Other projects

1. Surtsey and Capelinhos, Two Contemporary Submarine Volcanoes
   Tommy Lindell
   Funding: TN-faculty, UU
   Period: 0703-
   Abstract: Capelinhos, close to the Island of Faial in the Azores in the middle of the Atlantic, began to erupt on the 27 of September 1957 from 4 submarine vents after a couple of days with seismic activities. The outbreak of magma started a violent eruption of ash, lapilli and steam when it interacted with the sea water. This continued until May 1958. The first two cones collapsed after a few months but the third cone still remains. is located most westerly of the island of Faial.

   The island of Surtsey was formed in a volcanic eruption which began 130 meters below sea level, and reached the surface on 14 November 1963. The eruption lasted until 5 June 1967, when the island reached its maximum size of 2.7 km. Wind and wave erosion has diminished the island in size to about 1.4 km today. Like as for the Capelinhos, eruptions created more islands from the vents, Jlnir and Syrtlingur but as in the case for Capelinhos those two islands disappeared soon.

   Wind and waves are the main factors eroding these two volcanic features. They are now approximately half a century old, resting in two similar locations but within two rather different climatological systems as to their wave and wind climate. One intriguing question is then of course if the environment may have had any major differentiating effect on the present shape of the islands. This is under investigation in this project, based on satellite imagery and aerial photos and climatological data.

2. Image Analysis for Landscape Analysis
   Anders Brun, Filip Malmberg
   Partners: Bo Malmberg, Michael Nielsen, Dept. of Human Geography, Stockholms University; Anders Wästfelt, Dept. of Economics, SLU
   Funding: S-faculty, SLU
   Period: 0901-
   Abstract: This project is a collaboration with researchers at SU and SLU. It aims to derive information about the landscape (rural and city) from satellite images. The project focuses on using texture analysis of images rather than only pixelwise spectral analysis to segment the image into different meaningful regions. During 2011 we have been active in both the assessment of forest damages and land cover in Ethiopia using remote sensing techniques. One EU grant application was submitted, for a project to deal with processing of data from the Sentinel-2 satellite, which is planned to be launched in 2013.

3. Image Analysis for Studying Horse Behavior
   Anders Brun
   Partners: Anna Byström, Lars Roepstorff, SLU
   Funding: S-faculty, Dept. of Equine Studies, SLU
   Period: 0901-
   Abstract: In this project, we analyze signals from a pressure sensor on the horse saddle. The work of CBA is mainly to help the veterinary group to analyze these signals. During 2011 we have published a novel algorithm for the analysis of saddle pressure at SSBA.
4. Tracking Honey Bees and Their Interactions
   Cris Luengo
   Partners: Olle Terenius, Ingemar Fries, Joachim Rodrigues de Miranda, Eva Forsgren, Barbara Locke, Dept. of Ecology, SLU; Fredrik Liljeros, Dept. of Sociology, Stockholm University
   Funding: Åke Wiberg foundation
   Period: 1003-
   Abstract: In this project, we intend to set up a system in which we can observe a portion of a bee hive (containing several hundred individuals, each tagged with a number on its back) over days or weeks. Bees will be free to enter and exit the hive, and the environment will be set up to provide them with an environment that is as natural as possible. The purpose is to observe the natural behaviour of the bees, and record the type and duration of interaction between individuals. In 2010 Olle Terenius was awarded a small grant from the Åke Wiberg foundation for materials and consumables, which we will use to create a setup and obtain preliminary data for a larger grant application.

5. Optical Character Recognition of Handwritten Texts
   Anders Brun, Ewert Bengtsson, Fredrik Wahlberg
   Partners: Lasse Mårtensson, Dept. of Scandinavian Languages, UU; Mats Dahllöf, Dept. of Linguistics and Philology, UU
   Funding: Faculty of Languages and Humanities, UU
   Period: 1008-
   Abstract: Optical character recognition (OCR) is still, after nearly 100 years of research, an active area of research. Currently one of the frontiers is the recognition of handwritten text (HTR), in particular from historical documents. During 2011 the findings of this project were published in an international workshop on Handwritten Text Recognition, HIP, colocated with ICDAR 2011 in Beijing. A major grant application was sent to the Knut & Alice Wallenberg Foundation with a budget of about 50MKR.

6. Size Distribution of Sand From a Fluidized Bed Boiler
   Cris Luengo
   Partners: Mattias Moëll, Martin Petersen and Shariar Badiei, Vattenfall Research and Development AB, Stockholm
   Funding: Vattenfall
   Period: 1102-
   Abstract: We are developing an on-line system to measure particle size distribution of sand from a fluidized bed boiler. We have written and validated an algorithm that works well on a series of test images obtained in a commercial fluidized bed boiler. During the coming year we will develop a test system to be installed at the same plant.

7. Image Analysis for Grain Quality Assessment
   Cris Luengo
   Partners: Lantmännen Lantbruk, Lidköping & Uppsala; Maxx automation AB, Uppsala
   Funding: Lantmännen Lantbruk
   Period: 1006-
   Abstract: In this project we develop novel algorithms and systems to assess the quality of a batch of grain (oats, barley, wheat), based on the Seedscanner 2003 seed sorting robot from Maxx automation AB. In 2010 we improved the imaging capabilities of the robot, and adapted algorithms developed earlier in this project to the new setup.

8. Drosophila Behaviour Analysis
   Cris Luengo
   Partner: Michael Williams, Dept. of Neuroscience, UU
   Funding: -
   Period: 1106-
   Abstract: We are developing software to automatically analyze video of fruit flies and quantify their behaviour. In particular, aggressive and sexual displays need to be counted. We are still in the initial phases of the project, in terms of image analysis.

9. Face Recognition in Presence of Shadow Artifacts
   Khalid Niazi, Ingela Nyström
   Partners: M. Talal Ibrahim, Ling Guan, Ryerson Multimedia Lab, Ryerson University, Canada
   Funding: COMSATS IIT, Islamabad
   Period: 1101-1112
   Abstract: Face recognition in the presence of shadow artifacts is a challenging task.This project presents a novel filtering method for face recognition under varying illumination and shadow artifacts. The proposed method starts by normalizing the given input image by gamma transformation. Empirically, we have proven that most of the discriminating features in a human face are horizontal in nature and decimation-free directional filter bank provides a efficient mechanism to extract horizontal features from the facial images. The efficiency of the proposed method is evaluated on two public databases: Yale Face Database B, and the Extended Yale Face Database B. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method achieves higher recognition rate under varying illumination conditions and in presence of shadow artifacts in comparison with some other existing methods.

10. DIPimage and DIPlib
    Cris Luengo
    Partners: Bernd Rieger, Lucas van Vliet, Quantitative Imaging Group, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands; Michael van Ginkel, Unilever Research and Development, Colworth House, Bedford, UK
    Funding: S-faculty, SLU
    Period: 0807-
    Abstract: DIPimage is a MATLAB toolbox for scientific image analysis, useful for both teaching and research. It has been in active development since 1999, when it was created at Delft University of Technology. In 2008, when Cris Luengo moved to Uppsala, CBA was added to the project as a main development site. DIPlib, created in 1995, is a C library containing many hundreds of image analysis routines. DIPlib is the core of the DIPimage toolbox, and both projects are developed in parallel. Because DIPlib provides efficient algorithms, MATLAB is useful for image analysis beyond the prototyping stage. Together, MATLAB and DIPimage form a powerful tool for working with scalar and vector images in any number of dimensions.