In this paper, we propose PCPNET, a deep‐learning based approach for estimating local 3D shape properties in point clouds. In contrast to the majority of prior techniques that concentrate on global ...or mid‐level attributes, e.g., for shape classification or semantic labeling, we suggest a patch‐based learning method, in which a series of local patches at multiple scales around each point is encoded in a structured manner. Our approach is especially well‐adapted for estimating local shape properties such as normals (both unoriented and oriented) and curvature from raw point clouds in the presence of strong noise and multi‐scale features. Our main contributions include both a novel multi‐scale variant of the recently proposed PointNet architecture with emphasis on local shape information, and a series of novel applications in which we demonstrate how learning from training data arising from well‐structured triangle meshes, and applying the trained model to noisy point clouds can produce superior results compared to specialized state‐of‐the‐art techniques. Finally, we demonstrate the utility of our approach in the context of shape reconstruction, by showing how it can be used to extract normal orientation information from point clouds.
Facial vibrissae (whiskers) are thin, tapered, flexible, hair-like structures that are an important source of tactile sensory information for many species of mammals. In contrast to insect antennae, ...whiskers have no sensors along their lengths. Instead, when a whisker touches an object, the resulting deformation is transmitted to mechanoreceptors in a follicle at the whisker base. Previous work has shown that the mechanical signals transmitted along the whisker will depend strongly on the whisker's geometric parameters, specifically on its taper (how diameter varies with arc length) and on the way in which the whisker curves, often called "intrinsic curvature." Although previous studies have largely agreed on how to define taper, multiple methods have been used to quantify intrinsic curvature. The present work compares and contrasts different mathematical approaches towards quantifying this important parameter. We begin by reviewing and clarifying the definition of "intrinsic curvature," and then show results of fitting whisker shapes with several different functions, including polynomial, fractional exponent, elliptical, and Cesàro. Comparisons are performed across ten species of whiskered animals, ranging from rodents to pinnipeds. We conclude with a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of using the various models for different modeling situations. The fractional exponent model offers an approach towards developing a species-specific parameter to characterize whisker shapes within a species. Constructing models of how the whisker curves is important for the creation of mechanical models of tactile sensory acquisition behaviors, for studies of comparative evolution, morphology, and anatomy, and for designing artificial systems that can begin to emulate the whisker-based tactile sensing of animals.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Data acquisition in large‐scale scenes regularly involves accumulating information across multiple scans. A common approach is to locally align scan pairs using Iterative Closest Point (ICP) ...algorithm (or its variants), but requires static scenes and small motion between scan pairs. This prevents accumulating data across multiple scan sessions and/or different acquisition modalities (e.g., stereo, depth scans). Alternatively, one can use a global registration algorithm allowing scans to be in arbitrary initial poses. The state‐of‐the‐art global registration algorithm, 4PCS, however has a quadratic time complexity in the number of data points. This vastly limits its applicability to acquisition of large environments. We present Super 4PCS for global pointcloud registration that is optimal, i.e., runs in linear time (in the number of data points) and is also output sensitive in the complexity of the alignment problem based on the (unknown) overlap across scan pairs. Technically, we map the algorithm as an ‘instance problem’ and solve it efficiently using a smart indexing data organization. The algorithm is simple, memory‐efficient, and fast. We demonstrate that Super 4PCS results in significant speedup over alternative approaches and allows unstructured efficient acquisition of scenes at scales previously not possible. Complete source code and datasets are available for research use at http://geometry.cs.ucl.ac.uk/projects/2014/super4PCS/.
The rodent vibrissal (whisker) system has been studied for decades as a model of active touch sensing. There are no sensors along the length of a whisker; all sensing occurs at the whisker base. ...Therefore, a large open question in many neuroscience studies is how an animal could estimate the three-dimensional (3D) location at which a whisker makes contact with an object. In the present work we simulated the shape of a real rat whisker to demonstrate the existence of several unique mappings from triplets of mechanical signals at the whisker base to the three-dimensional whisker-object contact point. We then used high speed video to record whisker deflections as an awake rat whisked against a peg, and used the mechanics resulting from those deflections to extract the contact points along the peg surface. These results demonstrate that measurement of specific mechanical triplets at the base of a biological whisker can enable 3D contact point determination during natural whisking behavior. The approach is viable even though the biological whisker has non-ideal, non-planar curvature, and even given the rat’s real-world choices of whisking parameters. Visual intuition for the quality of the approach is provided in a video that shows the contour of the peg gradually emerging during active whisking behavior.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Zinc interstitials and their complexes with oxygen vacancies, harbouring a lone pair of electrons, have been discussed as suspects for an n-type character and the ensuing conductivity of nominally ...undoped ZnO. ZnO nanorods, with different Zn concentrations, have been studied using photoluminescence and photoluminescence excitation spectroscopy to evidence the presence of defect states, their correlation with excess Zn and their viability as donors. It is shown that each sample may emit intense violet-blue, green-orange and red emissions, as decided by the excitation energy and presence of excess Zn. Intensity variation of these individual emissions vis-à-vis their excitation energies, in the range 4.0–2.7 eV, indicates the presence of defect states not only within the band gap but crucially within the conduction band itself, but only in a Zn rich environment. The study provides the experimental signature of the theoretical predictions of the latter states and demonstrates why Zn interstitials may be responsible for the n-type doping and conductivity of ZnO. The origin of the emissions, their interdependence and tunability are further discussed.
A major challenge hindering the application of techniques like UV/Vis spectrophotometry in determining concentration is spectral interference from contaminants. Since molar absorptivities vary ...significantly, even minuscule amounts of specific contaminants may cause relatively large errors in UV/Vis spectrophotometry based quantification. Current methods to deal with this are slow, cost-intensive, or ineffective for unknown interferents. We propose constrained refractometry as an expedient technique to aid UV/Vis spectrophotometry, avoiding large errors due to spectral interference. Based on a modified Lorentz Lorenz equation, the technique helps not only in detecting and reducing error from unknown contaminants but also in identifying the significant impurity. Experimental results show a significant reduction of error in concentration determination even for multiple unknown interfering contaminants.
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•Refractometric method to handle spectral interference in UV spectrophotometry.•A quick and inexpensive technique that works for unknown impurities as well.•Also helps to identify the major impurity using Pearson’s correlation coefficient.•Experimentally verified in ten solvents, and error decreased from 53.4% to 2%.•Applications in protein concentration and salinity measurements were demonstrated.
Global Contrast Based Salient Region Detection Cheng, Ming-Ming; Mitra, Niloy J.; Huang, Xiaolei ...
IEEE transactions on pattern analysis and machine intelligence,
2015-March-1, 2015-Mar, 2015-3-1, 20150301, Letnik:
37, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Automatic estimation of salient object regions across images, without any prior assumption or knowledge of the contents of the corresponding scenes, enhances many computer vision and computer ...graphics applications. We introduce a regional contrast based salient object detection algorithm, which simultaneously evaluates global contrast differences and spatial weighted coherence scores. The proposed algorithm is simple, efficient, naturally multi-scale, and produces full-resolution, high-quality saliency maps. These saliency maps are further used to initialize a novel iterative version of GrabCut, namely SaliencyCut, for high quality unsupervised salient object segmentation. We extensively evaluated our algorithm using traditional salient object detection datasets, as well as a more challenging Internet image dataset. Our experimental results demonstrate that our algorithm consistently outperforms 15 existing salient object detection and segmentation methods, yielding higher precision and better recall rates. We also show that our algorithm can be used to efficiently extract salient object masks from Internet images, enabling effective sketch-based image retrieval (SBIR) via simple shape comparisons. Despite such noisy internet images, where the saliency regions are ambiguous, our saliency guided image retrieval achieves a superior retrieval rate compared with state-of-the-art SBIR methods, and additionally provides important target object region information.
We introduce 4PCS, a fast and robust alignment scheme for 3D point sets that uses wide bases, which are known to be resilient to noise and outliers. The algorithm allows registering raw noisy data, ...possibly contaminated with outliers, without pre-filtering or denoising the data. Further, the method significantly reduces the number of trials required to establish a reliable registration between the underlying surfaces in the presence of noise, without any assumptions about starting alignment. Our method is based on a novel technique to extract all coplanar 4-points sets from a 3D point set that are approximately congruent, under rigid transformation, to a given set of coplanar 4-points. This extraction procedure runs in roughly
O(n
2
+ k)
time, where
n
is the number of candidate points and
k
is the number of reported 4-points sets. In practice, when noise level is low and there is sufficient overlap, using local descriptors the time complexity reduces to
O(n + k)
. We also propose an extension to handle similarity and affine transforms. Our technique achieves an order of magnitude asymptotic acceleration compared to common randomized alignment techniques. We demonstrate the robustness of our algorithm on several sets of multiple range scans with varying degree of noise, outliers, and extent of overlap.
Background: The introduction of transcatheter edge-to-edge repair for moderate-to-severe or severe mitral regurgitation (MR) utilizing the MitraClip system became reimbursed and clinically accessible ...in Japan in April 2018. This study presents the 2-year clinical outcomes of all consecutively treated patients who underwent MitraClip implantation in Japan and were prospectively enrolled in the Japanese Circulation Society-oriented J-MITRA registry.Methods and Results: Analysis encompassed 2,739 consecutive patients enrolled in the J-MITRA registry with informed consent (mean age: 78.3±9.6 years, 1,550 males, STS risk score 11.7±8.9), comprising 1,999 cases of functional MR, 644 of degenerative MR and 96 in a mixed group (DMR and FMR). The acute procedure success rate was 88.9%. After MitraClip implantation, >80% exhibited an MR grade ≤2+ and the trend was sustained over the 2 years. Within this observation period, the mortality rate was 19.3% and the rate of heart failure readmissions was 20.6%. The primary composite endpoint, inclusive of cardiovascular death and heart failure readmission, was significantly higher in patients with functional MR than in with degenerative MR (32.0% vs. 17.5%, P<0.001).Conclusions: The 2-year clinical outcomes after MitraClip implantation were deduced from comprehensive data within an all-Japan registry.
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