Engineering Commons^™

Face Recognition With Multi-Stage Matching Algorithms, Xianming Chen

Dissertations

For every face recognition method, the primary goal is to achieve higher recognition accuracy and spend less computational costs. However, as the gallery size increases, especially when one probe image corresponds to only one training image, face recognition becomes more and more challenging. First, a larger gallery size requires more computational costs and memory usage. Meanwhile, that the large gallery sizes degrade the recognition accuracy becomes an even more significant problem to be solved.

A coarse parallel algorithm that equally divides training images and probe images into multiple processors is proposed to deal with the large computational costs and huge …

Image Processing And Visualization Of Terahertz Pulsed Imaging Of Breast Cancer Tumors, Yuhao Wu

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Terahertz imaging technology has grown substantially in recent years. With new advances made in the generation, manipulation, and detection of terahertz radiation, terahertz imaging has found its application as inspection tools in a wide range of areas including biomedicine, materials science, and aerospace industries. In the field of medical imaging, terahertz (THz) has emerged as a new imaging modality due to some fundamental physical properties of the THz wave. THz imaging has been used to examine various biological structures, and THz tomography has been developed to probe the 3D structures of those samples.

THz pulsed imaging (TPI) is one of …

Designing Eye Tracking Algorithm For Partner-Assisted Eye Scanning Keyboard For Physically Challenged People, Zeenat S. Al-Kassim

Theses

The proposed research work focuses on building a keyboard through designing an algorithm for eye movement detection using the partner-assisted scanning technique. The study covers all stages of gesture recognition, from data acquisition to eye detection and tracking, and finally classification. With the presence of many techniques to implement the gesture recognition stages, the main objective of this research work is implementing the simple and less expensive technique that produces the best possible results with a high level of accuracy. The results, finally, are compared with similar works done recently to prove the efficiency in implementation of the proposed algorithm. …

Accelerated Fog Removal From Real Images For Car Detection, Rawan Ibrahim Khader Younis

Theses

Image de-hazing improves the visual quality of images in computer vision applications, such as object detection and object tracking. Fog removal from car photos taken by street cameras is considered essential to accurate car detection. An accelerated image enhancement technique is presented for car detection as part of an effort to count cars using existing street cameras for the purpose of traffic management. Two aspects of car detection are tackled: 1) An existing image fog removal technique is accelerated by replacing a time consuming image filter with a faster filter while maintaining negligible image degradation, 2) A quick and practical …

Multidimensional Analysis Of Nuclear Detonations, Robert C. Slaughter

Theses and Dissertations

The focus of this research is to develop the methods for 3-dimensional reconstructions and temperature distributions of early time nuclear fireballs. Initial developments have resulted in the first 2-dimensional temperature distribution of a nuclear fireball using digitized film. This same process was then extended to perform the first limb darkening calculations of nuclear fireballs. Limb darkening coefficients were then used to derive a temperature profile of the nuclear fireball as a function of optical path length. A 3-dimensional reconstruction was performed using a variation of a structure from illuminance technique in combination with limb darkening coefficients to produce structure using …

Design And Implementation Of Digital Information Security For Physical Documents, Pengcheng Wang

Masters Theses

The objective of this thesis is to improve the security for physical paper documents. Providing information security has been difficult in environments that rely on physical paper documents to implement business processes. Our work presents the design of a digital information security system for paper documents, called "CryptoPaper", that uses 2-dimensional codes to represent data and its security properties on paper. A special scanner system is designed for "CryptoPaper" which uses image recognition techniques and cloud-based access control to display plaintext of encrypted and encoded data to authorized users.

Geometry And Material Properties Of Vocal Fold Models, Kimberly Ann Stevens

Theses and Dissertations

Voiced communication plays a fundamental role in society. Voice research seeks to improve understanding of the fundamental physics governing voice production, with the eventual goal of improving methods to diagnose and treat voice disorders. For this thesis, three different aspects of voice production research were studied. First, porcine vocal fold medial surface geometry was determined, and the three-dimensional geometric distortion induced by freezing the larynx, especially in the region of the vocal folds, was quantified. It was found that porcine vocal folds are qualitatively geometrically similar to canine and human vocal folds, as well as commonly used models, and that …

Design And Verification Environment For High-Performance Video-Based Embedded Systems, Michael Mefenza Nentedem

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, a method and a tool to enable design and verification of computation demanding embedded vision-based systems is presented. Starting with an executable specification in OpenCV, we provide subsequent refinements and verification down to a system-on-chip prototype into an FPGA-Based smart camera. At each level of abstraction, properties of image processing applications are used along with structure composition to provide a generic architecture that can be automatically verified and mapped to the lower abstraction level. The result is a framework that encapsulates the computer vision library OpenCV at the highest level, integrates Accelera's System-C/TLM with UVM and QEMU-OS …

Integrating Pavement Crack Detection And Analysis Using Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Imagery, Patrick J. Grandsaert

Theses and Dissertations

Efficient, reliable data is necessary to make informed decisions on how to best manage aging road assets. This research explores a new method to automate the collection, processing, and analysis of transportation networks using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and Computer Vision technology. While there are current methodologies to accomplish road assessment manually and semi-autonomously, this research is a proof of concept to obtain the road assessment faster and cheaper with a vision for little to no human interaction required. This research evaluates the strengths of applying UAV technology to pavement assessments and identifies where further work is needed. Furthermore, it validates …

A Monocular Slam Method To Estimate Relative Pose During Satellite Proximity Operations, Scott J. Kelly

Theses and Dissertations

Automated satellite proximity operations is an increasingly relevant area of mission operations for the US Air Force with potential to significantly enhance space situational awareness (SSA). Simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) is a computer vision method of constructing and updating a 3D map while keeping track of the location and orientation of the imaging agent inside the map. The main objective of this research effort is to design a monocular SLAM method customized for the space environment. The method developed in this research will be implemented in an indoor proximity operations simulation laboratory. A run-time analysis is performed, showing near …

Extraction Of Pictorial Energy Information From Campus Unmetered Buildings Using Image Processing Techniques, Yachen Tang

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

In recent years, advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) has been the main research focus due to the traditional power grid has been restricted to meet development requirements. There has been an ongoing effort to increase the number of AMI devices that provide real-time data readings to improve system observability. Deployed AMI across distribution secondary networks provides load and consumption information for individual households which can improve grid management. Significant upgrade costs associated with retrofitting existing meters with network-capable sensing can be made more economical by using image processing methods to extract usage information from images of the existing meters. This thesis …

Analytical Study Of Computer Vision-Based Pavement Crack Quantification Using Machine Learning Techniques, Soroush Mokhtari

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Image-based techniques are a promising non-destructive approach for road pavement condition evaluation. The main objective of this study is to extract, quantify and evaluate important surface defects, such as cracks, using an automated computer vision-based system to provide a better understanding of the pavement deterioration process. To achieve this objective, an automated crack-recognition software was developed, employing a series of image processing algorithms of crack extraction, crack grouping, and crack detection. Bottom-hat morphological technique was used to remove the random background of pavement images and extract cracks, selectively based on their shapes, sizes, and intensities using a relatively small number …

Thermographic Investigation Of Laser Metal Deposition, Sreekar Karnati

Masters Theses

"Laser metal deposition as an additive manufacturing technique has been proven to possess the capability for fabricating complex, intricate geometries and excellent material properties through material deposition. Accurate manufacture of such geometric features would require precise control over the material deposition process. The need of the hour are process monitoring and analyses mechanisms that are crucial in ascertaining the occurrence of the intended actions during deposition while also serving as effective learning tools. The current work involved developing and incorporating an Infra-Red (IR) camera as a process monitoring tool for laser metal deposition. Using the IR camera the thermal dynamics …

Computer Aided Detection Of Oral Lesions On Ct Images, Shaikat Mahmood Galib

Masters Theses

"Oral lesions are important findings on computed tomography images. They are difficult to detect on CT images because of low contrast, arbitrary orientation of objects, complicated topology and lack of clear lines indicating lesions. In this thesis, a fully automatic method to detect oral lesions from dental CT images is proposed to identify (1) Closed boundary lesions and (2) Bone deformation lesions. Two algorithms were developed to recognize these two types of lesions, which cover most of the lesion types that can be found on CT images. The results were validated using a dataset of 52 patients. Using non training …