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A visual attention model for adapting images on small displays

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Abstract.

Image adaptation, one of the essential problems in adaptive content delivery for universal access, has been actively explored for some time. Most existing approaches have focused on generic adaptation with a view to saving file size under constraints in client environment and have hardly paid attention to user perceptions of the adapted result. Meanwhile, the major limitation on the user’s delivery context is moving away from data volume (or time-to-wait) to screen size because of the galloping development of hardware technologies. In this paper, we propose a novel method for adapting images based on user attention. A generic and extensible image attention model is introduced based on three attributes (region of interest, attention value, and minimal perceptible size) associated with each attention object. A set of automatic modeling methods are presented to support this approach. A branch-and-bound algorithm is also developed to find the optimal adaptation efficiently. Experimental results demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed scheme and its potential application in the future.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. of Automation, University of Science and Technology of China, 230027, Hefei, P.R. China

    Li-Qun Chen, Xin Fan & He-Qin Zhou

  2. 5/F Sigma Center, Microsoft Research Asia, No. 49 Zhichun Road, 100080, Beijing, P.R. China

    Xing Xie, Wei-Ying Ma & Hong-Jiang Zhang

Authors
  1. Li-Qun Chen
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  2. Xing Xie
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  3. Xin Fan
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  4. Wei-Ying Ma
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  5. Hong-Jiang Zhang
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  6. He-Qin Zhou
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Xing Xie.

Additional information

Xing Xie: Correspondence to:

Xin Fan: This work was conducted while the first and third authors were visiting students at Microsoft Research Asia.

Abbreviations: AO, attention object; ROI, region-of-interest; AV, attention value; MPS, minimal perceptible size; IF, information fidelity; DS, description scheme// Part of this work was originally presented at the 9th International Conference on Multimedia Modeling (MMM’03).

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Chen, LQ., Xie, X., Fan, X. et al. A visual attention model for adapting images on small displays. Multimedia Systems 9, 353–364 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00530-003-0105-4

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