Patterns and randomness in networks for computer vision: from graphs to neural networks

Abstract

To my parents, brothers, grandparents, uncles, and cousins for the familial love and occasional support.To Marilia for her love, companionship, and support, and for all the moments we shared through our journey together.To my advisor, Odemir Martinez Bruno, for the guidance, support, trust, and collaboration for the past seven years. Working together has been an incredible journey and a fundamental part of my professional development.To my co-advisor, Bernard De Baets, firstly for the supervision during my stay at Ghent University, and also for becoming part of the development of this thesis as a whole. It was a great pleasure meeting and working with such an esteemed scientist.Special thanks to my cats, Puck, Juanita, and Gwyn, for their active participation in developing this thesis by constantly walking over the keyboard. They deserve all the credit for any lost characters or weird typos in the text.To all colleagues, professors, and workers from the São Carlos Institute of Physics (IFSC-USP), the Institute of Mathematics and Computer Science (ICMC-USP), the Faculty of Bioscience Engineering (UGent), and the Scientific Computing Group (SCG), who contributed, directly or indirectly, to my academic education and the development of this thesis. I am deeply grateful for the discussions, knowledge exchange, and casual moments that were part of my life during the Ph.D.