EFFICIENT SEMI-AUTOMATIC TECHNIQUES FOR IMAGE AND VIDEO MORPHING

PhD Thesis Proposal Defence


Title: "EFFICIENT SEMI-AUTOMATIC TECHNIQUES FOR IMAGE AND VIDEO MORPHING"

by

Miss Jing LIAO


Abstract:

This thesis proposes a new method for creating smooth transitions between 
images and videos, and the adaptive transition control scheme.

The main challenge in achieving good image morphs is to create a map that 
aligns corresponding image elements. Our aim is to help automate this often 
tedious task. We compute the map by optimizing the compatibility of 
corresponding warped image neighborhoods using an adaptation of structural 
similarity. The optimization is regularized by a thin-plate spline, and may be 
guided by a few user-drawn points. We parameterize the map over a halfway 
domain and show that this representation offers many benefits. The map is able 
to treat the image pair symmetrically, model simple occlusions continuously, 
span partially overlapping images, and define extrapolated correspondences. 
Moreover, it enables direct evaluation of the morph in a pixel shader without 
mesh rasterization. We improve the morphs by optimizing quadratic motion paths 
and by seamlessly extending content beyond the image boundaries. We parallelize 
the algorithm on a GPU to achieve a responsive interface and demonstrate 
challenging morphs obtained with little effort.

When extending image morphing to video morphing, it presents added challenges. 
Because motions are often unsynchronized, temporal alignment is also necessary. 
Applying morphing to individual frames leads to discontinuities, so temporal 
coherence must be considered. Our approach is to optimize a full spatiotemporal 
mapping between the two videos. We reduce tedious interactions by letting the 
optimization derive the fine-scale map given only sparse userspecified 
constraints. For robustness, the optimization objective examines structural 
similarity of the video content. We demonstrate the approach on a variety of 
videos, obtaining results using few explicit correspondences.

We also explore some adaptive transition functions for image and video 
morphing, and provide users a convenient tool for intuitive control on the 
transition rates, to produce some more interesting results.


Date:			Tuesday, 23 September 2014

Time:                   12:00noon - 2:00pm

Venue:                  Room 3494
                         lifts 25/26

Committee Members:	Dr. Pedro Sander (Supervisor)
 			Prof. Long Quan (Chairperson)
 			Dr. Huamin Qu
 			Prof. Chiew-Lan Tai


**** ALL are Welcome ****