Fourier Image Watermarking: Print-Cam Application

Digital image watermarking is an active research field since it provides protection, security, and authenticity of data. This paper presents development and implementation of a blind and robust watermarking application for ID images under a print-cam system. In the present case, the images are watermarked and printed on ID cards and then detected freehandedly with a smartphone camera. In order to design an efficient and robust image watermarking application, the attacks produced in print-cam processes, such as geometric distortions, must be resolved. Accordingly, the proposed watermarking approach is applied in the Fourier domain. Then, a frame-based projective rectification is integrated to deal with geometric distortions by using detection of Hough lines. Moreover, better robustness against print-cam watermarking attacks was achieved compared with the existing methods, and an Android application was designed and implemented based on the proposed scheme.

Combining Feature Correspondence with Parametric Chamfer Alignment: Hybrid Two-Stage Registration for Ultra-Widefield Retinal Images

<div>We propose a novel hybrid framework for registering retinal images in the presence of extreme geometric distortions that are commonly encountered in ultra-widefield (UWF) fluorescein angiography. Our approach consists of two stages: a feature-based global registration and a vessel-based local refinement. For the global registration, we introduce a modified RANSAC algorithm that jointly identifies robust matches between feature keypoints in reference and target images and estimates a polynomial geometric transformation consistent with the identified correspondences. Our RANSAC modification particularly improves feature point matching and the registration in peripheral regions that are most severely impacted by the geometric distortions. The second local refinement stage is formulated in our framework as a parametric chamfer alignment for vessel maps obtained using a deep neural network. Because the complete vessel maps contribute to the chamfer alignment, this approach not only improves registration accuracy but also aligns with clinical practice, where vessels are typically a key focus of examinations. We validate the effectiveness of the proposed framework on a new UWF fluorescein angiography (FA) dataset and on the existing narrow-field FIRE (fundus image registration) dataset and demonstrate that it significantly outperforms prior retinal image registration methods. The proposed approach enhances the utility of large sets of longitudinal UWF images by enabling: (a) automatic computation of vessel change metrics and (b) standardized and co-registered examination that can better highlight changes of clinical interest to physicians.</div>

Combining Feature Correspondence with Parametric Chamfer Alignment: Hybrid Two-Stage Registration for Ultra-Widefield Retinal Images

<div>We propose a novel hybrid framework for registering retinal images in the presence of extreme geometric distortions that are commonly encountered in ultra-widefield (UWF) fluorescein angiography. Our approach consists of two stages: a feature-based global registration and a vessel-based local refinement. For the global registration, we introduce a modified RANSAC algorithm that jointly identifies robust matches between feature keypoints in reference and target images and estimates a polynomial geometric transformation consistent with the identified correspondences. Our RANSAC modification particularly improves feature point matching and the registration in peripheral regions that are most severely impacted by the geometric distortions. The second local refinement stage is formulated in our framework as a parametric chamfer alignment for vessel maps obtained using a deep neural network. Because the complete vessel maps contribute to the chamfer alignment, this approach not only improves registration accuracy but also aligns with clinical practice, where vessels are typically a key focus of examinations. We validate the effectiveness of the proposed framework on a new UWF fluorescein angiography (FA) dataset and on the existing narrow-field FIRE (fundus image registration) dataset and demonstrate that it significantly outperforms prior retinal image registration methods. The proposed approach enhances the utility of large sets of longitudinal UWF images by enabling: (a) automatic computation of vessel change metrics and (b) standardized and co-registered examination that can better highlight changes of clinical interest to physicians.</div>

Increased Brain Volumetric Measurement Precision from Multi-Site 3D T1-weighted 3T Magnetic Resonance Imaging by Correcting Geometric Distortions

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner-specific geometric distortions may contribute to scanner induced variability and decrease volumetric measurement precision for multi-site studies. The purpose of this study was to determine whether geometric distortion correction increases the precision of brain volumetric measurements in a multi-site multi-scanner study. Geometric distortion variation was quantified over a one-year period at 10 sites using the distortion fields estimated from monthly 3D T1-weighted MRI geometrical phantom scans. The variability of volume and distance measurements were quantified using synthetic volumes and a standard quantitative MRI (qMRI) phantom. The effects of geometric distortion corrections on MRI derived volumetric measurements of the human brain were assessed in two subjects scanned on each of the 10 MRI scanners and in 150 subjects with cerebrovascaular disease (CVD) acquired across imaging sites. Geometric distortions were found to vary substantially between different MRI scanners but were relatively stable on each scanner over a one-year interval. Geometric distortions varied spatially, increasing in severity with distance from the magnet isocenter. In measurements made with the qMRI phantom, the geometric distortion correction decreased the standard deviation of volumetric assessments by 35% and distance measurements by 42%. The average coefficient of variance decreased by 16% in gray matter and white matter volume estimates in the two subjects scanned on the 10 MRI scanners. Geometric distortion correction using an up-to-date correction field is recommended to increase precision in volumetric measurements made from MRI images.

Multi-Hypothesis Topological Isomorphism Matching Method for Synthetic Aperture Radar Images with Large Geometric Distortion

The dramatic undulations of a mountainous terrain will introduce large geometric distortions in each Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) image with different look angles, resulting in a poor registration performance. To this end, this paper proposes a multi-hypothesis topological isomorphism matching method for SAR images with large geometric distortions. The method includes the Ridge-Line Keypoint Detection (RLKD) and Multi-Hypothesis Topological Isomorphism Matching (MHTIM). Firstly, based on the analysis of the ridge structure, a ridge keypoint detection module and a keypoint similarity description method are designed, which aim to quickly produce a small number of stable matching keypoint pairs under large look angle differences and large terrain undulations. The keypoint pairs are further fed into the MHTIM module. Subsequently, the MHTIM method is proposed, which uses the stability and isomorphism of the topological structure of the keypoint set under different perspectives to generate a variety of matching hypotheses, and iteratively achieves the keypoint matching. This method uses both local and global geometric relationships between two keypoints, hence it achieving better performance compared with traditional methods. We tested our approach on both simulated and real mountain SAR images with different look angles and different elevation ranges. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness and stable matching performance of our approach.

Colourlab Image Database: Geometric Distortions

Over the years, a high number of different objective image quality metrics have been proposed. While some image quality metrics show a high correlation with subjective scores provided in different datasets, there still exists room for improvement. Different studies have pointed to evaluating the quality of images affected by geometrical distortions as a challenge for current image quality metrics. In this work, we introduce the Colourlab Image Database: Geometric Distortions (CID:GD) with 49 different reference images made specifically to evaluate image quality metrics. CID:GD is one of the first datasets which include three different types of geometrical distortions; seam carving, lens distortion, and image rotation. 35 state-ofthe-art image quality metrics are tested on this dataset, showing that apart from a handful of these objective metrics, most are not able to show a high performance. The dataset is available at <ext-link ext-link-type="url" xlink:href="http://www.colourlab.no/cid">www.colourlab.no/cid</ext-link>.

Algorithms for contactless scanning of book monuments

The article is devoted to the questions of cultural heritage preservation by creating the digital collection of book monuments. The original documents are monuments of book culture and their dilapidated state requires careful handling, splitting of documents for scanning is extremely undesirable. The market does not present the equipment for contactless scanning of books without embroidering, therefore an algorithm that allows digitalizing book monuments in a contactless way has been developed. The technique has been constructed using an algorithm based on the projection of the light grid on the object scanned. The authors propose a sequence of actions consisting of image processing and comparing the results between two images. The first snapshot determines the initial parameters of the grid; the second snapshot determines the actual distortion of the test snapshot. Subsequent mathematical processing allows getting scanned images without absence of geometric distortions of the scanned page due to the system of using the two-dimensional array of corrections. The application of the system has been modeled on the example of «The legend of the destruction of Siberian cities of Tara and Tyumen by the lesser Tatars / / Collection of moral stories, words, lives and other articles [hand.]». The evaluation parameters of the simulation result have been the following: text distinctness, absence of geometric distortions, color quality, uniformity of document scanning quality within a single book, etc., as checked and recognized as high by the experts.The experience described opens possibilities of book monuments digitization using the new algorithm. The development of the system is aimed at expanding the database of objects of material culture to be digitized, perfecting the software, improving the quality of digital images, as well as the capabilities of image recognition and search for the document itself and information it contains.