Modern AI has greatly expanded the capabilities of image processing. However, the ready availability of powerful models, public datasets, and benchmark leaderboards has also en- couraged a model-first research pattern: researchers increasingly begin with an available architecture and optimize it on a public benchmark, rather than beginning with the underlying real-world imaging problem. This can produce impressive benchmark results without necessarily improving our understanding or solution of the real problem. This paper argues for a problem-first approach that distinguishes the physical imaging problem, solution principle, statistical estimator, and computational implementation, while clarifying what modern AI can achieve and which fundamental problems remain unsolved. Through case studies of super- resolution and low-light enhancement, we show how benchmark datasets may define tasks that differ substantially from the real-world problems they are intended to represent, and why performance improvements must be interpreted within the conditions under which they are obtained. We propose a six-stage workflow that places problem formulation, image acquisition, information-loss analysis, assumptions, ambiguity, and evaluation before model and dataset selection. The paper also proposes clearer standards for evidence, reproducibility, uncertainty, and claims of state-of-the-art performance. More fundamentally, it calls for a change in research culture and education so that future researchers learn to understand imaging problems deeply and use modern AI to achieve genuine scientific and technical advancement.
Students and working professionals have to go through the attendance process every day. Traditional methods of marking attendance using pen and paper or online platforms are human-intensive and time-consuming. To address the challenges in manual attendance processes, this research explores the use of face detection (FD) and face recognition (FR) technology to automate the attendance process, particularly in educational settings, and build a ClassVision course attendance system. We also propose an automated attendance system featuring a human-computer interaction (HCI) and user-friendly web interface that utilizes real-time image processing to identify and recognize students in classrooms and automatically record their attendance. We identified RetinaFace as the best face detection model, and when combined with Face Recognition for verification, it provided the most promising results with a cropped embedding of 50x50 pixels.
Heart rate measurement is one of the key requirements for real-time health monitoring, in particular for health caring of elderly people. Traditional heart rate measurement relies on contact sensing mechanisms such as some heart rate measurement devices at medical hospitals or some wearable devices with embedded sensors such as Apple Watch, etc. In this paper, we develop a system for non-contact, real-time, heart rate measurement using image processing with commodity cameras such as an embedded camera on a laptop, where we use an innovative algorithm to capture the relevant signals for the computation of heart rate in a time series in real life environments. The presented heart rate computation (HRC) process is composed with four major steps: (a) identify frames per second of the camera in use, i.e., 30 frames per second for a given camera, (b) face detection (FD) with shape predictor of 68 face landmarks using deep learning (DL) method, (c) time sliding window (TSW) algorithm to de-noise the signal by smoothing out the noise, and (d) compute heart rate based on identified signal periodicity. We test and analyze the developed prototypes against heart rate results by Apple Watch and check the difference range in multiple rounds and compute the mean of the difference for the measurement values of the heart rate of the same person at the same time. We will do further tuning and optimization of the present methods and deploy the system as a personal AI agent [6] for health monitoring as our future directions.
Rama Y. AlHamidi, Aseel A. Mohamed, Mustafa A. Eltayeb +2cs.CV eess.IV
Accurate identification of resistor values from unconstrained images remains a challenging computer vision task due to variations in lighting, orientation, scale, and background complexity. This paper presents HiRes, a hierarchical cascaded pipeline for end-to-end resistor value identification directly from full-frame images. The approach combines object detection (YOLOv8n), semantic segmentation (UNet++ with EfficientNet-B2), and structured geometric decoding via projection along the resistor axis. To improve robustness, we incorporate geometric filtering, gap-preserving band separation, and validation against the E24 resistor series. Experiments across diverse real-world images show that HiRes achieves a detection mAP50 of 0.9906, a segmentation mIoU of 0.8444, and an end-to-end identification accuracy of 85.8% (95% CI: 78.0-91.9%), outperforming the publicly available classical baseline, CVResist, which fails to generalize beyond controlled conditions. In addition, our architecture outperforms state-of-the-art MLLMs on our challenging test set, offering a lower cost, high efficiency, and an interpretable alternative method. These results demonstrate the effectiveness of integrating learned visual representations with structured reasoning for robust resistor interpretation. Code and dataset are available at https://github.com/HiRes491/HiRes.
Fruit spoilage is a significant issue in agriculture, leading to substantial economic losses. Addressing this, our study introduces a hybrid approach combining image processing and deep learning to assess fruit freshness. We developed an image processing algorithm that quantifies spoilage on a scale from 0 (fully fresh) to 100 (fully rotten). Alongside, we trained a convolutional neural network (CNN) to perform binary classification (fresh or rotten) using a large dataset of fruit images. The outcomes of both methods were synthesized using logistic regression to enhance the accuracy of freshness predictions. Subsequently, this logistic regression model was utilized to enable the image processing algorithm to provide binary classification based on its percentage output, thus eliminating the need for the CNN in real-time applications. Our approach, which does not require high computational resources, achieved real-time performance and was validated with over 90% accuracy on a dataset comprising apples and oranges. The primary limitation lies in the requirement for fruits to be isolated on a background that must be either white or transparent, suggesting future improvements could include advanced segmentation models to automate background removal. This study's results highlight the potential of integrating simple image processing techniques with machine learning to provide practical solutions in the agricultural sector.
This work proposes an integrated pipeline for automatic glaucoma detection method from easily available colour fundas images based on an adaptive algorithm for ellipse-based polar transformation, to enhance the analysis of the Retinal Nerve Fiber Layer (RNFL) as the primary biomarker for observing glaucomatous changes, regardless of optic disc and macula position. Utilizing this transformation, we introduce two distinct frameworks tailored to different operational needs. The first framework, a deep learning-inspired feature fusion approach, achieves a 99.3% detection rate, ideal for settings where high precision is essential, despite higher computational demands. The second framework employs a novel image-processing algorithm based on bit-plane slicing, offering 92.31% accuracy and optimized for environments requiring rapid inference with minimal resource consumption. Both frameworks provide scalable and cost-effective solutions for early glaucoma detection. This study highlights the potential of RNFL-based diagnostic tools in addressing the global challenge of glaucoma, particularly in underserved regions.
OKLCH -- the cylindrical (lightness, chroma, hue) form of Ottosson's Oklab color space -- is the interpolation space recommended by CSS Color 4 for gradients and color-mix(), and it is now broadly deployed. Its polar parameterization, however, casts color near the neutral axis in two ways: (1) an inter-hue detour between two chromatic endpoints that sweeps through an unintended hue (blue to yellow visibly passing through green), and (2) an off-line bow when one endpoint is achromatic. Existing remedies are uniformly two-valued -- a threshold switch that fires only at an achromatic endpoint -- so they address only (2); on chromatic pairs every one of them reduces to raw OKLCH, leaving the (1) inter-hue cast untreated. We introduce Continuous Oklab fallback (COFb), a one-parameter, differentiable chroma gate $w(C)=C^n/(C^n+σ^n)$ that continuously blends the OKLCH path toward the linear Oklab path as chroma falls. A single gate reduces the (1) cast that the two-valued family leaves untreated and unifies the handling of (1) and (2) without any endpoint test. We characterize a cast-hue trade-off frontier, adopt a default ($n=1$, the rational Michaelis-Menten form; $σ\approx0.19$ for a typical sRGB palette, from a normalization-independent cast-half criterion), and verify the gate's properties symbolically. At the default, COFb halves the inter-hue path detour (mean lateral deviation -49.5%, chroma-weighted hue excursion -35.5%). We also state the method's limits: on (2) alone the two-valued switch remains better, and like any Cartesian blend COFb does not preserve chroma. In deployment, COFb runs entirely in plain Oklab (a,b) to sRGB, so it serves as a fallback that delivers the same cast-reduced gradients where modern CSS color interpolation (color-mix(in oklch) and the like) is unavailable -- older engines, image and video pipelines, or GPU shaders.
Titouan Le Breton, Karol Szustakowski, Marie Piraudcs.CV
We present Flash Cubical, a highly efficient computation of cubical persistence on a V-filtration for 2D and 3D images over $\mathbb{F}_2$. The implementation is built around three core ideas. First, cubical complexes satisfy properties that allow for the computation of persistence of the highest dimension via union-find and duality. Second, pruning of certain edges allows for a fast and efficient implementation of union-find. Third, the use of a lookup table, which exploits the regularity of cubical complexes to pre-compute local information. This avoids the need to compute local information at run time. To the best of our knowledge, this is the most efficient implementation of cubical persistence with a V-filtration, both in terms of time and memory costs. Although the paper focuses on persistence for V-filtration cubical complexes, the underlying ideas generalise naturally to T-filtrations on cubical complexes and suggest promising directions for other complexes.
Night Photography Rendering (NPR) poses a significant challenge due to the extreme contrast between dark and illuminated areas in scenes, stemming from concurrent capture of severely dark regions alongside intense point light sources. Existing methods, which are mainly tailored for fidelity metrics, reveal considerable perceptual gaps and often detract from visual quality. We introduce pHVI-ISPNet, a novel RAW-to-RGB framework built on the robust HVI color space. Our network integrates four distinct key refinements: RAW-domain feature processing and Wavelet-based feature propagation to mitigate high-frequency detail loss; sample-based dynamic loss coefficients to ensure stable learning across varying exposure levels; and loss term based on feature distributions to maintain rigorous color constancy. Evaluations on the dataset introduced in the NTIRE 2025 challenge on NPR confirm our approach achieves competitive fidelity while establishing new state-of-the-art results in both CIE2000 color difference and LPIPS. This validates our perceptually-driven design for high-quality nighttime imaging.
In this paper, we report the world's first infrastructure-guided communication-enhanced road crack detection pipeline that is effective and implementable on passenger vehicles. We first design a customized communication protocol to transmit the region of interest from the infrastructure to the vehicle. With proper camera image processing (e.g., dynamic cropping and frame selection), the focused images are provided to the crack detection model. Leveraging state-of-the-art crack detection model backbones and a carefully prepared dataset comprising a forward-facing view with a crack, we train the model to improve crack-detection performance. We demonstrate the full detection pipeline on an experimental vehicle platform, showcase the detection effectiveness, and project future research directions.