Rasmus Rothe

In this paper we propose a deep learning solution to age estimation from a single face image without the use of facial landmarks and introduce the IMDB-WIKI dataset, the largest public dataset of face images with age and gender labels. If the real age estimation research spans over decades, the study of apparent age estimation or the age as perceived by other humans from a face image is a recent endeavor. We tackle both tasks with our convolutional neural networks (CNNs) of VGG-16 architecture… Mehr anzeigen

In this paper we propose a deep learning solution to age estimation from a single face image without the use of facial landmarks and introduce the IMDB-WIKI dataset, the largest public dataset of face images with age and gender labels. If the real age estimation research spans over decades, the study of apparent age estimation or the age as perceived by other humans from a face image is a recent endeavor. We tackle both tasks with our convolutional neural networks (CNNs) of VGG-16 architecture which are pre-trained on ImageNet for image classification. We pose the age estimation problem as a deep classification problem followed by a softmax expected value refinement. The key factors of our solution are: deep learned models from large data, robust face alignment, and expected value formulation for age regression. We validate our methods on standard benchmarks and achieve state-of-the-art results for both real and apparent age estimation. Weniger anzeigen

In this paper we present seven techniques that everybody should know to improve example-based single image super resolution (SR): 1) augmentation of data, 2) use of large dictionaries with efficient search structures, 3) cascading, 4) image self-similarities, 5) back projection refinement, 6) enhanced prediction by consistency check, and 7) context reasoning. We validate our seven techniques on standard SR benchmarks (i.e. Set5, Set14, B100) and methods (i.e. A+, SRCNN, ANR, Zeyde, Yang) and… Mehr anzeigen

In this paper we present seven techniques that everybody should know to improve example-based single image super resolution (SR): 1) augmentation of data, 2) use of large dictionaries with efficient search structures, 3) cascading, 4) image self-similarities, 5) back projection refinement, 6) enhanced prediction by consistency check, and 7) context reasoning. We validate our seven techniques on standard SR benchmarks (i.e. Set5, Set14, B100) and methods (i.e. A+, SRCNN, ANR, Zeyde, Yang) and achieve substantial improvements.The techniques are widely applicable and require no changes or only minor adjustments of the SR methods. Moreover, our Improved A+ (IA) method sets new state-of-the-art results outperforming A+ by up to 0.9dB on average PSNR whilst maintaining a low time complexity. Weniger anzeigen

For people first impressions of someone are of determining importance. They are hard to alter through further information. This begs the question if a computer can reach the same judgement. Earlier research has already pointed out that age, gender, and average attractiveness can be estimated with reasonable precision. We improve the state-of-the-art, but also predict - based on someone's known preferences - how much that particular person is attracted to a novel face. Our computational pipeline… Mehr anzeigen

For people first impressions of someone are of determining importance. They are hard to alter through further information. This begs the question if a computer can reach the same judgement. Earlier research has already pointed out that age, gender, and average attractiveness can be estimated with reasonable precision. We improve the state-of-the-art, but also predict - based on someone's known preferences - how much that particular person is attracted to a novel face. Our computational pipeline comprises a face detector, convolutional neural networks for the extraction of deep features, standard support vector regression for gender, age and facial beauty, and - as the main novelties - visual regularized collaborative filtering to infer inter-person preferences as well as a novel regression technique for handling visual queries without rating history. We validate the method using a very large dataset from a dating site as well as images from celebrities. Our experiments yield convincing results, i.e. we predict 76% of the ratings correctly solely based on an image, and reveal some sociologically relevant conclusions. We also validate our collaborative filtering solution on the standard MovieLens rating dataset, augmented with movie posters, to predict an individual's movie rating. We demonstrate our algorithms on howhot.io which went viral around the Internet with more than 50 million pictures evaluated in the first month. Weniger anzeigen

In this paper we tackle the estimation of apparent age in still face images with deep learning. Our convolutional neural networks (CNNs) use the VGG-16 architecture and are pretrained on ImageNet for image classification. In addition, due to the limited number of apparent age annotated images, we explore the benefit of finetuning over crawled Internet face images with available age. We crawled 0.5 million images of celebrities from IMDB and Wikipedia that we make public. This is the largest… Mehr anzeigen

In this paper we tackle the estimation of apparent age in still face images with deep learning. Our convolutional neural networks (CNNs) use the VGG-16 architecture and are pretrained on ImageNet for image classification. In addition, due to the limited number of apparent age annotated images, we explore the benefit of finetuning over crawled Internet face images with available age. We crawled 0.5 million images of celebrities from IMDB and Wikipedia that we make public. This is the largest public dataset for age prediction to date. We pose the age regression problem as a deep classification problem followed by a softmax expected value refinement and show improvements over direct regression training of CNNs. Our proposed method, Deep EXpectation (DEX) of apparent age, first detects the face in the test image and then extracts the CNN predictions from an ensemble of 20 networks on the cropped face. The CNNs of DEX were finetuned on the crawled images and then on the provided images with apparent age annotations. DEX does not use explicit facial landmarks. Our DEX is the winner (1st place) of the ChaLearn LAP 2015 challenge on apparent age estimation with 115 registered teams, significantly outperforming the human reference. Weniger anzeigen

In this paper we tackle the classification of cultural events from a single image with a deep learning based method. We use convolutional neural networks (CNNs) with VGG-16 architecture, pretrained on ImageNet or the Places205 dataset for image classification, and fine-tuned on cultural events data. CNN features are robustly extracted at 4 different layers in each image. At each layer Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) is employed for discriminative dimensionality reduction. An image is… Mehr anzeigen

In this paper we tackle the classification of cultural events from a single image with a deep learning based method. We use convolutional neural networks (CNNs) with VGG-16 architecture, pretrained on ImageNet or the Places205 dataset for image classification, and fine-tuned on cultural events data. CNN features are robustly extracted at 4 different layers in each image. At each layer Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) is employed for discriminative dimensionality reduction. An image is represented by the concatenated LDA-projected features from all layers or by the concatenation of CNN pooled features at each layer. The classification is then performed through the Iterative Nearest Neighbors-based Classifier (INNC). Classification scores are obtained for different image representation setups at train and test. The average of the scores is the output of our deep linear discriminative retrieval (DLDR) system. With 0.80 mean average precision (mAP) DLDR is a top entry for the ChaLearn LAP 2015 cultural event recognition challenge. Weniger anzeigen

Lossy image compression allows for large storage savings but at the cost of reduced fidelity of the compressed images. There is a fair amount of literature aiming at restoration by suppressing the compression artifacts. Very recently a learned semi-local Gaussian Processes-based solution (SLGP) has been proposed with impressive results. However, when applied to top compression schemes such as JPEG 2000, the improvement is less significant. In our paper we propose an efficient novel artifact… Mehr anzeigen

Lossy image compression allows for large storage savings but at the cost of reduced fidelity of the compressed images. There is a fair amount of literature aiming at restoration by suppressing the compression artifacts. Very recently a learned semi-local Gaussian Processes-based solution (SLGP) has been proposed with impressive results. However, when applied to top compression schemes such as JPEG 2000, the improvement is less significant. In our paper we propose an efficient novel artifact reduction algorithm based on the adjusted anchored neighborhood regression (A+), a method from image super-resolution literature. We double the relative gains in PSNR when compared with the state-of-the-art methods such as SLGP, while being order(s) of magnitude faster.
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Fashion is a major segment in e-commerce with growing importance and a steadily increasing number of products. Since manual annotation of apparel items is very tedious, the product databases need to be organized automatically, e.g. by image classification. Common image classification approaches are based on features engineered for general purposes which perform poorly on specific images of apparel. We therefore propose to learn discriminative features based on a small set of annotated images… Mehr anzeigen

Fashion is a major segment in e-commerce with growing importance and a steadily increasing number of products. Since manual annotation of apparel items is very tedious, the product databases need to be organized automatically, e.g. by image classification. Common image classification approaches are based on features engineered for general purposes which perform poorly on specific images of apparel. We therefore propose to learn discriminative features based on a small set of annotated images. We experimentally evaluate our method on a dataset with 30,000 images containing apparel items, and compare it to other engineered and learned sets of features. The classification accuracy of our features is significantly superior to designed HOG and SIFT features (43.7% and 16.1% relative improvement, respectively). Our method allows for fast feature extraction and training, is easy to implement and, unlike deep convolutional networks, does not require powerful dedicated hardware. Weniger anzeigen

Non-maximum suppression (NMS) is a key post-processing step in many computer vision applications. In the context of object detection, it is used to transform a smooth response map that triggers many imprecise object window hypotheses in, ideally, a single bounding-box for each detected object. The most common approach for NMS for object detection is a greedy, locally optimal strategy with several hand-designed components (e.g., thresholds). Such a strategy inherently suffers from several… Mehr anzeigen

Non-maximum suppression (NMS) is a key post-processing step in many computer vision applications. In the context of object detection, it is used to transform a smooth response map that triggers many imprecise object window hypotheses in, ideally, a single bounding-box for each detected object. The most common approach for NMS for object detection is a greedy, locally optimal strategy with several hand-designed components (e.g., thresholds). Such a strategy inherently suffers from several shortcomings, such as the inability to detect nearby objects. In this paper, we try to alleviate these problems and explore a novel formulation of NMS as a well-defined clustering problem. Our method builds on the recent Affinity Propagation Clustering algorithm, which passes messages between data points to identify cluster exemplars. Contrary to the greedy approach, our method is solved globally and its parameters can be automatically learned from training data. In experiments, we show in two contexts - object class and generic object detection - that it provides a promising solution to the shortcomings of the greedy NMS. Weniger anzeigen

It is well known that the accuracy of classifiers strongly depends on the distribution of the data. Consequently, a versatile classifier with a broad range of design parameters is better able to cope with various scenarios encountered in real-world applications. Kung presented such a classifier named Ridge-SVM which incorporates the advantages of both Kernel Ridge Regression and Support Vector Machines by combining their regularization mechanisms for enhancing robustness. In this paper this… Mehr anzeigen

It is well known that the accuracy of classifiers strongly depends on the distribution of the data. Consequently, a versatile classifier with a broad range of design parameters is better able to cope with various scenarios encountered in real-world applications. Kung presented such a classifier named Ridge-SVM which incorporates the advantages of both Kernel Ridge Regression and Support Vector Machines by combining their regularization mechanisms for enhancing robustness. In this paper this novel classifier was tested on four different datasets and an optimal combination of parameters was identified. Furthermore, the influence of the parameter choice on the training time was quantified and methods to efficiently tune the parameters are presented. This prior knowledge about how each parameter influences the training is especially important for big data applications where the training time becomes the bottleneck as well as for applications in which the algorithm is regularly trained on new data. Weniger anzeigen