CompressNet: Generative Compression at Extremely Low Bitrates

Compressing images at extremely low bitrates (< 0.1 bpp) has always been a challenging task since the quality of reconstruction significantly reduces due to the strong imposed constraint on the number of bits allocated for the compressed data. With the increasing need to transfer large amounts of images with limited bandwidth, compressing images to very low sizes is a crucial task. However, the existing methods are not effective at extremely low bitrates. To address this need, we propose a novel network called CompressNet which augments a Stacked Autoencoder with a Switch Prediction Network (SAE-SPN). This helps in the reconstruction of visually pleasing images at these low bitrates (< 0.1 bpp). We benchmark the performance of our proposed method on the Cityscapes dataset, evaluating over different metrics at extremely low bitrates to show that our method outperforms the other state-of-the-art. In particular, at a bitrate of 0.07, CompressNet achieves 22% lower Perceptual Loss and 55% lower Frechet Inception Distance (FID) compared to the deep learning SOTA methods.

Vision Based Dynamic Offside Line Marker for Soccer Games

Offside detection in soccer has emerged as one of the most important decisions with an average of 50 offside decisions every game. False detections and rash calls adversely affect game conditions and in many cases drastically change the outcome of the game. The human eye has finite precision and can only discern a limited amount of detail in a given instance. Current offside decisions are made manually by sideline referees and tend to remain controversial in many games. This calls for automated offside detection techniques in order to assist accurate refereeing. In this work, we have explicitly used computer vision and image processing techniques like Hough transform, color similarity (quantization), graph connected components, and vanishing point ideas to identify the probable offside regions. Keywords: Hough transform, connected components, KLT tracking, color similarity.