Rob Aspin

ABSTRACT Capturing, recreating and representing a high fidelity virtual representation of the dynamic human form has long been a target for a diverse range of applications including tele-presence, games, film and TV special effects. The complexity of the challenge, to achieve a lifelike, faithful and believable representation, is such that a wide range of techniques and approaches have been developed. These are both due to research lead curiosity and requirements to address specific objective for particular problems. This work starts from a novel standpoint: that the processes of surfacing, tessellation and texturing, commonly used in 3D reconstruction, are computationally expensive and un-necessary. This work argues that by integrating the reconstruction and rendering processes into a single process that is aligned with the architecture of modern graphics hardware, a lightweight component solution can be achieved that is suitable for application on the end user systems within the many application domains. In order to achieve this aim the research undertaken seeks to both define an appropriate technique and develop detailed understanding of the reconstruction process pipeline and impacting factors. This is achieved through a complementary investigation of the tools and frameworks that are necessary to support iterative development of the approach with reliable, repeatable objective assessment. This reasons that by understanding the nature of the capture, reconstruction and presentation pipeline and by objective evaluation of the emerging reconstruction techniques this research will define an approach for 3D video based reconstruction that effectively utilises the processing potential of a single system to deliver acceptable levels of performance (speed) and fidelity (visual quality) for a componentised, multi-purpose 3D reconstruction and rendering solution. This thesis describes the research that has driven the evolution of technique and documents the iterations made. It presents a novel framework for experimentation and evaluation of the techniques and demonstrates how the use of these tools has enabled both rapid prototyping of approach and objective evaluation of improvement. The work concludes with a review of the approach taken and identifies approaches for evaluation of performance (speed) and fidelity (visual quality) that enable both repeatable experimentation within the research pipeline and reliable comparison of the end-to-end process against other techniques.

CAVE-like Immersive Projection Technologies (IPT) systems have long been used to explore complex 3D geometric data sets. While this approach works well for many activity types, there are a class of activities that remain challenging within these environments. When virtual objects are brought into close proximity to the user (denoted by a virtual distance of less than that between the

Abstract HTML 5 is the most significant update of HTML in the last 10 years since XHTML was introduced. It promises a vastly improved user experience, increased browser features, cross compatibility and the ability to provide semantic content. In this paper we discuss the ...

At the beginning of a design project chaotic thinking ensues [1]. During this time designers seek to understand the project requirements and generate solutions that meet the stated need [2]. This synthesis of ideas and general solutions addressing all, or parts, of the requirement ...

... While, recent research into optimum organisation of construction site layouts and site scheduling has resulted into the development of a number of IT pro-totypes to aid site planning tasks, very limited search into path finding for site operatives and logistics has been conducted ...

... collaboration, and activities undertaken during the key stages of the urban planning process ... Although, several approaches were discussed it was felt that effective collaboration could only be achieved ... In order to separate the issues of distribution from the framework for a shared ...

Rob Aspin Nick Avis Rassul Ayani Luciano Bononi Azzedine Boukerche Wolfgang Broll Wentong Cai Dan Chen Gabriele D'Angelo Declan Delaney Jauvane de Oliveira Lorenzo Donatiello Abdulmotaleb El Saddik Alois Ferscha Emmanuel Frécon Richard Fujimoto Boon Ping Gan Ilona Heldal ...

This paper reports a GPU based, projective texturing approach to reconstructing the human form, from multiple images, at a quality and frame rate close to high end video conferencing. The ultimate aim is to support spatially grounded, non-verbal communication through a video based medium. This will, we hope, enable us to balance image quality and update rate to deliver highly realistic and dynamic 3D human representations that offer the visual quality of high end video conferencing with the spatial and temporal characteristics of immersive virtual environments. The output of this will enhance communication by enabling a remote actor to be realistically projected into another person's local space, projected into an extension of the local space, or projected into a shared virtual space. This extends previous work by incorporating texture into the reconstructed form and evaluating the optimized process within our established simulation system.

Eye gaze is an important and widely studied non-verbal resource in co-located social interaction. When we attempt to support tele- presence between people, there are two main technologies that can be used today: video-conferencing (VC) and collaborative virtual environments (CVEs). In VC, one can observe eye-gaze behaviour but practically the targets of eye-gaze are only correct if the participants remain relatively still. We attempt to support eye-gaze behaviour in an unconstrained manner by integrating eye-trackers into an Immersive CVE (ICVE) system. This paper aims to show that while both ICVE and VC allow people to discern being looked at and what else is looked at, when someone gazes into their space from another location, ICVE alone can continue to do this as people move. The conditions of aligned VC, ICVE, eye- gaze enabled ICVE and co-location are compared. The impact of factors of alignment, lighting, resolution, and perspective distortion are minimised through a set of pi...

Abstract Eye gaze is an important and widely studied non-verbal resource in co-located social interaction. When we attempt to support tele-presence between people, there are two main technologies that can be used today: video-conferencing (VC) and collaborative ...

ABSTRACT Image blurring in mammography can cause significant image degradation and interpretational problems. A potential source is due to paddle movement during image formation. Paddle movement has been shown to be as much as 1.5mm. No study has yet been performed to determine how much motion would be noticeable, visually. To determine the minimum amount of simulated breast movement at which blurring can be detected visually. 25 artefact free mammogram images were selected. Mathematical simulation software was created to mimic the effect of blurring produced by breast movement during exposure. Motion simulation was imposed to 15 levels, from 0.1mm to 1.5mm stepping through 0.1mm increments. 15 degraded images and 1 without blurring were de-identified, randomized and assessed on a blinded basis by two clinical experts to determine presence or absence of blurring. Statistical testing was carried out to determine the consistency between the two observers. The probability of simulated blurred image detection is highest for the Gaussian method and lowest for soft edged mask estimation. The amount of simulated breast movement at which blurring can be detected visually for Gaussian blur, hard edge mask estimation, and soft edge mask estimation are 0.4mm, 0.8mm and 0.7mm respectively. Cohen's Kappa for all the levels of simulated blurring is 0.689 (p<0.05). Advances in knowledge: This research establishes the concept of using probability to represent visual detection of blurring rather than defining a hard cut-off level.

Abstract None-invasive scanning technologies, such as MRI, have greatly enhanced our ability to dasiaimagepsila the internal body, however the resultant visualisation is often difficult to comprehend due to both inadequacies in the scanning process and sub-optimal ...

Real-time 3D reconstruction of people promises to combine the winning characteristics of video conferencing and immersive collaborative virtual environments. However, it remains difficult to obtain a reconstruction of a person with recognisable facial features in real-time, as the person moves around. Three highly related issues that require further work are camera placement, reconstruction algorithm and rendering processes. In order to

Interactive 3D visualisation is increasingly used for design/review activities in urban planning and construction. However, as this becomes more wide spread user expectations of the levels of interaction and the functionality expand. Many organisations maintain rich sources of ...

Effective processing of source data matched to appropriate visualisation can greatly enhance the user’s ability to explore and comprehend complex information. While this is a fundamental problem for many domains, in medical applications it is particularly important. None-invasive scanning technologies, such as MRI, have greatly enhanced our ability to ‘image’ the internal body, however the resultant visualisation is often difficult

Michael Lees, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore Suiping Zhou, Teesside University, UK Abdulmotaleb El Saddik, University of Ottawa, Canada Adelinde Uhrmacher, University of Rostock, Germany Alois Ferscha, Johannes Kepler University at Linz, Austria Carl Tropper, McGill University, Canada Christopher D. Carothers, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, USA Eugene Ch'ng, University of Birmingham, UK Francesco Quaglia, University of Rome, Italy Gabriele D'Angelo, University of Bologna, Italy Gary Tan, National University ...

What level of synchronization is necessary between images from multiple cameras in order to realistically reconstruct a moving human in 3D? Live reconstruction of the human form, from cameras surrounding the subject, could bridge the gap between video conferencing and Immersive Collaborative Virtual Environments (ICVEs). Video conferencing faithfully reproduces what someone looks like whereas ICVE faithfully reproduces what they look