• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.12 no.5
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• pp.2287-2312
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• 2018

Extracting key visual information from images containing natural scene is a challenging task and an important step for the visually impaired to recognize information based on tactile graphics. In this study, a novel method is proposed for extracting salient regions based on global contrast enhancement and saliency cuts in order to improve the process of recognizing images for the visually impaired. To accomplish this, an image enhancement technique is applied to natural scene images, and a saliency map is acquired to measure the color contrast of homogeneous regions against other areas of the image. The saliency maps also help automatic salient region extraction, referred to as saliency cuts, and assist in obtaining a binary mask of high quality. Finally, outer boundaries and inner edges are detected in images with natural scene to identify edges that are visually significant. Experimental results indicate that the method we propose in this paper extracts salient objects effectively and achieves remarkable performance compared to conventional methods. Our method offers benefits in extracting salient objects and generating simple but important edges from images containing natural scene and for providing information to the visually impaired.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.557-567
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• 2015

Over the past decades, a variety of spatial saliency methods have been introduced. Recently, motion saliency has gained much interests, where motion data estimated from an image sequence are utilized. In general, motion saliency requires reliable motion data as well as image segmentation for producing satisfactory saliency map which poses difficulty in most natural images. To overcome this, we propose a motion-based saliency generation that enhances the spatial saliency based on the combination of spatial and motion saliencies as well as motion complexity without the consideration of complex motion classification and image segmentation. Further, an affinity model is integrated for the purpose of connecting close-by pixels with different colors and obtaining a similar saliency. In experiment, we performed the proposed method on eleven test sets. From the objective performance evaluation, we validated that the proposed method produces better result than spatial saliency based on objective evaluation as well as ROC test.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.446-455
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• 2017

A color image compression based on saliency map was proposed. The proposed method provides higher quality in saliency blocks on which people's attention focuses, compared with non-saliency blocks on which the attention less focuses at a given bitrate. The proposed method uses 3 different quantization tables according to each block's saliency level. In the experiment using 6 typical images, we compared the proposed method with JPEG and other conventional methods. As the result, it showed that the proposed method (Qup=0.5*Qx) is about 3.1 to 1.2 dB better than JPEG and others in saliency blocks in PSNR at the almost similar bitrate. In the comparison of result images, the proposed one also showed less error than others in saliency blocks.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.10 no.7
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• pp.3245-3271
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• 2016

To obtain well-dehazed images at the receiver while sustaining low bit rates in the transmission pipeline, this paper investigates the effects of image dehazing methods using dehazing contrast-enhancement filters on image compression for surveillance systems. At first, this paper proposes a novel image dehazing method by using a new method of calculating the transmission function—namely, the direct denoising method. Next, we deduce the dehazing effects of the direct denoising method and image dehazing method based on dark channel prior (DCP) on image compression in terms of ringing artifacts and blocking artifacts. It can be concluded that the direct denoising method performs better than the DCP method for decompressed (reconstructed) images. We also improve the direct denoising method to obtain more desirable dehazed images with higher contrast, using the saliency map as the guidance image to modify the transmission function. Finally, we adjust the parameters of dehazing contrast-enhancement filters to obtain a corresponding composite peak signal-to-noise ratio (CPSNR) and blind image quality assessment (BIQA) of the decompressed images. Experimental results show that different filters have different effects on image compression. Moreover, our proposed dehazing method can strike a balance between image dehazing and image compression.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.626-632
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• 2016

In this paper, we propose the defect emphasis in TFT-LCD panel image. The defect emphasis image consist of S(Shape) map and B(Brightness) map. S map based on DoG(difference of gaussian) is made with the mura defect shape characteristic. And B map use defect intensity property that defect intensity is higher than background. The experiments were conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed defect emphasis method. The results of experiments show the validity of the defect emphasis using the proposed method.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.223-236
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• 2012

We develop a video processing method that allows the more advanced human perception oriented video coding. The proposed method necessarily reflects all influences by the rate-distortion based optimization and the human visual perception that is affected by the visual saliency, the limited space-time resolution and the regional moving history. For reflecting the human perceptual effects, we devise an online moving pattern classifier using the Hedge algorithm. Then, we embed the existing visual saliency into the proposed moving patterns so as to establish a human visual perception model. In order to realize the proposed human visual perception model, we extend the conventional foveation filtering method. Compared to the conventional foveation filter only smoothing less stimulus video signals, the developed foveation filter can locally smooth and enhance signals according to the human visual perception without causing any artifacts. Due to signal enhancement, the developed foveation filter more efficiently transfers the bandwidth saved at smoothed signals to the enhanced signals. Performance evaluation verifies that the proposed video processing method satisfies the overall video quality, while improving the perceptual quality by 12%~44%.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Broadcast Engineers Conference
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• 2016.06a
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• pp.33-34
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• 2016

본 논문에서는 HVS(human visual system)의 특성을 고려한 새로운 스케일러블 코딩방법을 제안한다. 제안된 방법은 먼저 영상 내에서 관심영역(saliency map)을 찾고 관심영역을 제외한 부분에 에지 보존 필터를 적용한다. 그 영상은 정해진 양자 파라미터 값으로 인코딩 되어 제안된 코딩 시스템의 베이스 층(base layer)이 된다. 기존 스케일러블 코딩 표준에서의 베이스 층과 다르게 본 논문의 베이스 층은 관심 있는 중요영역(foreground)을 보존하고 또한 배경(background)의 에지 성분도 보존한다. 기본 층이 전송되면 개선층(enhancement layer)은 원 영상과 복원된 베이스 층 영상간의 차분 영상에서 관심영역 순으로 보내진다. 실험은 HEVC 를 바탕으로 수행되었고 스케일러블 코딩 표준인 SHVC 와 관심영역에서 비교를 했을 때 제안된 알고리즘이 더 높은 PSNR 을 가지는 것을 확인하였다. 또한 전체적으로 지각적인 품질(perceptual quality) 또한 향상되었음을 확인하였다.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Broadcast Engineers Conference
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• 2014.06a
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• pp.105-106
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• 2014

본 논문에서는 중요도 지도를 사용한 화소값 사이 척력 기반 영상 대조비 향상 기법을 제안한다. 공간상에서 인접한 화소들 사이에 자주 발생하는 화소값들의 차이를 크게 하면 효과적으로 영상의 디테일을 두드러지게 할 수 있다. 대조비 증가를 위해 화소값 사이 척력을 정의하고, 유효 화소값 사이 척력들의 합을 사용하여 대조비의 증가 정도를 조절한다. 중요도 지도는 영상의 화소마다 사람의 시선이 머무르는 정도를 상대적인 수치로 나타낸 것이다. 따라서 영상 화질을 개선할 때 중요도 지도를 사용하면 사람의 시선을 끄는 화소값들의 대조비를 선택적으로 높일 수 있다. 실험 결과를 통하여 제안 기법이 우수한 화질개선 영상을 생성함을 확인한다.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.10 no.9
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• pp.4386-4404
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• 2016

Most existing salient object detection algorithms commonly employed segmentation techniques to eliminate background noise and reduce computation by treating each segment as a processing unit. However, individual small segments provide little information about global contents. Such schemes have limited capability on modeling global perceptual phenomena. In this paper, a novel salient object detection algorithm is proposed based on region merging. An adaptive-based merging scheme is developed to reassemble regions based on their color dissimilarities. The merging strategy can be described as that a region R is merged with its adjacent region Q if Q has the lowest dissimilarity with Q among all Q's adjacent regions. To guide the merging process, superpixels that located at the boundary of the image are treated as the seeds. However, it is possible for a boundary in the input image to be occupied by the foreground object. To avoid this case, we optimize the boundary influences by locating and eliminating erroneous boundaries before the region merging. We show that even though three simple region saliency measurements are adopted for each region, encouraging performance can be obtained. Experiments on four benchmark datasets including MSRA-B, SOD, SED and iCoSeg show the proposed method results in uniform object enhancement and achieve state-of-the-art performance by comparing with nine existing methods.

• BMB Reports
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• v.49 no.1
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• pp.1-2
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• 2016

Of the numerous events that occur in daily life, we readily remember salient information, but do not retain most less-salient events for a prolonged period. Although some of the episodes contain putatively emotional aspects, the information with lower saliency is rarely stored in neural circuits via an unknown mechanism. We provided substantial evidence indicating that synaptic plasticity in the dorsal ITC of amygdala allows for selective storage of salient emotional experiences, while it deters less-salient experience from entering long-term memory. After activation of D4R or weak fear conditioning, STDP stimulation induces LTD in the LA-ITC synapses. This form of LTD is dependent upon presynaptic D4R, and is likely to result from enhancement of GABA release. Both optogenetic abrogation of LTD and ablation of D4R at the dorsal ITC in vivo lead to heightened and over-generalized fear responses. Finally, we demonstrated that LTD was impaired at the dorsal ITC of PTSD model mice, which suggests that maladaptation of GABAergic signaling and the resultant LTD impairment contribute to the endophenotypes of PTSD. [BMB Reports 2016; 49(1): 1-2]