A Reduced Codebook and Re-Interpolation Approach for Enhancing Quality in Chroma Subsampling

Prior to encoding RGB full-color images or Bayer color filter array (CFA) images, chroma subsampling is a necessary and crucial step at the server side. In this paper, we first propose a flow diagram approach to analyze the coordinate-inconsistency (CI) problem and the upsampling process-inconsistency (UPI) problem existing in the traditional and state-of-the-art chroma subsampling methods under the current coding environment. In addition, we explain why the two problems degrade the quality of the reconstructed images. Next, we propose a reduced codebook and re-interpolation (RCRI) approach to solve the two problems for enhancing the quality of the reconstructed images. Based on the testing RGB full-color images and Bayer CFA images, the comprehensive experimental results demonstrated at least 1.4 dB and 2.4 dB quality improvement effects, respectively, of our RCRI approach against the CI and UPI problems for the traditional and state-of-the-art chroma subsampling methods.

Novel and Effective CNN-Based Binarization for Historically Degraded As-built Drawing Maps

Binarizing historically degraded as-built drawing (HDAD) maps is a new challenging job, especially in terms of removing the three artifacts, namely noise, the yellowing areas, and the folded lines, while preserving the foreground components well. In this paper, we first propose a semi-automatic labeling method to create the HDAD-pair dataset of which each HDAD-pair consists of one HDAD map and its binarized HDAD map. Based on the created training HDAD-pair dataset, we propose a convolutional neural network-based (CNN-based) binarization method to produce high-quality binarized HDAD maps. Based on the testing HDAD maps, the thorough experimental data demonstrated that in terms of the accuracy, PSNR (peak-signal-to-noise-ratio), and the perceptual effect of the binarized HDAD maps, our method substantially outperforms the nine existing binarization methods. In addition, with similar accuracy, the experimental results demonstrated the significant execution-time reduction merit of our method relative to the retrained version of the state-of-the-art CNN-based binarization methods.

Novel Adaptive Binary Search Strategy-First Hybrid Pyramid- and Clustering-Based CNN Filter Pruning Method without Parameters Setting

Pruning redundant filters in CNN models has received growing attention. In this paper, we propose an adaptive binary search-first hybrid pyramid- and clustering-based (ABSHPC-based) method for pruning filters automatically. In our method, for each convolutional layer, initially a hybrid pyramid data structure is constructed to store the hierarchical information of each filter. Given a tolerant accuracy loss, without parameters setting, we begin from the last convolutional layer to the first layer; for each considered layer with less or equal pruning rate relative to its previous layer, our ABSHPC-based process is applied to optimally partition all filters to clusters, where each cluster is thus represented by the filter with the median root mean of the hybrid pyramid, leading to maximal removal of redundant filters. Based on the practical dataset and the CNN models, with higher accuracy, the thorough experimental results demonstrated the significant parameters and floating-point operations reduction merits of the proposed filter pruning method relative to the state-of-the-art methods.