arXiv subjects

Gene Cheung

Publications and source records attributed to Gene Cheung.

At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

arXiv2019

3D Point Cloud Super-Resolution via Graph Total Variation on Surface Normals

Point cloud is a collection of 3D coordinates that are discrete geometric samples of an object's 2D surfaces. Using a low-cost 3D scanner to acquire data means that point clouds are often in lower resolution than desired for rendering on high-resolution displays. Building on recent advances in graph signal processing, we design a local algorithm for 3D point cloud super-resolution (SR). First, we initialize new points at centroids of local triangles formed using the low-resolution point cloud, and connect all points using a k-nearestneighbor graph. Then, to establish a linear relationship between surface normals and 3D point coordinates, we perform bipartite graph approximation to divide all nodes into two disjoint sets, which are optimized alternately until convergence. For each node set, to promote piecewise smooth (PWS) 2D surfaces, we design a graph total variation (GTV) objective for nearby surface normals, under the constraint that coordinates of the original points are preserved. We pursue an augmented Lagrangian approach to tackle the optimization, and solve the unconstrained equivalent using the alternating method of multipliers (ADMM). Extensive experiments show that our proposed point cloud SR algorithm outperforms competing schemes objectively and subjectively for a large variety of point clouds.

eess.SP↗

arXiv2019

Deep Graph Laplacian Regularization for Robust Denoising of Real Images

Recent developments in deep learning have revolutionized the paradigm of image restoration. However, its applications on real image denoising are still limited, due to its sensitivity to training data and the complex nature of real image noise. In this work, we combine the robustness merit of model-based approaches and the learning power of data-driven approaches for real image denoising. Specifically, by integrating graph Laplacian regularization as a trainable module into a deep learning framework, we are less susceptible to overfitting than pure CNN-based approaches, achieving higher robustness to small datasets and cross-domain denoising. First, a sparse neighborhood graph is built from the output of a convolutional neural network (CNN). Then the image is restored by solving an unconstrained quadratic programming problem, using a corresponding graph Laplacian regularizer as a prior term. The proposed restoration pipeline is fully differentiable and hence can be end-to-end trained. Experimental results demonstrate that our work is less prone to overfitting given small training data. It is also endowed with strong cross-domain generalization power, outperforming the state-of-the-art approaches by a remarkable margin.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2019

3D Point Cloud Denoising using Graph Laplacian Regularization of a Low Dimensional Manifold Model

3D point cloud - a new signal representation of volumetric objects - is a discrete collection of triples marking exterior object surface locations in 3D space. Conventional imperfect acquisition processes of 3D point cloud - e.g., stereo-matching from multiple viewpoint images or depth data acquired directly from active light sensors - imply non-negligible noise in the data. In this paper, we adopt a previously proposed low-dimensional manifold model for the surface patches in the point cloud and seek self-similar patches to denoise them simultaneously using the patch manifold prior. Due to discrete observations of the patches on the manifold, we approximate the manifold dimension computation defined in the continuous domain with a patch-based graph Laplacian regularizer and propose a new discrete patch distance measure to quantify the similarity between two same-sized surface patches for graph construction that is robust to noise. We show that our graph Laplacian regularizer has a natural graph spectral interpretation, and has desirable numerical stability properties via eigenanalysis. Extensive simulation results show that our proposed denoising scheme can outperform state-of-the-art methods in objective metrics and can better preserve visually salient structural features like edges.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2019

Reconstruction-Cognizant Graph Sampling using Gershgorin Disc Alignment

Graph sampling with noise is a fundamental problem in graph signal processing (GSP). Previous works assume an unbiased least square (LS) signal reconstruction scheme and select samples greedily via expensive extreme eigenvector computation. A popular biased scheme using graph Laplacian regularization (GLR) solves a system of linear equations for its reconstruction. Assuming this GLR-based scheme, we propose a reconstruction-cognizant sampling strategy to maximize the numerical stability of the linear system---\textit{i.e.}, minimize the condition number of the coefficient matrix. Specifically, we maximize the eigenvalue lower bounds of the matrix, represented by left-ends of Gershgorin discs of the coefficient matrix. To accomplish this efficiently, we propose an iterative algorithm to traverse the graph nodes via Breadth First Search (BFS) and align the left-ends of all corresponding Gershgorin discs at lower-bound threshold $T$ using two basic operations: disc shifting and scaling. We then perform binary search to maximize $T$ given a sample budget $K$. Experiments on real graph data show that the proposed algorithm can effectively promote large eigenvalue lower bounds, and the reconstruction MSE is the same or smaller than existing sampling methods for different budget $K$ at much lower complexity.

eess.SP↗

arXiv2018

3D Point Cloud Denoising via Bipartite Graph Approximation and Reweighted Graph Laplacian

Point cloud is a collection of 3D coordinates that are discrete geometric samples of an object's 2D surfaces. Imperfection in the acquisition process means that point clouds are often corrupted with noise. Building on recent advances in graph signal processing, we design local algorithms for 3D point cloud denoising. Specifically, we design a reweighted graph Laplacian regularizer (RGLR) for surface normals and demonstrate its merits in rotation invariance, promotion of piecewise smoothness, and ease of optimization. Using RGLR as a signal prior, we formulate an optimization problem with a general lp-norm fidelity term that can explicitly model two types of independent noise: small but non-sparse noise (using l2 fidelity term) and large but sparser noise (using l1 fidelity term). To establish a linear relationship between normals and 3D point coordinates, we first perform bipartite graph approximation to divide the point cloud into two disjoint node sets (red and blue). We then optimize the red and blue nodes' coordinates alternately. For l2-norm fidelity term, we iteratively solve an unconstrained quadratic programming (QP) problem, efficiently computed using conjugate gradient with a bounded condition number to ensure numerical stability. For l1-norm fidelity term, we iteratively minimize an l1-l2 cost function sing accelerated proximal gradient (APG), where a good step size is chosen via Lipschitz continuity analysis. Finally, we propose simple mean and median filters for flat patches of a given point cloud to estimate the noise variance given the noise type, which in turn is used to compute a weight parameter trading off the fidelity term and signal prior in the problem formulation. Extensive experiments show state-of-the-art denoising performance among local methods using our proposed algorithms.

eess.SP↗

arXiv2018

Low-complexity Graph Sampling with Noise and Signal Reconstruction via Neumann Series

Graph sampling addresses the problem of selecting a node subset in a graph to collect samples, so that a K-bandlimited signal can be reconstructed in high fidelity. Assuming an independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) noise model, minimizing the expected mean square error (MMSE) leads to the known A-optimality criterion for graph sampling, which is expensive to compute and difficult to optimize. In this paper, we propose an augmented objective based on Neumann series that well approximates the original criterion and is amenable to greedy optimization. Specifically, we show that a shifted A-optimal criterion can be equivalently written as a function of an ideal low-pass (LP) graph filter, which in turn can be approximated efficiently via fast graph Fourier transform (FGFT). Minimizing the new objective, we select nodes greedily without large matrix inversions using a matrix inverse lemma. Further, for the dynamic network case where node availability varies across time, we propose an extended sampling strategy that replaces offline samples one-by-one in the selected set. For signal reconstruction, we propose an accompanied biased signal recovery strategy that reuses the approximated filter from sampling. Experiments show that our reconstruction is more robust to large noise than the least square (LS) solution, and our sampling strategy far outperforms several existing schemes.

eess.SP↗

arXiv2018

A-Optimal Sampling and Robust Reconstruction for Graph Signals via Truncated Neumann Series

Graph signal processing (GSP) studies signals that live on irregular data kernels described by graphs. One fundamental problem in GSP is sampling---from which subset of graph nodes to collect samples in order to reconstruct a bandlimited graph signal in high fidelity. In this paper, we seek a sampling strategy that minimizes the mean square error (MSE) of the reconstructed bandlimited graph signals assuming an independent and identically distributed (iid) noise model---leading naturally to the A-optimal design criterion. To avoid matrix inversion, we first prove that the inverse of the information matrix in the A-optimal criterion is equivalent to a Neumann matrix series. We then transform the truncated Neumann series based sampling problem into an equivalent expression that replaces eigenvectors of the Laplacian operator with a sub-matrix of an ideal low-pass graph filter. Finally, we approximate the ideal filter using a Chebyshev matrix polynomial. We design a greedy algorithm to iteratively minimize the simplified objective. For signal reconstruction, we propose an accompanied signal reconstruction strategy that reuses the approximated filter sub-matrix and is provably more robust than conventional least square recovery. Simulation results show that our sampling strategy outperforms two previous strategies in MSE performance at comparable complexity.

eess.SP↗

arXiv2018

SiGAN: Siamese Generative Adversarial Network for Identity-Preserving Face Hallucination

Despite generative adversarial networks (GANs) can hallucinate photo-realistic high-resolution (HR) faces from low-resolution (LR) faces, they cannot guarantee preserving the identities of hallucinated HR faces, making the HR faces poorly recognizable. To address this problem, we propose a Siamese GAN (SiGAN) to reconstruct HR faces that visually resemble their corresponding identities. On top of a Siamese network, the proposed SiGAN consists of a pair of two identical generators and one discriminator. We incorporate reconstruction error and identity label information in the loss function of SiGAN in a pairwise manner. By iteratively optimizing the loss functions of the generator pair and discriminator of SiGAN, we cannot only achieve photo-realistic face reconstruction, but also ensures the reconstructed information is useful for identity recognition. Experimental results demonstrate that SiGAN significantly outperforms existing face hallucination GANs in objective face verification performance, while achieving photo-realistic reconstruction. Moreover, for input LR faces from unknown identities who are not included in training, SiGAN can still do a good job.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2018

Fast 3D Point Cloud Denoising via Bipartite Graph Approximation & Total Variation

Acquired 3D point cloud data, whether from active sensors directly or from stereo-matching algorithms indirectly, typically contain non-negligible noise. To address the point cloud denoising problem, we propose a fast graph-based local algorithm. Specifically, given a k-nearest-neighbor graph of the 3D points, we first approximate it with a bipartite graph(independent sets of red and blue nodes) using a KL divergence criterion. For each partite of nodes (say red), we first define surface normal of each red node using 3D coordinates of neighboring blue nodes, so that red node normals n can be written as a linear function of red node coordinates p. We then formulate a convex optimization problem, with a quadratic fidelity term ||p-q||_2^2 given noisy observed red coordinates q and a graph total variation (GTV) regularization term for surface normals of neighboring red nodes. We minimize the resulting l2-l1-norm using alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) and proximal gradient descent. The two partites of nodes are alternately optimized until convergence. Experimental results show that compared to state-of-the-art schemes with similar complexity, our proposed algorithm achieves the best overall denoising performance objectively and subjectively.

eess.SP↗

arXiv2018

Adaptive Non-Rigid Inpainting of 3D Point Cloud Geometry

In this letter, we introduce several algorithms for geometry inpainting of 3D point clouds with large holes. The algorithms are examplar-based: hole filling is performed iteratively using templates near the hole boundary to find the best matching regions elsewhere in the cloud, from where existing points are transferred to the hole. We propose two improvements over the previous work on exemplar-based hole filling. The first one is adaptive template size selection in each iteration, which simultaneously leads to higher accuracy and lower execution time. The second improvement is a non-rigid transformation to better align the candidate set of points with the template before the point transfer, which leads to even higher accuracy. We demonstrate the algorithms' ability to fill holes that are difficult or impossible to fill by existing methods.

eess.SP↗

arXiv2018

Graph-Based Blind Image Deblurring From a Single Photograph

Blind image deblurring, i.e., deblurring without knowledge of the blur kernel, is a highly ill-posed problem. The problem can be solved in two parts: i) estimate a blur kernel from the blurry image, and ii) given estimated blur kernel, de-convolve blurry input to restore the target image. In this paper, we propose a graph-based blind image deblurring algorithm by interpreting an image patch as a signal on a weighted graph. Specifically, we first argue that a skeleton image---a proxy that retains the strong gradients of the target but smooths out the details---can be used to accurately estimate the blur kernel and has a unique bi-modal edge weight distribution. Then, we design a reweighted graph total variation (RGTV) prior that can efficiently promote a bi-modal edge weight distribution given a blurry patch. Further, to analyze RGTV in the graph frequency domain, we introduce a new weight function to represent RGTV as a graph $l_1$-Laplacian regularizer. This leads to a graph spectral filtering interpretation of the prior with desirable properties, including robustness to noise and blur, strong piecewise smooth (PWS) filtering and sharpness promotion. Minimizing a blind image deblurring objective with RGTV results in a non-convex non-differentiable optimization problem. We leverage the new graph spectral interpretation for RGTV to design an efficient algorithm that solves for the skeleton image and the blur kernel alternately. Specifically for Gaussian blur, we propose a further speedup strategy for blind Gaussian deblurring using accelerated graph spectral filtering. Finally, with the computed blur kernel, recent non-blind image deblurring algorithms can be applied to restore the target image. Experimental results demonstrate that our algorithm successfully restores latent sharp images and outperforms state-of-the-art methods quantitatively and qualitatively.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2018

Non-Local Graph-Based Prediction For Reversible Data Hiding In Images

Reversible data hiding (RDH) is desirable in applications where both the hidden message and the cover medium need to be recovered without loss. Among many RDH approaches is prediction-error expansion (PEE), containing two steps: i) prediction of a target pixel value, and ii) embedding according to the value of prediction-error. In general, higher prediction performance leads to larger embedding capacity and/or lower signal distortion. Leveraging on recent advances in graph signal processing (GSP), we pose pixel prediction as a graph-signal restoration problem, where the appropriate edge weights of the underlying graph are computed using a similar patch searched in a semi-local neighborhood. Specifically, for each candidate patch, we first examine eigenvalues of its structure tensor to estimate its local smoothness. If sufficiently smooth, we pose a maximum a posteriori (MAP) problem using either a quadratic Laplacian regularizer or a graph total variation (GTV) term as signal prior. While the MAP problem using the first prior has a closed-form solution, we design an efficient algorithm for the second prior using alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) with nested proximal gradient descent. Experimental results show that with better quality GSP-based prediction, at low capacity the visual quality of the embedded image exceeds state-of-the-art methods noticeably.

eess.IV↗

arXiv2018

Graph Spectral Image Processing

Recent advent of graph signal processing (GSP) has spurred intensive studies of signals that live naturally on irregular data kernels described by graphs (e.g., social networks, wireless sensor networks). Though a digital image contains pixels that reside on a regularly sampled 2D grid, if one can design an appropriate underlying graph connecting pixels with weights that reflect the image structure, then one can interpret the image (or image patch) as a signal on a graph, and apply GSP tools for processing and analysis of the signal in graph spectral domain. In this article, we overview recent graph spectral techniques in GSP specifically for image / video processing. The topics covered include image compression, image restoration, image filtering and image segmentation.

eess.IV↗

arXiv2017

Blind Image Deblurring via Reweighted Graph Total Variation

cs.CV↗

arXiv2017

Graph Laplacian Regularization for Image Denoising: Analysis in the Continuous Domain

Inverse imaging problems are inherently under-determined, and hence it is important to employ appropriate image priors for regularization. One recent popular prior---the graph Laplacian regularizer---assumes that the target pixel patch is smooth with respect to an appropriately chosen graph. However, the mechanisms and implications of imposing the graph Laplacian regularizer on the original inverse problem are not well understood. To address this problem, in this paper we interpret neighborhood graphs of pixel patches as discrete counterparts of Riemannian manifolds and perform analysis in the continuous domain, providing insights into several fundamental aspects of graph Laplacian regularization for image denoising. Specifically, we first show the convergence of the graph Laplacian regularizer to a continuous-domain functional, integrating a norm measured in a locally adaptive metric space. Focusing on image denoising, we derive an optimal metric space assuming non-local self-similarity of pixel patches, leading to an optimal graph Laplacian regularizer for denoising in the discrete domain. We then interpret graph Laplacian regularization as an anisotropic diffusion scheme to explain its behavior during iterations, e.g., its tendency to promote piecewise smooth signals under certain settings. To verify our analysis, an iterative image denoising algorithm is developed. Experimental results show that our algorithm performs competitively with state-of-the-art denoising methods such as BM3D for natural images, and outperforms them significantly for piecewise smooth images.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2017

Robust Semi-Supervised Graph Classifier Learning with Negative Edge Weights

In a semi-supervised learning scenario, (possibly noisy) partially observed labels are used as input to train a classifier, in order to assign labels to unclassified samples. In this paper, we study this classifier learning problem from a graph signal processing (GSP) perspective. Specifically, by viewing a binary classifier as a piecewise constant graph-signal in a high-dimensional feature space, we cast classifier learning as a signal restoration problem via a classical maximum a posteriori (MAP) formulation. Unlike previous graph-signal restoration works, we consider in addition edges with negative weights that signify anti-correlation between samples. One unfortunate consequence is that the graph Laplacian matrix $\mathbf{L}$ can be indefinite, and previously proposed graph-signal smoothness prior $\mathbf{x}^T \mathbf{L} \mathbf{x}$ for candidate signal $\mathbf{x}$ can lead to pathological solutions. In response, we derive an optimal perturbation matrix $\boldsymbolΔ$ - based on a fast lower-bound computation of the minimum eigenvalue of $\mathbf{L}$ via a novel application of the Haynsworth inertia additivity formula---so that $\mathbf{L} + \boldsymbolΔ$ is positive semi-definite, resulting in a stable signal prior. Further, instead of forcing a hard binary decision for each sample, we define the notion of generalized smoothness on graph that promotes ambiguity in the classifier signal. Finally, we propose an algorithm based on iterative reweighted least squares (IRLS) that solves the posed MAP problem efficiently. Extensive simulation results show that our proposed algorithm outperforms both SVM variants and graph-based classifiers using positive-edge graphs noticeably.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2017

Graph-based Joint Signal / Power Restoration for Energy Harvesting Wireless Sensor Networks

The design of energy and spectrally efficient Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) is crucial to support the upcoming expansion of IoT/M2M mobile data traffic. In this work, we consider an energy harvesting WSN where sensor data are periodically reported to a Fusion Center (FC) by a sparse set of active sensors. Unlike most existing works, the transmit power levels of each sensor are assumed to be unknown at the FC in this distributed setting. We address the inverse problem of joint signal / power restoration at the FC- a challenging under-determined separation problem. To regularize the ill-posed problem, we assume both a graph-signal smoothness prior (signal is smooth with respect to a graph modeling spatial correlation among sensors) and a sparsity power prior for the two unknown variables. We design an efficient algorithm by alternately fixing one variable and solving for the other until convergence. Specifically, when the signal is fixed, we solve for the power vector using Simplex pivoting in linear programming (LP) to iteratively identify sparse feasible solutions, locally minimizing an objective. Simulation results show that our proposal can achieve very low reconstruction errors and outperform conventional schemes under reasonable assumptions

cs.IT↗

arXiv2017

Graph Fourier Transform with Negative Edges for Depth Image Coding

Recent advent in graph signal processing (GSP) has led to the development of new graph-based transforms and wavelets for image / video coding, where the underlying graph describes inter-pixel correlations. In this paper, we develop a new transform called signed graph Fourier transform (SGFT), where the underlying graph G contains negative edges that describe anti-correlations between pixel pairs. Specifically, we first construct a one-state Markov process that models both inter-pixel correlations and anti-correlations. We then derive the corresponding precision matrix, and show that the loopy graph Laplacian matrix Q of a graph G with a negative edge and two self-loops at its end nodes is approximately equivalent. This proves that the eigenvectors of Q - called SGFT - approximates the optimal Karhunen-Lo`eve Transform (KLT). We show the importance of the self-loops in G to ensure Q is positive semi-definite. We prove that the first eigenvector of Q is piecewise constant (PWC), and thus can well approximate a piecewise smooth (PWS) signal like a depth image. Experimental results show that a block-based coding scheme based on SGFT outperforms a previous scheme using graph transforms with only positive edges for several depth images.

cs.CV↗