The Centre for Image Analysis (CBA), founded 1988, is a joint university entity between Uppsala University (UU) and the Swedish University for Agricultural Sciences (SLU). The main activities at CBA are graduate education and research in image analysis and visualization, both theoretic and applied. On average we have 3-4 dissertations per year but there are significant variations over time and during 2007 there were no dissertations. However, in 2008 we are expecting four plus a licentiate.
An important event during the year was the external evaluation of research at UU conducted through the so called KoF Quality and Renewal project. 25 international expert groups scrutinized all areas of research and came up with detailed critical evaluations. We were pleased with the statements by our evaluators that The research at CBA holds a high international standard, as witnessed by the quality of its publications and The CBA is successfully facing the strong international competition. We also appreciated the recommendation to the faculty: The Panel recommends that the CBA receive increased funding for permanent researchers; the number of permanent staff is too small compared to the high number of temporary staff. Anyone wishing to read the whole report about CBA, or any other part of UU, can find the 578 page report at: http://usxs.fysik.uu.se/projectweb/451bc17f63905/Home%20Eng.html
Also this year our research received external recognition in another way, through scientific prices and rewards. Gunilla Borgefors received the prestigious Edlundska priset from the Royal Academy of Sciences (KVA) and she was also elected Fellow of IEEE. Our former PhD student Nataša Sladoje was awarded the Benzelius prize from the Royal Society of Sciences in Uppsala. Stina Svensson one of our lecturers became our first docent at SLU.
Computer graphics and visualization are different subjects than image analysis, but at UU they have both been included under the heading "image processing" and research and teaching in those topics is part of CBA's responsibilities. Since visualization issues are important when working with images of higher dimensions this ties in well with our general research profile. A big event during the year was the inauguration of our new visualization studio, 3DIS4U, 3D Image Studio for Uppsala. There results from, e.g., image analysis experiments, computer graphics exercises or scientific computations can be projected in full 3D stereo to an audience of up to 30 persons. The studio also has a high speed fibre link to the high performance computers of UPPMAX through which we expect to be able to provide exciting possibilities of live visualizations of complex scientific calculations.
Image processing is highly interdisciplinary, its foundations being in mathematics, statistics, physics, signal processing, and computer science, and with applications found in many diverse fields. We are working in a wide range of application areas, most of them related to life sciences and usually in close collaboration with experts from the particular application area. Our co-operation partners are found locally as well as nationally and internationally. For a complete list of our 28 national and 32 international co-operation partners, see Section 5.2. From a methodological point of view our focus is on discrete geometry and multi-dimensional images, both spatially, 3D and 4D, and spectrally, i.e., images with many spectral channels.
Even though CBA currently is not responsible for organising undergraduate education, most personnel at CBA participates in undergraduate education. Most of it is organized through the large Dept. of Information Technology at UU and some is organized through the Dept. of Mathematics.
During 2007, a total of 29 persons have been working at CBA as researchers, administrators or PhD students. Additionally, six Master thesis students have finished their thesis work at CBA. This does, however, not mean that we have had 35 full time persons at CBA, many have split appointments, part time at CBA and part time elsewhere most commonly at the Dept. of Information Technology. If we sum up the time spent at and working for CBA, we had the equivalent of about 20 full time full year equivalents including teaching. The employees are formally employed at either university. The whole of CBA is administered through UU.
Ingela Nyström also serves as Director of UPPMAX, Uppsala Multidisciplinary Center for Advanced Computational Science, our administrator Lena Wadelius takes care of its administration, and Ewert Bengtsson is member of its board. This gives us good contact with what is happening in the highly strategic field of high-performance computing.
We are very active in international and national societies. Ingela Nyström is representing Sweden on the governing board of the International Association of Pattern Recognition (IAPR) and Gunilla Borgefors serves on its advisory committee. She is also Area Editor for the scientific Journal Pattern Recognition Letters. Stefan Seipel has served as Vice-chair of the Swedish Society for Computer Graphics (SIGRAD). Ewert Bengtsson serves as senior advisor to the Rector of UU on information technology and also as Chair of the Virtual IT Faculty, together with many other related appointments.
Since 1993/94 CBA assembles extensive annual reports such as this document that describes in some detail what we have achieved during the year. These annual reports are intended for anyone interested in our work. 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. For this issue, see
http://www.cb.uu.se/verksamhet/annual_report/AR07html/