Section: New Results

Others

Optimized image resizing using seam carving and scaling

Keywords : Image resizing, Image distance function, IMED, DCD.

Participants : Weiming Dong, Ning Zhou, Jean-Claude Paul, Xiaopeng Zhang.

We present a novel method for content-aware image resizing based on optimization of a well-defined image distance function, which preserves both the important regions and the global visual effect (the background or other decorative objects) of an image. The method operates by joint use of seam carving and image scaling. The principle behind our method is the use of a bidirectional similarity function of image Euclidean distance (IMED), while cooperating with a dominant color descriptor (DCD) similarity and seam energy variation. The function is suitable for the quantitative evaluation of the resizing result and the determination of the best seam carving number. Different from the previous simplex-mode approaches, our method takes the advantages of both discrete and continuous methods. The technique is useful in image resizing for both reduction/retargeting and enlarging. We also show that this approach can be extended to indirect image resizing [18] .

Robust tile-based texture synthesis using artificial immune system

Keywords : Texture synthesis, ω-tile, Sample patches selection, Clonal selection, Artificial immune system.

Participants : Weiming Dong, Ning Zhou, Jean-Claude Paul.

One significant problem in tile-based texture synthesis is the presence of conspicuous seams in the tiles. The reason is that sample patches employed as primary patterns of the tile set may not be well stitched if carelessly picked. In this paper, we introduce a robust approach that can stably generate an -tile set of high quality and pattern diversity. First, an extendable rule is introduced to increase the number of sample patches to vary the patterns in an -tile set. Second, in contrast to other concurrent techniques that randomly choose sample patches for tile construction, ours uses artificial immune system (AIS) to select the feasible patches from the input example. This operation ensures the quality of the whole tile set. Experimental results verify the high quality and efficiency of the proposed algorithm [17] .

Review on recent patents in texture synthesis

Keywords : Texture synthesis, neighborhood matching, block sampling, anisometric synthesis, texture magnification, image repairing.

Participants : Weiming Dong, Jean-Claude Paul.

Computer graphics applications often use textures to render synthetic images. These textures can be obtained from a variety of sources such as hand-drawn pictures or scanned photographs. Texture synthesis is an alternative way to create textures. Because synthetic textures can be made any size, visual repetition is avoided. The goal of texture synthesis can be stated as follows: given a texture example, synthesize a new texture that, when perceived by a human observer, appears to be generated by the same underlying process. This paper reviews the recent patents on texture synthesis schemes. The key components in a texture synthesis algorithm, such as neighborhood matching, block sampling, anisometric synthesis, etc., are discussed. Then we discuss the applications of texture synthesis in texture magnification and image repairing. This paper also points out future works on this issue [16] .

Geometry Textures and Applications

Keywords : Geometry texture, Mesostructure.

Participants : Rodrigo de Toledo, Bin Wang, Bruno Lévy.

Geometry textures are a novel geometric representation for surfaces based on height maps. The visualization is done through a GPU ray casting algorithm applied to the whole object. At rendering time, the fine-scale details (mesostructures) are reconstructed preserving original quality. Visualizing surfaces with geometry textures allows a natural LOD behavior. There are numerous applications that can benefit from the use of geometry textures. In this paper, besides a mesostructure visualization survey, we present geometry textures with three possible applications: rendering of solid models, geological surfaces visualization and surface smoothing [15] .

High quality solid texture synthesis using position and index histogram

Keywords : Solid texture, Texture synthesis, Position histogram matching, Index histogram matching.

Participants : Jiating Chen, Bin Wang.

The synthesis quality is one of the most important aspects in solid texture synthesis algorithms. In recent years several methods are proposed to generate high quality solid textures. However, these existing methods often suffer from the synthesis artifacts such as blurring, missing texture structures, introducing aberrant voxel colors, and so on. In this paper, we introduce a novel algorithm for synthesizing high quality solid textures from 2D exemplars. We first analyze the relevant factors for further improvements of the synthesis quality, and then adopt an optimization framework with the k-coherence search and the discrete solver for solid texture synthesis. The texture optimization approach is integrated with two new kinds of histogram matching methods, position and index histogram matching, which effectively cause the global statistics of the synthesized solid textures to match those of the exemplars. Experimental results show that our algorithm outperforms or at least is comparable to the previous solid texture synthesis algorithms in terms of the synthesis quality [13] .