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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face=Arial><span style='font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>When:
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Wednesday,
April 30 @ 10:00am<b><span style='font-weight:bold'><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></font></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face=Arial><span style='font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></font></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face=Arial><span style='font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Where:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
TTI-C Conference Room<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face=Arial><span style='font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></font></p>

<p style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><font size=3 face=Arial><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Who:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
&nbsp;Sameer Shirdhonkar, <st1:PlaceType w:st="on">University</st1:PlaceType>
of <st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Maryland</st1:PlaceName>, <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place
 w:st="on">College Park</st1:place></st1:City><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face=Arial><span style='font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></font></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-autospace:none'><font size=3 face=Arial><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Topic:&nbsp;
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Linear time
approximation to the earth mover's distance for comparing histograms<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 color=navy face=Arial><span style='font-size:
12.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></font></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=navy face=Arial><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></font></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-autospace:none'><font size=3 face=Arial><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Arial'>The earth mover's distance (EMD) or
Vasershtein metric is a perceptually meaningful metric used for comparing
histograms in various computer vision applications such as content based image
retrieval.&nbsp; Computing the EMD involves solving a Kantorovich-Rubinstein
(KR) transshipment problem and requires about cubic time. I&nbsp; will present
a fast linear time approximation method for solving this class of KR
transshipment problems. The approximation, called wavelet EMD (WEMD), is
achieved by transforming the dual problem into the wavelet domain, where it
admits an explicit solution. It is a weighted norm on the wavelet coefficients
of the difference histograms and is equivalent to the EMD, i.e.&nbsp; the ratio
of the two has lower and upper bounds.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-autospace:none'><font size=3 face=Arial><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Arial'>I will use colour histogram based
image retrieval experiments to show that wavelet EMD is a good approximation to
EMD with similar performance, but requires much less computation time.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-autospace:none'><font size=3 face=Arial><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></font></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-autospace:none'><font size=3 face=Arial><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Briefly, I will talk about my
previous work on the importance of non-negative lighting in model based
recognition of specular objects. I will describe how to constrain the time
domain values of a function when you can only manipulate its frequency domain
coefficients.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-autospace:none'><font size=3 face=Arial><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></font></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-autospace:none'><font size=3 face=Arial><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Arial'>I will also demonstrate the
Columbia-Maryland-Smithsonian electronic field guide for the identification of
plant species using leaf images.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-autospace:none'><font size=3 face=Arial><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></font></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-autospace:none'><font size=3 face=Arial><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Arial'>This is joint work with my advisor
Prof. David Jacobs. The electronic field guide is joint work with many people
at the <st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Columbia</st1:PlaceName> <st1:PlaceType w:st="on">University</st1:PlaceType>,
the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:PlaceType w:st="on">University</st1:PlaceType> of
 <st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Maryland</st1:PlaceName></st1:place> and the
Smithsonian Institution.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 color=navy face=Arial><span style='font-size:
12.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></font></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=navy face=Arial><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></font></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face=Arial><span style='font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Contact:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
Greg Shakhnarovich,
TTI-C&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;greg@tti-c.org&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
834-2572<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 color="#134f5c" face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;color:#134F5C'><br>
<br>
</span></font><font color=navy face=Arial><span style='font-family:Arial;
color:navy'><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-autospace:none'><font size=2 face="Courier New"><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New"'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></font></p>

<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=navy face=Arial><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></font></p>

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