The Computer Vision Digest

Facial Expressions Categorised Using New Software

Some rather nice work there it would seem.

Researchers at the Department of Artificial Intelligence (DIA) of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid’s School of Computing (FIUPM) have, in conjunction with Madrid’s Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, developed an algorithm that is capable of processing 30 images per second to recognize a person’s facial expressions in real time and categorize them as one of six prototype expressions: anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and surprise.

MICCAI 2008 Deadline is Approaching

Dear MICCAI Attendees,

We would like to let you know that the MICCAI 2008 website is up
and running at: miccai2008.rutgers.edu
Important deadlines:
Proposal submission for Workshops and Tutorials:
January 20, 2008
Workshop and Tutorial Acceptance Notification:
February 10, 2008
Paper submission deadline March 7, 2008.

For any further questions please email to
miccai08@cs.rutgers.edu

Thanks

MICCAI 08 Program Chairs

Face Recognition Keeps Minors Away

Here is some nice use of face identification software.

A cigarette vending machine that can tell adults from minors by determining their approximate ages based on bone structure, wrinkles and the way their skin sags went on sale Monday.

ICISP 2008 : Call For Papers

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Call For Papers
Third International Conference on Image
and Signal Processing (ICISP 2008)

July 1-3, 2008
Cherbourg-Octeville, Normandy, France
http://www.stlo.unicaen.fr/icisp2008/
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Deadline extension for EURASIP JASP Special Issue on MLIP

********* Deadline extension *************

The submission deadline for the special issue on
"Machine Learning in Image Processing" of the
EURASIP Journal on Advances in Signal Processing has been
postponed to October 1th, 2007.

More details at :

http://www.hindawi.com/journals/asp/osi.html

Face Recognition-based Authenitcation in UH

The University of Houston is doing some commendable job. They use rich facial image models, but it's not clear why the article focuses on the use of recognition to match it against a record (which is neither new nor innovative).

Face recognition as a unique biometric is growing slowly in certain corporate and consumer applications, but researchers at the University of Houston (UH) are trying to make the technology far more ubiquitous and secure: they want it to replace the dozens of personal identification numbers (PIN), passwords and credit card numbers everyone uses every day.

CVIU Special Issue/Discrete Optimization in CV

CVIU Special Issue/Discrete Optimization in CV
http://vision.mas.ecp.fr/cviu.html

CALL FOR PAPERS
Special Issue of the Computer Vision and Image Understanding (CVIU): Discrete Optimization in Computer Vision
Guest Editors: N. Paragios & R. Zabih

* Scope
Visual understanding tasks are often naturally formulated as energy minimization approaches. In such a context, the goal is to estimate a set of parameters that produces the lowest potential of a specifically designed cost function. These problems are quite challenging, since the cost functions are typically non-convex functions in high dimensional spaces.

Discrete optimization is a well studied branch of computer science and operations research. It has numerous applications, including networks, communication, computational biology, finance, etc. While discrete optimization problems have been popular in vision for almost three decades, the area has gained significant attention within the past decade thanks to the development of efficient combinatorial optimization techniques including, max flow/min cut, graph cuts, linear programming, belief propagation, message passing, dynamic programming, etc.

* Potential topics include:
This issue aims to present the latest developments in this area both from theoretical and application perspective to capture the widest possible range of problems in computer vision. To this end, we solicit submissions in the following areas, among others:

- Discrete optimization algorithms
- Image enhancement, inpainting
- Image segmentation and grouping
- Motion analysis, registration and tracking
- Computational stereo, shape from shading
- Medical and biological imaging
- Experimental comparisons of optimization techniques or energy functions

* Submission Procedure
Submissions should be marked "Special Issue: Discrete Optimization in CV" and should be submitted through the CVIU journal web server (http://ees.elsevier.com/cviu/default.asp). During the submission the authors should indicate (select the appropriate option) that this is a submission for the Discrete Optimization in CV issue. The guide for authors is at (http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/622809/authorinstructions)

The guest editors may return without review submissions that are not aligned with the scope of this issue.

* Important dates:
- Deadline for submission: October, 31st 2007
- First Review Decision: January, 31st 2008
- Resubmission of Revised Papers (if needed): April, 30st 2008
- Final Decisions to the authors: June, 30st 2008
- Issue Publication (scheduled): fall/winter 2008

Guest Editors:

Nikos Paragios
http://vision.mas.ecp.fr
Professor, Laboratoire MAS
Ecole Centrale de Paris
Grande Voie des Vignes
Chatenay Malabry, France

Ramin Zabih
http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~rdz/
Professor of Computer Science and Radiology
Cornell University
4130 Upson Hall
Ithaca, NY, USA

Image Search Named Immature by German Police

On the face of it (pun), facial-features recognition technology meets doubt.

The assessment of the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) according to which biometric visual-image search systems are not advanced enough to be used by the police to search for persons has led to mixed reactions.

An Interview with Dan J. Bernstein

Daring. Just. Brilliant. These three words best describe Prof. Dan J. Bernstein, better known as DJB, the creator of qmail, djbdns and lots of other popular, highly secure software. We've met Dan on the Enigma 2005 cryptography conference in Warsaw. Approaching with caution, since Dan is sometimes described as controversial, what we found out is that he is a very communicative and likeable person with huge knowledge, lots of interesting ideas and a definite role-model in terms of security (...) [Editor's note: definitely off topic, but this seems like a genuine submission by a reader]

Face Recognition Technology Comes to Australia's ePassports

Australia appears to be the next country (among several) to use biometrics in this way.

"Despite a series of technical hiccups, the first public trials of Australia's biometric SmartGate project are set to take place in Brisbane in August, six months behind schedule."