We get the algorithms of our ground truths: Designing referential databases in digital image processing.

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State: Public
Version: author
Serval ID
serval:BIB_072DBC7ACAA6
Type
Article: article from journal or magazin.
Collection
Publications
Institution
Title
We get the algorithms of our ground truths: Designing referential databases in digital image processing.
Journal
Social studies of science
Author(s)
Jaton Florian
ISSN
0306-3127 (Print)
ISSN-L
0306-3127
Publication state
Published
Issued date
12/2017
Peer-reviewed
Oui
Volume
47
Number
6
Pages
811-840
Language
english
Notes
Publication types: Journal Article
Publication Status: ppublish
Abstract
This article documents the practical efforts of a group of scientists designing an image-processing algorithm for saliency detection. By following the actors of this computer science project, the article shows that the problems often considered to be the starting points of computational models are in fact provisional results of time-consuming, collective and highly material processes that engage habits, desires, skills and values. In the project being studied, problematization processes lead to the constitution of referential databases called 'ground truths' that enable both the effective shaping of algorithms and the evaluation of their performances. Working as important common touchstones for research communities in image processing, the ground truths are inherited from prior problematization processes and may be imparted to subsequent ones. The ethnographic results of this study suggest two complementary analytical perspectives on algorithms: (1) an 'axiomatic' perspective that understands algorithms as sets of instructions designed to solve given problems computationally in the best possible way, and (2) a 'problem-oriented' perspective that understands algorithms as sets of instructions designed to computationally retrieve outputs designed and designated during specific problematization processes. If the axiomatic perspective on algorithms puts the emphasis on the numerical transformations of inputs into outputs, the problem-oriented perspective puts the emphasis on the definition of both inputs and outputs.

Keywords
History and Philosophy of Science, General Social Sciences, History, algorithms, computational science, computer science, ground truths, image processing
Pubmed
Web of science
Open Access
Yes
Create date
06/11/2017 12:32
Last modification date
21/08/2019 6:08
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