pwc-archive/papers-with-abstracts huggingface dataset:
A Unified Optimal Transport Framework for Cross-Modal Retrieval with Noisy Labels
Authors: Haochen Han, Minnan Luo, Huan Liu, Fang Nan
Date: 2024-03-20 00:00:00
Tasks: Cross-Modal Retrieval, Retrieval

Cross-modal retrieval (CMR) aims to establish interaction between different modalities, among which supervised CMR is emerging due to its flexibility in learning semantic category discrimination. Despite the remarkable performance of previous supervised CMR methods, much of their success can be attributed to the well-annotated data. However, even for unimodal data, precise annotation is expensive and time-consuming, and it becomes more challenging with the multimodal scenario. In practice, massive multimodal data are collected from the Internet with coarse annotation, which inevitably introduces noisy labels. Training with such misleading labels would bring two key challenges -- enforcing the multimodal samples to \emph{align incorrect semantics} and \emph{widen the heterogeneous gap}, resulting in poor retrieval performance. To tackle these challenges, this work proposes UOT-RCL, a Unified framework based on Optimal Transport (OT) for Robust Cross-modal Retrieval. First, we propose a semantic alignment based on partial OT to progressively correct the noisy labels, where a novel cross-modal consistent cost function is designed to blend different modalities and provide precise transport cost. Second, to narrow the discrepancy in multi-modal data, an OT-based relation alignment is proposed to infer the semantic-level cross-modal matching. Both of these two components leverage the inherent correlation among multi-modal data to facilitate effective cost function. The experiments on three widely-used cross-modal retrieval datasets demonstrate that our UOT-RCL surpasses the state-of-the-art approaches and significantly improves the robustness against noisy labels.
Scaling Diffusion Models to Real-World 3D LiDAR Scene Completion
Authors: Lucas Nunes, Rodrigo Marcuzzi, Benedikt Mersch, Jens Behley, Cyrill Stachniss
Date: 2024-03-20 00:00:00
Proceeding: CVPR 2024 1
Tasks: Autonomous Vehicles, Denoising, Lidar Scene Completion

Computer vision techniques play a central role in the perception stack of autonomous vehicles. Such methods are employed to perceive the vehicle surroundings given sensor data. 3D LiDAR sensors are commonly used to collect sparse 3D point clouds from the scene. However, compared to human perception, such systems struggle to deduce the unseen parts of the scene given those sparse point clouds. In this matter, the scene completion task aims at predicting the gaps in the LiDAR measurements to achieve a more complete scene representation. Given the promising results of recent diffusion models as generative models for images, we propose extending them to achieve scene completion from a single 3D LiDAR scan. Previous works used diffusion models over range images extracted from LiDAR data, directly applying image-based diffusion methods. Distinctly, we propose to directly operate on the points, reformulating the noising and denoising diffusion process such that it can efficiently work at scene scale. Together with our approach, we propose a regularization loss to stabilize the noise predicted during the denoising process. Our experimental evaluation shows that our method can complete the scene given a single LiDAR scan as input, producing a scene with more details compared to state-of-the-art scene completion methods. We believe that our proposed diffusion process formulation can support further research in diffusion models applied to scene-scale point cloud data.
CLIPSwarm: Generating Drone Shows from Text Prompts with Vision-Language Models
Authors: Pablo Pueyo, Eduardo Montijano, Ana C. Murillo, Mac Schwager
Date: 2024-03-20 00:00:00

This paper introduces CLIPSwarm, a new algorithm designed to automate the modeling of swarm drone formations based on natural language. The algorithm begins by enriching a provided word, to compose a text prompt that serves as input to an iterative approach to find the formation that best matches the provided word. The algorithm iteratively refines formations of robots to align with the textual description, employing different steps for "exploration" and "exploitation". Our framework is currently evaluated on simple formation targets, limited to contour shapes. A formation is visually represented through alpha-shape contours and the most representative color is automatically found for the input word. To measure the similarity between the description and the visual representation of the formation, we use CLIP [1], encoding text and images into vectors and assessing their similarity. Subsequently, the algorithm rearranges the formation to visually represent the word more effectively, within the given constraints of available drones. Control actions are then assigned to the drones, ensuring robotic behavior and collision-free movement. Experimental results demonstrate the system's efficacy in accurately modeling robot formations from natural language descriptions. The algorithm's versatility is showcased through the execution of drone shows in photorealistic simulation with varying shapes. We refer the reader to the supplementary video for a visual reference of the results.
An AI-Assisted Skincare Routine Recommendation System in XR
Authors: Gowravi Malalur Rajegowda, Yannis Spyridis, Barbara Villarini, Vasileios Argyriou
Date: 2024-03-20 00:00:00
Tasks: 16k

In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and extended reality (XR) in the beauty industry. In this paper, we present an AI-assisted skin care recommendation system integrated into an XR platform. The system uses a convolutional neural network (CNN) to analyse an individual's skin type and recommend personalised skin care products in an immersive and interactive manner. Our methodology involves collecting data from individuals through a questionnaire and conducting skin analysis using a provided facial image in an immersive environment. This data is then used to train the CNN model, which recognises the skin type and existing issues and allows the recommendation engine to suggest personalised skin care products. We evaluate our system in terms of the accuracy of the CNN model, which achieves an average score of 93% in correctly classifying existing skin issues. Being integrated into an XR system, this approach has the potential to significantly enhance the beauty industry by providing immersive and engaging experiences to users, leading to more efficient and consistent skincare routines.
MedCycle: Unpaired Medical Report Generation via Cycle-Consistency
Authors: Elad Hirsch, Gefen Dawidowicz, Ayellet Tal
Date: 2024-03-20 00:00:00
Tasks: Medical Report Generation

Generating medical reports for X-ray images presents a significant challenge, particularly in unpaired scenarios where access to paired image-report data for training is unavailable. Previous works have typically learned a joint embedding space for images and reports, necessitating a specific labeling schema for both. We introduce an innovative approach that eliminates the need for consistent labeling schemas, thereby enhancing data accessibility and enabling the use of incompatible datasets. This approach is based on cycle-consistent mapping functions that transform image embeddings into report embeddings, coupled with report auto-encoding for medical report generation. Our model and objectives consider intricate local details and the overarching semantic context within images and reports. This approach facilitates the learning of effective mapping functions, resulting in the generation of coherent reports. It outperforms state-of-the-art results in unpaired chest X-ray report generation, demonstrating improvements in both language and clinical metrics.
Stochastic Geometry Models for Texture Synthesis of Machined Metallic Surfaces: Sandblasting and Milling
Authors: Natascha Jeziorski, Claudia Redenbach
Date: 2024-03-20 00:00:00
Tasks: Defect Detection, Texture Synthesis

Training defect detection algorithms for visual surface inspection systems requires a large and representative set of training data. Often there is not enough real data available which additionally cannot cover the variety of possible defects. Synthetic data generated by a synthetic visual surface inspection environment can overcome this problem. Therefore, a digital twin of the object is needed, whose micro-scale surface topography is modeled by texture synthesis models. We develop stochastic texture models for sandblasted and milled surfaces based on topography measurements of such surfaces. As the surface patterns differ significantly, we use separate modeling approaches for the two cases. Sandblasted surfaces are modeled by a combination of data-based texture synthesis methods that rely entirely on the measurements. In contrast, the model for milled surfaces is procedural and includes all process-related parameters known from the machine settings.
Advancing 6D Pose Estimation in Augmented Reality -- Overcoming Projection Ambiguity with Uncontrolled Imagery
Authors: Mayura Manawadu, Sieun Park, Soon-Yong Park
Date: 2024-03-20 00:00:00
Tasks: 6D Pose Estimation, Pose Estimation

This study addresses the challenge of accurate 6D pose estimation in Augmented Reality (AR), a critical component for seamlessly integrating virtual objects into real-world environments. Our research primarily addresses the difficulty of estimating 6D poses from uncontrolled RGB images, a common scenario in AR applications, which lacks metadata such as focal length. We propose a novel approach that strategically decomposes the estimation of z-axis translation and focal length, leveraging the neural-render and compare strategy inherent in the FocalPose architecture. This methodology not only streamlines the 6D pose estimation process but also significantly enhances the accuracy of 3D object overlaying in AR settings. Our experimental results demonstrate a marked improvement in 6D pose estimation accuracy, with promising applications in manufacturing and robotics. Here, the precise overlay of AR visualizations and the advancement of robotic vision systems stand to benefit substantially from our findings.
MTP: Advancing Remote Sensing Foundation Model via Multi-Task Pretraining
Authors: Di Wang, Jing Zhang, Minqiang Xu, Lin Liu, Dongsheng Wang, Erzhong Gao, Chengxi Han, HaoNan Guo, Bo Du, DaCheng Tao, Liangpei Zhang
Date: 2024-03-20 00:00:00
Tasks: Aerial Scene Classification, Building change detection for remote sensing images, Change Detection, Change detection for remote sensing images, Decoder, image-classification, Image Classification, Instance Segmentation, Object, object-detection, Object Detection, Object Detection In Aerial Images, Oriented Object Detection, Scene Classification, Segmentation, Self-Supervised Learning, Semantic Segmentation

Foundation models have reshaped the landscape of Remote Sensing (RS) by enhancing various image interpretation tasks. Pretraining is an active research topic, encompassing supervised and self-supervised learning methods to initialize model weights effectively. However, transferring the pretrained models to downstream tasks may encounter task discrepancy due to their formulation of pretraining as image classification or object discrimination tasks. In this study, we explore the Multi-Task Pretraining (MTP) paradigm for RS foundation models to address this issue. Using a shared encoder and task-specific decoder architecture, we conduct multi-task supervised pretraining on the SAMRS dataset, encompassing semantic segmentation, instance segmentation, and rotated object detection. MTP supports both convolutional neural networks and vision transformer foundation models with over 300 million parameters. The pretrained models are finetuned on various RS downstream tasks, such as scene classification, horizontal and rotated object detection, semantic segmentation, and change detection. Extensive experiments across 14 datasets demonstrate the superiority of our models over existing ones of similar size and their competitive performance compared to larger state-of-the-art models, thus validating the effectiveness of MTP.
Diversified and Personalized Multi-rater Medical Image Segmentation
Authors: Yicheng Wu, Xiangde Luo, Zhe Xu, Xiaoqing Guo, Lie Ju, ZongYuan Ge, Wenjun Liao, Jianfei Cai
Date: 2024-03-20 00:00:00
Proceeding: CVPR 2024 1
Tasks: Image Segmentation, Medical Image Segmentation, Segmentation, Semantic Segmentation

Annotation ambiguity due to inherent data uncertainties such as blurred boundaries in medical scans and different observer expertise and preferences has become a major obstacle for training deep-learning based medical image segmentation models. To address it, the common practice is to gather multiple annotations from different experts, leading to the setting of multi-rater medical image segmentation. Existing works aim to either merge different annotations into the "groundtruth" that is often unattainable in numerous medical contexts, or generate diverse results, or produce personalized results corresponding to individual expert raters. Here, we bring up a more ambitious goal for multi-rater medical image segmentation, i.e., obtaining both diversified and personalized results. Specifically, we propose a two-stage framework named D-Persona (first Diversification and then Personalization). In Stage I, we exploit multiple given annotations to train a Probabilistic U-Net model, with a bound-constrained loss to improve the prediction diversity. In this way, a common latent space is constructed in Stage I, where different latent codes denote diversified expert opinions. Then, in Stage II, we design multiple attention-based projection heads to adaptively query the corresponding expert prompts from the shared latent space, and then perform the personalized medical image segmentation. We evaluated the proposed model on our in-house Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma dataset and the public lung nodule dataset (i.e., LIDC-IDRI). Extensive experiments demonstrated our D-Persona can provide diversified and personalized results at the same time, achieving new SOTA performance for multi-rater medical image segmentation. Our code will be released at https://github.com/ycwu1997/D-Persona.
Cell Tracking in C. elegans with Cell Position Heatmap-Based Alignment and Pairwise Detection
Authors: Kaito Shiku, Hiromitsu Shirai, Takeshi Ishihara, Ryoma Bise
Date: 2024-03-20 00:00:00
Tasks: Cell Detection, Cell Tracking, Position

3D cell tracking in a living organism has a crucial role in live cell image analysis. Cell tracking in C. elegans has two difficulties. First, cell migration in a consecutive frame is large since they move their head during scanning. Second, cell detection is often inconsistent in consecutive frames due to touching cells and low-contrast images, and these inconsistent detections affect the tracking performance worse. In this paper, we propose a cell tracking method to address these issues, which has two main contributions. First, we introduce cell position heatmap-based non-rigid alignment with test-time fine-tuning, which can warp the detected points to near the positions at the next frame. Second, we propose a pairwise detection method, which uses the information of detection results at the previous frame for detecting cells at the current frame. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of each module, and the proposed method achieved the best performance in comparison.
Unifying Local and Global Multimodal Features for Place Recognition in Aliased and Low-Texture Environments
Authors: Alberto García-Hernández, Riccardo Giubilato, Klaus H. Strobl, Javier Civera, Rudolph Triebel
Date: 2024-03-20 00:00:00
Tasks: Re-Ranking, Simultaneous Localization and Mapping

Perceptual aliasing and weak textures pose significant challenges to the task of place recognition, hindering the performance of Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) systems. This paper presents a novel model, called UMF (standing for Unifying Local and Global Multimodal Features) that 1) leverages multi-modality by cross-attention blocks between vision and LiDAR features, and 2) includes a re-ranking stage that re-orders based on local feature matching the top-k candidates retrieved using a global representation. Our experiments, particularly on sequences captured on a planetary-analogous environment, show that UMF outperforms significantly previous baselines in those challenging aliased environments. Since our work aims to enhance the reliability of SLAM in all situations, we also explore its performance on the widely used RobotCar dataset, for broader applicability. Code and models are available at https://github.com/DLR-RM/UMF
Robust image segmentation model based on binary level set
Authors: Wenqi Zhao
Date: 2024-03-20 00:00:00
Tasks: Image Segmentation, Semantic Segmentation

In order to improve the robustness of traditional image segmentation models to noise, this paper models the illumination term in intensity inhomogeneity images. Additionally, to enhance the model's robustness to noisy images, we incorporate the binary level set model into the proposed model. Compared to the traditional level set, the binary level set eliminates the need for continuous reinitialization. Moreover, by introducing the variational operator GL, our model demonstrates better capability in segmenting noisy images. Finally, we employ the three-step splitting operator method for solving, and the effectiveness of the proposed model is demonstrated on various images.
IIDM: Image-to-Image Diffusion Model for Semantic Image Synthesis
Authors: Feng Liu, Xiaobin Chang
Date: 2024-03-20 00:00:00
Tasks: Denoising, Image Denoising, Image Generation

Semantic image synthesis aims to generate high-quality images given semantic conditions, i.e. segmentation masks and style reference images. Existing methods widely adopt generative adversarial networks (GANs). GANs take all conditional inputs and directly synthesize images in a single forward step. In this paper, semantic image synthesis is treated as an image denoising task and is handled with a novel image-to-image diffusion model (IIDM). Specifically, the style reference is first contaminated with random noise and then progressively denoised by IIDM, guided by segmentation masks. Moreover, three techniques, refinement, color-transfer and model ensembles, are proposed to further boost the generation quality. They are plug-in inference modules and do not require additional training. Extensive experiments show that our IIDM outperforms existing state-of-the-art methods by clear margins. Further analysis is provided via detailed demonstrations. We have implemented IIDM based on the Jittor framework; code is available at https://github.com/ader47/jittor-jieke-semantic_images_synthesis.
Correlation Clustering of Organoid Images
Authors: Jannik Presberger, Rashmiparvathi Keshara, David Stein, Yung Hae Kim, Anne Grapin-Botton, Bjoern Andres
Date: 2024-03-20 00:00:00
Tasks: Clustering

In biological and medical research, scientists now routinely acquire microscopy images of hundreds of morphologically heterogeneous organoids and are then faced with the task of finding patterns in the image collection, i.e., subsets of organoids that appear similar and potentially represent the same morphological class. We adopt models and algorithms for correlating organoid images, i.e., for quantifying the similarity in appearance and geometry of the organoids they depict, and for clustering organoid images by consolidating conflicting correlations. For correlating organoid images, we adopt and compare two alternatives, a partial quadratic assignment problem and a twin network. For clustering organoid images, we employ the correlation clustering problem. Empirically, we learn the parameters of these models, infer a clustering of organoid images, and quantify the accuracy of the inferred clusters, with respect to a training set and a test set we contribute of state-of-the-art light microscopy images of organoids clustered manually by biologists.
Few-shot Oriented Object Detection with Memorable Contrastive Learning in Remote Sensing Images
Authors: Jiawei Zhou, Wuzhou Li, Yi Cao, Hongtao Cai, Xiang Li
Date: 2024-03-20 00:00:00
Tasks: Contrastive Learning, Few-Shot Object Detection, Object, object-detection, Object Detection, Oriented Object Detection

Few-shot object detection (FSOD) has garnered significant research attention in the field of remote sensing due to its ability to reduce the dependency on large amounts of annotated data. However, two challenges persist in this area: (1) axis-aligned proposals, which can result in misalignment for arbitrarily oriented objects, and (2) the scarcity of annotated data still limits the performance for unseen object categories. To address these issues, we propose a novel FSOD method for remote sensing images called Few-shot Oriented object detection with Memorable Contrastive learning (FOMC). Specifically, we employ oriented bounding boxes instead of traditional horizontal bounding boxes to learn a better feature representation for arbitrary-oriented aerial objects, leading to enhanced detection performance. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to address oriented object detection in the few-shot setting for remote sensing images. To address the challenging issue of object misclassification, we introduce a supervised contrastive learning module with a dynamically updated memory bank. This module enables the use of large batches of negative samples and enhances the model's capability to learn discriminative features for unseen classes. We conduct comprehensive experiments on the DOTA and HRSC2016 datasets, and our model achieves state-of-the-art performance on the few-shot oriented object detection task. Code and pretrained models will be released.
Counting Network for Learning from Majority Label
Authors: Kaito Shiku, Shinnosuke Matsuo, Daiki Suehiro, Ryoma Bise
Date: 2024-03-20 00:00:00
Tasks: Multiple Instance Learning

The paper proposes a novel problem in multi-class Multiple-Instance Learning (MIL) called Learning from the Majority Label (LML). In LML, the majority class of instances in a bag is assigned as the bag's label. LML aims to classify instances using bag-level majority classes. This problem is valuable in various applications. Existing MIL methods are unsuitable for LML due to aggregating confidences, which may lead to inconsistency between the bag-level label and the label obtained by counting the number of instances for each class. This may lead to incorrect instance-level classification. We propose a counting network trained to produce the bag-level majority labels estimated by counting the number of instances for each class. This led to the consistency of the majority class between the network outputs and one obtained by counting the number of instances. Experimental results show that our counting network outperforms conventional MIL methods on four datasets The code is publicly available at https://github.com/Shiku-Kaito/Counting-Network-for-Learning-from-Majority-Label.