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Texture is a one of the most fundamental yet important characteristic of images, and texture analysis & modeling is an essential and challenging problem in computer vision and pattern recognition, which has attracted extensive research attention over the last several decades.

As a powerful visual cue, texture play an important role in human perception, and provides useful information in identifying objects or regions in images, ranging from multispectral satellite data to microscopic images of tissue samples. Besides, understanding texture is also a key component in many other computer vision topics, including image de-noising, image super-resolution and image generation.

In the past few years, MCL has done original research works in several important aspects of texture analysis & modeling, including texture representation, unsupervised texture segmentation, and dynamic texture synthesis.

Texture Representation[1]: A hierarchical spatial-spectral correlation (HSSC) method is proposed for texture analysis in this work. The HSSC method first applies a multi-stage spatial-spectral transform to input texture patches, which is known as the Saak transform. Then, it conducts a correlation analysis on Saak transform coefficients to obtain texture features of high discriminant power. During the correlation analysis, both auto-correlation and cross-correlation are computed, and further used to get compact and representative feature for texture. Given the fact that texture is the spatial organization of a set of basic patterns, we further provide theoretical explanation of proposed method, that it attempts to capture the energy distribution of orthogonal texture patterns derived from the Saak transform. This paper has been accepted by ICIP2019.

Unsupervised Texture Segmentation[2]: We propose a data-centric approach to efficiently extract and represent textural information for unsupervised texture segmentation problem. Based on the strong self-similarities and quasi-periodicity in texture images, the proposed method first constructs a representative texture [...]

We are so glad to welcome our new MCL member, Wenxuan Li! Wenxuan is a summer intern in MCL. Here is a short interview with Wenxuan:

1. Could you briefly introduce yourself and your research interests?

My name is Wenxuan Li. I’m a graduate student pursuing master’s degree in Electrical Engineering at USC. I am from a city called Nanjing, which is in the eastern part of China. Prior to coming to USC, I achieved my bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering and Automation from Beijing Institute of Technology, 2017. I found my strong interest in machine learning during my curriculum study in EE program. I am also fascinated by image processing problems.

2. What is your impression about MCL and USC?

I was deeply impressed by the beautiful campus when I came to USC for the first time. Students here are full of confidence and passion for learning. USC also offers us great opportunities both in industry and academia. MCL is like a family that strongly connects its members. Everyone here not only focuses on their research topics but also is willing to share and offer help. MCL gives the opportunities to challenge ourselves with frontier research problems

3. What is your future expectation and plan in MCL?

I am working on style transfer topic this summer and hope to learn more about generative model and feature extraction of neural networks. MCL is a great platform to meet people and gain skills. Under insightful guidance from Prof. Kuo and thoughtful advice from PhD mentors, I will quickly expand and improve necessary skills for research.

We are so glad to welcome our new MCL member, Muhan Li! Here is a short interview with Muhan:
1. Could you briefly introduce yourself and your research interests?

My name is Muhan Li, a graduate student in USC Viterbi School of Engineering. I come from China. My major is Electrical Engineering. Before coming to USC, I received my Bachelor degree from North China Electric Power University. This summer, I join MCL and start a time series project with Prof. Kuo and my mentors (Ruiyuan, Zhiruo and Shuiyang). I’m interested in machine learning and have taken many courses related to this topic. So, it’s glad for me to participate in an interesting project with excellent people in MCL.

2. What is your impression about MCL and USC?

I think MCL is like a big family with many lovely members. Prof. Kuo and my mentors are all enthusiastic and thoughtful person. They provide plenty of helpful suggestions and extra insights to me. When I seek help from other students in MCL, everyone is willing to help, too. I feel so lucky to meet many friends who has same hobby and interests as me in USC. We can do things we both love and gain happiness together.

3. What is your future expectation and plan in MCL?

I hope I can make crucial progress in current research under the supervision of Prof. Kuo and with the help of my mentors. If possible, I want to explore more interesting topics in the field of machine learning and improve myself to be prepared for pursuing PhD.

We are so glad to welcome our new MCL member, Chaitra Suresh! Here is a short interview with Chaitra:
1. Could you briefly introduce yourself and your research interests?
 My name is Chaitra Suresh. I am a graduate student at USC, pursuing Master of Science in Electrical Engineering. I am from Bangalore, India. Prior to joining USC in Fall 2018, I worked at Bharti Airtel Limited for a year. I received my Bachelor’s degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from R.V. College of Engineering, India in 2017. My current research interests include application of Machine learning in Computer Vision and Natural Language Processing.  
2. What is your impression about MCL and USC?
 USC has a very diversified culture with integrity. The institution has a lot of ongoing research activity with ample opportunities. Media Communications Lab led by Prof. C.-C. Jay Kuo facilitates working on emerging interdisciplinary areas. I have come across with lab members who work hard with determination and zeal. MCL has been a platform to acquire necessary skill to be a researcher. I am very glad to be onboard.
3. What is your future expectation and plan in MCL?
The lab environment with weekly meeting and seminar facilitates me to learn and adapt to recent developments. I am looking forward to the constant process of learning and understanding concepts under the guidance of Prof. C.-C. Jay Kuo. The ability to think differently drives me to gain experience in my research interest.
 

We are so glad to welcome our new MCL member, Ranga Sai Shreyas Manchikanti! Here is a short interview with Shreyas:
1. Could you briefly introduce yourself and your research interests?
My name is Ranga Sai Shreyas Manchikanti (long! I know). I am a graduate student studying for the Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering. I have spent almost my entire life in a city in southern India called Bangalore before coming to USC. I did my undergraduate degree from National Institute of Technology Karnataka, Surathkal in Electronics and Communication Engineering. I was working at Goldman Sachs as a Software Developer for the past 3 years before joining the graduate program. I have a strong passion towards computer vision and it’s application in everyday life. Specifically, I am very motivated to work in robotics where the images captured by the robot perform a huge role in understanding the environment and performing actions to navigate in the environment.
2. What is your impression about MCL and USC?
Since I joined USC, I have had the chance to meet amazing people all around me. The environment provided by the USC campus inspires me to work had and improve myself. Also, the various facilities available at USC are state of the art and I am very glad to have come to this place for my Master’s degree. MCL is a first research group that I have ever been a part of. I feel that there are a lot of highly skilled and motivated people here at MCL and I am very happy to have the opportunity to work with so many talented people. The weekly gathering of MCL members is also a great activity that helps me to [...]