High dynamic range | EPFL Graph Search

High dynamic range (HDR) is a dynamic range higher than usual, synonyms are wide dynamic range, extended dynamic range, expanded dynamic range. The term is often used in discussing the dynamic range of various signals such as s, videos, audio or radio. It may apply to the means of recording, processing, and reproducing such signals including analog and digitized signals. The term is also the name of some of the technologies or techniques allowing to achieve high dynamic range images, videos, or audio. Imaging In this context, the term high dynamic range means there is a lot of variation in light levels within a scene or an image. The dynamic range refers to the range of luminosity between the brightest area and the darkest area of that scene or image. (HDRI) refers to the set of imaging technologies and techniques that allow to increase the dynamic range of images or videos. It covers the acquisition, creation, storage, distribution and display of images and videos. Mo

Exploring information retrieval using image sparse representations

William Guicquéro

New advances in the field of image sensors (especially in CMOS technology) tend to question the conventional methods used to acquire the image. Compressive Sensing (CS) plays a major role in this, especially to unclog the Analog to Digital Converters which are generally representing the bottleneck of this type of sensors. In addition, CS eliminates traditional compression processing stages that are performed by embedded digital signal processors dedicated to this purpose. The interest is twofold because it allows both to consistently reduce the amount of data to be converted but also to suppress digital processing performed out of the sensor chip. For the moment, regarding the use of CS in image sensors, the main route of exploration as well as the intended applications aims at reducing power consumption related to these components (i.e. ADC & DSP represent 99% of the total power consumption). More broadly, the paradigm of CS allows to question or at least to extend the Nyquist-Shannon sampling theory. This thesis shows developments in the field of image sensors demonstrating that is possible to consider alternative applications linked to CS. Indeed, advances are presented in the fields of hyperspectral imaging, super-resolution, high dynamic range, high speed and non-uniform sampling. In particular, three research axes have been deepened, aiming to design proper architectures and acquisition processes with their associated reconstruction techniques taking advantage of image sparse representations. How the on-chip implementation of Compressed Sensing can relax sensor constraints, improving the acquisition characteristics (speed, dynamic range, power consumption) ? How CS can be combined with simple analysis to provide useful image features for high level applications (adding semantic information) and improve the reconstructed image quality at a certain compression ratio ? Finally, how CS can improve physical limitations (i.e. spectral sensitivity and pixel pitch) of imaging systems without a major impact neither on the sensing strategy nor on the optical elements involved ? A CMOS image sensor has been developed and manufactured during this Ph.D. to validate concepts such as the High Dynamic Range - CS. A new design approach was employed resulting in innovative solutions for pixels addressing and conversion to perform specific acquisition in a compressed mode. On the other hand, the principle of adaptive CS combined with the non-uniform sampling has been developed. Possible implementations of this type of acquisition are proposed. Finally, preliminary works are exhibited on the use of Liquid Crystal Devices to allow hyperspectral imaging combined with spatial super-resolution. The conclusion of this study can be summarized as follows: CS must now be considered as a toolbox for defining more easily compromises between the different characteristics of the sensors: integration time, converters speed, dynamic range, resolution and digital processing resources. However, if CS relaxes some material constraints at the sensor level, it is possible that the collected data are difficult to interpret and process at the decoder side, involving massive computational resources compared to so-called conventional techniques. The application field is wide, implying that for a targeted application, an accurate characterization of the constraints concerning both the sensor (encoder), but also the decoder need to be defined.

EPFL2015

An Algorithm Architecture Co-Design for CMOS Compressive High Dynamic Range Imaging

Antoine Dupret, William Guicquéro, Pierre Vandergheynst

Standard image sensors feature dynamic range about 60 to 70 dB while the light flux of natural scenes may be over 120 dB. Most imagers dedicated to address such dynamic ranges, need specific, and large pixels. However, canonical imagers can be used for high dynamic range (HDR) by performing multicapture acquisitions to compensate saturation. This technique is made possible at the expense of the need for large memory requirements and an increase of the overall acquisition time. On the other hand, the implementation of compressive sensing (CS) raises the same issues regarding the modifications of both the pixel and the read-out circuitry. Assuming HDR images are sufficiently sparse, CS claims they can be reconstructed from few random linear measurements. A novel CS-based image sensor design is presented in this paper allowing a compressive acquisition without changing the classical pixel design, as well as the overall sensor architecture. In addition to regular CS, HDR CS is enabled thanks to specific time diagrams of the control signals. An alternative nondestructive column-based readout mode constitutes the main change compared to a traditional functioning. The HDR reconstruction, which is also presented in this paper, is based on merging the information of multicapture compressed measurements while taking into account noise sources and nonlinearities introduced by both the proposed acquisition scheme and its practical implementation.

Ieee-Inst Electrical Electronics Engineers Inc2016

New support vector algorithms for multicategorical data applied to real-time object recognition

Silvio Borer

Humans have the ability to learn. Having seen an object we can recognise it later. We can do this because our nervous system uses an efficient and robust visual processing and capabilities to learn from sensory input. On the other hand, designing algorithms to learn from visual data is a difficult task. More than fifty years ago, Rosenblatt proposed the perceptron algorithm. The perceptron learns from data examples a linear separation, which categorises the data in two classes. The algorithm served as a simple model of neuronal learning. Two further important ideas were added to the perceptron. First, to look for a maximal margin of separation. Second, to separate the data in a possibly high dimensional feature space, related nonlinearly to the initial space of the data, and allowing nonlinear separations. Important is that learning in the feature space can be performed implicitly and hence efficiently with the use of a kernel, a measure of similarity between two data points. The combination of these ideas led to the support vector machine, an efficient algorithm with high performance. In this thesis, we design an algorithm to learn the categorisation of data into multiple classes. This algorithm is applied to a real-time vision task, the recognition of human faces. Our algorithm can be seen as a generalisation of the support vector machine to multiple classes. It is shown how the algorithm can be efficiently implemented. To avoid a large number of small but time consuming updates of the variables limited accuracy computations are used. We prove a bound on the accuracy needed to find a solution. The proof motivates the use of a heuristic, which further increases efficiency. We derive a second implementation using a stochastic gradient descent method. This implementation is appealing as it has a direct interpretation and can be used in an online setting. Conceptually our approach differs from standard support vector approaches because examples can be rejected and are not necessarily attributed to one of the categories. This is natural in the context of a vision task. At any time, the sensory input can be something unseen before and hence cannot be recognised. Our visual data are images acquired with the recently developed adaptive vision sensor from CSEM. The vision sensor has two important features. First, like the human retina, it is locally adaptive to light intensity. Hence, the sensor has a high dynamic range. Second, the image gradient is computed on the sensor chip and is thus available directly from the sensor in real time. The sensor output is time encoded. The information about a strong local contrast is transmitted rst and the weakest contrast information at the end. To recognise faces, possibly moving in front of the camera, the sensor images have to be processed in a robust way. Representing images to exhibit local invariances is a common yet unsolved problem in computer vision. We develop the following representation of the sensor output. The image gradient information is decomposed into local histograms over contrast intensity. The histograms are local in position and direction of the gradient. Hence, the representation has local invariance properties to translation, rotation, and scaling. The histograms can be efficiently computed because the sensor output is already ordered with respect to the local contrast. Our support vector approach for multicategorical data uses the local histogram features to learn the recognition of faces. As recognition is time consuming, a face detection stage is used beforehand. We learn the detection features in an unsupervised manner using a specially designed optimisation procedure. The combined system to detect and recognise faces of a small group of individuals is efficient, robust, and reliable.