Patents by Inventor Hong Jiang Zhang

Hong Jiang Zhang has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

  • Publication number: 20070131096
    Abstract: A system and methods use music features extracted from music to detect a music mood within a hierarchical mood detection framework. A two-dimensional mood model divides music into four moods which include contentment, depression, exuberance, and anxious/frantic. A mood detection algorithm uses a hierarchical mood detection framework to determine which of the four moods is associated with a music clip based on the extracted features. In a first tier of the hierarchical detection process, the algorithm determines one of two mood groups to which the music clip belongs. In a second tier of the hierarchical detection process, the algorithm then determines which mood from within the selected mood group is the appropriate, exact mood for the music clip. Benefits of the mood detection system include automatic detection of music mood which can be used as music metadata to manage music through music representation and classification.
    Type: Application
    Filed: December 9, 2005
    Publication date: June 14, 2007
    Applicant: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Lie Lu, Hong-Jiang Zhang
  • Patent number: 7231381
    Abstract: Text features corresponding to pieces of media content (e.g., images, audio, multimedia content, etc.) are extracted from media content sources. One or more text features (e.g., one or more words) for a piece of media content are extracted from text associated with the piece of media content and text feature vectors generated therefrom and used during subsequent searching. Additional low-level feature vectors may also be extracted from the piece of media content and used during the subsequent searching. Relevance feedback can also be received from a user(s) identifying the relevance of pieces of media content rendered to the user in response to his or her search request. The relevance feedback is logged and can be used in determining how to respond to subsequent search requests, such as by modifying feature vectors (e.g., text feature vectors) corresponding to the pieces of media content for which relevance feedback is received.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 13, 2001
    Date of Patent: June 12, 2007
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Mingjing Li, Hong-Jiang Zhang, Wen-Yin Liu, Zhen Chen
  • Patent number: 7224850
    Abstract: In one aspect, the present disclosure describes a process for automatic artifact compensation in a digital representation of an image. The process includes detecting, by a processor, regions corresponding to facial images within the digital representation; locating, by the processor, red-eye regions within the detected regions; and automatically modifying, by the processor, the located red-eye regions to provide a modified image.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 13, 2003
    Date of Patent: May 29, 2007
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Lei Zhang, Yanfeng Sun, Mingjing Li, Hong-Jiang Zhang
  • Publication number: 20070112583
    Abstract: Systems and methods for learning-based automatic commercial content detection are described. In one aspect, the systems and methods include a training component and an analyzing component. The training component trains a commercial content classification model using a kernel support vector machine. The analyzing component analyzes program data such as video and audio data using the commercial content classification model and one or more of single-side left neighborhood(s) and right neighborhood(s) of program data segments. Based on this analysis, each of the program data segments are classified as being commercial or non-commercial segments.
    Type: Application
    Filed: January 15, 2007
    Publication date: May 17, 2007
    Applicant: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Xian-Sheng Hua, Lie Lu, Mingjing Li, Hong-Jiang Zhang
  • Patent number: 7218760
    Abstract: A face model having outer and inner facial features is matched to that of first and second models. Each facial feature of the first and second models is represented by plurality of points that are adjusted for each matching outer and inner facial feature of the first and second models using 1) the corresponding epipolar constraint for the inner features of the first and second models. 2) Local grey-level structure of both outer and inner features of the first and second models. The matching and the adjusting are repeated, for each of the first and second models, until the points for each of the outer and inner facial features on the respective first and second models that are found to match that of the face model have a relative offset there between of not greater than a predetermined convergence tolerance. The inner facial features can include a pair of eyes, a nose and a mouth. The outer facial features can include a pair of eyebrows and a silhouette of the jaw, chin, and cheeks.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 30, 2003
    Date of Patent: May 15, 2007
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Lie Gu, Li Ziqing, Hong-Jiang Zhang
  • Patent number: 7212666
    Abstract: An algorithm identifies a salient video frame from a video sequence for use as a video thumbnail. The identification of a video thumbnail is based on a frame goodness measure. The algorithm calculates a color histogram of a frame, and then calculates the entropy and standard deviation of the color histogram. The frame goodness measure is a weighted combination of the entropy and the standard deviation. A video frame having the highest value of frame goodness measure for a video sequence is determined as the video thumbnail for a video sequence.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 1, 2003
    Date of Patent: May 1, 2007
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Dong Zhang, Yijin Wang, Hong-Jiang Zhang
  • Patent number: 7203901
    Abstract: A large web page is analyzed and partitioned into smaller sub-pages so that a user can navigate the web page on a small form factor device. The user can browse the sub-pages to find and read information in the content of the large web page. The partitioning can be performed at a web server, an edge server, at the small form factor device, or can be distributed across one or more such devices. The analysis leverages design habits of a web page author to extract a representation structure of an authored web page. The extracted representation structure includes high level structure using several markup language tag selection rules and low level structure using visual boundary detection in which visual units of the low level structure are provided by clustering markup language tags. User viewing habits can be learned to display favorite parts of a web page.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 27, 2002
    Date of Patent: April 10, 2007
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Yu Chen, Wei-Ying Ma, Ming-Yu Wang, Hong Jiang Zhang
  • Patent number: 7190829
    Abstract: Improved methods and apparatuses are provided for use in face detection. The methods and apparatuses significantly reduce the number of candidate windows within a digital image that need to be processed using more complex and/or time consuming face detection algorithms. The improved methods and apparatuses include a skin color filter and an adaptive non-face skipping scheme.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 30, 2003
    Date of Patent: March 13, 2007
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Lei Zhang, Mingjing Li, Hong-Jiang Zhang
  • Patent number: 7183479
    Abstract: A system that analyzes music to detect musical beats and to rectify beats that are out of sync with the actual beat phase of the music. The music analysis includes onset detection, tempo/meter estimation, and beat analysis, which includes the rectification of out-of-sync beats.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 1, 2005
    Date of Patent: February 27, 2007
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Lie Lu, Hong-Jiang Zhang
  • Patent number: 7181393
    Abstract: A method is provided for real-time speaker change detection and speaker tracking in a speech signal. The method is a “coarse-to-refine” process, which consists of two stages: pre-segmentation and refinement. In the pre-segmentation process, the covariance of a feature vector of each segment of speech is built initially. A distance is determined based on the covariance of the current segment and a previous segment; and the distance is used to determine if there is a potential speaker change between these two segments. If there is no speaker change, the model of current identified speaker model is updated by incorporating data of the current segment. Otherwise, if there is a speaker change, a refinement process is utilized to confirm the potential speaker change point.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 29, 2002
    Date of Patent: February 20, 2007
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Lie Lu, Hong-Jiang Zhang
  • Patent number: 7171044
    Abstract: Red-eye detection based on red region detection with eye confirmation initially identifies pixels that correspond to the color of red-eye within an image. A determination is then made as to whether these identified pixels and surrounding areas are part of an eye or not part of an eye. Those identified pixels that are determined to be part of an eye are the detected red-eye regions.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 8, 2004
    Date of Patent: January 30, 2007
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Tong-Xian Chen, Xiangrong Chen, John C. Platt, Jie Yan, Hong-Jiang Zhang
  • Patent number: 7164798
    Abstract: Systems and methods for learning-based automatic commercial content detection are described. In one aspect, program data is divided into multiple segments. The segments are analyzed to determine visual, audio, and context-based feature sets that differentiate commercial content from non-commercial content. The context-based features are a function of single-side left and/or right neighborhoods of segments of the multiple segments.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 18, 2003
    Date of Patent: January 16, 2007
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Xian-Sheng Hua, Lie Lu, Mingjing Li, Hong-Jiang Zhang
  • Patent number: 7149732
    Abstract: The described subject matter provides systems and procedures to make query similarity determinations, wherein the queries are used in information retrieval operations. A same document and/or multiple similar documents are identified that have been selected by a user in response to multiple queries. Responsive to identifying the same document and/or the similar documents, a query cluster is generated that indicates that the queries used to obtain the same and/or similar documents. This is accomplished in a manner that is independent of whether individual ones of the queries are compositionally similar with respect to other ones of the queries.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 12, 2001
    Date of Patent: December 12, 2006
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Ji-Rong Wen, Jian-Yun Nie, Ming-Jing Li, Hong-Jiang Zhang
  • Patent number: 7142697
    Abstract: A face recognition system and process for identifying a person depicted in an input image and their face pose. This system and process entails locating and extracting face regions belonging to known people from a set of model images, and determining the face pose for each of the face regions extracted. All the extracted face regions are preprocessed by normalizing, cropping, categorizing and finally abstracting them. More specifically, the images are normalized and cropped to show only a persons face, categorized according to the face pose of the depicted person's face by assigning them to one of a series of face pose ranges, and abstracted preferably via an eigenface approach.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 5, 2004
    Date of Patent: November 28, 2006
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Fu Jie Huang, Hong-Jiang Zhang, Tsuhan Chen
  • Patent number: 7132595
    Abstract: A system that analyzes music to detect musical beats and to rectify beats that are out of sync with the actual beat phase of the music. The music analysis includes onset detection, tempo/meter estimation, and beat analysis, which includes the rectification of out-of-sync beats.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 1, 2005
    Date of Patent: November 7, 2006
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Lie Lu, Hong-Jiang Zhang
  • Publication number: 20060245639
    Abstract: A method and system for generating 3D images of faces from 2D images, for generating 2D images of the faces at different image conditions from the 3D images, and for recognizing a 2D image of a target face based on the generated 2D images is provided. The recognition system provides a 3D model of a face that includes a 3D image of a standard face under a standard image condition and parameters indicating variations of an individual face from the standard face. To generate the 3D image of a face, the recognition system inputs a 2D image of the face under a standard image condition. The recognition system then calculates parameters that map the points of the 2D image to the corresponding points of a 2D image of the standard face. The recognition system uses these parameters with the 3D model to generate 3D images of the face at different image conditions.
    Type: Application
    Filed: April 29, 2005
    Publication date: November 2, 2006
    Applicant: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Dalong Jiang, Hong-Jiang Zhang, Lei Zhang, Shuicheng Yan, Yuxiao Hu
  • Publication number: 20060248044
    Abstract: An implementation of a technology, described herein, for relevance-feedback, content-based image retrieval minimizes the number of iterations for user feedback regarding the semantic relevance of exemplary images while maximizing the resulting relevance of each iteration. One technique for accomplishing this is to use a Bayesian classifier to treat positive and negative feedback examples with different strategies. In addition, query refinement techniques are applied to pinpoint the users' intended queries with respect to their feedbacks. These techniques further enhance the accuracy and usability of relevance feedback. This abstract itself is not intended to limit the scope of this patent. The scope of the present invention is pointed out in the appending claims.
    Type: Application
    Filed: July 17, 2006
    Publication date: November 2, 2006
    Applicant: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Hong-Jiang Zhang, Zhong Su, Xingquan Zhu
  • Patent number: 7127120
    Abstract: Systems and methods to automatically edit a video to generate a video summary are described. In one aspect, sub-shots are extracted from the video. Importance measures are calculated for at least a portion of the extracted sub-shots. Respective relative distributions for sub-shots having relatively higher importance measures as compared to importance measures of other sub-shots are determined. Based on the determined relative distributions, sub-shots that do not exhibit a uniform distribution with respect to other sub-shots in the particular ones are dropped. The remaining sub-shots are connected with respective transitions to generate the video summary.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 1, 2002
    Date of Patent: October 24, 2006
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Xian-Sheng Hua, Lie Lu, Yu-Fei Ma, Mingjing Li, Hong-Jiang Zhang
  • Patent number: 7127087
    Abstract: A face recognition system and process for identifying a person depicted in an input image and their face pose. This system and process entails locating and extracting face regions belonging to known people from a set of model images, and determining the face pose for each of the face regions extracted. All the extracted face regions are preprocessed by normalizing, cropping, categorizing and finally abstracting them. More specifically, the images are normalized and cropped to show only a persons face, categorized according to the face pose of the depicted person's face by assigning them to one of a series of face pose ranges, and abstracted preferably via an eigenface approach.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 5, 2004
    Date of Patent: October 24, 2006
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Fu Jie Huang, Hong-Jiang Zhang, Tsuhan Chen
  • Patent number: 7115808
    Abstract: A system and methods use music features extracted from music to detect a music mood within a hierarchical mood detection framework. A two-dimensional mood model divides music into four moods which include contentment, depression, exuberance, and anxious/frantic. A mood detection algorithm uses a hierarchical mood detection framework to determine which of the four moods is associated with a music clip based on the extracted features. In a first tier of the hierarchical detection process, the algorithm determines one of two mood groups to which the music clip belongs. In a second tier of the hierarchical detection process, the algorithm then determines which mood from within the selected mood group is the appropriate, exact mood for the music clip. Benefits of the mood detection system include automatic detection of music mood which can be used as music metadata to manage music through music representation and classification.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 2, 2005
    Date of Patent: October 3, 2006
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Lie Lu, Hong-Jiang Zhang