Sharif Digital Repository

An invisible image watermarking scheme tends to insert the mark in a transparent manner, with the highest possible energy. Several watermarking algorithms use human visual models as perceptual masks to maximize the power of watermark. We take advantage of inhibitory and excitatory characteristics of eye receptors which yield an extra capacity, for amplifying watermark power, while still satisfying imperceptibility constraint. Spatial-domain image entropy is used as a measure of strength of inhibitory effect. The principle of our idea is based on the decomposition of mark sequence into two parts, corresponding to two complementary sets of pixels in spatial-domain. These sets are determined... 

In this article, we discuss the possibility of integrating image de-blurring techniques in an aerial simultaneous localization and mapping by a single camera (monocular simultaneous localization and mapping (Mono-SLAM)). We use an integrated aerial virtual environment together with a six-degree-of-freedom aircraft flight simulator to show the effectiveness of the approach to generate three-dimensional flight trajectories via integration of image de-blurring in the associated loop of the Mono-SLAM. The objective is to increase the overall performance of a flying mission over an unknown area by means of a vision-only method. The integrated aerial virtual environment produces and collects... 

In this paper we propose a rate-efficient peer-to-peer architecture for video multicasting over the Internet. The limited capacity of the Internet hosts and the heterogeneous property of their access links are the main challenges of the peer-to-peer video multicasting over the Internet. Although, the rate-optimized overlay tree construction is a NP-hard problem, we propose a number of distributed and efficient protocols for rate-efficient overlay tree construction. Our proposed protocols include efficient join, improvement, overlay tree refinement and an optimum rate allocation protocol. The simulation results show the efficiency of the proposed protocols in rate-efficient overlay tree... 

Color image segmentation is a primitive operation in many image processing and computer vision applications. Accordingly, there exist numerous segmentation approaches in the literature, which might be misleading for a researcher who is looking for a practical algorithm. While many researchers are still using the tools which belong to the old color space paradigm, there is evidence in the research established in the eighties that a proper descriptor of color vectors should act locally in the color domain. In this paper, these results are used to propose a new color image segmentation method. The proposed method searches for the principal colors, defined as the intersections of the cylindrical... 

Sparse representation is a powerful tool for image processing, including noise removal. It is an effective method for Gaussian noise removal by taking advantage of a fixed and learned dictionary. In this study, the variable distribution of Rician noise is reduced in magnetic resonance (MR) images by sparse representation based on reconstruction error sets. Standard deviation of Gaussian noise is used to find these errors locally. The proposed method represents two formulas for local error calculation using standard deviation of noise. The acquired results from the real and simulated images are comparable, and in some cases, better than the best Rician noise removal method due to the... 

In this paper, an optical beam shaping system is theoretically and experimentally investigated. The optical system design software ZEMAX is used to simulate and analyze the reported beam shaping design. By using this software ray tracing diagrams are presented with the aim of studying the direct beam propagation, total reflection rays, and the lost rays. The prism duct output beam shape and radiance profiles in both position space and angle space are also studied. For experimental investigation, a two-stage beam shaping design including a fiber-bundle and a prism duct is used. A source light is used for the fiber-bundle illumination and the photograph image of the output beam is taken by a... 

This paper introduces a new method for improving the inertial navigation system errors using information provided by the camera. An unscented Kalman filter is used for integrating the inertial measurement unit data with the features’ constraints extracted from the camera’s image. The constraints, in our approach, comprise epipolar geometry of two consecutive images with more than 65% coverage. Tracking down a known feature in two consecutive images results in emergence of stochastic epipolar constraint. It emerges in the form of an implicit measurement equation of the Kalman filter. Correctly matching features of the two images is necessary for reducing the navigation system errors because... 

Nonlinear propagation has been demonstrated to have a significant impact on ultrasound imaging. An efficient computational algorithm is presented to simulate nonlinear ultrasound propagation through layered liquid and tissue-equivalent media. Results are compared with hydrophone measurements. This study was undertaken to investigate the role of nonlinear propagation in high frequency ultrasound micro-imaging. The acoustic field of a focused transducer (20 MHz centre frequency, f-number 2.5) was simulated for layered media consisting of water and tissue-mimicking phantom, for several wide-bandwidth source pulses. The simulation model accounted for the effects of diffraction, attenuation and...