Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Information measures for object understanding

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
Signal, Image and Video Processing Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

In this paper, we present a new information-theoretic framework for object understanding. From a visibility channel between a set of viewpoints and the polygons of an object, and three specific information measures introduced in the field of neural systems, we analyze and visualize the information associated with an object. Our approach is twofold since we present several forms of representing the shape information in the object space and different ways of capturing this information from the viewpoint space. First, we introduce several information measures associated with the polygons of the object. The way we visualize, this polygonal information provides us with different forms of perceiving the shape of the object. Second, we present several ways of evaluating the shape information from the observer’s point of view. To do this, the polygonal information is “projected” onto the viewpoints to quantify the information associated with a viewpoint and is used to select the \(N\) best views and to explore the object. A number of experiments show the behavior of all proposed measures.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9
Fig. 10
Fig. 11

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Blanz, V., Tarr, M., Bülthoff, H.: What object attributes determine canonical views? Perception 28, 575–599 (1999)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Bonaventura, X., Feixas, M., Sbert, M.: Viewpoint information. In: 21st GraphiCon International Conference on Computer Graphics and Vision, pp. 16–19 (2011)

  3. Bordoloi, U.D., Shen, H.W.: Viewpoint evaluation for volume rendering. In: IEEE Visualization 2005, pp. 487–494 (2005)

  4. Butts, D.A.: How much information is associated with a particular stimulus? Netw. Comput. Neural Syst. 14, 177–187 (2003)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Cover, T.M., Thomas, J.A.: Elements of Information Theory. Wiley Series in Telecommunications, New York (1991)

    Book  MATH  Google Scholar 

  6. Deweese, M.R., Meister, M.: How to measure the information gained from one symbol. Netw. Comput. Neural Syst. 10(4), 325–340 (1999)

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  7. Feixas, M., Sbert, M., González, F.: A unified information-theoretic framework for viewpoint selection and mesh saliency. ACM Trans. Appl. Percept. 6(1), 1–23 (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Furuichi, S.: Information theoretical properties of tsallis entropies. J. Math. Phys. 47(2), 1–18 (2006)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  9. González, F., Sbert, M., Feixas, M.: Viewpoint-based ambient occlusion. IEEE Comput. Graph. Appl. 28, 44–51 (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Harvda, J., Charvát, F.: Quantification method of classification processes. Concept of structural \(\alpha \)-entropy. Kybernetika 3, 30–35 (1967)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Iones, A., Krupkin, A., Sbert, M., Zhukov, S.: Fast, realistic lighting for video games. IEEE Comput. Graph. Appl. 23(3), 54–64 (2003)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Landis, H.: RenderMan in production. In: Course notes of ACM SIGGRAPH (2002)

  13. Langer, M., Bülthoff, H.: Depth discrimination from shading under diffuse lighting. Perception 29(6), 649–660 (2000)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Méndez-Feliu, A., Sbert, M.: From obscurances to ambient occlusion: A survey. Vis. Comp. 25, 181–196 (2009)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Palmer, S., Rosch, E., Chase, P.: Canonical perspective and the perception of objects. Atten. Perform. IX, 135–151 (1981)

    Google Scholar 

  16. Sokolov, D., Plemenos, D., Tamine, K.: Methods and data structures for virtual world exploration. Vis. Comput. 22(7), 506–516 (2006)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Taneja, I.J.: Bivariate measures of type \(\alpha \) and their applications. Tamkang J. Math. 19(3), 63–74 (1988)

    MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  18. Tarr, M., Bülthoff, H., Zabinski, M., Blanz, V.: To what extent do unique parts influence recognition across changes in viewpoint? Psychol. Sci. 8(4), 282–289 (1997)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Thompson, W., Fleming, R., Creem-Regehr, S., Stefanucci, J.K.: Visual Perception from a Computer Graphics Perspective. A K Peters/CRC Press, Boca Raton (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  20. Tsallis, C.: Possible generalization of Boltzmann-Gibbs statistics. J. Stat. Phys. 52(1/2), 479–487 (1988)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  21. Tsallis, C.: Generalized entropy-based criterion for consistent testing. Phys. Rev. E 58, 1442–1445 (1998)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Vázquez, P.P., Feixas, M., Sbert, M., Heidrich, W.: Viewpoint selection using viewpoint entropy. In: Proceedings of Vision, Modeling, and Visualization 2001, pp. 273–280 (2001)

  23. Viola, I., Feixas, M., Sbert, M., Gröller, M.E.: Importance-driven focus of attention. IEEE Trans. Vis. Comput. Graph. 12(5), 933–940 (2006)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Yeung, R.W.: Information Theory and Network Coding. Springer, Berlin (2008)

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  25. Zhukov, S., Iones, A., Kronin, G.: An ambient light illumination model. In: Drettakis, G., Max, N. (eds.) Rendering Techniques ’98. Eurographics, pp. 45–56. Springer, New York (1998)

Download references

Acknowledgments

This work has been funded in part by grant number TIN2010-21089-C03-01 of Spanish Government and grant number 2009-SGR-643 of Generalitat de Catalunya (Catalan Government).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Girona, Campus Montilivi, P4, Girona, Spain

    Xavier Bonaventura, Miquel Feixas & Mateu Sbert

Authors
  1. Xavier Bonaventura
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Miquel Feixas
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Mateu Sbert
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Xavier Bonaventura.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Bonaventura, X., Feixas, M. & Sbert, M. Information measures for object understanding. SIViP 7, 467–478 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11760-013-0449-y

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11760-013-0449-y

Keywords

Search

Navigation