Abstract: An educational recommender system and a method are provided. The method includes receiving a request to recommend a course of action related to a plurality of current students; accessing a computer database storing student data that corresponds to the plurality of current students; clustering in a computer process the plurality of current students into at least two clusters based at least on granular assessment data associated with student data corresponding to respective current students; and outputting the results of the clustering to a user. The granular assessment data includes a result of an assessment administered to respective students of the plurality of current students, and each assessment includes a plurality of questions for assessing one of the current students. The associated result includes an independent evaluation of each respective question of the plurality of questions.

Abstract: A system and a method of querying a remote service without revealing a private document to the remote service are provided. The method includes receiving a signature of a user's private document, and querying an intermediate database with the signature of the private document to generate an intermediate result set comprising intermediate database documents, based on a computation of similarity of the signatures of the intermediate database documents to the signature of the private document. The remote service is queried, based on the intermediate result set and a final result set is received from the remote service based on the query, which can be output to the user or further processed.

Abstract: To compute a signature for an object comprising or represented by a set of vectors in a vector space of dimensionality D, statistics are computed that are indicative of distribution of the vectors of the set of vectors amongst a set of regions Ri, i=1, . . . , N of the vector space, at least some statistics associated with each region are binarized to generate sets of binary values ai, i=1, . . . , N indicative of statistics of the vectors of the set of vectors belonging to the respective regions Ri, i=1, . . . , N; and a vector set signature is defined for the set of vectors including the sets of binary values ai, i=1, . . . , N. The computing, binarizing, and defining operations may be repeated for two sets of vectors, and a quantitative comparison of the two sets of vectors determined based on the corresponding vector set signatures.

Abstract: A classification system and method enable improvements to classification with nearest class mean classifiers by computing a comparison measure between a multidimensional representation of a new sample and a respective multidimensional class representation embedded into a space of lower dimensionality than that of the multidimensional representations. The embedding is performed with a projection that has been learned on labeled samples to optimize classification with respect to multidimensional class representations for classes which may be the same or different from those used subsequently for classification. Each multidimensional class representation is computed as a function of a set of multidimensional representations of labeled samples, each labeled with the respective class. A class is assigned to the new sample based on the computed comparison measures.

Abstract: A system for detecting a vehicle occupancy violation includes an image capture module that acquires an image including a vehicle cabin from a camera positioned to view oncoming traffic. The system includes a violation determination device, which includes a feature extraction module that processes the image pixels for determining an image descriptor. The process is selected from a group consisting of a Successive Mean Quantization Transform; a Scale-Invariant Feature Transform; a Histogram of Gradients; a Bag-of-Visual-Words Representation; a Fisher Vector Representation; and, a combination of the above. The system further includes a classifier that determines a distance that the vehicle image descriptor/representation is positioned in the projected feature space relative to a hyper-plane. The classifier determines whether the distance meets a threshold and classifies the image when the threshold is met. A processor implements the modules. A graphic user interface outputs the classification.

Abstract: A system and a method of querying a remote service without revealing a private document to the remote service are provided. The method includes receiving a signature of a user's private document, and querying an intermediate database with the signature of the private document to generate an intermediate result set comprising intermediate database documents, based on a computation of similarity of the signatures of the intermediate database documents to the signature of the private document. The remote service is queried, based on the intermediate result set and a final result set is received from the remote service based on the query, which can be output to the user or further processed.

Abstract: A system and method for determining the aesthetic quality of an image are disclosed. The method includes extracting a set of local features from the image, such as gradient and/or color features and generating an image representation which describes the distribution of the local features. A classifier system is used for determining an aesthetic quality of the image based on the computed image representation.

Abstract: Methods and systems for improved license plate signature matching by similarity learning on synthetic images comprise generating a plurality of synthetic license plate images; applying one or more transformations to the synthetic license plate images to cause the synthetic license plate images to more closely resemble authentic license plate image captures; and providing the synthetic license plate images as inputs to a machine distance learning algorithm in which weighted similarity scores are calculated between signatures of analogous and non-analogous license plate images and one or more sets of signature weights are iteratively adjusted to increase the likelihood that comparing analogous license plate images results in high weighted signature similarity scores and comparing non-analogous license plate images results in low weighted signature similarity scores.

Abstract: An instance-level retrieval method and system are provided. A representation of a query image is embedded in a multi-dimensional space using a learned projection. The projection is learned using category-labeled training data to optimize a classification rate on the training data. The joint learning of the projection and the classifiers improves the computation of similarity/distance between images by embedding them in a subspace where the similarity computation outputs more accurate results. An input query image can thus be used to retrieve similar instances in a database by computing the comparison measure in the embedding space.

Abstract: A method for color transfer includes retrieving a concept color palette from computer memory corresponding to a concept selected by a user. The concept color palette includes a first set of colors, which may be statistically representative of colors of a set of predefined color palettes which have been associated with the concept. The method further includes computing an image color palette for an input image. The image color palette includes a second set of colors that are representative of pixels of the input image. Colors of the image color palette are mapped to colors of the concept color palette to identify, for colors of the image color palette, a corresponding color in the concept color palette. A transformation is computed based on the mapping. For pixels of the input image, modified color values are computed, based on the computed transformation, to generate a modified image.

Abstract: A method and system are disclosed for conducting text-based searches of images using a visual signature associated with each image. A measure of string similarity between a query and an annotation associated with each entry in a first database is computed, and based upon the computed string similarity measures, a set of entries from the first database is selected. Each entry of the first database also includes an associated visual signature. At least one entry is then retrieved from a second database based upon a measure of visual similarity between a visual signature of each of the entries in the second database and the visual signatures of the entries in the selected set. Information corresponding to the retrieved entries from the second database is then generated.

Abstract: An input image representation is generated based on an aggregation of local descriptors extracted from an input image, and is adjusted by performing a power normalization, an Lp normalization such as an L2 normalization, or both. In some embodiments the generating comprises modeling the extracted local descriptors using a probabilistic model to generate the input image representation comprising probabilistic model component values for a set of probabilistic model components. In some such embodiments the probabilistic model comprises a Gaussian mixture model and the probabilistic model components comprise Gaussian components of the Gaussian mixture model. The generating may include partitioning the input image into a plurality of image partitions using a spatial pyramids partitioning model, extracting local descriptors, such as Fisher vectors, from the image partitions, and concatenating the local descriptors extracted from the image partitions.

Abstract: A set of word embedding transforms are applied to transform text words of a set of documents into K-dimensional word vectors in order to generate sets or sequences of word vectors representing the documents of the set of documents. A probabilistic topic model is learned using the sets or sequences of word vectors representing the documents of the set of documents. The set of word embedding transforms are applied to transform text words of an input document into K-dimensional word vectors in order to generate a set or sequence of word vectors representing the input document. The learned probabilistic topic model is applied to assign probabilities for topics of the probabilistic topic model to the set or sequence of word vectors representing the input document. A document processing operation such as annotation, classification, or similar document retrieval may be performed using the assigned topic probabilities.

Abstract: A document processing system and method are disclosed. In the method local scores are incrementally computed for document samples, based on local features extracted from the respective sample. A global score is estimated for the document based on the local scores currently computed, i.e., on fewer than all document samples. A confidence in a decision for the estimated global score is computed. The computed confidence is based on the local scores currently computed and, optionally, the number of samples used in computing the estimated global score. A classification decision, such as a categorization or retrieval decision for the document is output, based on the estimated score when the computed confidence in the decision reaches a threshold value.

Abstract: A document processing system and method are disclosed. In the method local scores are incrementally computed for document samples, based on local features extracted from the respective sample. A global score is estimated for the document based on the local scores currently computed, i.e., on fewer than all document samples. A confidence in a decision for the estimated global score is computed. The computed confidence is based on the local scores currently computed and, optionally, the number of samples used in computing the estimated global score. A classification decision, such as a categorization or retrieval decision for the document is output, based on the estimated score when the computed confidence in the decision reaches a threshold value.

Abstract: A recommender system and method including receiving a request identifying at least one current student for which a recommendation is sought and accessing stored student data including attributes associated with respective students of the current students and a plurality of predecessor students. For the predecessor students the attributes include educational resources. The method includes clustering one of predecessor students and the current students into clusters based on sameness of first selected attributes of their respective associated attributes. The method includes generating a mapping between respective students of the other of the predecessor and current students and one of the clusters based on sameness of second selected attributes associated with the students being mapped. The method then includes recommending for each of the current students the educational resource associated with the predecessor student or cluster of predecessor students that the current student is mapped with.

Abstract: Methods and systems for improved license plate signature matching by similarity learning on synthetic images comprise generating a plurality of synthetic license plate images; applying one or more transformations to the synthetic license plate images to cause the synthetic license plate images to more closely resemble authentic license plate image captures; and providing the synthetic license plate images as inputs to a machine distance learning algorithm in which weighted similarity scores are calculated between signatures of analogous and non-analogous license plate images and one or more sets of signature weights are iteratively adjusted to increase the likelihood that comparing analogous license plate images results in high weighted signature similarity scores and comparing non-analogous license plate images results in low weighted signature similarity scores.

Abstract: A method and system are disclosed for conducting text-based searches of images using a visual signature associated with each image. A measure of string similarity between a query and an annotation associated with each entry in a first database is computed, and based upon the computed string similarity measures, a set of entries from the first database is selected. Each entry of the first database also includes an associated visual signature. At least one entry is then retrieved from a second database based upon a measure of visual similarity between a visual signature of each of the entries in the second database and the visual signatures of the entries in the selected set. Information corresponding to the retrieved entries from the second database is then generated.

Abstract: A system and method are provided for modeling a chromatic object, such as an image. For a set of colors of a chromatic object that are expressed as color values in a perceptual color space, the method includes optimizing a convex objective function which is a log likelihood function of a combination of weighted kernels centered on each color in the set over each of the other colors in the set. A number Nc of weighted kernels in the optimized function which each have a weight which is at least greater than 0 is identified. The chromatic object is modeled with a mixture model in which the complexity of the model is based on the identified number Nc.

Abstract: A system and method for comparing a query object and one or more of a set of database objects are provided. The method includes providing quantized representations of database objects. The database objects have each been transformed with a quantized embedding function which is the composition of a real-valued embedding function and a quantization function. The query object is transformed to a representation of the query object in a real-valued embedding space using the real-valued embedding function. Query-dependent estimated distance values are computed for the query object, based on the transformed query object and stored. A comparison (e.g., distance or similarity) measure between the query object and each of the quantized database object representations is computed based on the stored query-dependent estimated distance values. Data is output based on the comparison computation.