvement in intersection over union compared to the previous state-of-the-art of self-supervised drivable area detection.
Produce Once, Utilize Twice for Anomaly Detection
Authors: Shuyuan Wang, Qi Li, Huiyuan Luo, Chengkan Lv, Zhengtao Zhang
Date: 2023-12-20 00:00:00
Tasks: Anomaly Detection

Visual anomaly detection aims at classifying and locating the regions that deviate from the normal appearance. Embedding-based methods and reconstruction-based methods are two main approaches for this task. However, they are either not efficient or not precise enough for the industrial detection. To deal with this problem, we derive POUTA (Produce Once Utilize Twice for Anomaly detection), which improves both the accuracy and efficiency by reusing the discriminant information potential in the reconstructive network. We observe that the encoder and decoder representations of the reconstructive network are able to stand for the features of the original and reconstructed image respectively. And the discrepancies between the symmetric reconstructive representations provides roughly accurate anomaly information. To refine this information, a coarse-to-fine process is proposed in POUTA, which calibrates the semantics of each discriminative layer by the high-level representations and supervision loss. Equipped with the above modules, POUTA is endowed with the ability to provide a more precise anomaly location than the prior arts. Besides, the representation reusage also enables to exclude the feature extraction process in the discriminative network, which reduces the parameters and improves the efficiency. Extensive experiments show that, POUTA is superior or comparable to the prior methods with even less cost. Furthermore, POUTA also achieves better performance than the state-of-the-art few-shot anomaly detection methods without any special design, showing that POUTA has strong ability to learn representations inherent in the training data.
A Unified Representation Framework for the Evaluation of Optical Music Recognition Systems
Authors: Pau Torras, Sanket Biswas, Alicia Fornés
Date: 2023-12-20 00:00:00

Modern-day Optical Music Recognition (OMR) is a fairly fragmented field. Most OMR approaches use datasets that are independent and incompatible between each other, making it difficult to both combine them and compare recognition systems built upon them. In this paper we identify the need of a common music representation language and propose the Music Tree Notation (MTN) format, with the idea to construct a common endpoint for OMR research that allows coordination, reuse of technology and fair evaluation of community efforts. This format represents music as a set of primitives that group together into higher-abstraction nodes, a compromise between the expression of fully graph-based and sequential notation formats. We have also developed a specific set of OMR metrics and a typeset score dataset as a proof of concept of this idea.
Testing the Segment Anything Model on radiology data
Authors: José Guilherme de Almeida, Nuno M. Rodrigues, Sara Silva, Nickolas Papanikolaou
Date: 2023-12-20 00:00:00
Tasks: image-classification, Image Classification, Image Segmentation, model, MRI segmentation, Segmentation, Semantic Segmentation, Zero Shot Segmentation

Deep learning models trained with large amounts of data have become a recent and effective approach to predictive problem solving -- these have become known as "foundation models" as they can be used as fundamental tools for other applications. While the paramount examples of image classification (earlier) and large language models (more recently) led the way, the Segment Anything Model (SAM) was recently proposed and stands as the first foundation model for image segmentation, trained on over 10 million images and with recourse to over 1 billion masks. However, the question remains -- what are the limits of this foundation? Given that magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) stands as an important method of diagnosis, we sought to understand whether SAM could be used for a few tasks of zero-shot segmentation using MRI data. Particularly, we wanted to know if selecting masks from the pool of SAM predictions could lead to good segmentations. Here, we provide a critical assessment of the performance of SAM on magnetic resonance imaging data. We show that, while acceptable in a very limited set of cases, the overall trend implies that these models are insufficient for MRI segmentation across the whole volume, but can provide good segmentations in a few, specific slices. More importantly, we note that while foundation models trained on natural images are set to become key aspects of predictive modelling, they may prove ineffective when used on other imaging modalities.
Relightable and Animatable Neural Avatars from Videos
Authors: Wenbin Lin, Chengwei Zheng, Jun-Hai Yong, Feng Xu
Date: 2023-12-20 00:00:00

Lightweight creation of 3D digital avatars is a highly desirable but challenging task. With only sparse videos of a person under unknown illumination, we propose a method to create relightable and animatable neural avatars, which can be used to synthesize photorealistic images of humans under novel viewpoints, body poses, and lighting. The key challenge here is to disentangle the geometry, material of the clothed body, and lighting, which becomes more difficult due to the complex geometry and shadow changes caused by body motions. To solve this ill-posed problem, we propose novel techniques to better model the geometry and shadow changes. For geometry change modeling, we propose an invertible deformation field, which helps to solve the inverse skinning problem and leads to better geometry quality. To model the spatial and temporal varying shading cues, we propose a pose-aware part-wise light visibility network to estimate light occlusion. Extensive experiments on synthetic and real datasets show that our approach reconstructs high-quality geometry and generates realistic shadows under different body poses. Code and data are available at \url{https://wenbin-lin.github.io/RelightableAvatar-page/}.
COVID-19 Diagnosis: ULGFBP-ResNet51 approach on the CT and the Chest X-ray Images Classification
Authors: Vida Esmaeili, Mahmood Mohassel Feghhi, Seyed Omid Shahdi
Date: 2023-12-20 00:00:00
Tasks: COVID-19 Diagnosis

The contagious and pandemic COVID-19 disease is currently considered as the main health concern and posed widespread panic across human-beings. It affects the human respiratory tract and lungs intensely. So that it has imposed significant threats for premature death. Although, its early diagnosis can play a vital role in revival phase, the radiography tests with the manual intervention are a time-consuming process. Time is also limited for such manual inspecting of numerous patients in the hospitals. Thus, the necessity of automatic diagnosis on the chest X-ray or the CT images with a high efficient performance is urgent. Toward this end, we propose a novel method, named as the ULGFBP-ResNet51 to tackle with the COVID-19 diagnosis in the images. In fact, this method includes Uniform Local Binary Pattern (ULBP), Gabor Filter (GF), and ResNet51. According to our results, this method could offer superior performance in comparison with the other methods, and attain maximum accuracy.
The Audio-Visual Conversational Graph: From an Egocentric-Exocentric Perspective
Authors: Wenqi Jia, Miao Liu, Hao Jiang, Ishwarya Ananthabhotla, James M. Rehg, Vamsi Krishna Ithapu, Ruohan Gao
Date: 2023-12-20 00:00:00
Proceeding: CVPR 2024 1

In recent years, the thriving development of research related to egocentric videos has provided a unique perspective for the study of conversational interactions, where both visual and audio signals play a crucial role. While most prior work focus on learning about behaviors that directly involve the camera wearer, we introduce the Ego-Exocentric Conversational Graph Prediction problem, marking the first attempt to infer exocentric conversational interactions from egocentric videos. We propose a unified multi-modal framework -- Audio-Visual Conversational Attention (AV-CONV), for the joint prediction of conversation behaviors -- speaking and listening -- for both the camera wearer as well as all other social partners present in the egocentric video. Specifically, we adopt the self-attention mechanism to model the representations across-time, across-subjects, and across-modalities. To validate our method, we conduct experiments on a challenging egocentric video dataset that includes multi-speaker and multi-conversation scenarios. Our results demonstrate the superior performance of our method compared to a series of baselines. We also present detailed ablation studies to assess the contribution of each component in our model. Check our project page at https://vjwq.github.io/AV-CONV/.
Quantum Annealing for Computer Vision Minimization Problems
Authors: Shahrokh Heidari, Michael J. Dinneen, Patrice Delmas
Date: 2023-12-20 00:00:00
Tasks: Stereo Matching

Computer Vision (CV) labelling algorithms play a pivotal role in the domain of low-level vision. For decades, it has been known that these problems can be elegantly formulated as discrete energy minimization problems derived from probabilistic graphical models (such as Markov Random Fields). Despite recent advances in inference algorithms (such as graph-cut and message-passing algorithms), the resulting energy minimization problems are generally viewed as intractable. The emergence of quantum computations, which offer the potential for faster solutions to certain problems than classical methods, has led to an increased interest in utilizing quantum properties to overcome intractable problems. Recently, there has also been a growing interest in Quantum Computer Vision (QCV), with the hope of providing a credible alternative or assistant to deep learning solutions in the field. This study investigates a new Quantum Annealing based inference algorithm for CV discrete energy minimization problems. Our contribution is focused on Stereo Matching as a significant CV labeling problem. As a proof of concept, we also use a hybrid quantum-classical solver provided by D-Wave System to compare our results with the best classical inference algorithms in the literature.