We had four dissertations 2004, two at each university. The new doctors are Anders Hast and Felix Wehrmann at UU and Mats Erikson and Xavier Tizon at SLU. The four theses are illustrated on the cover of this report.
CBA personnel received two important rewards, showing that our work is appreciated by potential users. Julia Åhlén got the ``Best industry-relevant paper Award" at the Swedish Symposium on Image Analysis 2004. Ida-Maria Sintorn, together two colleagues, got the Second prize in an innovation competition awarded by the European Regional Development Fund and three universities in Stockholm.
CBA was host for the annual Swedish Symposium on Image Analysis, SSBA2004, where most researchers in image analysis participate and present their work, this year about 100. The conference is the official meeting of the for Swedish Society Automatic Image Analysis (SSBA).
Even though its is a subject distinct from image analysis, CBA has, ever since its start, taken the responsibility for undergraduate education at UU in computer graphics and carried out some projects in graphics and visualization. This has been necessary, as three dimensional images can not be viewed directly (the retina being two dimensional). Since 2003 there is a Chair in Computer Graphics and Visualization placed at CBA (jointly between UU and University College of Gävle). This year, a lecturer in visualization was recruited, Ingela Nyström, so we now have research base at UU.
Image processing is in its essence interdisciplinary, its foundations being in mathematics, statistics, physics, and computer science, and its applications - in our case - ranging from shape analysis of protein molecules to detection of coral bleaching in tropical seas. This may seem like a too wide area of research, but, in fact, we do concentrate on two areas of basic research and on applications suitable for these. The first of these areas is volume (three-dimensional) images, e.g., tomographic images of the human body. In this area we work both quite theoretically, together with mathematicians and with applications, both analysis and visualization, together with physicians. We are the strongest group in Northern Europe on volume image processing. The second area is spectral/hyperspectral images, that is images with 3-200 layers, where each layer represents a specific spectral band. Such images are, e.g., used to detect water pollution.
Most of our application projects are carried out in close co-operation with researchers from other scientific areas, or with industry. We also co-operate internationally. For the extensive list of national and international co-operation partners, see Section 5.2. We there list the 19 international groups in twelve countries and 35 national groups with which we have had active co-operation in 2004.
How many we are at CBA is a question with several answers. If we count the number of persons ``in house" (excluding Master thesis students and visiting scientists) for at least part of their time we were 25 at 2004-12-30. If we count the time spent at CBA we had the equivalent of about 19 full time persons at the end of the year. The employees are formally employed at either university. The whole of CBA is administrated through UU.
All personnel at CBA participates, more or less intensely, in undergraduate education, mainly through the large Dept. of Information Technology at UU but also through the Dept. of Mathematics. There is also an undergraduate course at SLU.
We are very active in international and national societies, e.g. Ingela Nyström is President of the Swedish Society for Automated Image Analysis (SSBA), Stefan Seipel served as Vice Chair of Swedish Society for Computer Graphics (SIGRAD), and Gunilla Borgefors became one of three Area Editors for the Scientific Journal Pattern Recognition Letters. Ewert Bengtsson continues to serve as advisor to the Rector of UU on information technology and also as Chair of the Virtual Faculty of information technology, together with many other related appointments.
Since 1993/94 CBA assembles extensive annual reports, that describes in some detail what we have achieved during the year. These annual reports are intended for anyone interested in our work, not only financial sponsors, but for users of image analysis in society and industry, co-operation partners, and research colleagues. This is especially important for us, since we belong equally to two universities. Note that each Section in this report starts with a short summary printed in a larger font than the following detailed material.
Our annual reports have been available on the Internet since
1998.
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