Publications by Costantino Grana

This article presents a framework for automatic semantic annotation of video streams with an ontology that includes concepts expressed using linguistic terms and visual data.

In this paper we present an overview of the historical evolution of connected component labeling algorithms, and in particular the ones applied on images stored in raster scan order. This brief survey aims at providing a comprehensive comparison of their performance on modern architectures, since the high availability of memory and the presence of caches make some solutions more suitable and fast. Moreover we propose a new strategy for label propagation based on a 2x2 blocks, which allows to improve the performance of many existing algorithms. The tests are conducted on high resolution images obtained from digitized historical manuscripts and a set of transformations is applied in order to show the algorithms behavior at different image resolutions and with a varying number of labels.

In this paper a document analysis tool for historical manuscripts is proposed. The goal is to automatically segment layout components of the page, that is text, pictures and decorations. We specifically focused on the pictures, proposing a set of visual features able to identify significant pictures and separating them from all the floral and abstract decorations. The analysis is performed by blocks using a limited set of color and texture features, including a new texture descriptor particularly effective for this task, namely Gradient Spatial Dependency Matrix. The feature vectors are processed by an embedding procedure which allows increased performance in later SVM classification.

This paper proposes a comparison of color features for image retrieval. In particular the UCID image database has been employed to compare the retrieval capabilities of different color descriptors. The set of descriptors comprises global and spatially related features, and the tests show that HSV based global features provide the best performance at varying brightness and contrast settings.

This work proposes a general approach to optimize the time required to perform a choice in a decision support system, with particular reference to image processing tasks with neighborhood analysis. The decisions are encoded in a decision table paradigm that allows multiple equivalent procedures to be performed for the same situation. An automatic synthesis of the optimal decision tree is implemented in order to generate the most efficient order in which conditions should be considered to minimize the computational requirements.To test out approach, the connected component labeling scenario is considered. Results will show the speedup introduced using an automatically built decision system able to efficiently analyze and explore the neighborhood.

In this work we propose a system for automatic document segmentation to extract graphical elements from historical manuscripts and then to identify significant pictures from them, removing floral and abstract decorations. The system performs a block based analysis by means of color and texture features. The Gradient Spatial Dependency Matrix, a new texture operator particularly effective for this task, is proposed. The feature vectors are processed by an embedding procedure which allows increased performance in later SVM classification. Results for both feature extraction and embedding based classification are reported, supporting the effectiveness of the proposal.

In this paper we present a new optimization technique for the neighborhood computation in connected component labeling focused on images stored in raster scan order. This new technique is based on a 2x2 square block analysis of the image, and it exploits the fact that, when using 8-connection, the pixels of a 2x2 square are all connected to each other. This implies that they will share the same label at the end of the computation. To prove the effectiveness of our proposal, we show a comprehensive comparison of the most used and advanced connected components labeling techniques presented so far. The tests are conducted on high resolution images obtained from digitized historical manuscripts and a set of transformations is applied in order to show the algorithms behavior at different image resolutions and with a varying number of labels.

In this work we describe a new approach for texture characterization. Starting from the autocorrelation matrix an elegant description through a mixture of Von Mises distributions is proposed. A compact 6 valued descriptor is produced for each block and served as input to an SVM classifier. Tests are carried out on high resolution illuminated manuscripts images.

In this paper we present a system for automatic segmentation, annotation and image retrieval based on content, focused on illuminated manuscripts and in particular the Borso D'Este Holy Bible. To enhance the interaction possibilities with this work, full of decorations and illustrations, we exploit some well known document analysis techniques in addition to some new approaches, in order to achieve good segmentation of pages into meaningful visual objects with the relative annotation. We wanted to extend the standard keyword-based retrieval approach in a commentary with a modern visual-based retrieval by appearance similarity: an entire software user interface for exploration and visual search of illuminated manuscripts.

In this paper we focus on the problem of automatic classification of melanocytic lesions, aiming at identifying the presence of reticular patterns. The recognition of reticular lesions is an important step in the description of the pigmented network, in order to obtain meaningful diagnostic information. Parameters like color, size or symmetry could benefit from the knowledge of having a reticular or non-reticular lesion. The detection of network patterns is performed with a three-steps procedure. The first step is the localization of line points, by means of the line points detection algorithm, firstly described by Steger. The second step is the linking of such points into a line considering the direction of the line at its endpoints and the number of line points connected to these. Finally a third step discards the meshes which couldn't be closed at the end of the linking procedure and the ones characterized by anomalous values of area or circularity. The number of the valid meshes left and their area with respect to the whole area of the lesion are the inputs of a discriminant function which classifies the lesions into reticular and non-reticular. This approach was tested on two balanced (both sets are formed by 50 reticular and 50 non-reticular images) training and testing sets. We obtained above 86% correct classification of the reticular and non-reticular lesions on real skin images, with a specificity value never lower than 92%.