DynaHull: Density-centric Dynamic Point Filtering in Point Clouds

In semantic network-based dynamic scene visual SLAM methods, the masks generated by semantic networks often over-cover dynamic objects, resulting in parts of the static background being mistakenly included in the masks. Furthermore, the system fails to identify passively moving potential dynamic objects outside the masks, which impacts the pose estimation effect. To address these challenges, this paper proposes a mask-filtering method that integrates image depth information. By utilizing the consistency of object depth, this approach effectively eliminates background regions mistakenly included in the mask. Subsequently, we developed a regional dynamic point rejection strategy and proposed an anomaly detection method based on an adaptive Gaussian model. By constructing an adaptive Gaussian model for dynamic points inside the mask, setting dynamic thresholds, and updating the model parameters, this method can detect potential dynamic points outside the mask. It effectively reduces the impact of potential dynamic objects on the system’s pose estimation. Finally, this paper presents a dynamic Gaussian SLAM system based on the ORB-SLAM3 framework, named DG-SLAM. This system is used for pose estimation and dense point cloud construction, improving localization accuracy in dynamic scenes. To validate the performance of the DG-SLAM system, we conducted tests on the TUM RGBD dataset and in real-world scenarios, comparing it with ORB-SLAM3, DynaSLAM, and SG-SLAM. Compared to ORB-SLAM3, DG-SLAM achieves an average improvement of 94.54% and a minimum improvement of 89.34% in positioning accuracy on the TUM and Bonn datasets. Experimental results show that DG-SLAM can effectively detect and eliminate the interference of potential dynamic feature points in the scene, achieving good localization accuracy and strong robustness in various dynamic environments.

Affordable prices for 3D laser range finders and mature software solutions for registering multiple point clouds in a common coordinate system paved the way for new areas of application for 3D point clouds. Nowadays we see 3D laser scanners being used not only by digital surveying experts but also by law enforcement officials, construction workers or archaeologists. Whether the purpose is digitizing factory production lines, preserving historic sites as digital heritage or recording environments for gaming or virtual reality applications -- it is hard to imagine a scenario in which the final point cloud must also contain the points of objects like factory workers, pedestrians, cars or flocks of birds. For most post-processing tasks, moving objects are undesirable not least because moving objects will appear in scans multiple times or are distorted due to their motion relative to the scanner rotation. The main contributions of this work are two postprocessing steps for already registered 3D point clouds. The first method is a new change detection approach based on a voxel grid which allows partitioning the input points into static and dynamic points using explicit change detection and subsequently remove the latter for a point cloud. The second method uses this cleaned point cloud as input for detecting collisions between points of the environment point cloud and a point cloud of a model that is moved through the scene. Our approach on explicit change detection is compared to the state of the art using multiple datasets including the popular KITTI dataset. We show how our solution achieves similar or better F1-scores than an existing solution while at the same time being faster. To detect collisions we do not produce a mesh but approximate the raw point cloud data by spheres or cylindrical volumes. We show how our data structures allow efficient nearest neighbor queries that make our CPU-only approach comparable to a massively-parallel algorithm running on a GPU. The utilized algorithms and data structures are discussed in detail. All our software is freely available for download under the terms of the GNU General Public license. Most of the datasets used in this thesis are freely available as well. We provide shell scripts that allow one to directly reproduce the quantitative results shown in this thesis for easy verification of our findings.

Motivation: Certain studies use short-TE MRS to estimate metabolites such as gamma-aminobutyric acid. The findings of such studies hinge on the correlation of this technique to the gold-standard edited MRS technique. Goal(s): We investigate how the false negative rate and false positive rate of studies vary as a function of correlation between short-TE and MEGA-edited metabolite estimates. Approach: Simulated data was used to numerically estimate the false positive and false negative rates, using parameters obtained from the literature. Results: We show that these studies can have largely inflated false positive and false negative rates as compared to their nominally designed values. Impact: The false negative and false positive rate can be markedly inflated when using short-TE MRS to estimate metabolites such as gamma-aminobutyric acid. This calls for increased caution in interpreting results, and the accommodation of these effects when designing statistical analyses.

Dynamic reconstruction and spatiotemporal novel‐view synthesis of non‐rigidly deforming scenes recently gained increased attention. While existing work achieves impressive quality and performance on multi‐view or teleporting camera setups, most methods fail to efficiently and faithfully recover motion and appearance from casual monocular captures. This paper contributes to the field by introducing a new method for dynamic novel view synthesis from monocular video, such as casual smartphone captures. Our approach represents the scene as a dynamic neural point cloud, an implicit time‐conditioned point distribution that encodes local geometry and appearance in separate hash‐encoded neural feature grids for static and dynamic regions. By sampling a discrete point cloud from our model, we can efficiently render high‐quality novel views using a fast differentiable rasterizer and neural rendering network. Similar to recent work, we leverage advances in neural scene analysis by incorporating data‐driven priors like monocular depth estimation and object segmentation to resolve motion and depth ambiguities originating from the monocular captures. In addition to guiding the optimization process, we show that these priors can be exploited to explicitly initialize our scene representation to drastically improve optimization speed and final image quality. As evidenced by our experimental evaluation, our dynamic point cloud model not only enables fast optimization and real‐time frame rates for interactive applications, but also achieves competitive image quality on monocular benchmark sequences. Our code and data are available online https://moritzkappel.github.io/projects/dnpc/.

Normal Distribution Transform (NDT) algorithm plays the role of detecting the relative pose of the vehicle in high-precision map. In this paper, a method of setting downsampling factor and grid factor for NDT relocation algorithm in dynamic environment is proposed, which can solve the problems of excessive NDT relocation error and location loss caused by dynamic objects accounting for 1 % to 35 % of the volume of scanning point cloud in vehicle environment. To simulate a real dynamic point cloud environment, the single-frame LiDAR point cloud space is voxelized into a mesh. Each grid is assigned a random number evenly distributed between 0 and 1. The threshold value for whether to add a Gaussian noise point is also set. Seven representative dynamic objects on the highway are selected. The threshold value of probability distribution function of Gaussian noise object needs to be set. Then the volume content of the dynamic object in the single frame point cloud space is calculated according to the set threshold value by using the definite integral. By changing the content and volume of dynamic obstacles in a dynamic environment, the effects of the downsampling factor and the grid factor on the accuracy of the repositioning trajectory are obtained. The resampling and mesh coefficients are optimized based on the analysis of the repositioning trajectory accuracy. The results show that When the current sampling factor is fixed, the grid factor of the NDT algorithm is proportional to the RMSE factor. When the NDT grid factor is fixed and the down sampling factor is equal to the side length of the obstacle, the NDT relocation accuracy is the highest and reaches the local optimum.

This paper reviews the latest research progress of visual SLAM in dynamic scenes. The improved algorithms dependent on deep learning and multi-sensor fusion are discussed. First of all, the challenges of traditional visual SLAM in dynamic environments are stated, especially the interference of high dynamic objects on system feature extraction, pose estimation and mapping. Then, the application of several object detection technologies such as YOLOv5 and YOLOv7 in dynamic visual SLAM was analyzed in detail. These methods significantly improve the positioning precision and robustness of the system by identifying and eliminating dynamic feature points in the scene. In addition, this paper explores the visual SLAM system combining semantic segmentation and geometric constraint optimization, and finally introduces the multi-sensor SLAM method combining IMU data, point cloud data and visual information. Experimental results show that these improved algorithms have a significant improvement in positioning accuracy and system robustness compared with traditional visual SLAM algorithms under TUM and other dynamic data sets.

Ranaviruses have been identified as the etiologic agent in many amphibian die-offs across the globe. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is commonly used to detect ranavirus infection in amphibian hosts, but the test results may vary between tissue samples obtained by lethal and non-lethal procedures. Testing liver samples for infection is a common lethal sampling technique to estimate ranavirus prevalence because the pathogen often targets this organ and the liver is easy to identify and collect. However, tail clips or swabs may be more practicable for ranavirus surveillance programs compared with collecting and euthanizing animals, especially for uncommon species. Using PCR results from liver samples for comparison, we defined false-positive test results as occurrences when a non-lethal technique indicated positive but the liver sample was negative. Similarly, we defined false-negative test results as occurrences when a non-lethal technique was negative but the liver sample was positive. Using these decision rules, we estimated false-negative and false-positive rates for tail clips and swabs. Our study was conducted in a controlled facility using American bullfrog Lithobates catesbeianus tadpoles; false-positive and false-negative rates were estimated after different periods of time following exposure to ranavirus. False-negative and false-positive rates were 20 and 6%, respectively, for tail samples, and 22 and 12%, respectively, for swabs. False-negative rates were constant over time, but false-positive rates decreased with post-exposure duration. Our results suggest that non-lethal sampling techniques can be useful for ranavirus surveillance, although the prevalence of infection may be underestimated when compared to results obtained with liver samples.

The Effect of Testing Reliability on Visual Field Sensitivity in Normal Eyes: The Singapore Chinese Eye Study

Dynamic 3D point clouds enable the immersive user experience and thus have become increasingly more popular in volumetric video streaming applications. When being streamed over best-effort networks, point cloud frames may suffer from lost or late packets, leading to non-trivial quality degradation. To solve this problem, we proposed the very first error concealment pipeline framework, which comprises five stages: pre-processing, matching, motion estimation, prediction, and post-processing. Alternative algorithms can be developed for each stage, while algorithms of different stages could be mixed and matched into pipelines for end-to-end performance evaluations. We discussed the design goal and proposed multiple algorithms for each stage. These algorithms were then quantitatively compared using dynamic 3D point cloud sequences with diverse characteristics. Based on the comparison results, we proposed four representative pipelines for: (i) diverse degrees of motion variance, i.e., minor versus significant, and (ii) different application requirements, i.e., high quality versus low overhead. Extensive end-to-end evaluations of our proposed pipelines demonstrated their superior concealed quality over the 3D frame-copy method in both: (i) 3D metrics, by up to 5.32 dB in GPSNR and 1.7 dB in CPSNR,and (ii) 2D metrics, by up to 2.22 dB in PSNR, 0.06 in SSIM, and 11.67 in VMAF. Adding to that, a user study with 15 subjects indicated that our best-performing pipeline achieved 100% preference winning rate over the state-of-the-art learning-based interpolation algorithms while consuming merely up to 8.55% of running time.

To address the degradation of visual simultaneous localization and mapping (VSLAM) pose estimation accuracy caused by extensive moving objects and the resulting contamination of feature points in indoor dynamic environments, this study proposes a dynamic feature point rejection strategy that integrates a You Only Look Once (YOLO) family detector, YOLO11, with the Lucas–Kanade (LK) optical flow method within the ORB_SLAM3 framework. First, YOLO11 is employed to detect potentially dynamic targets such as pedestrians in the image, and ORB features extracted within the detection bounding boxes are labeled as high-risk dynamic points. Subsequently, based on pyramidal LK optical flow, the motion consistency of feature points is analyzed across multiple frames, and a secondary discrimination is performed on features located at the edges and in the vicinity of the detection boxes. In this way, feature points that conform to a static motion model are maximally preserved, thereby alleviating the excessive removal and misclassification of static points caused by oversized detection boxes. On this basis, a new map is reconstructed using the filtered static feature points, and the pose estimation process is further refined. Experiments on multiple indoor dynamic scenarios demonstrate that, compared with the original ORB_SLAM3, the proposed method effectively suppresses dynamic interference, enhances the stability of feature points, and significantly improves pose estimation accuracy and trajectory continuity, thus providing a valuable reference for robust VSLAM applications in dynamic environments.

To evaluate the false-negative and false-positive error rates both in a screening and a non-screening population. A total of 4192 prostatic biopsies were reported in a 6-year period by 15 consultant histopathologists, two of whom had an interest in uropathology and were deemed to be specialists (J.O. and C.S.). All biopsies were reviewed prior to the multidisciplinary team (MDT) meeting. The overall false-negative rate was 1.7% (screening 2.1%, non-screening 1.5%). The overall false-positive rate was 0.5% (screening 0.9%, non-screening 0.4%). These error rates varied among pathologists, with the false-negative rate ranging from 0% to 9.3%, and the false-positive rate ranging from 0% to 3.8%. The false-negative rate was three times greater than the false-positive rate, showing that detection of significant pathology is far greater in the negative biopsies. More errors occurred in the screening population than in the non-screening population. The consultants making the most errors were non-specialists, but the specialists also made false-negative errors, suggesting that just using specialist reporting alone would not have eradicated errors.

In indoor dynamic scenes, traditional visual simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) algorithms based on RGB-D cameras incorrectly use dynamic features to estimate the poses of the cameras, and do not fully utilize the geometric information in the scenes, resulting in the low positioning accuracy and robustness of SLAM systems. To solve this problem, this paper proposes an RGB-D SLAM algorithm based on multiple geometric features and semantic segmentation. The core of our SLAM system is the proposed robust exclusion method of dynamic point and line features. The method consists of the following three steps: (a) identify potential dynamic point features using motion consistency checks; (b) obtain potential motion regions via semantic segmentation, and then determine dynamic regions by combining these with dynamic point features; (c) remove point and line features in dynamic regions. The exclusion method of dynamic point and line features can be easily integrated into RGB-D SLAM systems for improving the accuracy and robustness of SLAM systems in dynamic scenes. Experimental results on the Technische Universität München (TUM) dataset demonstrate that the proposed algorithm has better positioning accuracy and stability than the original dynamic semantic (DS-SLAM) algorithm in dynamic environments. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is verified by comparison with other classical visual SLAM algorithms. Better mapping performance is achieved by this proposed algorithm in actual indoor scenes.

To address the challenges of visual SLAM algorithms in unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) during nearshore navigation or docking, where dynamic feature points degrade localization accuracy and dynamic objects impede static dense mapping, this study proposes an improved visual SLAM algorithm that removes dynamic feature points. Building upon the ORB-SLAM3 framework, the improved SLAM algorithm integrates a shore segmentation module and a dynamic region elimination module, while enabling static dense point cloud mapping. The system first implements shore segmentation based on Otsu’s method to generate masks covering water and sky regions, ensuring the SLAM system avoids extracting interfering feature points from these areas. Secondly, the deep learning network YOLOv8n-seg is employed to detect priori dynamic objects, with the motion consistency check method to identify non-priori dynamic feature points, collectively removing dynamic feature points. Additionally, the ELAS algorithm computes disparity maps, integrating depth information and dynamic object information to construct a static dense map. Experimental results demonstrate that, compared to the original ORB-SLAM3, the improved SLAM algorithm achieves superior localization accuracy in dynamic nearshore environments, significantly reduces the impact of dynamic objects on pose estimation, and successfully constructs ghosting-free static dense point cloud maps.

Chapter 5 - Data Preprocessing and Feature Extraction

An Evaluation of Conventional Culture, invA PCR, and the Real-Time PCR iQ-Check Kit as Detection Tools for Salmonella in Naturally Contaminated Premarket and Retail Turkey