Invited Talks

• Jelena Kovacevic
  Professor
  Department of Biomedical Engineering
  Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
  Center for Bioimage Informatics, Director
  Carnegie Mellon University
  http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/jelenak/
  Title: Next-Generation Bioimaging Systems
  Abstract »

  The question I would like to help answer is: What is the role and what can imaging do for systems biology?

  In recent years, the focus in biological sciences has shifted from understanding single parts of larger systems, sort of vertical approach, to understanding complex systems at the cellular and molecular levels, horizontal approach. Thus the revolution of “omics” projects, genomics and now proteomics. Understanding complexity of biological systems is a task that requires acquisition, analysis and sharing of huge databases, and in particular, high-dimensional databases. For example, in the current project on location proteomics, the fluorescence microscopy data sets can have a dimension as high as 5: two spatial dimensions, z-stacks, time series and different-color channels (different color probes for different proteins). Processing such huge amount of bioimages visually by biologists is inefficient, time-consuming and error-prone. Therefore, we would like to move towards automated, efficient and robust processing of such bioimage data sets. Moreover, some information hidden in the images may not be readily visually available. For example, in the same project, we use images of two proteins residing in the Golgi apparatus—giantin and gpp130. These two proteins cannot be distinguished better than randomly by humans, while when employing data mining methods, they can be told apart. Therefore, we do not only replace humans by machines for faster and more efficient processing but also because new knowledge is generated through use of sophisticated algorithms.

  The ultimate dream is to have distributed yet integrated large bioimage databases which would allow researchers to upload their data, have it processed, share the data, download data as well as platform-optimized code, etc, and all this in a common format, something akin to the DICOM format for clinical imaging.

  To achieve this goal, we must draw upon a whole host of sophisticated tools from signal processing, machine learning and scientific computing. While such tools are widely present in clinical (medical) imaging, they are not as widespread in imaging of biological systems at cellular and molecular levels. This is a huge challenge and requires integration of interdisciplinary teams.

  I will address some of these issues in this presentation.

  Bio »

  Kovacevic (S'88-M'91-SM'96-F'02) received the Dipl. Electr. Eng. degree from the Electrical Engineering Department, University of Belgrade, Yugoslavia, in 1986, and the Master of Science
  and Ph.D. degrees from Columbia University, New York, NY, in 1988 and 1991, respectively.

  From 1987 to 1991, she was a Graduate Research Assistant at Columbia University. In the summer of 1985, she worked for Gaz de France, Paris, France, during the summer of 1987, for INTELSAT, Washington, D.C., and in the summer of 1988, for Pacific Bell, San Ramon, CA. In the fall of 1986, she was a Teaching Assistant at the University of Belgrade. From 1991-2002, she was with Bell Labs, Murray Hill, NJ, as a Member of Technical Staff. She is a co-founder and Technical VP of xWaveforms, based in New York City, NY. In 2003, she joined the Departments of Biomedical Engineering & Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University where she also serves as the Director of the Center for Bioimage Informatics. She was an Adjunct Professor at Columbia University. Her research interests include wavelets, frames, biomedical signal processing, multirate signal processing, data compression and signal processing for communications. She is a coauthor on the paper for which Aleksandra Mojsilovic received the Young Author Best Paper Award. Her paper on multidimensional filter banks and wavelets, co-authored with Martin Vetterli, was selected as one of the papers for inclusion in Fundamental Papers in Wavelet Theory, edited by Chris Heil and David Walnut. She is a coauthor (with Martin Vetterli) of the book "Wavelets and Subband Coding" (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1995). She is on the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Applied and Computational Harmonic Analysis, Journal of Fourier Analysis and Applications and the Signal Processing Magazine.

  Dr. Kovacevic received the Belgrade October Prize, highest Belgrade prize for student scientific achievements awarded for the Engineering Diploma Thesis in October 1986 and the E.I. Jury Award at Columbia University for outstanding achievement as a graduate student in the areas of systems, communication or signal processing. She is the Fellow of the IEEE and the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Image Processing. She served as an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, as a Guest Co-Editor (with Ingrid Daubechies) of the Special Issue on Wavelets of the Proceedings of the IEEE, Guest Co-Editor (with Martin Vetterli) of the Special Issue on Transform Coding of the Signal Processing Magazine and as a Guest Co-Editor (with Robert F. Murphy) of the Special Issue on Molecular and Cellular Bioimaging of the Signal Processing Magazine. She is a Member-at-Large of the IEEE Signal Processing Society Board of Governors and serves on the Bioimage and Signal Processing Technical Committee as well as the Image and Multidimensional Signal Processing echnical Committee of the IEEE Signal Processing Society. She is the General Chair of the 2006 International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging, was the Co-Chair (with Vivek Goyal) of the DIMACS Workshop on Source Coding and Harmonic Analysis and a General Co-Chair (with Jan Allebach) of the Ninth Workshop on Image and Multidimensional Signal Processing.

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• Anastasios (Tas) N. Venetsanopoulos
  Professor
  Bell Canada Chair in Multimedia
  Dean, Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering
  University of Toronto
  http://www.dsp.toronto.edu/~anv/
  Title: Multimedia Signal Processing and Content-Based Image Retrieval
  Abstract »

  The signal processing landscape has become vastly changed with the advent of high speed communications systems which permit the transmission of more than just voice and signaling data, but also images, video and virtually all possible data combinations. This multimedia communication environment has resulted in the need for new and different processing tools and applications, aimed at providing increased efficiency, convenience, productivity and flexibility than previously expected in both commercial and consumer scenarios. In this talk, a broad overview of multimedia and its impact will be provided. The challenges which arise in our specific area of multimedia, that of Content-Based Image Retrieval (CBIR) will be presented and some areas of application in relation to MPEG-7 will be discussed.

  Bio »

  Dr. Anastasios (Tas) N. Venetsanopoulos received the Bachelors of Engineering degree from the National Technical University in Athens (NTU), Greece, in 1965, and the M.S., P.Phil., and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Yale University in 1966, 1968, and 1969 respectively. He joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto, Canada, in September 1968 and was appointed Inaugural Chairholder of The Bell Canada Chair in Multimedia in 1999. Since July 2001, he has been Dean of the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering at the University of Toronto.

  He has published over 800 papers on digital signal and image processing and digital communications and has served as Chair on numerous boards, councils and technical conference committees including IEEE committees such as the Toronto Section (1977-1979) and the IEEE Central Canada Council (1980-1982); he was President of the Canadian Society for Electrical Engineering and Vice-President of the Engineering Institute of Canada (1983-1986). He was Guest Editor and Associate Editor for numerous IEEE journals, and the Editor of the Canadian Electrical Engineering Journal (1981-1983).

  He is a member of the IEEE Communications, Circuits and Systems, Computer, and Signal Processing Societies, as well as a member of Sigma Xi, the Technical Chamber of Greece, the European Association of Signal Processing, and the Association of Professional Engineers of Ontario (PEO). He was elected as a Fellow of the IEEE “for contributions to digital signal and image processing”, Fellow of EIC, “for contributions to electrical engineering”, and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the National Technical University of Athens, in October 1994. In October 1996, he was awarded the “Excellence in Innovation Award” of the Information Technology Research Centre of Ontario and Royal Bank of Canada, “for innovative work in colour image processing and its industrial applications”. In 2003, he was awarded the IEEE MacNaughton Medal, “for outstanding contributions to the design and implementation of communication systems, digital filters and multimedia systems; IEEE; the engineering profession and society at large”.

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