HI-GAN: Hierarchical Inpainting GAN with Auxiliary Inputs for Combined RGB and Depth Inpainting

Inpainting involves filling in missing pixels or areas in an image, a crucial technique employed in Mixed Reality environments for various applications, particularly in Diminished Reality (DR) where content is removed from a user's visual environment. Existing methods rely on digital replacement techniques which necessitate multiple cameras and incur high costs. AR devices and smartphones use ToF depth sensors to capture scene depth maps aligned with RGB images. Despite speed and affordability, ToF cameras create imperfect depth maps with missing pixels. To address the above challenges, we propose Hierarchical Inpainting GAN (HI-GAN), a novel approach comprising three GANs in a hierarchical fashion for RGBD inpainting. EdgeGAN and LabelGAN inpaint masked edge and segmentation label images respectively, while CombinedRGBD-GAN combines their latent representation outputs and performs RGB and Depth inpainting. Edge images and particularly segmentation label images as auxiliary inputs significantly enhance inpainting performance by complementary context and hierarchical optimization. We believe we make the first attempt to incorporate label images into inpainting process.Unlike previous approaches requiring multiple sequential models and separate outputs, our work operates in an end-to-end manner, training all three models simultaneously and hierarchically. Specifically, EdgeGAN and LabelGAN are first optimized separately and further optimized inside CombinedRGBD-GAN to enhance inpainting quality. Experiments demonstrate that HI-GAN works seamlessly and achieves overall superior performance compared with existing approaches.

Safety in Traffic Management Systems: A Comprehensive Survey

Traffic management systems play a vital role in ensuring safe and efficient transportation on roads. However, the use of advanced technologies in traffic management systems has introduced new safety challenges. Therefore, it is important to ensure the safety of these systems to prevent accidents and minimize their impact on road users. In this survey, we provide a comprehensive review of the literature on safety in traffic management systems. Specifically, we discuss the different safety issues that arise in traffic management systems, the current state of research on safety in these systems, and the techniques and methods proposed to ensure the safety of these systems. We also identify the limitations of the existing research and suggest future research directions.

A review of Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) and its applications in a wide variety of disciplines -- From Medical to Remote Sensing

We look into Generative Adversarial Network (GAN), its prevalent variants and applications in a number of sectors. GANs combine two neural networks that compete against one another using zero-sum game theory, allowing them to create much crisper and discrete outputs. GANs can be used to perform image processing, video generation and prediction, among other computer vision applications. GANs can also be utilised for a variety of science-related activities, including protein engineering, astronomical data processing, remote sensing image dehazing, and crystal structure synthesis. Other notable fields where GANs have made gains include finance, marketing, fashion design, sports, and music. Therefore in this article we provide a comprehensive overview of the applications of GANs in a wide variety of disciplines. We first cover the theory supporting GAN, GAN variants, and the metrics to evaluate GANs. Then we present how GAN and its variants can be applied in twelve domains, ranging from STEM fields, such as astronomy and biology, to business fields, such as marketing and finance, and to arts, such as music. As a result, researchers from other fields may grasp how GANs work and apply them to their own study. To the best of our knowledge, this article provides the most comprehensive survey of GAN's applications in different fields.

High Resolution Solar Image Generation using Generative Adversarial Networks

We applied Deep Learning algorithm known as Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) to perform solar image-to-image translation. That is, from Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO)/Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager(HMI) line of sight magnetogram images to SDO/Atmospheric Imaging Assembly(AIA) 0304-{\AA} images. The Ultraviolet(UV)/Extreme Ultraviolet(EUV) observations like the SDO/AIA0304-{\AA} images were only made available to scientists in the late 1990s even though the magenetic field observations like the SDO/HMI have been available since the 1970s. Therefore by leveraging Deep Learning algorithms like GANs we can give scientists access to complete datasets for analysis. For generating high resolution solar images we use the Pix2PixHD and Pix2Pix algorithms. The Pix2PixHD algorithm was specifically designed for high resolution image generation tasks, and the Pix2Pix algorithm is by far the most widely used image to image translation algorithm. For training and testing we used the data for the year 2012, 2013 and 2014. The results show that our deep learning models are capable of generating high resolution(1024 x 1024 pixels) AIA0304 images from HMI magnetograms. Specifically, the pixel-to-pixel Pearson Correlation Coefficient of the images generated by Pix2PixHD and original images is as high as 0.99. The number is 0.962 if Pix2Pix is used to generate images. The results we get for our Pix2PixHD model is better than the results obtained by previous works done by others to generate AIA0304 images. Thus, we can use these models to generate AIA0304 images when the AIA0304 data is not available which can be used for understanding space weather and giving researchers the capability to predict solar events such as Solar Flares and Coronal Mass Ejections. As far as we know, our work is the first attempt to leverage Pix2PixHD algorithm for SDO/HMI to SDO/AIA0304 image-to-image translation.