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Moshe Ben-Ezra

[Contact]  [Patents]  [Research]  [Publications]  [ECV05]  [EURASIP]  [CLIP]  [HumanEyes]


Patents

6,831,677 System and method for facilitating the adjustment of disparity in a stereoscopic panoramic image pair.
6,795,109 Stereo panoramic camera arrangements for recording panoramic images useful in a stereo panoramic image pair.
6,665,003 System and method for generating and displaying panoramic images and movies.

Research

Jitter Camera Jitter Camera: The resolution of videos can be computationally enhanced by moving the camera and applying super-resolution algorithms. However, a moving camera introduces motion blur, which limits the quality of super-resolution. To overcome this limitation, we have developed a novel camera called the "jitter camera". The jitter camera produces shifts between consecutive video frames without introducing any motion blur. This is done by shifting the video detector instantaneously and timing the shifts to occur between pixel integration periods. The videos captured by the jitter camera are processed by an adaptive super-resolution algorithm that handles complex dynamic scenes in a robust manner producing a video that has a higher resolution than the captured one. (With Assaf Zomet and Shree K. Nayar). [Project Page]


Motion Deblurring Motion Deblurring: Motion blur due to camera motion can significantly degrade the quality of an image. Since the path of the camera motion can be arbitrary, deblurring of motion blurred images is a hard problem. In this project, we exploit the fundamental trade-off between spatial resolution and temporal resolution to construct a hybrid camera that can measure its own motion during image integration. The acquired motion information is used to compute a point spread function (PSF) that represents the path of the camera during integration. This PSF is then used to deblur the image. This prototype system was evaluated in different indoor and outdoor scenes using long exposures and complex camera motion paths. The results show that, with minimal resources, hybrid imaging outperforms previous approaches to the motion blur problem. (With Shree K. Nayar). [Project Page]


Motion & Transparency Motion and Transparent Objects: The perception of transparent objects from images is known to be a very hard vision problem. Given a single image, it is difficult to even detect the presence of transparent objects in the scene. In this project, we explore what can be said about transparent objects by a moving observer. We show how features that are imaged through a transparent object behave differently from those that are rigidly attached to the scene. We present a novel model-based approach to recover the shapes and the poses of transparent objects from known motion. The objects can be complex in that they may be composed of multiple layers with different refractive indices. We have applied our algorithm to real scenes that include transparent objects and recovered the shapes and dimensions of the objects with high accuracy. (With Shree K. Nayar). [Project Page]


Invisible Keying Signal Segmentation with Invisible Keying Signal: Chroma keying is the process of segmenting objects from images and video using color cues. i A blue (or green) screen placed behind an object during recording is used in special effects and in virtual studios. A different background later replaces the blue color. A new method for automatic keying using invisible signal is presented. The advantages of the new approach over conventional chroma keying are unlimited color range for foreground objects and no foreground contamination by background color. The method can be used in real-time and no user assistance is required. A new camera design and a single chip sensor design for keying are also presented. [Project Page]


Omnistereo Omnidirectional Stereo Imaging: An Omnistereo panorama consists of a pair of panoramic images, where one panorama is for the left eye and another panorama is for the right eye. The panoramic stereo pair provides a stereo sensation up to a full 360 degrees. Omnistereo panoramas cannot be photographed by two omnidirectional cameras from two viewpoints, but can be constructed by mosaicing together images from a single rotating camera. Capturing panoramic omnistereo images with a rotating camera makes it impossible to capture dynamic scenes at video rates and limits omnistereo imaging to stationary scenes. We, therefore, present two possibilities for capturing omnistereo panoramas using optics without any moving parts. A special mirror is introduced such that viewing the scene through this mirror creates the same rays as those used with the rotating cameras. A lens for omnistereo panorama is also introduced. Omnistereo panoramas can also be rendered by computer graphics methods to represent virtual environments. (With Shmuel Peleg and Yael Pritch). [Project Page]


Linear Programing Robust Motion and Pose Estimation using Linear Programming: Motion Estimation in real time from point-to-line correspondences using linear programming is presented. Point-to-line correspondences are the most reliable measurements for image motion given the aperture effect, and it is shown how they can approximate other motion measurements as well. An error measure for image alignment using the L1 metric and based on point-to-line correspondences achieves results which are more robust than those for the commonly used L2 metric. The L1 error measure is minimized using linear programming. The entire computation is performed in real-time on a PC (Pentium MMX 300Mhz) without special hardware. (With Shmuel Peleg and Michael Werman). [Project Page]
Penrose Pixels; Super-Resolution in the Detector Layout Domain

Recent Publications

Penrose Pixels; Super-Resolution in the Detector Layout Domain,
M. Ben-Ezra, Z. Lin, and B. Wilburn
IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV),
Vol.X, No.X, pp.xxx-xxx, Oct, 2007. [PDF]

Spectral Probing; Multi-Spectral Imaging by Optimized Wide Band Illumination,
C. Cui and M. Ben-Ezra
Workshop on Photometric Analysis For Computer Vision (PACV),
pp.xxx-xxx, Oct, 2007. [PDF]

An LED-only BRDF Measurement Device,
Moshe Ben-Ezra, Jiaping Wang, Bennett Wilburn, Xiaoyang Li and Le Ma
To appear in CVPR08. [PDF]

Selected Publications

A complete list can be found here: [PDF]  [HTML]
Video Super-Resolution Using Controlled Subpixel Detector Shifts,
M. Ben-Ezra, A. Zomet, and S.K. Nayar,
IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence,
Vol.27, No.6, pp.977-987, Jun, 2005. [PDF]

What does motion reveal about transparency?,
M. Ben-Ezra and S.K. Nayar,
IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV),
Vol.2, pp.1025-1032, Oct, 2003. [PDF]

Motion-Based Motion Deblurring,
M. Ben-Ezra and S.K. Nayar,
IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence,
Vol.26, No.6, pp.689-698, Jun, 2004. [PDF]

Omnistereo: Panoramic Stereo Imaging,
M. Ben-Ezra, Y. Pritch and S. Peleg,
IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence,
Vol.23, No.3, pp.279-290, March, 2001. [PDF]

Real-Time Motion Analysis with Linear Programming,
M. Ben-Ezra, S. Peleg and M. Werman
Computer Vision and Image Understanding,
Vol.78, No.1, pp.32-52, April, 2000. [PDF]


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