Dynamic texture

Dynamic texture

Dynamic texture ( sometimes referred to as temporal texture) is the texture with motion which can be found in videos of sea-waves, fire, smoke, wavy trees, etc. Dynamic texture has a spatially repetitive pattern with time-varying visual pattern. Modeling and analyzing dynamic texture is a topic of images processing and pattern recognition in computer vision. Extracting features that describe the dynamic texture can be utilized for tasks of images sequences classification, segmentation, recognition and retrieval. Comparing with texture found within static images, analyzing dynamic texture is a challenging problem. It is important that the extracted features from dynamic texture combine motion and appearance description, and also be invariance to some transformation such as rotation, translation and illumination. == Analysis methods of dynamic texture == The methods of dynamic texture recognition can categorized as follows: Methods based on optical flow: by applying optical flow to the dynamic texture, velocity with direction and magnitude can be detected and used to recognize the dynamic texture. Due to simplicity of its computation, it is currently the most popular method. Methods computing geometric properties: this methods track the surfaces of motion trajectories in spatiotemporal domain. Methods based on local spatiotemporal filtering : this methods analyze the local spatiotemporal patterns and its orientation and energy and employ them as feature used for classification. Methods based on global spatiotemporal transform: this method characterize the motion at different scale using wavelets that can decompose the motion into local and global. Model-based methods : These methods aims at generating a model to describe the motion by a set of parameters. == Applications == - Segmenting the sequence images of natural scenes. This helps on differentiate between streets and grass alongside these streets which could be used in the application of navigations. - Motion detection : Dynamic texture features extracted from footage videos can be exploited to detect abnormal crowd activities. - Video classification: video of natural scenes or other scenes that exhibit dynamic textures. - Video retrieval : Dynamic textures can be employed as a feature retrieve videos that contain, for example, sea-waves, smoke, clouds, wavy trees.

Video browsing

Video browsing, also known as exploratory video search, is the interactive process of skimming through video content in order to satisfy some information need or to interactively check if the video content is relevant. While originally proposed to help users inspecting a single video through visual thumbnails, modern video browsing tools enable users to quickly find desired information in a video archive by iterative human–computer interaction through an exploratory search approach. Many of these tools presume a smart user that wants features to interactively inspect video content, as well as automatic content filtering features. For that purpose, several video interaction features are usually provided, such as sophisticated navigation in video or search by a content-based query. Video browsing tools often build on lower-level video content analysis, such as shot transition detection, keyframe extraction, semantic concept detection, and create a structured content overview of the video file or video archive. Furthermore, they usually provide sophisticated navigation features, such as advanced timelines, visual seeker bars or a list of selected thumbnails, as well as means for content querying. Examples of content queries are shot filtering through visual concepts (e.g., only shots showing cars), through some specific characteristics (e.g., color or motion filtering), through user-provided sketches (e.g., a visually drawn sketch), or through content-based similarity search. == History == Video browsing was originally proposed by Iranian engineer Farshid Arman, Taiwanese computer scientist Arding Hsu, and computer scientist Ming-Yee Chiu, while working at Siemens, and it was presented at the ACM International Conference in August 1993. They described a shot detection algorithm for compressed video that was originally encoded with discrete cosine transform (DCT) video coding standards such as JPEG, MPEG and H.26x. The basic idea was that, since the DCT coefficients are mathematically related to the spatial domain and represent the content of each frame, they can be used to detect the differences between video frames. In the algorithm, a subset of blocks in a frame and a subset of DCT coefficients for each block are used as motion vector representation for the frame. By operating on compressed DCT representations, the algorithm significantly reduces the computational requirements for decompression and enables effective video browsing. The algorithm represents separate shots of a video sequence by an r-frame, a thumbnail of the shot framed by a motion tracking region. A variation of this concept was later adopted for QBIC video content mosaics, where each r-frame is a salient still from the shot it represents. === Video Notebook === Modern video browsing solutions include Video Notebook, a Menlo Park startup founded in 2021 by Mike Lanza, which uses computer vision to extract slides and optical character recognition and speech recognition to facilitate video search. The software can be either used on the client side (using a browser extension), where the slides and text are extracted while the video is watched (e.g. on a video platform like YouTube or Udemy), or on the server side. Processed videos, which can be viewed in the Video Notebook web app, feature a video browsing user interface with extracted timestamped slides, a search bar for querying the video (or a collection of videos), and text chapters. Video Notebook customers include organisations like Ernst & Young. === Video Browser Showdown === The Video Browser Showdown (VBS) is an annual live evaluation competition for exploratory video search tools, where international researchers use video browsing tools to solve ad-hoc video search tasks on a moderately large data set as fast as possible. The main goal of the VBS, which started in 2012 at the International Conference on MultiMedia Modeling (MMM), is to advance the performance of video browsing tools. Since 2016, the VBS also collaborates with TRECVID. The aim of the VBS is to evaluate video browsing tools for efficiency at known-item search (KIS) tasks with a well-defined data set in direct comparison to other tools.

Quantexa

Quantexa is a UK-based software company that develops artificial intelligence-based applications for data analytics and decision-making. The company was founded in 2016 and is headquartered in London, with operations in North America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific region. As of 2025, Quantexa reported a valuation of $2.6 billion and provides services to organizations in over 70 countries. Investors include Warburg Pincus, HSBC, and the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan. == History == Quantexa was founded in London in 2016 by several co-founders, including Jamie Hutton, Richard Seewald, Imam Hoque, Felix Hoddinott, and Vishal Marria, who also serves as the company's chief executive officer. The company was established to develop tools intended to address limitations in traditional data analysis methods, particularly those related to identifying hidden connections across large datasets. The name "Quantexa" is derived from the company's focus on quantitative methods and data analysis. In 2023, Quantexa acquired Dublin-based AI firm Aylien. In April 2023, the company completed a Series E funding round, raising $129 million at a valuation of approximately $1.8 billion, marking its entry into "unicorn" status. In October 2024, the company reported annual recurring revenue (ARR) exceeding $100 million. In early 2025, Quantexa participated in the World Economic Forum's Unicorn Program, which supports high-growth technology companies. In March 2025, Quantexa completed a Series F funding round of $175 million, led by Teachers' Venture Growth, the venture arm of the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan. That August, the company was reported to be considering a 2026 IPO. The company formed a partnership with Zurich in October 2025, the first insurer to add its AI-based Decision Intelligence platform to enhance fraud detection.

Immuni

Immuni was an open-source COVID-19 contact tracing app used for digital contact tracing in Italy, dismissed on 31 December 2022, after a long and debated criticism for having been a failure due to the lack of trust placed by citizens. Immuni COVID-19 contact-tracing app had in fact been downloaded only by 12% of Italians between 14 and 75 years old (the government had previously stated that, in order for the app to work properly, it should have been downloaded by at least 60% of Italians). It makes use of the Apple/Google Exposure Notification system. == Development == It was developed by Bending Spoons and released by the Italian Ministry of Health on 1 June 2020. After a testing phase in 4 Italian regions (Abruzzo, Apulia, Liguria, Marche), the app started being active in the whole country on 15 June 2020. The app was initially released on App Store and Google Play, and since 1 February 2021 it is available on the Huawei AppGallery as well. === Source code === The source code was published on GitHub on the 25 May. The app only works in Italy, but compatibility with other European contact tracing apps was a goal. Since 19 October 2020 the app supports key-exchanges with the EU Interoperability Gateway and is therefore able to communicate with contact tracing apps of other EU countries. == Shutdown == As of 16 December 2020, the app was downloaded more than 10 million times, a number which increased to 21.882.502 downloads the day before the app's shutdown. On 27 December 2022 the Italian Ministry of Health announced that the app and its infrastructures will be dismissed on the 31 December of the same year.

Attensity

Attensity was an American company that provided social analytics and engagement applications for social customer relationship management (social CRM). Attensity's text analytics software applications extracted facts, relationships and sentiment from unstructured data. == History == Attensity was founded in 2000. An early investor in Attensity was In-Q-Tel, which funds technology to support the missions of the US Government and the broader DOD. InTTENSITY, an independent company that has combined Inxight with Attensity Software (the only joint development project that combines two InQTel funded software packages), was the exclusive distributor and outlet for Attensity in the Federal Market. In 2009, Attensity Corp., then based in Palo Alto, merged with Germany's Empolis and Living-e AG to form Attensity Group. In 2010, Attensity Group acquired Biz360, a provider of social media monitoring and market intelligence solutions. In early 2012, Attensity Group divested itself of the Empolis business unit via a management buyout; that unit currently conducts business under its pre-merger name. Attensity Group was a closely held private company. Its majority shareholder was Aeris Capital, a private Swiss investment office advising a high-net-worth individual and his charitable foundation. Foundation Capital, Granite Ventures, and Scale Venture Partners were among Biz360's investors and thus became shareholders in Attensity Group. In February 2016, Attensity's IP assets were acquired by InContact, and Attensity closed.

IT operations analytics

In the fields of information technology (IT) and systems management, IT operations analytics (ITOA) is an approach or method to retrieve, analyze, and report data for IT operations. ITOA may apply big data analytics to large datasets to produce business insights. In 2014, Gartner predicted its use might increase revenue or reduce costs. By 2017, it predicted that 15% of enterprises will use IT operations analytics technologies. == Definition == IT operations analytics (ITOA) (also known as advanced operational analytics, or IT data analytics) technologies are primarily used to discover complex patterns in high volumes of often "noisy" IT system availability and performance data. Forrester Research defined IT analytics as "The use of mathematical algorithms and other innovations to extract meaningful information from the sea of raw data collected by management and monitoring technologies." Note, ITOA is different than AIOps, which focuses on applying artificial intelligence and machine learning to the applications of ITOA. == History == Operations research as a discipline emerged from the Second World War to improve military efficiency and decision-making on the battlefield. However, only with the emergence of machine learning tech in the early 2000s could an artificially intelligent operational analytics platform actually begin to engage in the high-level pattern recognition that could adequately serve business needs. A critical catalyst towards ITOA development was the rise of Google, which pioneered a predictive analytics model that represented the first attempt to read into patterns of human behavior on the Internet. IT specialists then applied predictive analytics to the IT Industry, coming forward with platforms that can sift through data to generate insights without the need for human intervention. Due to the mainstream embrace of cloud computing and the increasing desire for businesses to adopt more big data practices, the ITOA industry has grown significantly since 2010. A 2016 ExtraHop survey of large and mid-size corporations indicates that 65 percent of the businesses surveyed will seek to integrate their data silos either this year or the next. The current goals of ITOA platforms are to improve the accuracy of their APM services, facilitate better integration with the data, and to enhance their predictive analytics capabilities. == Applications == ITOA systems tend to be used by IT operations teams, and Gartner describes seven applications of ITOA systems: Root cause analysis: The models, structures and pattern descriptions of IT infrastructure or application stack being monitored can help users pinpoint fine-grained and previously unknown root causes of overall system behavior pathologies. Proactive control of service performance and availability: Predicts future system states and the impact of those states on performance. Problem assignment: Determines how problems may be resolved or, at least, direct the results of inferences to the most appropriate individuals, or communities in the enterprise for problem resolution. Service impact analysis: When multiple root causes are known, the analytics system's output is used to determine and rank the relative impact, so that resources can be devoted to correcting the fault in the most timely and cost-effective way possible. Complement best-of-breed technology: The models, structures and pattern descriptions of IT infrastructure or application stack being monitored are used to correct or extend the outputs of other discovery-oriented tools to improve the fidelity of information used in operational tasks (e.g., service dependency maps, application runtime architecture topologies, network topologies). Real time application behavior learning: Learns & correlates the behavior of Application based on user pattern and underlying Infrastructure on various application patterns, create metrics of such correlated patterns and store it for further analysis. Dynamically baselines threshold: Learns behavior of Infrastructure on various application user patterns and determines the Optimal behavior of the Infra and technological components, bench marks and baselines the low and high water mark for the specific environments and dynamically changes the bench mark baselines with the changing infra and user patterns without any manual intervention. == Types == In their Data Growth Demands a Single, Architected IT Operations Analytics Platform, Gartner Research describes five types of analytics technologies: Log analysis Unstructured text indexing, search and inference (UTISI) Topological analysis (TA) Multidimensional database search and analysis (MDSA) Complex operations event processing (COEP) Statistical pattern discovery and recognition (SPDR) == Tools and ITOA platforms == A number of vendors operate in the ITOA space:

Semantic compression

In natural language processing, semantic compression is a process of compacting a lexicon used to build a textual document (or a set of documents) by reducing language heterogeneity, while maintaining text semantics. As a result, the same ideas can be represented using a smaller set of words. In most applications, semantic compression is a lossy compression. Increased prolixity does not compensate for the lexical compression and an original document cannot be reconstructed in a reverse process. == By generalization == Semantic compression is basically achieved in two steps, using frequency dictionaries and semantic network: determining cumulated term frequencies to identify target lexicon, replacing less frequent terms with their hypernyms (generalization) from target lexicon. Step 1 requires assembling word frequencies and information on semantic relationships, specifically hyponymy. Moving upwards in word hierarchy, a cumulative concept frequency is calculating by adding a sum of hyponyms' frequencies to frequency of their hypernym: c u m f ( k i ) = f ( k i ) + ∑ j c u m f ( k j ) {\displaystyle cumf(k_{i})=f(k_{i})+\sum _{j}cumf(k_{j})} where k i {\displaystyle k_{i}} is a hypernym of k j {\displaystyle k_{j}} . Then a desired number of words with top cumulated frequencies are chosen to build a target lexicon. In the second step, compression mapping rules are defined for the remaining words in order to handle every occurrence of a less frequent hyponym as its hypernym in output text. Example The below fragment of text has been processed by the semantic compression. Words in bold have been replaced by their hypernyms. They are both nest building social insects, but paper wasps and honey bees organize their colonies in very different ways. In a new study, researchers report that despite their differences, these insects rely on the same network of genes to guide their social behavior.The study appears in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. Honey bees and paper wasps are separated by more than 100 million years of evolution, and there are striking differences in how they divvy up the work of maintaining a colony. The procedure outputs the following text: They are both facility building insect, but insects and honey insects arrange their biological groups in very different structure. In a new study, researchers report that despite their difference of opinions, these insects act the same network of genes to steer their party demeanor. The study appears in the proceeding of the institution bacteria Biological Sciences. Honey insects and insect are separated by more than hundred million years of organic processes, and there are impinging differences of opinions in how they divvy up the work of affirming a biological group. == Implicit semantic compression == A natural tendency to keep natural language expressions concise can be perceived as a form of implicit semantic compression, by omitting unmeaningful words or redundant meaningful words (especially to avoid pleonasms). == Applications and advantages == In the vector space model, compacting a lexicon leads to a reduction of dimensionality, which results in less computational complexity and a positive influence on efficiency. Semantic compression is advantageous in information retrieval tasks, improving their effectiveness (in terms of both precision and recall). This is due to more precise descriptors (reduced effect of language diversity – limited language redundancy, a step towards a controlled dictionary). As in the example above, it is possible to display the output as natural text (re-applying inflexion, adding stop words).