IP Library Granted Patent US 11,887,358
Granted Patent B2
US 11,887,358 · App. 17/343,626 · Granted Jan 30, 2024

Systems and methods for identifying and segmenting objects from images

Inventors: Masaki Stanley Fujimoto (Provo, UT); Yen-Yun Yu (Murray, UT)
Assignee: Ancestry.com Operations Inc.
G06V10/82G06T3/4046G06T7/11G06V10/32G06V30/19173G06V30/414G06N3/08G06T2207/20021G06T2207/20024
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Quick Facts
Patent No.
US 11,887,358
App. No.
17/343,626
Granted
Jan 30, 2024
Kind
B2
Abstract

Systems and methods for identifying and segmenting objects from images include a preprocessing module configured to adjust a size of a source image; a region-proposal module configured to propose one or more regions of interest in the size-adjusted source image; and a prediction module configured to predict a classification, bounding box coordinates, and mask. Such systems and methods may utilize end-to-end training of the modules using adversarial loss, facilitating the use of a small training set, and can be configured to process historical documents, such as large images comprising text. The preprocessing module within said systems and methods can utilize a conventional image scaler in tandem with a custom image scaler to provide a resized image suitable for GPU processing, and the region-proposal module can utilize a region-proposal network from a single-stage detection model in tandem with a two-stage detection model paradigm to capture substantially all particles in an image.

Claims (38)

1. A system for identifying and segmenting objects from images, the system comprising:

one or more memory devices storing a preprocessing module, a region-proposal module, and a prediction module; and

at least one processor coupled to the one or more memory devices, the at least one processor configured to perform operations comprising:

generating, utilizing the preprocessing module, a resized historical document image from a source historical document image;

determining, utilizing the region-proposal module, one or more regions of interest in the resized historical document image; and

generating, utilizing the prediction module to process pixels of the resized historical document image indicated by the one or more regions of interest, a predicted object defined by a classification and a set of bounding box coordinates within the resized historical document image.

2. The system of claim 1 , wherein:

the preprocessing module comprises a first image resizing model that applies a first resizing algorithm and a second image resizing model that applies a second resizing algorithm; and

generating the resized historical document image comprises utilizing the first resizing algorithm and the second resizing algorithm to resize the source historical document image.

3. The system of claim 2 , wherein the second resizing algorithm comprises a convolutional neural network that generates a filter corresponding to the source historical document image.

4. The system of claim 3 , wherein generating the resized historical document image comprises:

generating an intermediate resized historical document image utilizing the first resizing algorithm; and

combining the filter and the intermediate resized historical document image to generate the resized historical document image.

5. The system images of claim 1 , wherein the preprocessing module further comprises an image feature extractor configured to extract a feature map from the resized historical document image.

6. The system of claim 1 , wherein the region-proposal module comprises a first region-proposal algorithm for a two-stage region proposal neural network and a second region-proposal algorithm adapted from a single-stage region proposal neural network.

7. The system of claim 6 , wherein the first region-proposal algorithm is a region proposal network adapted from a region-based convolutional neural network (RCNN) algorithm and the second region-proposal algorithm is a region proposal network adapted from a you only look once (YOLO) based algorithm.

8. The system of claim 6 , wherein determining the one or more regions of interest comprises utilizing the first region-proposal algorithm and the second region-proposal algorithm in parallel.

9. The system of claim 1 , wherein generating the predicted object comprises segmenting objects within the resized historical document image utilizing the prediction module.

10. The system of claim 1 , wherein the prediction module comprises a classifier, a bounding box regressor, and a mask predictor.

11. The system of claim 1 , wherein the preprocessing module comprises a convolutional neural network having a kernel size through at least one layer of at least 7×7.

12. The system of claim 11 , wherein the convolutional neural network comprises a stride through at least one layer of at least 5.

13. The system of claim 12 , wherein a stride size of the convolutional neural network is less than a kernel size of the convolutional neural network.

14. A computer-implemented method comprising:

generating, utilizing a preprocessing module, a resized historical document image from a source historical document image;

determining, utilizing a region-proposal module comprising a combination of two region proposal models, one or more regions of interest in the resized historical document image; and

generating, utilizing a prediction module to process pixels of the resized historical document image indicated by the one or more regions of interest, a predicted object defined by a classification and a set of bounding box coordinates within the resized historical document image.

15. The computer-implemented method of claim 14 , wherein generating the resized historical document image comprises utilizing a first resizing algorithm and a second resizing algorithm of the preprocessing module to resize the source historical document image.

16. The computer-implemented method of claim 14 , wherein generating the predicted object comprises segmenting objects within the resized historical document image utilizing the prediction module.

17. A non-transitory computer readable medium storing instructions which, when executed by at least one processor, cause the at least one processor to:

generate, utilizing a preprocessing module comprising a learned image scaler, a resized historical document image from a source historical document image;

determine, utilizing a region-proposal module, one or more regions of interest in the resized historical document image; and

generate, utilizing a prediction module to process pixels of the resized historical document image indicated by the one or more regions of interest, a predicted object defined by a classification and a set of bounding box coordinates within the resized historical document image.

18. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 17 , further comprising instructions which, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the at least one processor to generate a region proposal within resized historical document image by utilizing a region-proposal neural network as part of the region-proposal module.

19. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 18 , further comprising instructions which, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the at least one processor to:

generate a bounding box coordinate utilizing a bounding box regressor;

generate an image mask for a bounding box defined by the bounding box coordinate utilizing a mask predictor; and

generate a segmented historical document image reflecting the image mask.

20. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 18 , further comprising instructions which, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the at least one processor to generate the resized historical document image by utilizing a first resizing algorithm and a second resizing algorithm of the preprocessing module to resize the source historical document image.

Assignments (3)
PATENT SECURITY AGREEMENT Recorded Dec 17, 2021
From: ANCESTRY.COM DNA, LLC; ANCESTRY.COM OPERATIONS INC.
To: CREDIT SUISSE AG, CAYMAN ISLANDS BRANCH, AS COLLATERAL AGENT
Reel/Frame 058536/0257 →
PATENT SECURITY AGREEMENT Recorded Dec 17, 2021
From: ANCESTRY.COM DNA, LLC; ANCESTRY.COM OPERATIONS INC.
To: WILMINGTON TRUST, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION, AS NOTES COLLATERAL AGENT
Reel/Frame 058536/0278 →
ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNOR'S INTEREST Recorded Jun 22, 2021
From: FUJIMOTO, MASAKI STANLEY; YU, YEN-YUN
To: ANCESTRY.COM OPERATIONS INC.
Reel/Frame 056625/0640 →
Continuity (2)
Provisional Application 63037364 · Jun 10, 2020
Related Publication 20210390704A1 · Dec 16, 2021