This paper provides an overview of a number of techniques developed within our group to perform 3D reconstruction and image segmentation based of the application of energy minimisation concepts. We begin with classical snake techniques and show how similar energy minimisation concepts can be extended to derive globally optimal segmentation methods. Then we discuss more recent work based on geod...

It has been extensively observed that languages minimise the distance between two related words. Dependency length minimisation effects are explained as a means to reduce memory load and for effective communication. In this paper, we ask whether they hold in typically short spans, such as noun phrases, which could be thought of being less subject to efficiency pressure. We demonstrate that mini...

This paper describes a method for stereoscopic rectification with geometric distortion minimisation, to generate suitable image pairs for 3D viewing applications. The current state of the art technique is not optimal as it lacks appropriate mathematical constraints. We present a new approach that enforces the same distortion minimisation criterion with more computational efficiency whilst also ...

Direct minimisation of a cost function can in principle provide a versatile and highly controllable route to computational hologram generation. Here we show that the careful design of cost functions, combined with numerically efficient conjugate gradient minimisation, establishes a practical method for the generation of holograms for a wide range of target light distributions. This results in a...

Probabilistic model checking is an increasingly widely used formal verification technique. However, its dependence on computationally expensive numerical operations makes it particularly susceptible to the state-space explosion problem. Among other abstraction techniques, bisimulation minimisation has proven to shorten computation times significantly, but, usually, the full state space needs to...

– Modern array signal processing applications place great demands on the underlying antenna array geometry to deliver high performance. This paper discusses a computational solution to an integer multicriteria optimisation (MO) problem that arises in a certain class of nonuniform linear array (NLA) design. “Fully augmentable” arrays have a full and complete set of covariance lag differences; wi...

An efficient minimisation method is presented to find the best polarity of fixed polarity canonical orcoincidence (COC) expansions. The method derives one COC fixed polarity expansion from another adjacent polarity expansion. To reduce CPU time, it utilises bitwise operation and Gray code. Furthermore, it counts the number of “0”s in the polarity matrix rather than polarity matrix multiplicatio...

This paper introduces a novel framework for compressive sensing of biomedical ultrasonic signals based on modelling data with stable distributions. We propose an approach to `p norm minimisation that employs the iteratively reweighted least squares (IRLS) algorithm but in which the parameter p is judiciously chosen by relating it to the characteristic exponent of the underlying alpha-stable dis...

We present a systematic procedure for the synthesis and minimisation of digital circuits using propositional satisfiability. We encode the truth table into a canonical sum of at most k different minterms, which is then passed to one randomised search procedure that minimises k. The solution for a minimal k is the satisfiable representation of the resulting circuit. We show how to use an interes...

An algorithm, based on the Mumford–Shah (M–S) functional, for image contour segmentation and object smoothing in the presence of noise is proposed. However, in the proposed algorithm, contour length minimisation is not required and it is demonstrated that the M–S functional without contour length minimisation becomes an edge detector. Optimisation of this nonlinear functional is based on the me...