Title: Learn from Human Eyes & Brain for Handling Big Visual Data
Speaker: Weisi Lin, Nanyang Technological University
Time: 10th July, 3:30-4:30pm
Place: N3-320
Abstract
Human eyes receive much more visual information than what can be processed by the related part of the brain in real time. In response to this big data challenge, the human visual system (HVS; consisting eyes, visual pathways, visual cortices, etc) has been evolved to equip with the effective visual attention (VA) mechanism to select the most informative or interesting region in a scene for focus at a time; for instance, we pay attention to a red flower among many green leaves in a picture, or a green leaf among many red flowers. The VA and its computational models have attracted continuous research effort since William James' time. It is beneficial to understand the VA and incorporate an appropriate model computationally in visual/multimedia signal processing, toward various AI-oriented tasks.
In this talk, we will first introduce the research problems associated with VA, as well as the relevant physiological and psychological ground. Afterward, we are to discuss the principle of computational VA modelling and the advances in the area, including approaches with handcrafted and deep-learnt features. Meaningful applications in perceptual quality assessment, image retargeting, video coding, computer graphics, and fast target identification are then demonstrated. The talk will also present our opinions toward possible future research and development.
Speaker’s Biography
Weisi Lin is an active researcher in image processing, perception-based signal modelling and assessment, video compression, and multimedia communication systems. In the said areas, he has published 180+ international journal papers and 230+ international conference papers, 7 patents, 9 book chapters, 2 authored books and 3 edited books, as well as excellent track record in leading and delivering more than 10 major funded projects (with over S$7m research funding). He earned his Ph.D from King’s College, University of London. He had been the Lab Head, Visual Processing, in Institute for Infocomm Research (I2R). He is a Professor and the Programme Director (Special Projects) in School of Computer Science and Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, where he also served as the Associate Chair (Graduate Studies) in 2013-2014.
He is a Fellow of IEEE and IET, and an Honorary Fellow of Singapore Institute of Engineering Technologists. He has been elected as a Distinguished Lecturer in both IEEE Circuits and Systems Society (2016-17) and Asia-Pacific Signal and Information Processing Association (2012-13), and given keynote/invited/tutorial/panel talks to 20+ international conferences during the past 10 years. He has been an Associate Editor for IEEE Trans. on Image Processing, IEEE Trans. on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, IEEE Trans. on Multimedia, IEEE Signal Processing Letters, Quality and User Experience, and Journal of Visual Communication and Image Representation. He was also the Guest Editor for 7 special issues in international journals, and chaired the IEEE MMTC QoE Interest Group (2012-2014); he has been a Technical Program Chair for IEEE Int’l Conf. Multimedia and Expo (ICME 2013), International Workshop on Quality of Multimedia Experience (QoMEX 2014), International Packet Video Workshop (PV 2015), Pacific-Rim Conf. on Multimedia (PCM 2012) and IEEE Visual Communications and Image Processing (VCIP 2017). He believes that good theory is practical, and has delivered 10 major systems and modules for industrial deployment with the technology developed.
