Explore Similar Images with Google Image Swirl

Google has released an interactive similar images explorer. The app is called Google Image Swirl, and it’s using the wonder wheel Flash visualization you might know from web search results.

Here’s how it works: you enter a query, like “lion”. After a bit of loading, and if your keyword is supported (not all queries are), you’ll be presented with some visual base categories Google could find:

Opening a category by clicking on it will start the star exploration, with your image in center, surrounded by similar images. Clicking on a surrounding image will put it in focus, and new surrounding images are loaded dynamically:

Once you reached a final image with no more new neighbors, a click on it will take you to the original source site it’s crawled from:

In all of this, even due to its scripted Flash nature, the back button will take you to your last focus image. The app is fast, accessible, scaling pretty well to many keywords (not all – Google mentions there’s 200,000 at the moment), and on first glance it looks useful, too.

Already though, Google has a “Find similar images” link below pics in Google Images. It looks less glorious but feels similarly fast to use. The difference with Image Swirl seems to be that Swirl always takes into account your original keyword, meaning that new images will not only look similar, but also always shows e.g. a lion, if that’s what you entered. The similar images explorer currently available in Google Images on the other hand gets rid of your keyword and start a free-style visual exploration... i.e. the more clicks away from your original image, the less likely you’ll still be looking at lions. Both approaches have their merits, and it would be nice to see an additional pattern matching app which allows you to visually browse using a set of base shapes, which then become more and more refined, so that you could intuitively drill down towards your target pic.

http://blogoscoped.com/index2.html

Microsoft Academic Search

Microsoft Academic Search is a free academic search engine developed by Microsoft Research Asia, and it is also a test-bed for our object-level vertical search research. Driven by the latest search engine technology, Microsoft Academic Search enables users to not only find papers but to discover more information that goes beyond simple query results. With Microsoft Academic Search, you can:

• Locate top research papers
• Find top scientists, conferences, and journals in a specific field

How are the results ranked?

The objects are sorted based on two separate factors: their relevance to the query and their global importance. The relevance score of an object is computed by considering its attributes and its importance score is calculated by considering its relationships with other objects.

Technologies behind Microsoft Academic Search:

• Object-Level Ranking: Bringing Order to Web Objects
  Zaiqing Nie, Yuanzhi Zhang, Ji-Rong Wen, and Wei-Ying Ma
  In the Proceedings of the 14th international World Wide Web conference (WWW 2005), May 10-14, 2005, in Chiba, Japan.
• Object-Level Vertical Search
  Zaiqing Nie, Yuanzhi Zhang, Ji-Rong Wen, and Wei-Ying Ma
  In the Third Biennial Conference on Innovative Data Systems Research (CIDR 2007,May 10-14, research paper).
• Extracting Objects from the Web
  Zaiqing Nie, Fei Wu, Ji-Rong Wen, Wei-Ying Ma
  In the 22nd International Conference on Data Engineering (ICDE 2006,poster paper ).

• Simultaneous Record Detection and Attribute Labeling in Web Data Extraction

  Jun Zhu, Zaiqing Nie, Ji-Rong Wen, Bo Zhang, Wei-Ying Ma

  In the 12th International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (SIGKDD 2006, full paper).

• 2D Conditional Random Fields for Web Information Extraction

  Jun Zhu, Zaiqing Nie, Ji-Rong Wen, Bo Zhang, Wei-Ying Ma

  In the 22nd International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML 2005).

• Web Object Retrieval

  Zaiqing Nie, Yunxiao Ma, Shuming Shi, Ji-Rong Wen, Wei-Ying Ma

  In the Proceedings of the 16th international World Wide Web conference (WWW 2007).

Numenta People Tracking Demonstration

This demonstration application illustrates how Hierarchical Temporal Memory (HTM) can be applied to video recognition. The HTM network in this demo has been trained to locate people in surveillance video footage. You can see how the HTM operates by experimenting with the sample videos that are bundled with this application. For each video, the application will process it in real time on your machine and track the locations of people and other moving objects, while correctly discriminating between the two.
HTM networks can be applied to a wide variety of different problems in image and video recognition.

The network and video processing technology in this demonstration was developed in partnership with Vitamin D for their upcoming Smart Video application. If you would like to use HTMs in your own video applications please contact us at info@numenta.com.

http://www.numenta.com/about-numenta/demoapps.php

8th ACM symposium on Non-Photorealistic Animation and Rendering (NPAR 2010)

Highlights:

• Traditional research joined by new production and "meta" paper categories
• March 15, 2010 regular papers deadline
• Extended April 2, 2010 deadline for research papers rejected from SIGGRAPH 2010
• A special issue of the Computers and Graphics journal will feature extended NPAR papers
• NPAR will be a joint session with SBIM in Annecy, Fr during the animation festival
• Submit papers at https://cmt.research.microsoft.com/NPAR2010/
• More information at http://graphics.cs.williams.edu/sbim-npar10

---

We invite you to submit your work to NPAR 2010, the 8th international symposium dedicated to non-photorealistic animation and rendering, sponsored by ACM SIGGRAPH and in cooperation with Eurographics. This year NPAR returns to its traditional home in Annecy, France. It will be at the 50^th anniversary Annecy International Animated Film Festival and will be held in joint session with the Sketch Based Interfaces and Modeling workshop.

Non-photorealistic animation and rendering (NPAR) refers to computational techniques for visual communication. Such techniques usually generate imagery and motion which is expressive, rather than photorealistic, although they may incorporate realistic elements. We invite researchers, artists, and practitioners of all areas connected to non-photorealistic animation and rendering to submit papers and posters on their work. Submitted papers should be self-classified into one of the following three categories, each of which has its own reviewing standards:

• Research: new algorithms, scientific studies, analysis, or data (i.e., traditional NPAR papers) These must contain novel results that make a substantitive contribution to the field. NPAR has a special extended deadline for technical papers that were also submitted to SIGGRAPH 2010. Authors of accepted research papers are encouraged to follow up on their work in a special issue of the Computers and Graphics journal dedicated to extended NPAR papers. This is an opportunity to tackle outstanding issues raised by reviewers, address discussions and comments at the conference and present additional details and results.
• Production: candid discussion of the process of creating a work (e.g., film, image, game) or art tool (e.g., paint or CAD program, software library).
• Meta: statements about research that do not contain new results, e.g.: grand challenges, position papers, evaluation standards, surveys, and primers on art/aesthetics/psychophysics for a computer science audience.

All work must be previously unpublished and contain a novel contribution. Production and Meta papers need not contain original research or results.

Topic areas of the conference include but are not limited to:

• Expressive character animation and physics
• Abstraction and stylization of images/video
• Interaction techniques
• Accounts of real productions (e.g., animated films)
• NPAR in real software products (e.g., modeling, visualization, presentation software)
• Visual composition
• Hardware acceleration
• Evaluation methods for NPAR algorithms
• Psychophysics of NPAR
• Rendering and layout for text and presentation graphics
• Quantitative analysis of human artists
• Generative or evolutionary approaches
• Style transfer
• Temporal and spatial coherence
• Adapting classic CG effects like motion blur, depth of field, and lighting for NPAR
• Simulation of natural media and traditional styles
• Non-traditional camera models
• Position papers on grand challenges

Paper submissions should be at most 9 single-sided color pages in length and follow the ACM SIGGRAPH sponsored conference formatting instructions, including a title page with an abstract and keywords, and a bibliography. For the first time, this year the bibliography will not count towards the page limit. The submission is electronic in PDF format; supplemental video and images may also be submitted. Accepted papers will be selected by double-blind peer-review, so they should be anonymous when submitted. The accepted papers will be published in the conference proceedings by ACM SIGGRAPH and will be available online via the ACM Digital Library. Posters will not be archived. Posters may be submitted in PDF format as either an extended abstract or a a draft of the poster itself. All paper submissions will automatically be considered for poster presentation as well.

Submission

• Papers: Go to https://cmt.research.microsoft.com/NPAR2010/ to create your paper submission.
• Posters: E-mail your extended abstract or poster draft to npar2010posters@gmail.com.

Important Dates

Note that the NPAR and SBIM paper submission and review processes are independent although the conference are held jointly.
All deadlines are at 23:59 (11:59 pm) GMT.

Full papers deadline:
March 15, 2010* (see exemption for works submitted to SIGGRAPH 2010 below)

SIGGRAPH-submitted papers abstract deadline:
March 15, 2010*

SIGGRAPH-submitted full papers deadline:
April 2, 2010*

Papers acceptance notification:
April 5, 2010

Posters deadline:
April 5, 2010

Papers camera-ready deadline:
April 12, 2010

Posters acceptance notification:
May 1, 2010

Conference:
June 7-10, 2010

* The extended "SIGGRAPH" deadline allows authors who have work rejected from SIGGRAPH 2010 to have an opportunity to improve their papers and submit them to NPAR 2010. If you submitted a technical paper to SIGGRAPH 2010 and would like to also be considered for publication at NPAR, make the following submissions:

1. March 15, 2010: Submit an extended abstract (e.g., the first page of your SIGGRAPH submission) and your complete SIGGRAPH reviews to NPAR. This is explicitly permitted by the SIGGRAPH dual submission rules.
2. April 2, 2010: Submit a complete paper, your complete SIGGRAPH reviews (again), and a cover letter explaining how you improved your paper to address issues in the reviews. It will then be re-reviewed for NPAR. If your paper was accepted at SIGGRAPH you must withdraw from consideration at NPAR.

Special Issue on Advances in Remote Sensing Image Processing

Our planet is continuously observed by airborne and satellite sensors that acquire tons of data to be processed and analyzed daily. Different problems are posed from a signal processing and machine learning points of view: the acquired signals have to be processed in a timely manner, transmitted, further corrected from different distortions, eventually compressed, and ultimately analyzed to extract valuable information from them with, for instance, advanced classification or regression methods. Recently, new learning paradigms have been introduced and latest advances in signal and image processing tools have been incorporated to the current toolbox of remote sensing data users.

The goal of this special issue is to summarize the recent advances in the remote sensing signal/image processing field in a comprehensive manner. The topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

1. Image coding

2. Image classification and target detection 3. Image denoising and restoration 4. Model inversion and function approximation of bio-geo-physical variables 5. Source separation and signal unmixing 6. Feature selection/extraction 7. Manifold characterization and data visualization 8. Data fusion, pansharpening, downscaling

Prospective authors should visit

http://www.signalprocessingsociety.org/publications/periodicals/jstsp/

for information on paper submission. Manuscripts should be submitted using the Manuscript Central system at

http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jstsp-ieee.

Manuscripts will be peer reviewed according to the standard IEEE process.

Manuscript submission due: Apr 20, 2010

First review completed: Jul 15, 2010

Revised manuscript due: Aug 31, 2010

Second review completed: Oct 30, 2010

Final manuscript due: Nov 30, 2010

Second IMCIC 2010 Deadlines (Extension) and First CFP for ISAS 2010

1. The International Multi-Conference on Complexity, Informatics and Cybernetics: IMCIC 2010 (April 6 -9, 2010 - Orlando, Florida, USA). http://www.2010iiisconferences.org/IMCIC

2. The 16th International Conference on Information Systems Analysis and Synthesis: ISAS 2010 http://www.2010iiisconferences.org/ISAS

Both conferences will be jointly held on April 6 -9, 2010 in Orlando, Florida, USA.

The deadlines for both conferences are the following:

Papers/Abstracts Submissions and Invited Sessions Proposals: December 15th, 2009 Authors Notifications: January 27th, 2010 Camera-ready, full papers: March 3rd,2010

Submissions for Face-to-Face or for Virtual Participation are both accepted. Both kinds of submissions will have the same reviewing process and the accepted papers will be included in the same proceedings.

Pre-Conference and Post-conference Virtual sessions (via electronic forums) will be held for each session included in the conference program, so that sessions papers can be read before the conference, and authors presenting at the same session can interact during one week before and after the conference. Authors can also participate in peer-to-peer reviewing in virtual sessions.

All Submitted papers/abstracts will go through three reviewing processes: (1) double-blind (at least three reviewers), (2) non-blind, and (3) participative peer reviews. These three kinds of review will support the selection process of those papers/abstracts that will be accepted for their presentation at the conference, as well as those to be selected for their publication in JSCI Journal.

Authors of accepted papers who registered in the conference can have access to the evaluations and possible feedback provided by the reviewers who recommended the acceptance of their papers/abstracts, so they can accordingly improve the final version of their papers. Non-registered authors will not have access to the reviews of their respective submissions.

Registration fees of an effective invited session organizer will be waived according to the policy described in the web page (click on 'Invited Session', then on 'Benefits for the Organizers of Invited Sessions'), where you can get information about the ten benefits for an invited session organizer. For Invited Sessions Proposals, please visit the conference web site, or directly to http://www.2010iiisconferences.org/imcic/organizer.asp

Authors of the best 10%-20% of the papers presented at the conference (included those virtually presented) will be invited to adapt their papers for their publication in the Journal of Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics.

13th International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI2010)

The 13th International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI2010) will be held from 20th to 24th September 2010 in Beijing, China. MICCAI attracts annually world leading scientists, engineers and clinicians from a wide range of disciplines associated with medical imaging and computer assisted surgery.

You are highly encouraged to submit papers for the conference and/or a proposal for the workshop and tutorial session. If you want to know more detailed information, please visit the MICCAI2010 website:

http://www.miccai2010.org

MICCAI 2010, the 13th International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention, will be held from 20th to 24th September 2010 in Beijing, China. The venue for MICCAI 2010 is the China National Convention Center (CNCC). Located in the Beijing Olympic Green, the CNCC is right next to the Bird's Nest (China National Stadium), the Water Cube(National Aquatics Center) and the National Indoor Stadium. 

*Topics to be addressed in MICCAI 2010 include, but are not limited to:*

     * General Medical Image Computing

    * Computer Assisted Interventional Systems and Robotics

    * Visualization and Interaction

    * General Biological Image Computing

    * Brain and Neuroscience Image Computing

    * Computational Anatomy (statistics on anatomy)

    * Computational Physiology (virtual organs)

    * Innovative Clinical/Biological Applications and 

*Submission of Papers*

We invite electronic submissions for MICCAI 2010 (LNCS style, double blind review)

of up to 8-page papers for oral or poster presentation. Papers will be reviewed

by members of the programme review committee and assessed for quality and

best means of presentation. Besides advances in methodology, we would also

like to encourage submission of papers that demonstrate clinical relevance,

clinical applications, and validation studies.

*Proposals for Tutorials and Workshops*

Tutorials will be held and will complement and enhance the scientific programme

of MICCAI 2010. The purpose of the tutorials is to provide educational material

for training new professionals in the field including students, engineers, clinicians

and new researchers. The purpose of the workshops is to provide a comprehensive

forum on topics that will not be fully explored during the main conference.

AM Journal on Image Processing and Computer Vision

AM Journal on Image Processing and Computer Vision is an open access journal encompassing contents on image interpretation, understanding and computer vision. It aims at disseminating original research original research and practical systems contribution in form of research papers, tutorials, survey article from professional engineers, researchers and scientists in industry and academia.
AM Journal on Image Processing and Computer Vision includes topics but not limited to: Enhancement and restoration, interpolation of images and videos, compression schemes of images and videos, image and video coding algorithms, motion estimation, morphology, segmentation, scene modeling, feature extraction and representation, camera calibration, pose estimation, scene classification, pattern recognition, novel computer vision applications, case studies, gesture recognition, human computer interaction, biometrics algorithms and systems, monitoring and surveillance, stereo vision, human activity recognition, active vision and robotic systems, hand writing and character recognition, image sensor architectures and VLSI issues for image sensors, video indexing, spatial databases design, spatial database search and retrieval, data structures for image and computer vision, numerical methods and discrete geometry etc. Proposals for special issues are also welcomed.
Article Submission
Article submission for AM Journal on Image Processing and Computer Vision has no deadline and submission is possible at all times. A blind review process is conducted for each submitted particle. Expected publication time is initially dependent upon the response from reviewers and revision requirements laid by the reviewer. However fast paced review process is emphasized and expectedly a quality article should take less than a month publication time.
Articles are accepted in form of word documents with .doc or .docx extensions alongwith copyright form signed by the authors
Frequency: 12
Publication Date: 2nd Week of the Month
Publisher: AM Publishers Corporation Canada.
Publication Charges: US $245 (For Hard Copy delivered at Author Address)
US$195 (For Online Version downloadable from Journal Site)

Recent Patents on Computer Science

Bentham Science Publishers has launched a series of innovative journals publishing review articles on recent patents in major therapeutic areas of drug discovery as well as biotechnology, nanotechnology, engineering, computer science and material science disciplines. Please refer to Bentham Science’s website at  http://www.pat-comp-sci.org/AllTitles for further details.

An exciting journal entitled “Recent Patents on Computer Science (CSENG)” was launched in January 2008. This journal publishes review articles written by experts on recent patents in the field of Computer Science. Please visit the journal‘s website at http://www.compscieng.org for the Editorial Board, first journal issue, abstracts of recent issues and other details.

Recent Patents on Computer Science (CSENG) is indexed in Genamics JournalSeek, Compendex.

If you would like to submit a review article to the journal on an important patent area in Computer Science, then please provide us the title of your proposed article and a tentative date of submission at editorial@compscieng.org. Moreover in your reply, could you please suggest some specific keywords, keyword phrases related to your topic, so that detailed patents may be sent to you for the preparation of your manuscript.

ICSEA 2010: The Fifth International Conference on Software Engineering Advances

ICSEA 2010 Tracks

Advances in fundamentals for software development

Fundamentals in software development; Software architecture, patterns, frameworks; Software analysis and model checking; Software architectural scalability; Requirements engineering and design; Software design (methodologies, patterns, experiences, views, design by contract, design by responsibilities, etc.); Software modeling (OO, non-OO, MDA, SOA, patterns, UML, etc.); Software process and workflow; Software validation and verification; Software testing and testing tools; Software implementation; Software project management (risk analysis, dependencies, etc.)

Advanced mechanisms for software development

Software composition; Process composition and refactoring; Co-design and codeplay; Software dependencies; Plug&play software; Adaptive software; Context-sensitive software; Policy-driven software design; Software rejuvenation; Feature interaction detection and resolution; Embedded software; Parallel and distributed software

Advanced design tools for developing software

Formal specifications in software; Programming mechanisms (real-time, multi-threads, etc.); Programming techniques (feature-oriented, aspects-oriented, generative programming, agents-oriented, contextual-oriented, incremental, stratified, etc.); Requirement specification languages; Programming languages; Automation of software design and implementation; Software design with highly distributed resources (GRID); Web service based software; Scenario-based model synthesis; Merging partial behavioral models; Partial goal/requirement satisfaction

Advanced facilities for accessing software

Information modeling; GUI related software; Computer-aided software design; Hierarchical APIs; APIs roles in software development; Ontology support for Web Services; Rapid prototyping tools; Embedded software quality; Thread modeling; Flexible Objects; Use cases; Visual Modeling

Software performance

Software performance modeling; Software performance engineering (UML diagrams, Process algebra, Petri nets, etc.); Software performance requirements; Performance forecast for specific applications; Performance testing; Web-service based software performance; Performance of rule-based software; Methods for performance improvements; Software performance experience reports; Program failures experiences; Error ranking via correlation; Empirical evaluation of defects

Software security, privacy, safeness

Security requirements, design, and engineering; Software safety and security; Security, privacy and safeness in software; Software vulnerabilities; Assessing risks in software; Software for online banking and transactions; Software trace analysis; Software uncertainties; Dynamic detection of likely invariants; Human trust in interactive software; Memory safety; Safety software reuse; High confidence software; Trusted computing; Next generation secure computing

Advances in software testing

Formal approaches for test specifications; Advanced testing methodologies; Static and dynamic analysis; Strategies for testing nondeterministic systems; Testing software releases; Generating tests suites; Evolutionary testing of embedded systems; Algorithmic testing; Exhaustive testing; Black-box testing; Testing at the design level; Testing reactive software; Empirical evaluation

Specialized software advanced applications

Database related software; Software for disaster recovery applications; Software for mobile vehicles; Biomedical-related software; Biometrics related software; Mission critical software; Real-time software; E-health related software; Military software; Crisis-situation software; Software for Bluetooth and mobile phones; Multimedia software applications

Open source software

Open source software (OSS) methodologies; OSS development and debugging; Security in OSS; Performance of OSS; OSS roles and responsibilities; OSS incremental development; Division of labor and coordination mechanisms; Distribution of decision-making; Operational boundaries; Experience reports and lessons learned; Versioning management; Towards generalizing the OSS methodologies and practices; Open source licensing; Industrial movement towards open source

Agile software techniques

Agile software methodologies and practices (extreme programming, scrum, feature-driven, etc.); Agile modeling (serial in the large, iterative in the small); Agile model driven design; Agile methodologies for embedded software; Software metrics for agile projects; Lifecycle for agile software development; Agile user experience design; Agility via program automation; Testing into an agile environment; Agile project planning; Agile unified process

Software deployment and maintenance

Software in small and large organizations; Deploying and maintaining open source software; Software maintenance; Software assurance; Patching; Run-time vulnerability checking; Software rejuvenation; Software updates; Partial or temporary feature deprecation; Multi-point software deployment and configuration; On-line software updates

Software engineering techniques, metrics, and formalisms

Software reuse; Software quality metrics (complexity, empiric metrics, etc.); Software re-engineering (reverse engineering); Software composition; Software integration; Consistency checking; Real-time software development; Temporal specification; Model checking; Theorem provers; Modular reasoning; Petri Nets; Formalisms for behavior specification; Advanced techniques for autonomic components and systems

Software economics, adoption, and education

Patenting software; Software licensing; Software economics; Software engineering education; Academic and industrial views on software adoption and education; Good-to-great in software adoption and improvement; Software knowledge management

Improving productivity in research on software engineering

Developing frameworks to support research; Methods and tools to improving the research environment; Supporting domain specific research needs; Teaching research skills in Computer Science; Experience reports on well developed research processes; Experience reports on empirical approaches to software engineering research; Approaches to supporting higher degree students in their research; Approaches to enlarge the research / teaching nexus to improve academics productivity; Approaches to integration between university research and industry research; Tools to support the research process

http://www.iaria.org/conferences2010/CfPICSEA10.html

British Machine Vision Conference (BMVC) 2010 Aberystwyth (Wales, UK)

The British Machine Vision Conference (BMVC) is one of the major international conferences on machine vision and related areas.

Organized by the British Machine Vision Association, the 21st BMVC will be held in Aberystwyth.

Authors are invited to submit full-length high-quality papers in image processing and machine vision. Papers covering theory and/or application areas of computer vision are invited for submission.

Submitted papers will be refereed on their originality, presentation, empirical results, and quality of evaluation.

All papers will be reviewed *doubly blind*, normally by three members of our international programme committee. Please note that BMVC is a single track meeting with oral and poster presentations and will include two keynote presentations and and a tutorial to be announced soon.

Topics include, but are not limited to:

Statistics and machine learning for vision

Stereo, calibration, geometric modelling and processing

Person, face and gesture tracking

Motion, flow and tracking

Segmentation and feature extraction

Model-based vision

Image processing techniques and methods

Texture, shape and colour

Video analysis

Document processing and recognition

Vision for quality assurance, medical diagnosis, etc.

Vision for visualization and graphics

Also, proposals for a workshop to be held on the 2nd September are invited

-- please contact the organizers.

Important dates:

Paper registration deadline: 17:30 GMT 23rd April 2010

Submission deadline: 17:30 GMT 30th April 2010

Notification of acceptance: 14th June 2010

Camera ready papers: 13th July 2010

Conference: 30th August-2nd September 2010

http://bmvc10.dcs.aber.ac.uk

VI Conference on Articulated Motion and Deformable Objects (AMDO 2010)

Andratx, Mallorca, Spain, 7-9 July, 2010

http://dmi.uib.es/~ugiv/AMDO2010

The Spanish Association for Pattern Recognition and Image Analysis (AERFAI) and the Mathematics and Computer Science Department of UIB are organising the fifth international conference AMDO 2010. It will take place in Puerto de Andratx, Mallorca. This conference is the natural evolution of AMDO's previous workshops. The new goal of this conference is to promote interaction and collaboration among researchers working directly in the areas covered by the main tracks. The new perceptual user interfaces and the emerging technologies increase the relationship between areas involved with human-computer interaction. The perspective of the AMDO 2010 conference will be to strengthen the relationship between the many areas that have as a key point the study of the human body using computer technologies as the main tool.

It is a great opportunity to encourage links between research in the areas of computer vision, computer graphics, advanced multimedia applications and multimodal interfaces that share common problems and frequently use similar techniques or tools. In this particular edition the related topics are divided in several parallel tracks, including the topics above proposed.

AMDO 2010 will consist in three days of lecture sessions, both regular and invited presentations, a poster session and international tutorials. The conference fee includes a social program (conference dinner, coffee breaks, snacks and cultural activities). Students, IAPR, EG, and AERFAI members can register at a reduced fee.

TOPICS INCLUDE (but not restricted to):

Track 1: Advanced Computer Graphics (Human Modelling & Animation) Track 2: Human Motion (Analysis, Tracking, 3D Reconstruction & Recognition) Track 3: Multimodal User Interaction (VR & AR, Speech, Biometrics)

PAPER SUBMISSION AND REVIEW PROCESS

Papers should describe original and unpublished work about the above or closely related topics. Please submit your paper electronically at our website (see URL below) using the software provided. All submissions should be in Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) format. The AMDO2010 secretariat must receive your paper before February 22, 2010, 17:00 (GMT).

Up to 10 A4 pages will be considered. All papers submitted will be subjected to a blind review process by at least three members of the program committee.

The initial paper must not provide names and affiliation, and should include a title, a 150-word abstract, keywords and paper manuscript. Accepted papers will appear in the LNCS Springer-Verlag international proceedings that will be published and distributed to all participants at the workshop. For more details and news, visit our web page.

N.B. Submission implies the willingness of at least one of the authors to register and to present the communication at the conference, if accepted.

IMPORTANT DEADLINES:

Submission of papers: February 22, 2010

Notification of acceptance: March 31, 2010

Camera-ready: April 30, 2010

Early registration: May 31, 2010

Late registration: June 30, 2010

VI AMDO Conference 2010 July 7-9th, 2010

Creating 3D models with a simple webcam

Constructing virtual 3D models usually requires heavy and expensive equipment, or takes lengthy amounts of time. A group of researchers here at the Department; Qi Pan, Dr Gerhard Reitmayr and Dr Tom Drummond have created a program able to build 3D models of textured objects in real-time, using only a standard computer and webcam. This allows 3D modeling to become accessible to everybody.

Qi, Gerhard and Tom presented the system at the 20th British Machine Vision Conference (BMVC'09), in London.

During the last few years, many methods have been developed to build a realistic 3D model of a real object. Various equipment has been used: 2D/3D laser, (in visible spectrum or other wave lengths), scanner, projector, camera, etc. These pieces of equipment are usually expensive, complicated to use or inconvenient and the model is not built in real-time. The data (for example laser information or photos) must first be acquired, before going through the lengthy reconstruction process to form the model. If the 3D reconstruction is unsatisfactory, then the data must be acquired again.

The method proposed by Qi and his colleagues needs only a simple webcam. The object is moved about in front of the webcam and the software can reconstruct the object "on-line" while collecting live video. The system uses points detected on the object to estimate object structure from the motion of the camera or the object, and then computes the Delaunay tetrahedralisation of the points (the extension of the 2D Delaunay triangulation to 3D). The points are recorded in a mesh of tetrahedra, within which is embedded the surface mesh of the object.

The software can then tidy up the final reconstruction by taking out the invalid tetrahedra to obtain the surface mesh based on a probabilistic carving algorithm, and the object texture is applied to the 3D mesh in order to obtain a realistic model. Thanks to this simple and cheap system, 3D reconstruction can become accessible to everybody.

 

http://www.eng.cam.ac.uk/news/stories/2009/3D_models/

Minnesota West Guitar Hero Robot

Article From Machine vision and image processing

Banner Engineering Corp. partnered with a Minnesota West Community and Technical College engineering student and robotics instructor to develop a robot designed to play the Guitar Hero video game—responding to each note as it appears onscreen. Pete Nikrin, who graduated from Minnesota West in 2008 and now works as a manufacturing engineer at Meier Tool & Engineering, designed the robot to compete with a friend that Nikrin had introduced to the game and, after playing for two weeks, had surpassed Nikrin in his ability. Bill Manor, robotics instructor at Minnesota West, suggested Nikrin incorporate a PresencePLUS P4 OMNI vision sensor with a right-angle lens from Banner Engineering. Manor had such a vision system in his possession, as Minnesota West had purchased it at a discount through Banner as a start-up education kit. To develop his Guitar Hero robot, Nikrin used a mannequin—complete with Minnesota West sweatshirt, hat and painted fingernails—and installed the camera lens as the robot's left eye, which would be positioned toward the TV or computer screen. The robot, named Roxanne, identified the notes to be played by using an Edge vision tool, which detects, counts and locates the transition between bright and dark pixels in an image area. For more information, go to: http://www.bannerengineering.com/en-US/ayrok.

Hot Topics in Molecular Imaging

TOPIM stands for 'hot TOPics in molecular IMaging'. The format is a medium scale one-week workshop organized by the European Society for Molecular Imaging (ESMI) and the European Network of Excellence DiMI. TOPIM is an annual event, aiming at covering a different red-hot aspect of research in Molecular Imaging every year.

Imaging Systems Biology

Date: February 7-12, 2010

Place: 10052 Bardonecchia (TO)

            Piemont
            Italy

Scientific Committee:

• Silvio Aime, Italy
• John Clark, UK
• Andreas H. Jacobs, Germany
• Clemens W.G.M. Lowik, The Netherlands
• Vasilis Ntziachristos, Germany
• Bertrand Tavitian, France

Topics:

• cell cycle
• differentiation and de-differentiation
• growth of multicellular systems including angiogenesis
• cell migration and homing
• intracellular and membrane trafficking
• cell-cell communication
• pathogen-host interaction
• endocrinology (insulin)

Presentations:

Presentations will be held during the morning (8:30-12:00) and the early evening (16:30-20:00) such that there is room to continue scientific discussions in between or to enjoy the snow

http://www.dimi.eu/index.php?id=2032

2nd Workshop on Cognitive Information Processing (CIP2010)

Following the success of the first edition of the workshop on Cognitive Information Processing, we are pleased to announce the second one in this series. This workshop aims at bringing together researchers from the machine learning, pattern recognition, statistical signal processing, communications and radar communities in an effort to promote and encourage cross-fertilization of ideas and tools.

CIP2010 will take place on June 14-16, 2010, in Italy, in the island of Elba, at the Grand Hotel Elba International (http://www.elbainternational.it), which dominates the beautiful Bay of Naregno.

CIP2010 is sponsored by the International Association for Pattern Recognition (IAPR), the European Association for Signal Processing (EURASIP), and the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), and it has the technical co-sponsorship of the IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Society (AESS) and the IEEE Signal Processing Society (SPS)

The workshop will feature six keynote addresses and technical presentations, oral (invited) and poster (invited & regular), all of which will be included in the workshop proceedings.

Prospective authors are invited to submit full length (six pages) papers via the conference website for presentation in any of the areas listed below. All submitted papers will be subjected to a blind peer-review process.

Theory:

• Learning theory and modeling;

• Bayesian learning and models;

• Information theoretic learning;

• Graphical and kernel methods;

• Adaptive learning algorithms;

• Ensembles: committees, mixtures, boosting, etc.;

• Data representation and analysis;

• Collaborative sensing techniques;

• Other topics for cognitive information processing.

Applications:

• Cognitive radio networks;

• Cognitive radio modulation techniques;

• Dynamic spectrum management;

• Opportunistic resource allocation;

• Cognitive radar and sonar;

• Knowledge based target detection, estimation, tracking and identification;

• Waveform agility design;

• Blind source separation;

• Cognitive dynamic systems;

• Distributed, cooperative, and adaptive processing;

• Remote sensing;

• Other application areas.

Accepted papers will be published in the Proceedings of CIP2010.

More information can be found on the workshop website at:

http://www.conference.iet.unipi.it/cip2010/

2010 IEEE International Conference on Multimedia & Expo (ICME 2010)

With around 1000 submissions and 500 participants each year, the IEEE International Conference on Multimedia & Expo (ICME) has been the flagship multimedia conference sponsored by four IEEE societies since 2000. It serves as a forum to promote the exchange of the latest advances in multimedia technologies, systems, and applications from both the research and development perspectives of the circuits and systems, communications, computer, and signal processing communities.

Paper Submission:

Prospective authors are invited to submit a full paper (two-column format,

6 pages maximum) according to the guidelines available on the conference website at http://www.icme2010.org/. Only electronic submissions will be accepted.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

- Speech, audio, image, graphics, video, text processing

- Signal processing for media integration

- Animation, virtual reality, and 3-D imaging

- Multimedia human-machine interface and interaction

- Multimedia communications and networking

- Multimedia security and content protection

- Multimedia databases and digital libraries

- Multimedia computing systems and applications

- Multimedia analysis and social media

- Hardware and software for multimedia systems

- Multimedia standards and related issues

- Multimedia quality assessment

ICME 2010 aims to have the top 15% papers accepted for oral presentation and additional 15% papers accepted for poster presentation. Several awards sponsored by industry and institutions will be given out. Best papers will be presented in a single-track session to all participants. Accepted papers should be presented, or else they will not be included in the IEEE Xplore Library.

Workshops, Tutorials, Demos and Special Sessions:

A number of Workshops will be organized by the sponsoring societies. To further foster new emerging topics, ICME 2010 also welcomes researchers, developers and practitioners to organize regular Workshops. Interested organizers please contact the Workshop Chairs for further details. Proposals for Special Sessions, Tutorials, Demos, and Exhibitions are also encouraged.

Please visit the ICME 2010 website for submission details.

Important Dates:

Regular Paper Abstract Submission: December 18, 2009

Regular Paper Submission: December 31, 2009

Notification of Regular Paper Acceptance: March 15, 2010

Camera-Ready Paper Due: April 15, 2010

Special Session Proposal Due: December 5, 2009

Workshop Proposal Due: December 31, 2009

Tutorial Proposal Due: January 31, 2010

Conference Website: www.icme2010.org

Google Introduces 'Go' Programming Language

Google (NSDQ: GOOG) on Tuesday released a new open source programming language called Go that's optimized for applications designed for massive scalability and multi-processor systems.

"I've never felt as productive as I have working with Go," said Rob Pike, a principal engineer at Google.

Go is the second programming language Google has released this year. In July, the company released Simple, a BASIC dialect for developing Android applications.

Pike says Go's goal is to serve as a systems language, in the way that C++ or C does today.

"It's fast for development but it also is a true compiled language," he explained. "We're opening sourcing it now because we think it's reached the point of being fun and useful and powerful."

Go began in 2007 as a group 20% project -- Google allows its workers to spend 20% of their time pursuing projects outside of their job responsibilities. In addition to Pike, contributors include Google engineers Robert Griesemer, Ken Thompson, Ian Taylor, and Russ Cox.

Compiled Go code runs at close to the speed of C, says Pike, adding that compilation happens almost instantly. "It's like using an interactive language," he explained.

Existing languages haven't been optimized for multi-core processors or massive scaling. Pike says that Go was conceived as a language for the kinds of programs written by Google engineers.

It's not intended for beginners, but it's also not terribly difficult to learn. It's object-oriented and boasts features like true closures and reflection.

Pike compares Go to Java in terms of its learning curve. "It's probably around the same level as Java," he said. "If people can learn Java out of the box, they shouldn't have too much trouble learning Go."

One reason for releasing Go as an open source project is to provide the open source community with the opportunity to create of better tools for using the language, like a plug-in for the Eclipse Integrated Development Environment (IDE). At present, there's no IDE support for Go.

Go has not played a role in the development of any of Google's publicly facing Web applications so far. But Google has several internal projects developed that were created using the language. "We have some cool demos," Pike said.

Pike says it's too early to say whether Go will play a part in Google's forthcoming Chrome OS, but he adds that Go does work with Native Client, Google's open-source technology for running native code in Web applications.

"Go has properties that make it really nice for running inside the browser for your apps," he said.

As an example, he said that Wave, which consists of JavaScript on the front-end and C++ server code, might be more efficiently implemented using Go on both the front-end and back-end.

Go has two compilers at the moment, Gccgo, which relies on the GCC as a back-end, and a suite of compilers (6g and 8g) for 64-bit x86 and 32-bit x86 machines respectively. Support for ARM chips and Android devices is being worked on. "The problem with Android phones is we have don't have a [floating point unit]," said Pike.

Additional details and documentation can be found at golang.org and on YouTube.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/web_services/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=221601138

CFP: ICMB2010

International Conference on Medical Biometrics 28-30 June, 2010, Hong Kong http://www4.comp.polyu.edu.hk/~icmb2010/

In the medical field, personal medical feature data, especially digital images, can be referred to as medical biometrics.

Such data are produced in ever-increasing quantities and used for diagnostics and therapy purposes. Medical biometric research aims to use personal medical features in different formats such as images, signals and other sources for solving medical problems and to provide high-performance services in medical field.

Medical biometric systems integrate multidisciplinary technologies in biology, medicine, electronics, computing, and statistics.

The importance of computer-aided diagnosis and therapy has drawn more and more attention worldwide and laid the foundation for the modern medicine with excellent potentials for promising applications such as telemedicine and web-based healthcare.

ICMB 2010 has an emphasis on efficient and effective medical biometric technologies and systems. It will provide a central forum for researchers, engineers and vendors from different disciplines to exchange most recent results, identify future directions and challenges, and initiate possible collaborative research and system development. This conference will significantly benefit

a large variety of audience from both academia and industry.

The topics to be addressed at ICMB 2010 will include, but are not limited to:

Medical device technologies:

- Digital sensor for signal detection

- Medical imaging devices

- Image reconstruction

Medical data processing and management:

- Medical information systems

- Medical data processing

- Medical information retrieval

Medical pattern recognition:

- Feature extraction and selection

- Feature matching and classification

- Decision theory

Medical biometric systems and applications:

- Computer-aided diagnosis

- Telemedicine systems

- Computerized Traditional Chinese Medicine

- Other applications

- System performance analysis