Department of Computer Science at UH

University of Houston

Department of Computer Science

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
Master of Science

Yan Zhou

Will defend her dissertation

Tissue Tracking in Thermo-physiological Imagery through Spatio-temporal Smoothing

Abstract

Accurate tracking of facial tissue in thermal infrared imaging is challenging because it is affected not only by positional but also physiological (functional) changes. This dissertation presents a particle filter tracker driven by a probabilistic template function with both spatial and temporal smoothing components, which is capable of adapting to abrupt positional and physiological changes. The method was tested on tracking facial regions of subjects under varying physiological and environmental conditions in 12 thermal clips. It demonstrated robustness and accuracy, outperforming other strategies. This new method promises improved performance in a host of applications from biometrics (contact-free polygraphy) to biomedicine (unobtrusive sleep studies).

Date: Thursday, September 10, 2009
Time: 9:00 AM
Place: 218-PGH
Faculty, students, and the general public are invited.
Advisor: Prof. Ioannis Pavlidis