Centre for Image Analysis (CBA) is a collaboration between Uppsala University (UU) and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU). The main activities at CBA are graduate education and research in image analysis and visualization. Our goal is to develop theory, methods, algorithms and systems for applications primarily within biomedicine, forestry and the environmental sciences.
The Centre for Image Analysis (CBA), founded 1988, is a collaboration between Uppsala University (UU) and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU). It is thus time for our 20th anniversary which was celebrated in early 2009. 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 PhD dissertations per year with significant variations over time; 2008 was an average year with three dissertations and one licentiate thesis. We were also happy to receive two new docents in computerized image analysis at UU, Tomas Brandtberg and Hans Frimmel.
During 2008, we had the pleasure of increasing our staff of senior researchers with four persons: Anders Brun and Cris Luengo at SLU and Ida-Maria Sintorn and Ingrid Carlbom at UU, the latter in a position as visiting professor. Gerhard Bax had to leave us since we failed to convince UU that remote sensing is an important research field. We have thus at present almost no research in that area which used to be a significant part of our activity. Instead, the computer graphics and visualization fields have increased their role in our activities. The visualization studio, 3DIS4U, 3D Image Studio for Uppsala, which was inaugurated last year was used extensively for our seminars and for some classes and external events. We expect to strengthen our work on graphics and haptics still more based on initiatives by Carlbom.
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 35 national and 20 international co-operation partners, see Section 5.7. From a methodological point of view, our focus is on discrete geometry and multi-dimensional images, both spatially and spectrally.
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 2008, a total of 34 persons have been working at CBA, half of them as researchers or administrators, the other half as PhD students. Additionally, six Master thesis students have finished their thesis work at CBA. This does, however, not mean that we have had 40 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, then we had the equivalent of about 23 full-time full-year equivalents including teaching, not counting Master thesis students. 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 was elected second vice-president 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 university IT-council, 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/AR08html/