The Potential and Value of AI Chatbot in Personalized Cognitive Training

In recent years, the rapid aging of the global population has led to an increase in cognitive disorders, such as Alzheimer's disease, presenting significant public health challenges. Although no effective treatments currently exist to reverse Alzheimer's, prevention and early intervention, including cognitive training, are critical. This report explores the potential of AI chatbots in enhancing personalized cognitive training. We introduce ReMe, a web-based framework designed to create AI chatbots that facilitate cognitive training research, specifically targeting episodic memory tasks derived from personal life logs. By leveraging large language models, ReMe provides enhanced user-friendly, interactive, and personalized training experiences. Case studies demonstrate ReMe's effectiveness in engaging users through life recall and open-ended language puzzles, highlighting its potential to improve cognitive training design. Despite promising results, further research is needed to validate training effectiveness through large-scale studies that include cognitive ability evaluations. Overall, ReMe offers a promising approach to personalized cognitive training, utilizing AI capabilities to meet the growing demand for non-pharmacological interventions in cognitive health, with future research aiming to expand its applications and efficacy.

Making Every Frame Matter: Continuous Video Understanding for Large Models via Adaptive State Modeling

Video understanding has become increasingly important with the rise of multi-modality applications. Understanding continuous video poses considerable challenges due to the fast expansion of streaming video, which contains multi-scale and untrimmed events. We introduce a novel system, C-VUE, to overcome these issues through adaptive state modeling. C-VUE has three key designs. The first is a long-range history modeling technique that uses a video-aware approach to retain historical video information. The second is a spatial redundancy reduction technique, which enhances the efficiency of history modeling based on temporal relations. The third is a parallel training structure that incorporates the frame-weighted loss to understand multi-scale events in long videos. Our C-VUE offers high accuracy and efficiency. It runs at speeds >30 FPS on typical edge devices and outperforms all baselines in accuracy. Moreover, applying C-VUE to a video foundation model as a video encoder in our case study resulted in a 0.46-point enhancement (on a 5-point scale) on the in-distribution dataset, and an improvement ranging from 1.19\% to 4\% on zero-shot datasets.

SPAC: Sampling-based Progressive Attribute Compression for Dense Point Clouds

We propose an end-to-end attribute compression method for dense point clouds. The proposed method combines a frequency sampling module, an adaptive scale feature extraction module with geometry assistance, and a global hyperprior entropy model. The frequency sampling module uses a Hamming window and the Fast Fourier Transform to extract high-frequency components of the point cloud. The difference between the original point cloud and the sampled point cloud is divided into multiple sub-point clouds. These sub-point clouds are then partitioned using an octree, providing a structured input for feature extraction. The feature extraction module integrates adaptive convolutional layers and uses offset-attention to capture both local and global features. Then, a geometry-assisted attribute feature refinement module is used to refine the extracted attribute features. Finally, a global hyperprior model is introduced for entropy encoding. This model propagates hyperprior parameters from the deepest (base) layer to the other layers, further enhancing the encoding efficiency. At the decoder, a mirrored network is used to progressively restore features and reconstruct the color attribute through transposed convolutional layers. The proposed method encodes base layer information at a low bitrate and progressively adds enhancement layer information to improve reconstruction accuracy. Compared to the latest G-PCC test model (TMC13v23) under the MPEG common test conditions (CTCs), the proposed method achieved an average Bjontegaard delta bitrate reduction of 24.58% for the Y component (21.23% for YUV combined) on the MPEG Category Solid dataset and 22.48% for the Y component (17.19% for YUV combined) on the MPEG Category Dense dataset. This is the first instance of a learning-based codec outperforming the G-PCC standard on these datasets under the MPEG CTCs.

Advancing Multi-Modal Sensing Through Expandable Modality Alignment

Sensing technology is widely used for comprehending the physical world, with numerous modalities explored in past decades. While there has been considerable work on multi-modality learning, they all require data of all modalities be paired. How to leverage multi-modality data with partially pairings remains an open problem. To tackle this challenge, we introduce the Babel framework, encompassing the neural network architecture, data preparation and processing, as well as the training strategies. Babel serves as a scalable pre-trained multi-modal sensing neural network, currently aligning six sensing modalities, namely Wi-Fi, mmWave, IMU, LiDAR, video, and depth. To overcome the scarcity of complete paired data, the key idea of Babel involves transforming the N-modality alignment into a series of two-modality alignments by devising the expandable network architecture. This concept is also realized via a series of novel techniques, including the pre-trained modality tower that capitalizes on available single-modal networks, and the adaptive training strategy balancing the contribution of the newly incorporated modality with the previously established modality alignment. Evaluation demonstrates Babel's outstanding performance on eight human activity recognition datasets, compared to various baselines e.g., the top multi-modal sensing framework, single-modal sensing networks, and multi-modal large language models. Babel not only effectively fuses multiple available modalities (up to 22% accuracy increase), but also enhance the performance of individual modality (12% averaged accuracy improvement). Case studies also highlight exciting application scenarios empowered by Babel, including cross-modality retrieval (i.e., sensing imaging), and bridging LLM for sensing comprehension.

OMR-NET: a two-stage octave multi-scale residual network for screen content image compression

Screen content (SC) differs from natural scene (NS) with unique characteristics such as noise-free, repetitive patterns, and high contrast. Aiming at addressing the inadequacies of current learned image compression (LIC) methods for SC, we propose an improved two-stage octave convolutional residual blocks (IToRB) for high and low-frequency feature extraction and a cascaded two-stage multi-scale residual blocks (CTMSRB) for improved multi-scale learning and nonlinearity in SC. Additionally, we employ a window-based attention module (WAM) to capture pixel correlations, especially for high contrast regions in the image. We also construct a diverse SC image compression dataset (SDU-SCICD2K) for training, including text, charts, graphics, animation, movie, game and mixture of SC images and NS images. Experimental results show our method, more suited for SC than NS data, outperforms existing LIC methods in rate-distortion performance on SC images. The code is publicly available at https://github.com/SunshineSki/OMR Net.git.

Global Spatial-Temporal Information-based Residual ConvLSTM for Video Space-Time Super-Resolution

By converting low-frame-rate, low-resolution videos into high-frame-rate, high-resolution ones, space-time video super-resolution techniques can enhance visual experiences and facilitate more efficient information dissemination. We propose a convolutional neural network (CNN) for space-time video super-resolution, namely GIRNet. To generate highly accurate features and thus improve performance, the proposed network integrates a feature-level temporal interpolation module with deformable convolutions and a global spatial-temporal information-based residual convolutional long short-term memory (convLSTM) module. In the feature-level temporal interpolation module, we leverage deformable convolution, which adapts to deformations and scale variations of objects across different scene locations. This presents a more efficient solution than conventional convolution for extracting features from moving objects. Our network effectively uses forward and backward feature information to determine inter-frame offsets, leading to the direct generation of interpolated frame features. In the global spatial-temporal information-based residual convLSTM module, the first convLSTM is used to derive global spatial-temporal information from the input features, and the second convLSTM uses the previously computed global spatial-temporal information feature as its initial cell state. This second convLSTM adopts residual connections to preserve spatial information, thereby enhancing the output features. Experiments on the Vimeo90K dataset show that the proposed method outperforms state-of-the-art techniques in peak signal-to-noise-ratio (by 1.45 dB, 1.14 dB, and 0.02 dB over STARnet, TMNet, and 3DAttGAN, respectively), structural similarity index(by 0.027, 0.023, and 0.006 over STARnet, TMNet, and 3DAttGAN, respectively), and visually.

PPRSteg: Printing and Photography Robust QR Code Steganography via Attention Flow-Based Model

Image steganography can hide information in a host image and obtain a stego image that is perceptually indistinguishable from the original one. This technique has tremendous potential in scenarios like copyright protection, information retrospection, etc. Some previous studies have proposed to enhance the robustness of the methods against image disturbances to increase their applicability. However, they generally cannot achieve a satisfying balance between the steganography quality and robustness. In this paper, we focus on the issue of QR Code steganography that is robust to real-world printing and photography. Different from common image steganography, QR Code steganography aims to embed a non-natural image into a natural image and the restored QR Code is required to be recognizable, which increases the difficulty of data concealing and revealing. Inspired by the recent developments in transformer-based vision models, we discover that the tokenized representation of images is naturally suitable for steganography. In this paper, we propose a novel QR Code embedding framework, called Printing and Photography Robust Steganography (PPRSteg), which is competent to hide QR Code in a host image with unperceivable changes and can restore it even if the stego image is printed out and photoed. We outline a transition process to reduce the artifacts in stego images brought by QR Codes. We also propose a steganography model based on normalizing flow, which combines the attention mechanism to enhance its performance. To our best knowledge, this is the first work that integrates the advantages of transformer models into normalizing flow. We conduct comprehensive and detailed experiments to demonstrate the effectiveness of our method and the result shows that PPRSteg has great potential in robust, secure and high-quality QR Code steganography.

TextCenGen: Attention-Guided Text-Centric Background Adaptation for Text-to-Image Generation

Recent advancements in Text-to-image (T2I) generation have witnessed a shift from adapting text to fixed backgrounds to creating images around text. Traditional approaches are often limited to generate layouts within static images for effective text placement. Our proposed approach, TextCenGen, introduces a dynamic adaptation of the blank region for text-friendly image generation, emphasizing text-centric design and visual harmony generation. Our method employs force-directed attention guidance in T2I models to generate images that strategically reserve whitespace for pre-defined text areas, even for text or icons at the golden ratio. Observing how cross-attention maps affect object placement, we detect and repel conflicting objects using a force-directed graph approach, combined with a Spatial Excluding Cross-Attention Constraint for smooth attention in whitespace areas. As a novel task in graphic design, experiments indicate that TextCenGen outperforms existing methods with more harmonious compositions. Furthermore, our method significantly enhances T2I model outcomes on our specially collected prompt datasets, catering to varied text positions. These results demonstrate the efficacy of TextCenGen in creating more harmonious and integrated text-image compositions.

AACP: Aesthetics assessment of children's paintings based on self-supervised learning

The Aesthetics Assessment of Children's Paintings (AACP) is an important branch of the image aesthetics assessment (IAA), playing a significant role in children's education. This task presents unique challenges, such as limited available data and the requirement for evaluation metrics from multiple perspectives. However, previous approaches have relied on training large datasets and subsequently providing an aesthetics score to the image, which is not applicable to AACP. To solve this problem, we construct an aesthetics assessment dataset of children's paintings and a model based on self-supervised learning. 1) We build a novel dataset composed of two parts: the first part contains more than 20k unlabeled images of children's paintings; the second part contains 1.2k images of children's paintings, and each image contains eight attributes labeled by multiple design experts. 2) We design a pipeline that includes a feature extraction module, perception modules and a disentangled evaluation module. 3) We conduct both qualitative and quantitative experiments to compare our model's performance with five other methods using the AACP dataset. Our experiments reveal that our method can accurately capture aesthetic features and achieve state-of-the-art performance.

Exploring the Impact of In-Browser Deep Learning Inference on Quality of User Experience and Performance

Deep Learning (DL) is increasingly being integrated into Web applications through a method known as "in-browser inference", where the DL processes occur directly within Web browsers. However, the actual performance of this method and its effect on user experience quality (QoE) is not well-understood. This gap in knowledge necessitates new forms of QoE measurement, going beyond traditional metrics such as page load time. To address this, we conducted the first extensive performance evaluation of in-browser inference. We introduced new metrics for this purpose: responsiveness, smoothness, and inference accuracy. Our thorough study included 9 widely-used DL models and tested them across 50 popular PC Web browsers. The findings show a significant latency issue with in-browser inference: it's on average 16.9 times slower on CPU and 4.9 times slower on GPU than native inference methods. Several factors contribute to this latency, including underused hardware instruction sets, inherent delays in the runtime environment, resource competition within the browser, and inefficiencies in software libraries and GPU abstractions. Moreover, in-browser inference demands a lot of memory, sometimes up to 334.6 times more than the size of the DL models themselves. This excessive memory usage is partly due to suboptimal memory management. Additionally, we noticed that in-browser inference increases the time it takes for graphical user interface (GUI) components to load in web browsers by a significant 67.2\%, which severely impacts the overall QoE for users of web applications that depend on this technology.