This thesis introduces spatial filtering, which is a technique to extend the time step size beyond the conventional stability limit for the Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) method, at the expense of transforming field nodes between the spatial domain and the discrete spatial-frequency domain and removing undesired spatial-frequency components at every FDTD update cycle. The spatially-filtered FDTD method is demonstrated to be almost as accurate as and more efficient than the conventional FDTD method via theories and numerical examples. Then, this thesis combines spatial filtering and an existing subgridding scheme to form the spatially-filtered subgridding scheme. The spatially-filtered subgridding scheme is more efficient than existing subgridding schemes because the former allows the time step size used in the dense mesh to be larger than the dense mesh CFL limit. However, trade-offs between accuracy and efficiency are required in complicated structures.

Face verification is a challenging pattern recognition problem. The face is a biometric that, we as humans, know can be recognised. However, the face is highly deformable and its appearance alters significantly when the pose, illumination or expression changes. These changes in appearance are most notable for texture images, or two-dimensional (2D) data. But the underlying structure of the face, or three dimensional (3D) data, is not changed by pose or illumination variations. Over the past five years methods have been investigated to combine 2D and 3D face data to improve the accuracy and robustness of face verification. Much of this research has examined the fusion of a 2D verification system and a 3D verification system, known as multi-modal classifier score fusion. These verification systems usually compare two feature vectors (two image representations), a and b, using distance or angular-based similarity measures. However, this does not provide the most complete description of the features being compared as the distances describe at best the covariance of the data, or the second order statistics (for instance Mahalanobis based measures). A more complete description would be obtained by describing the distribution of the feature vectors. However, feature distribution modelling is rarely applied to face verification because a large number of observations is required to train the models. This amount of data is usually unavailable and so this research examines two methods for overcoming this data limitation: 1. the use of holistic difference vectors of the face, and 2. by dividing the 3D face into Free-Parts. The permutations of the holistic difference vectors is formed so that more observations are obtained from a set of holistic features. On the other hand, by dividing the face into parts and considering each part separately many observations are obtained from each face image; this approach is referred to as the Free-Parts approach. The extra observations from both these techniques are used to perform holistic feature distribution modelling and Free-Parts feature distribution modelling respectively. It is shown that the feature distribution modelling of these features leads to an improved 3D face verification system and an effective 2D face verification system. Using these two feature distribution techniques classifier score fusion is then examined. This thesis also examines methods for performing classifier fusion score fusion. Classifier score fusion attempts to combine complementary information from multiple classifiers. This complementary information can be obtained in two ways: by using different algorithms (multi-algorithm fusion) to represent the same face data for instance the 2D face data or by capturing the face data with different sensors (multimodal fusion) for instance capturing 2D and 3D face data. Multi-algorithm fusion is approached as combining verification systems that use holistic features and local features (Free-Parts) and multi-modal fusion examines the combination of 2D and 3D face data using all of the investigated techniques. The results of the fusion experiments show that multi-modal fusion leads to a consistent improvement in performance. This is attributed to the fact that the data being fused is collected by two different sensors, a camera and a laser scanner. In deriving the multi-algorithm and multi-modal algorithms a consistent framework for fusion was developed. The consistent fusion framework, developed from the multi-algorithm and multimodal experiments, is used to combine multiple algorithms across multiple modalities. This fusion method, referred to as hybrid fusion, is shown to provide improved performance over either fusion system on its own. The experiments show that the final hybrid face verification system reduces the False Rejection Rate from 8:59% for the best 2D verification system and 4:48% for the best 3D verification system to 0:59% for the hybrid verification system; at a False Acceptance Rate of 0:1%.

Automated Face Recognition is the process of determining a subject's identity from digital imagery of their face without user intervention. The term in fact encompasses two distinct tasks; Face Verficiation is the process of verifying a subject's claimed identity while Face Identification involves selecting the most likely identity from a database of subjects. This dissertation focuses on the task of Face Verification, which has a myriad of applications in security ranging from border control to personal banking. Recently the use of 3D facial imagery has found favour in the research community due to its inherent robustness to the pose and illumination variations which plague the 2D modality. The field of 3D face recognition is, however, yet to fully mature and there remain many unanswered research questions particular to the modality. The relative expense and specialty of 3D acquisition devices also means that the availability of databases of 3D face imagery lags significantly behind that of standard 2D face images. Human recognition of faces is rooted in an inherently 2D visual system and much is known regarding the use of 2D image information in the recognition of individuals. The corresponding knowledge of how discriminative information is distributed in the 3D modality is much less well defined. This dissertations addresses these issues through the use of decompositional techniques. Decomposition alleviates the problems associated with dimensionality explosion and the Small Sample Size (SSS) problem and spatial decomposition is a technique which has been widely used in face recognition. The application of decomposition in the frequency domain, however, has not received the same attention in the literature. The use of decomposition techniques allows a map ping of the regions (both spatial and frequency) which contain the discriminative information that enables recognition. In this dissertation these techniques are covered in significant detail, both in terms of practical issues in the respective domains and in terms of the underlying distributions which they expose. Significant discussion is given to the manner in which the inherent information of the human face is manifested in the 2D and 3D domains and how these two modalities inter-relate. This investigation is extended to cover also the manner in which the decomposition techniques presented can be recombined into a single decision. Two new methods for learning the weighting functions for both the sum and product rules are presented and extensive testing against established methods is presented. Knowledge acquired from these examinations is then used to create a combined technique termed Log-Gabor Templates. The proposed technique utilises both the spatial and frequency domains to extract superior performance to either in isolation. Experimentation demonstrates that the spatial and frequency domain decompositions are complimentary and can combined to give improved performance and robustness.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-05-14T12:36:43Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 2151124 bytes, checksum: ffc486a2022781c4365766e4bf1e7054 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009-08-27 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Human face has a very complex and variable pattern, which makes the face detection and recognition operations a challenging problem. The scope of these operations is quite comprehensive, involving mainly security applications, such as authorization for physical and logical access, people tracking, and real time authentication. In addition to security applications, face detection and recognition can also be associated with other applications, such as human-computer interaction and virtual reality. Several studies of face detection and recognition have been proposed and developed by researchers, pursuing greater precision and efficiency. Currently there are face detectors and recognizers with accuracy exceeding 95%. Commercial systems are available as well. This work presents a study on several face detection and recognition methods. Also was discussed the possibility of developing a new face detection method using Prediction by Partial Match (PPM), Entropy and Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT). It is further proposed a new face recognition method based on DCT. Finally, is proposed an architecture for a face detection and recognition system in video. To validate the architecture, the proposed system was implemented using one of the best detectors in the literature and the recognizer produced in this work. Several experiments were performed, and both the face detector used as the recognizer developed were effective, achieving success rates compatible with most current methods / A face humana possui um padrão bastante complexo e variável, o que torna as operações de detecção e reconhecimento de face um problema desafiador. O campo de aplicação dessas operações é bastante abrangente, envolvendo principalmente aplicações de segurança, como autorização de acesso físico e lógico, rastreamento de pessoas e autenticação em tempo real. Além de aplicações de segurança, a detecção e o reconhecimento de faces também pode ser associado a outras aplicações, como interação homem-máquina e realidade virtual. Diversos trabalhos de detecção e reconhecimento de face vêm sendo propostos e desenvolvidos pela comunidade científica, buscando continuamente uma maior precisão e eficiência. Atualmente já estão disponíveis detectores e reconhecedores de face com precisão superior a 95%. Sistemas comerciais também já estão disponíveis no mercado. Este trabalho apresenta um estudo sobre os diversos métodos de detecção e reconhecimento de face existentes. Também foi analisada a possibilidade de desenvolvimento de um novo método de detecção de face utilizando Predição por Casamento Parcial (Prediction by Partial Match, PPM), Entropia e Transformada Cosseno Discreta (Discrete Cosine Transform, DCT). Propõe-se ainda, um novo método de reconhecimento de face baseado na DCT. Por fim, apresenta-se a arquitetura de um sistema de detecção e reconhecimento de face em vídeo. Para validação desta arquitetura, o sistema proposto foi implementado utilizando um dos melhores detectores encontrados na literatura e o reconhecedor produzido neste trabalho. Diversos experimentos foram realizados e tanto o detector de face utilizado, quanto o reconhecedor desenvolvido mostraram-se eficientes, atingindo taxas de acerto compatíveis com os métodos mais atuais.

Extracting speaker-specific information from speech is of great interest to both researchers and developers alike, since speaker recognition technology finds application in a wide range of areas, primary among them being forensics and biometric security systems. Several models and techniques have been employed to extract speaker information from the speech signal. Speech production is generally modeled as an excitation source followed by a filter. Physiologically, the source corresponds to the vocal fold vibrations and the filter corresponds to the spectrum-shaping vocal tract. Vocal tract-based features like the melfrequency cepstral coefficients (MFCCs) and linear prediction cepstral coefficients have been shown to contain speaker information. However, high speed videos of the larynx show that the vocal folds of different individuals vibrate differently. Voice source (VS)-based features have also been shown to perform well in speaker recognition tasks, thereby revealing that the VS does contain speaker information. Moreover, a combination of the vocal tract and VS-based features has been shown to give an improved performance, showing that the latter contains supplementary speaker information. In this study, the focus is on extracting speaker information from the VS. The existing techniques for the same are reviewed, and it is observed that the features which are obtained by fitting a time-domain model on the VS perform poorly than those obtained by simple transformations of the VS. Here, an attempt is made to propose an alternate way of characterizing the VS to extract speaker information, and to study the merits and shortcomings of the proposed speaker-specific features. The VS cannot be measured directly. Thus, to characterize the VS, we first need an estimate of the VS, and the integrated linear prediction residual (ILPR) extracted from the speech signal is used as the VS estimate in this study. The voice source linear prediction model, which was proposed in an earlier study to obtain the ILPR, is used in this work. It is hypothesized here that a speaker’s voice may be characterized by the relative proportions of the harmonics present in the VS. The pitch synchronous discrete cosine transform (DCT) is shown to capture these, and the gross shape of the ILPR in a few coefficients. The ILPR and hence its DCT coefficients are visually observed to distinguish between speakers. However, it is also observed that they do have intra-speaker variability, and thus it is hypothesized that the distribution of the DCT coefficients may capture speaker information, and this distribution is modeled by a Gaussian mixture model (GMM). The DCT coefficients of the ILPR (termed the DCTILPR) are directly used as a feature vector in speaker identification (SID) tasks. Issues related to the GMM, like the type of covariance matrix, are studied, and it is found that diagonal covariance matrices perform better than full covariance matrices. Thus, mixtures of Gaussians having diagonal covariances are used as speaker models, and by conducting SID experiments on three standard databases, it is found that the proposed DCTILPR features fare comparably with the existing VS-based features. It is also found that the gross shape of the VS contains most of the speaker information, and the very fine structure of the VS does not help in distinguishing speakers, and instead leads to more confusion between speakers. The major drawbacks of the DCTILPR are the session and handset variability, but they are also present in existing state-of-the-art speaker-specific VS-based features and the MFCCs, and hence seem to be common problems. There are techniques to compensate these variabilities, which need to be used when the systems using these features are deployed in an actual application. The DCTILPR is found to improve the SID accuracy of a system trained with MFCC features by 12%, indicating that the DCTILPR features capture speaker information which is missed by the MFCCs. It is also found that a combination of MFCC and DCTILPR features on a speaker verification task gives significant performance improvement in the case of short test utterances. Thus, on the whole, this study proposes an alternate way of extracting speaker information from the VS, and adds to the evidence for speaker information present in the VS.

Les différentes étapes et processus de la fabrication additive (FA) induisent des erreurs de sources multiples et complexes qui soulèvent des problèmes majeurs au niveau de la qualité géométrique du produit fabriqué. Par conséquent, une modélisation effective des écarts géométriques est essentielle pour la FA. Le paradigme Skin Model Shapes (SMS) offre un cadre intégral pour la modélisation des écarts géométriques des produits manufacturés et constitue ainsi une solution efficace pour la modélisation des écarts géométriques en FA.Dans cette thèse, compte tenu de la spécificité de fabrication par couche en FA, un nouveau cadre de modélisation à base de SMS est proposé pour caractériser les écarts géométriques en FA en combinant une approche dans le plan et une approche hors plan. La modélisation des écarts dans le plan vise à capturer la variabilité de la forme 2D de chaque couche. Une méthode de transformation des formes est proposée et qui consiste à représenter les effets de variations sous la forme de transformations affines appliquées à la forme nominale. Un modèle paramétrique des écarts est alors établi dans un système de coordonnées polaires, quelle que soit la complexité de la forme. Ce modèle est par la suite enrichi par un apprentissage statistique permettant la collecte simultanée de données des écarts de formes multiples et l'amélioration des performances de la méthode.La modélisation des écarts hors plan est réalisée par la déformation de la couche dans la direction de fabrication. La modélisation des écarts hors plan est effectuée à l'aide d'une méthode orientée données. Sur la base des données des écarts obtenues à partir de simulations par éléments finis, deux méthodes d'analyse modale: la transformée en cosinus discrète (DCT) et l'analyse statistique des formes (SSA) sont exploitées. De plus, les effets des paramètres des pièces et des procédés sur les modes identifiés sont caractérisés par le biais d'un modèle à base de processus Gaussien.Les méthodes présentées sont finalement utilisées pour obtenir des SMSs haute-fidélité pour la fabrication additive en déformant les contours de la couche nominale avec les écarts prédits et en reconstruisant le modèle de surface non idéale complet à partir de ces contours déformés. Une toolbox est développée dans l'environnement MATLAB pour démontrer l'efficacité des méthodes proposées. / The intricate error sources within different stages of the Additive Manufacturing (AM) process have brought about major issues regarding the dimensional and geometrical accuracy of the manufactured product. Therefore, effective modeling of the geometric deviations is critical for AM. The Skin Model Shapes (SMS) paradigm offers a comprehensive framework aiming at addressing the deviation modeling problem at different stages of product lifecycle, and is thus a promising solution for deviation modeling in AM. In this thesis, considering the layer-wise characteristic of AM, a new SMS framework is proposed which characterizes the deviations in AM with in-plane and out-of-plane perspectives. The modeling of in-plane deviation aims at capturing the variability of the 2D shape of each layer. A shape transformation perspective is proposed which maps the variational effects of deviation sources into affine transformations of the nominal shape. With this assumption, a parametric deviation model is established based on the Polar Coordinate System which manages to capture deviation patterns regardless of the shape complexity. This model is further enhanced with a statistical learning capability to simultaneously learn from deviation data of multiple shapes and improve the performance on all shapes.Out-of-plane deviation is defined as the deformation of layer in the build direction. A layer-level investigation of out-of-plane deviation is conducted with a data-driven method. Based on the deviation data collected from a number of Finite Element simulations, two modal analysis methods, Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) and Statistical Shape Analysis (SSA), are adopted to identify the most significant deviation modes in the layer-wise data. The effect of part and process parameters on the identified modes is further characterized with a Gaussian Process (GP) model. The discussed methods are finally used to obtain high-fidelity SMSs of AM products by deforming the nominal layer contours with predicted deviations and rebuilding the complete non-ideal surface model from the deformed contours. A toolbox is developed in the MATLAB environment to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods.

Thesis deals with multimedia signal comparison of compression options focused on video and advanced codecs. Specifically it describes the encoding and decoding of video recordings according to the MPEG standard. The theoretical part of the thesis describes characteristic properties of the video signal and justification for the need to use recording and transmission compression. There are also described methods for elimination of encoded video signal redundancy and irrelevance. Further on are discussed ways of measuring the video signal quality. A separate chapter is focused on the characteristics of currently used and promising codecs. In the practical part of the thesis were created functions in Matlab environment. These functions were implemented into graphic user interface that simulates the activity of functional blocks of the encoder and decoder. Based on user-specified input parameters it performs encoding and decoding of any given picture, composed of images in RGB format, and displays the outputs of individual functional blocks. There are implemented algorithms for the initial processing of the input sequence including sub-sampling, as well as DCT, quantization, motion compensation and their inverse operations. Separate chapters are dedicated to the realisation of codec description in the Matlab environment and to the individual processing steps output. Further on are mentioned compress algorithm comparisons and the impact of parameter change onto the final signal. The findings are summarized in conclusion.

Digital image watermarking has developed for the purpose of protecting intellectual property rights to multimedia data. The focus of this thesis is searching for an alternative solution of digital image watermarking methods. A detailed analysis of watermarking methods particularly in the frequency domain, and the modification of these methods are the main aim of this work. Improved performance in watermark extraction is one of the main goals. First, the common static image watermarking methods, possible attacks on the watermarked data and techniques for objective measurement of watermarked image quality are shortly introduced. Techniques which use the space domain for watermarking ar described in the next part of this work. It is about techniques which insert the watermark into the least significant bits of an image both in the RGB domain and in the YUV domain. The main part of the thesis depicts modified and newly developed static image watermarking methods in the frequency domain. These methods use various transforms and error-correction codes, by means of which the watermark robustness increases. All the methods developed are tested in MATLAB. Results together with tables and graphs are one part of work. The end of the thesis is devoted to a comparison of all the developed methods and their evaluation.

This thesis deals with lossless and losing methods of data compressions and their possible applications in the measurement engineering. In the first part of the thesis there is a theoretical elaboration which informs the reader about the basic terminology, the reasons of data compression, the usage of data compression in standard practice and the division of compression algorithms. The practical part of thesis deals with the realization of the compress algorithms in Matlab and LabWindows/CVI.

The first goal of diploma thesis is to study the basic principles of video signal compression. Introduction to techniques used to reduce irrelevancy and redundancy in the video signal. The second goal is, on the basis of information about compression tools, implement the individual compression tools in the programming environment of Matlab and assemble simple model of the video codec. Diploma thesis contains a description of the three basic blocks, namely - interframe coding, intraframe coding and coding with variable length word - according the standard MPEG-2.