Physics-Based Deformable Models presents a systematic physics-based framework for modeling rigid, articulated, and deformable objects, their interactions with the physical world, and the estimate of their shape and motion from visual data. This book presents a large variety of methods and associated experiments in computer vision, graphics and medical imaging that help the reader better to understand the presented material. In addition, special emphasis has been given to the development of techniques with interactive or close to real-time performance. Physics-Based Deformable Models is suitable as a secondary text for graduate level courses in Computer Graphics, Computational Physics, Computer Vision, Medical Imaging, and Biomedical Engineering. In addition, this book is appropriate as a reference for researchers and practitioners in the above-mentioned fields.

A modern treatment focusing on learning and inference, with minimal prerequisites, real-world examples and implementable algorithms.

Markov random field (MRF) modeling provides a basis for the characterization of contextual constraints on visual interpretation and enables us to develop optimal vision algorithms systematically based on sound principles. This book presents a comprehensive study on using MRFs to solve computer vision problems, covering the following parts essential to the subject: introduction to fundamental theories, formulations of various vision models in the MRF framework, MRF parameter estimation, and optimization algorithms. Various MRF vision models are presented in a unified form, including image restoration and reconstruction, edge and region segmentation, texture, stereo and motion, object matching and recognition, and pose estimation. This book is an excellent reference for researchers working in computer vision, image processing, pattern recognition and applications of MRFs. It is also suitable as a text for advanced courses in the subject.

This book is an international collection of contributions from academia, industry and the armed forces. It addresses current and emerging Spatial Vision Models and their application to the understanding, prediction and evaluation of the tasks of target detection and recognition. The discussion in many of the chapters is framed in terms of military targets and military vision aids. However, the techniques analyses and problems are by no means limited to this area of application. The detection and recognition of an armored vehicle from a reconnaissance image are performed by the same visual system used to detect and recognize a tumor in an X-ray. The analysis of the interaction of the human visual system with night vision devices is not different from the analysis needed in the case of an operator examining structures using a remote (endoscopic) camera, etc. The book is organized into three general sections. The first covers basic modeling of central (foveal) vision and its theoretical background. The second is centered on the evaluation of model performance in applications, while the third is dedicated to aspects of peripheral vision modeling and the expansion of peripheral modeling to include visual search.

Monocular Model-Based 3D Tracking of Rigid Objects reviews the different techniques and approaches that have been developed by industry and research.

Abstract Biological vision is a rather fascinating domain of research. Scientists of various origins like biology, medicine, neurophysiology, engineering, math ematics, etc. aim to understand the processes leading to visual perception process and at reproducing such systems. Understanding the environment is most of the time done through visual perception which appears to be one of the most fundamental sensory abilities in humans and therefore a significant amount of research effort has been dedicated towards modelling and repro ducing human visual abilities. Mathematical methods play a central role in this endeavour. Introduction David Marr's theory v^as a pioneering step tov^ards understanding visual percep tion. In his view human vision was based on a complete surface reconstruction of the environment that was then used to address visual subtasks. This approach was proven to be insufficient by neuro-biologists and complementary ideas from statistical pattern recognition and artificial intelligence were introduced to bet ter address the visual perception problem. In this framework visual perception is represented by a set of actions and rules connecting these actions. The emerg ing concept of active vision consists of a selective visual perception paradigm that is basically equivalent to recovering from the environment the minimal piece information required to address a particular task of interest.

Markov random field (MRF) theory provides a basis for modeling contextual constraints in visual processing and interpretation. It enables us to develop optimal vision algorithms systematically when used with optimization principles. This book presents a comprehensive study on the use of MRFs for solving computer vision problems. Various vision models are presented in a unified framework, including image restoration and reconstruction, edge and region segmentation, texture, stereo and motion, object matching and recognition, and pose estimation. This third edition includes the most recent advances and has new and expanded sections on topics such as: Bayesian Network; Discriminative Random Fields; Strong Random Fields; Spatial-Temporal Models; Learning MRF for Classification. This book is an excellent reference for researchers working in computer vision, image processing, statistical pattern recognition and applications of MRFs. It is also suitable as a text for advanced courses in these areas.

A system for computer vision is presented, which is based on two-dimensional prototypes, and which uses a hierarchy of features for mapping purposes. More specifically, one is dealing with scenes composed of planar faced, convex objects. Extensions to the general planar faced case are discussed. The visual input is provided by a TV-camera, and the problem is to interpret that input by computer, as a projection of a three-dimensional scene. The system proposed and demonstrated in this paper uses perspectively consistent two-dimensional models (prototypes) of views of three-dimensional objects, and interpretations of scene-representations are based on the establishment of mapping relationships from conglomerates of scene-elements (line-constellations) to prototypes templates. The prototypes are learned by the program through analysis of - and generalization on - ideal instances. (Modified author abstract).

Contents:Editorial (H I Christensen et al.)The Harvard Binocular Head (N J Ferrier & J J Clark)Heads, Eyes, and Head-Eye Systems (K Pahlavan & J-O Eklundh)Design and Performance of TRISH, a Binocular Robot Head with Torsional Eye Movements (E Milios et al.)A Low-Cost Robot Camera Head (H I Christensen)The Surrey Attentive Robot Vision System (J R G Pretlove & G A Parker)Layered Control of a Binocular Camera Head (J L Crowley et al.)SAVIC: A Simulation, Visualization and Interactive Control Environment for Mobile Robots (C Chen & M M Trivedi)Simulation and Expectation in Sensor-Based Systems (Y Roth & R Jain)Active Avoidance: Escape and Dodging Behaviors for Reactive Control (R C Arkin et al.) Readership: Engineers and computer scientists. keywords:Active Vision;Robot Vision;Computer Vision;Model-Based Vision;Robot Navigation;Reactive Control;Robot Motion Planning;Knowledge-Based Vision;Robotics