• Journal of the Optical Society of Korea
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.388-394
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• 2010

In this paper the object recognition performance of a photon counting integral imaging system is quantitatively compared with that of a conventional gray scale imaging system. For 3D imaging of objects with a small number of photons, the elemental image set of a 3D scene is obtained using the integral imaging set up. We assume that the elemental image detection follows a Poisson distribution. Computational geometrical ray back propagation algorithm and parametric maximum likelihood estimator are applied to the photon counting elemental image set in order to reconstruct the original 3D scene. To evaluate the photon counting object recognition performance, the normalized correlation peaks between the reconstructed 3D scenes are calculated for the varied and fixed total number of photons in the reconstructed sectional image changing the total number of image channels in the integral imaging system. It is quantitatively illustrated that the recognition performance of the photon counting integral imaging system can be similar to that of a conventional gray scale imaging system as the number of image viewing channels in the photon counting integral imaging (PCII) system is increased up to the threshold point. Also, we present experiments to find the threshold point on the total number of image channels in the PCII system which can guarantee a comparable recognition performance with a gray scale imaging system. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report on comparisons of object recognition performance with 3D photon counting & gray scale images.

• Journal of the Optical Society of Korea
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.88-92
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• 2008

This paper discusses a photon-counting linear discriminant analysis (LDA) with computational integral imaging (II). The computational II method reconstructs three-dimensional (3D) objects on the reconstruction planes located at arbitrary depth-levels. A maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) can be used to estimate the Poisson parameters of photon counts in the reconstruction space. The photon-counting LDA combined with the computational II method is developed in order to classify partially occluded objects with photon-limited images. Unknown targets are classified with the estimated Poisson parameters while reconstructed irradiance images are trained. It is shown that a low number of photons are sufficient to classify occluded objects with the proposed method.

• International Journal of Fuzzy Logic and Intelligent Systems
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.250-255
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• 2012

Face recognition has wide applications in security and surveillance systems as well as in robot vision and machine interfaces. Conventional challenges in face recognition include pose, illumination, and expression, and face recognition at a distance involves additional challenges because long-distance images are often degraded due to poor focusing and motion blurring. This study investigates the effectiveness of applying photon-counting linear discriminant analysis (Pc-LDA) to face recognition in harsh environments. A related technique, Fisher linear discriminant analysis, has been found to be optimal, but it often suffers from the singularity problem because the number of available training images is generally much smaller than the number of pixels. Pc-LDA, on the other hand, realizes the Fisher criterion in high-dimensional space without any dimensionality reduction. Therefore, it provides more invariant solutions to image recognition under distortion and degradation. Two decision rules are employed: one is based on Euclidean distance; the other, on normalized correlation. In the experiments, the asymptotic equivalence of the photon-counting method to the Fisher method is verified with simulated data. Degraded facial images are employed to demonstrate the robustness of the photon-counting classifier in harsh environments. Four types of blurring point spread functions are applied to the test images in order to simulate long-distance acquisition. The results are compared with those of conventional Eigen face and Fisher face methods. The results indicate that Pc-LDA is better than conventional facial recognition techniques.

• 한국정보디스플레이학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2008.10a
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• pp.1131-1134
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• 2008

In this invited paper, numerical reconstruction and pattern recognition using integral imaging are overviewed. The computational integral imaging method reconstructs three-dimensional information at arbitrary depth-levels. Photon-counting nonlinear matched filtering combined with the computational reconstruction provides promising results for the application of low-light level recognition.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
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• v.45 no.6
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• pp.64-69
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• 2008

This paper discusses low resolution face recognition using the photon-counting linear discriminant analysis (LDA). The photon-counting LDA asymptotically realizes the Fisher criterion without dimensionality reduction since it does not suffer from the singularity problem of the fisher LDA. The linear discriminant function for optimal projection is determined in high dimensional space to classify unknown objects, thus, it is more efficient in dealing with low resolution facial images as well as conventional face distortions. The simulation results show that the proposed method is superior to Eigen face and Fisher face in terms of the accuracy and false alarm rates.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.1207-1212
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• 2015

In this paper, we propose three-dimensional (3D) visualization and recognition techniques of micro-objects under photon-starved conditions using photon counting integral imaging microscopy. To capture high resolution 2D images with different perspectives in the proposed method, we use Synthetic Aperture Integral Imaging (SAII). Poisson distribution which is mathematical model of photon counting imaging system is used to extract photons from the images. To estimate 3D images with 2D photon counting images, the statistical estimation is used. Therefore, 3D images can be obtained and visualized without any damage under photon-starved conditions. In addition, 3D object recognition can be implemented using nonlinear correlation filters. To prove the usefulness of our technique, we implemented the optical experiment.

• International Journal of Fuzzy Logic and Intelligent Systems
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.332-339
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• 2014

Face classification has wide applications in security and surveillance. However, this technique presents various challenges caused by pose, illumination, and expression changes. Face recognition with long-distance images involves additional challenges, owing to focusing problems and motion blurring. Multiple frames under varying spatial or temporal settings can acquire additional information, which can be used to achieve improved classification performance. This study investigates the effectiveness of multi-frame decision-level fusion with photon-counting linear discriminant analysis. Multiple frames generate multiple scores for each class. The fusion process comprises three stages: score normalization, score validation, and score combination. Candidate scores are selected during the score validation process, after the scores are normalized. The score validation process removes bad scores that can degrade the final output. The selected candidate scores are combined using one of the following fusion rules: maximum, averaging, and majority voting. Degraded facial images are employed to demonstrate the robustness of multi-frame decision-level fusion in harsh environments. Out-of-focus and motion blurring point-spread functions are applied to the test images, to simulate long-distance acquisition. Experimental results with three facial data sets indicate the efficiency of the proposed decision-level fusion scheme.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
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• v.49 no.4
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• pp.77-84
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• 2012

Face classification has wide applications in intelligent video surveillance, content retrieval, robot vision, and human-machine interface. Pose and expression changes, and arbitrary illumination are typical problems for face recognition. When the face is captured at a distance, the image quality is often degraded by blurring and noise corruption. This paper investigates the efficacy of multi-classifier decision level fusion for face classification based on the photon-counting linear discriminant analysis with two different cost functions: Euclidean distance and negative normalized correlation. Decision level fusion comprises three stages: cost normalization, cost validation, and fusion rules. First, the costs are normalized into the uniform range and then, candidate costs are selected during validation. Three fusion rules are employed: minimum, average, and majority-voting rules. In the experiments, unfocusing and motion blurs are rendered to simulate the effects of the long distance environments. It will be shown that the decision-level fusion scheme provides better results than the single classifier.

• Current Optics and Photonics
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• v.3 no.5
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• pp.390-400
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• 2019

Encrypted images obtained through double random phase-encoding (DRPE) occupy considerable storage space. We propose efficient compression schemes to reduce the size of the encrypted data. In the proposed schemes, two state-of-art compression methods of JPEG and JP2K are applied to the quantized encrypted phase images obtained by combining the DRPE algorithm with the virtual photon counting imaging technique. We compute the nonlinear cross-correlation between the registered reference images and the compressed input images to verify the performance of the compression of double random phase-encoded images. We show quantitatively through experiments that considerable compression of the encrypted image data can be achieved while security and authentication factors are completely preserved.