Application Research on the analysis of Biological detection image segmentation using PDE

Research on infrared image enhancement and segmentation of power equipment based on partial differential equation

A critical review and comparative study on image segmentation-based techniques for pavement crack detection

Image processing is one of the rapidly growing technologies with operations that can be applied to image data which may be in the form of a 2D, 3D or 4D signals. It has created tremendous opportunities for mathematical modeling, analysis, and computation. A novel approach in image processing has been developed, known as PDE (Partial Differential Equations) based image processing. The PDE approach is very promising for solving many problems in image processing because it provides new and more intuitive mathematical models, gives better approximations to the Euclidean geometry of the problem, and is supported by efficient discrete numerical algorithms based on difference approximations. In this paper, we have discussed how Euler Lagrange Equation plays a significant role in solving PDE based image processing problems. The typical image processing problems such as denoising and inpainting can be solved using EL equation. The ROF and Tikhnov models of denoising and Total Variation based inpainting has been implemented and a comparative study is done with the conventional methods. We have considered various well-known objective quality evaluation metrics used in image processing in this comparison. The results show that PDE based image processing techniques outperforms the conventional approaches.

Image processing has largely been done via MATLAB and other programming languages, such as JAVA and C, implementing those Partial Differential Equation (PDE) models for denoising, smoothing, segmentation and restoration. This involves significant effort in writing implementation coding and in designing robust algorithms for image processing activities. In order to avoid such repeated effort such as algorithmic development for numerical solutions of PDE, we propose to use existing software packages which provide very good platforms of PDE solvers. Two commercial software platforms, namely PHYSICA3G and ANSYS, are examined. The former one allows a better interaction to the background coding and the latter one does not allow flexible user interaction with the background. This paper describes the implementation of PDE image processing models on and the design of a user interface with two very different software platforms, taking the advantage of the existing PDE solvers within them. The design logic is discussed in the paper along with numerical experiments on a number of methods, including isotropic model and anisotropic model for denoising and smoothing. Several pictures are used in the numerical experiments and the resulting PSNR ratios are obtained and compared with other work in the literature.

Image segmentation plays an important role in computer vision and image processing. Level set model is a classical image segmentation method. During level set evolution, almost all the level set energy minimization of image segmentation are based on the gradient descent method and the finite difference scheme. The speed of evolution is slow and easy to fall into local minima. In this paper, we propose a fast sweeping optimization algorithm to minimize global cosine fitting (GCF) model. When moving a pixel from the one side region to the another side region of evolving contour, the sweeping algorithm calculates the energy change directly and checks whether the cosine fitting energy is decreased. With this, we can avoid solving the Euler-Lagrange equation and the partial differential equation, which usually take a lot of time. Moreover, our proposal is robust to initial level set contour and it automatically handles the topological variety, algorithm automatic termination and no longer requires the reinitialization step, parameter adjustment and the distance regularization term. The experiments on real noise and synthetic images show the effectiveness of the sweeping algorithm.

This chapter describes the basic concepts of partial differential equations (PDEs) based image modelling and their applications to image restoration. The general basic concepts of partial differential equation (PDE)-based image modelling and processing techniques are discussed for image restoration problems. These techniques can also be used in the design and development of efficient tools for various image processing and vision related tasks such as restoration, enhancement, segmentation, registration, inpainting, shape from shading, 3D reconstruction of objects from multiple views, and many more. As a case study, the topic in consideration is oriented towards image restoration using PDEs formalism since image restoration is considered to be an important pre-processing task for 3D surface geometry, reconstruction, and many other applications. An image may be subjected to various types of noises during its acquisition leading to degraded quality of the image, and hence, the noise must be reduced. The noise may be additive or multiplicative in nature. Here, the PDE-based models for removal of both types of noises are discussed. As examples, some PDE-based schemes have been implemented and their comparative study with other existing techniques has also been presented.

Membrane computing, a recent branch of natural computing, has been gaining momentum attention in the last few decades due to its massive parallelism and efficient computation. Many researchers in the field of membrane computing have proposed sophisticated techniques inspired by cell biology for computer science applications, especially when they considered cell organization in tissues, organs, and most recently, from the organization of neurons. The interdisciplinary applications of membrane computing include, but not limited to computer science, biology, biomedicine, bioinformatics and several other fields such as mathematics, artificial intelligence, automation, economics, to name but a few. Their applications are pertaining to computer graphics, approximate optimization, cryptography, parallel computing and image processing. Hence, in this paper we present an up to date comprehensive literature review pertaining to the application of membrane computing in the area of digital image analysis, especially image segmentation, comprehensively and systematically. We thoroughly investigate the recent advancement in the field of image segmentation using membrane system. Furthermore, we highlight the merits and demerits of various software tools and methods. Finally, we suggest some intuitive future directions in light of the current limitations.

In general, synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging and image processing are two sequential steps in SAR image processing. Due to the large size of SAR images, most image processing algorithms require image segmentation before processing. However, the existence of speckle noise in SAR images, as well as poor contrast and the uneven distribution of gray values in the same target, make SAR images difficult to segment. In order to facilitate the subsequent processing of SAR images, this paper proposes a new method that combines the back-projection algorithm (BPA) and a first-order gradient operator to enhance the edges of SAR images to overcome image segmentation problems. For complex-valued signals, the gradient operator was applied directly to the imaging process. The experimental results of simulated images and real images validate our proposed method. For the simulated scene, the supervised image segmentation evaluation indexes of our method have more than 1.18%, 11.2% and 11.72% improvement on probabilistic Rand index (PRI), variability index (VI), and global consistency error (GCE). The proposed imaging method will make SAR image segmentation and related applications easier.

Toward designing intelligent PDEs for computer vision: An optimal control approach

Image recognition and image processing usually contain the technique of image segmentation. Excellent segmentation results can directly affect the accuracy of image recognition and processing. The essence of image segmentation is to segment each frame of a certain image or a video into multiple specific objects or regions and represent them with different labels. This paper focuses on the segmentation results obtained in image segmentation of images used for intelligent monitoring of Mandarin exams are usually visualized for image analysis. In this paper, we first investigate the performance improvement techniques for semantic segmentation in the image segmentation task for intelligent monitoring of Mandarin exams, improve the pixel classification capability by performing semantic migration, and, for the first time, extend the dataset substantially by style transformation to improve the model’s recognition of advanced features. In addition, to further address the shortcomings of the dataset, this paper improves the performance of image segmentation using synthetic datasets by investigating synthetic dataset image segmentation improvement techniques that reduce the reliance on manually annotated datasets. Image segmentation techniques continue to advance, and there are even thousands of commonly used segmentation methods for image segmentation development to date. Among them, they can be broadly classified as region-based segmentation methods, threshold-based segmentation methods, edge-based segmentation methods, specific theory-based segmentation methods, and deep learning-based segmentation methods. However, the methods used in this paper have all been experimentally demonstrated to improve the effectiveness of the techniques and proved to outperform other existing methods in the same field in the publicly available datasets LSUN, Cityscapes, and GTA5 datasets, respectively.

As the resolution of digital images increase significantly, the processing of images becomes more challenging in terms of accuracy and efficiency. In this paper, we consider image segmentation by solving a partial differentiation equation (PDE) model based on the Mumford-Shah functional. We develop a new algorithm by combining anisotropic mesh adaptation for image representation and finite element method for solving the PDE model. Comparing to traditional algorithms solved by finite difference method, our algorithm provides faster and better results without the need to resizing the images to lower quality. We also extend the algorithm to segment images with multiple regions.

Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) tags have been intensively applied in biological detection and imaging in recent years. However, both applications often suffer from high Raman background signals from containers such as 96-well plates or autofluorescence signals from biological tissues. Here, we greatly mitigate the influence of these high background Raman or fluorescent signals in both biological detection and imaging using two multivariate curve resolution (MCR) methods including negative matrix factorization and classical least squares. The limit of detection is lowered by one order of magnitude after applying MCR methods to detect target SERS tags in a 96-well plate. Additionally, in a multiplexed cell imaging assay, both false-negative and false-positive results were eliminated with the aid of MCR methods. Accordingly, we suggest a wider application of MCR methods during both biological detection and imaging of SERS tags with high background signals.

Image segmentation is an important problem in image processing that has a wide range of applications in medicine, biomedicine and other fields of science and engineering. During the non-learning-based approaches, the techniques based on the partial differential equations and calculus of variation have attracted a lot of attention and acquired many achievements. Among the variational models, the Chan-Vese variational segmentation is a well-known model to solve the image segmentation problem. The level set methods are highly accurate methods to solve this model, and they do not depend on the edges. However, the performance of these methods depends on the level set function and its initial boundary too much. In this paper, we propose automatic initial boundary generation methods based on the edge detectors: Sobel, Prewitt, Roberts and Canny. In the experiments, we prove that among the four proposed initial boundary generation methods, the method based on the Canny edge detector brings the highest performance for the segmentation method. By combining the proposed initial boundary generation method based on the Canny edge detector, we implement the Chan-Vese model to segment biomedical images. Experimental results indicate we obtain improved segmentation results and compare different edge detectors in terms of performance.

This article reviews the various image processing techniques in MATLAB and also hardware implementation in FPGA using Xilinx system generator. Image processing can be termed as processing of images using mathematical operations by using various forms of signal processing techniques. The main aim of image processing is to extract important features from an image data and process it in a desired manner and to visually enhance or to statistically evaluate the desired aspect of the image. This article provides an insight into the various approaches of Digital Image processing techniques in Matlab. This article also provides an introduction to FPGA and also a step by step tutorial in handling Xilinx System Generator. The Xilinx System Generator tool is a new application in image processing and offers a friendly environment design for the processing. This tool support software simulation, but the most important is that can synthesize in FPGAs hardware, with the parallelism, robust and speed, this features are essentials in image processing. Implementation of these algorithms on a FPGA is having advantage of using large memory and embedded multipliers. Advances in FPGA technology with the development of sophisticated and efficient tools for modelling, simulation and synthesis have made FPGA a highly useful platform.

The first quarter of 2007 started as an active season for the real-time image processing community. The annual SPIE Conference on Real-Time Image Processing, which was held in San Jose, CA, highlighted recent developments in this growing branch of image processing. As one of the few regular events with its focus matching that of JRTIP, one witnessed the growth in applications of real-time image and video processing. The conference served as an effective instrument to foster the dissemination of recent results and to leverage the cohesion of the real time image processing community. The preparations for the next SPIE Conference on Real-Time Image Processing in 2008 are already progressing and its call-for-papers is included at the end of this issue. In 2007, JRTIP is going to seek involvement of more scientists in the field of real-time image and video processing. After 1 year of operation, the editors-in-chief have started to recruit additional associate editors to enlarge the expertise base of the editorial board, to solicit manuscript submissions from potential authors, and to make the reviewing process more efficient. Interested colleagues should contact the editors-in-chief expressing their Associate Editor candidature in support of one or more fields within the focus of JRTIP. In addition, they wish to encourage researchers to act as guest editors for special issues on any real-time image or video processing related topics of interest to them. It is possible to schedule two special issues in 2007, provided that a draft call-for-papers is sent to the editors-in-chief as soon as possible. The third issue of JRTIP presents four articles, two are survey papers and two are original research papers. These articles address different real-time image processing perspectives ranging from algorithmic to hardware issues. The first survey paper deals with the real-time filtering in 2D and 3D using ordered statistics that are supported by a rich set of experimental results derived from several algorithmic variations. Performance measurements are used to demonstrate the effect of noise suppression and preservation of fine image structures and to show the DSP implementation of denoising filters. The second survey paper introduces a non-invasive analysis of dynamic processes in living cells using microscopic computer vision techniques for understanding the interactions between cellular and molecular functional units and for providing novel insights into the cell biology. The third article is an original research paper covering a machine vision application involving vision-based position sensing for aerial refueling of unmanned aerial vehicles in real-time. A full image processing chain is investigated and tested in a MATLAB/Simulink soft real-time environment as well as in a Linux/RTAI hard real-time environment. The feasibility of the real-time implementation is shown using off-the-shelf commercial hardware. The fourth article is another original research paper describing a hardware architecture for real-time fractal coding for image compression. The introduced parallel hardware architecture contains units for domain M. F. Carlsohn (&) Ingenieurberatung fur Computer Vision und Bildkommunikation, Am Heiddamm 36g, 28355 Bremen, Germany e-mail: matthias.carlsohn@t-online.de