Chi Zhang

Chenxu Jiang, Mingyuan Lin, Chi Zhang et al.

Depth from Focus estimates depth by determining the moment of maximum focus from multiple shots at different focal distances, i.e. the Focal Stack. However, the limited sampling rate of conventional optical cameras makes it difficult to obtain sufficient focus cues during the focal sweep. Inspired by biological vision, the event camera records intensity changes over time in extremely low latency, which provides more temporal information for focus time acquisition. In this study, we propose the EDFF Network to estimate sparse depth from the Event Focal Stack. Specifically, we utilize the event voxel grid to encode intensity change information and project event time surface into the depth domain to preserve per-pixel focal distance information. A Focal-Distance-guided Cross-Modal Attention Module is presented to fuse the information mentioned above. Additionally, we propose a Multi-level Depth Fusion Block designed to integrate results from each level of a UNet-like architecture and produce the final output. Extensive experiments validate that our method outperforms existing state-of-the-art approaches.

Jie Zhu, Yuanchen Zhou, Shuo Jiang et al.

Emotional Support Conversation (ESC) plays a vital role in alleviating psychological stress and providing emotional value through dialogue. While recent studies have largely focused on data augmentation and synthetic corpus construction, they often overlook the deeper cognitive reasoning processes that underpin effective emotional support. To address this gap, we propose \textbf{CARE}, a novel framework that strengthens reasoning in ESC without relying on large-scale synthetic data. CARE leverages the original ESC training set to guide models in generating logically coherent and supportive responses, thereby explicitly enhancing cognitive reasoning. Building on this foundation, we further employ reinforcement learning to refine and reinforce the reasoning process. Experimental results demonstrate that CARE significantly improves both the logical soundness and supportive quality of responses, advancing the development of empathetic, cognitively robust, and human-like emotional support systems.