The CIPA (Computer Vision, Image Processing and Analysis) cluster is comprised of researchers in DCU (primarily the Vision Systems Group (VSG), a key university recognised research group) along with a wide range of Industrial and Biomedical partners. CIPA acts as the focus for both traditional Feature Extraction / Machine Learning based Computer vision and Quantitative Image Analysis as well as Deep Learning based Computer Vision research in DCU.

The Vision Systems Group (VSG) was formed in 1990 by Prof. Paul Whelan, as a forum to co-ordinate and support the promotion of computer and machine vision research in DCU. In 1999 Prof. Whelan formed the Medical Imaging and Visualization Laboratory as a focus for medical imaging research within DCU. The Vision Systems Group currently consists of a core team working on computer vision (specifically image segmentation), medical imaging (specifically computer aided detection / diagnosis) and their associated visualization projects. In addition to the VSG team we have 5 adjunct faculty members based in the Mater hospital, RCSI, DIT, IIT and industry. VSG was also a founding member of Irish Pattern Recognition and Classification Society (IPRCS).

The VSG was a founding member RINCE - an Irish national research institute focussed on innovation in engineering (a €10.4 million HEA-PRTLI I initiative). It was also founding member of the NBIP - National Biophotonics & Imaging Platform(a €30 million HEA-PRTLI IV initiative) and the recently funded (PRTLI V, €23.8 million) Nano-Bioanalytical Research Facility. CIPA is a member of the DOCTRID (Daughters of Charity – Technology, Research into Disability) Research Institute (RI) and a host institution for the Marie Curie ASSISTID EU COFUND focusing on research is into Assistive Technologies for people with Autism and Intellectual Disabilities.

Our digital and non-digital computer vision research programmes relate to issues involved in the acquisition (custom sensor design), processing, quantitative analysis, classification, visualization and systems engineering (integration) for a wide range of computer vision applications. Specifically the cluster focuses on the issues involved in the automation or semi automation of image feature segmentation, and its associated quantitative analysis, at both a micro and macro level.

The core expertise provided by the VSG is in its ability to develop and design novel computer based solutions that will allow the automatic extraction of key image features [specifically from 2D, video, 3D and 4D data sources] with a view to a robust and reliable quantitative analysis, classification or tracking of key information/data within the scene.

We also runs a wide ranging Education & Outreach programmes covering undergraduate & graduate education along with undergraduate internships and outreach into second level education. In particular we coordinate the MEng in Electronic and Computer Engineering: Major in Image Processing and Analysis.

Prof. Paul F Whelan, May 2019

• Congratulations to Vincent Andrearczyk on the successful defence of his PhD thesis - "Deep learning for texture and dynamic texture analysis".
• Congratulations to Julia Dietlmeier on the successful defence of her PhD thesis - "A Machine Learning Approach to the Unsupervised Segmentation of Mitochondria in Subcellular Electron Microscopy Data".
• The automatic landmarking software srilf3dFL version 1.0_Demo (SRILF_v1.0_Demo.7z) is an implementation of the Shape Regression with Incomplete Features (SRILF) algorithm detailed in: F. Sukno, J. Waddington, P. Whelan (2015): 3D Facial Landmark Localization with Asymmetry Patterns and Shape Regression from Incomplete Local Features; IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics, 45(9):1717-1730, 2015. [Full Paper - PDF]
• Congratulations to Vincent on his best overall paper award at IMVIP 2016 in Galway for his work on "Deep Learning for Biomedical Texture Image Analysis" [Short Paper - PDF]
• Congratulations to Tony Marrero Barroso on the successful completion of his PhD - "Colour Local Feature Fusion for Image Matching and Recognition".
• Machine Vision industrial development systems upgraded.
• Vincent Andrearczyk and Prof. Paul F. Whelan received the best overall paper award at IMVIP 2015 for their work on "Dynamic Texture Classification using Combined Co-Occurrence Matrices of Optical Flow" [Full Paper - PDF]
• Prof. Paul F. Whelan & Dr. Tarik Chowdhury receive the 2014 AWARD FOR ENGAGEMENT WITH INDUSTRY/BUSINESS for the licensing of its computer aided ultrasound detection technology to a new start-up ReproInfo Ltd.
• Call for ASSISTID Fellows (Specific Calls) is now open. Experienced computer vision / machine learning researchers (i.e. in possession of a doctoral degree or at least 4 years full-time equivalent research experience) are encouraged to apply.
• Congratulations to Yu Sha on the successful completion of her PhD exam - "Sparse and Non-Sparse Curvature Based Adaptive Regularities for Optic-Flow Algorithms and Snake Models with Application in Dense Cell Population Tracking" . This work was funded by the NBIPI@DCU.
• Congratulations to Michele Peporte on her PhD graduation (14-Nov-2014).
• CIPA finalises the commercial licence of its computer vision technology for automatic computer aided detection of the reproductive cycle and pregnancy of Bovines from ultrasound images to reproinfo. This work was designed and developed in CIPA as part of an Enterprise Ireland - Innovation Partnership grant (IP/2011/0107) with Reprodoc Ltd.
• The 1st call for ASSISTID Fellows (Specific Calls) is now open. Experienced researchers (i.e. in possession of a doctoral degree or at least 4 years full-time equivalent research experience) are encouraged to apply.
• Ilea, D.E.; Whelan, P.F. (2011) "Image segmentation based on the integration of colour-texture descriptors-A review" remains in the top 10 (#8) Hottest Pattern Recognition articles from January to December 2013.
• Congratulations to Tony Marrero Barroso for his best paper award (entitled "Local Image Features") at the Rince Institute - Research Away-Day 2014.
• Official launch of the Marie Curie ASSISTID EU COFUND (€8.9m in funding over 5 years (2014-2019)) - research is into Assistive Technologies for people with Autism and Intellectual Disabilities. The first call for fellows will be launched on Sep 2014 with 16 incoming, 4 outgoing fellows. The first fellows are expected to start by Feb 2015. Press coverage of launch and press release. CIPA is one of the Irish Host institutions. If you are interested in discussing computer vision based research programmes for ASSISTID, then contact Prof. Paul F Whelan.

(News archive)

• Dr. Vincent Andrearczyk (PhD 2017) [PFW], Deep learning for texture and dynamic texture analysis
• Dr. Julia Dietlmeier (PhD 2017) [PFW], A Machine Learning Approach to the Unsupervised Segmentation of Mitochondria in Subcellular Electron Microscopy Data
• Dr. Tony Marrero Barroso (PhD 2016) [PFW], Colour Local Feature Fusion for Image Matching and Recognition
• Dr. Michele Peporte (PhD 2014) [PFW], White Matter Volume assessment in premature infants on MRI at term - Computer Aided Volume Analysis
• Dr. Brendan Byrne (PhD 2012) [PFW], Generalising The Ideal Pinhole Model to Multi-Pupil Imaging For Depth Recovery
• Dr. Ketheesan Thirusittampalam (PhD 2012) [PFW], Cellular tracking and mitosis detection in dense in-vitro cellular data
• Dr. Stephen O'Brien (PhD 2011) [PFW], Integrating Contour-Coupling with Spatio-Temporal Models in Multi-Dimensional Cardiac Image Segmentation
• Dr. Aubrey Dunne (PhD 2009) [PFW], Calibration of Non-Conventional Imaging Systems
• Sean Begley (MEng 2009) [PFW], Content Based Image Pose Manipulation
• Dr. Dana Ilea (PhD 2008) [PFW], Unsupervised Segmentation of Natural Images Based on the Adaptive Integration of Colour-Texture Descriptors
  
• Dr. Dahai Yu (PhD 2008) [PFW], The application of manifold based visual speech units for visual speech recognition, in conjunction with Dr. Alistair Sutherland (School of Computing)
  
• Dr. Felicia Brisc (PhD 2007) [PFW], Accelerated Volumetric Reconstruction From Uncalibrated Camera Views
  
• Dr. Tarik Chowdhury (PhD 2006) [PFW], Automatic polyp detection using curvature analysis for standard and low-dose CT (Computed Tomography) data
  
• Dr. Michael Lynch (PhD 2006) [PFW], Multidimensional Image Analysisof Cardiac Function in MRI
  
• Dr. Robert Sadleir (PhD 2006) [PFW], Enhanced Computer Assisted Detection of Polyps in CT Colonography
  
• Dr. John Mallon (PhD 2005) [PFW], Modelling and Removal of Distortions in Images
  
• Dr. Kevin Robinson (PhD 2005) [PFW], Efficient Pre-segmentation Filtering In MRCP
  
• Dr. Padmapriya Nammalwar (PhD 2004) [PFW], A Generic Framework For Colour Texture Segmentation
  
• Tim Carew (MEng 2002) [PFW], Automation of Painted Slate Inspection
  
• Dr. Ovidiu Ghita (PhD 2001) [PFW], A Real-time Low-cost Vision Sensor for Robotic Bin Picking
  
• Dr. Derek Molloy (PhD 2000) [PFW], Active meshes For Motion Tracking
  
• Tommy McGowan (MEng 1997) [PFW], Development of a Prototype Vision to Speech Sensory Substitution System
  

• Dr. Federico Sukno (Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona)
• Prof. Yaroslav Kholodov (Innopolis University, Republic of Tatarstan)
• Charlotte Meyer (Université Jean Monnet Saint-Étienne, France)
• Jacob Lercke Skytte (DTU Informatics, Technical University of Denmark)
• Dr. Enrique Alegre-Gutiérrez, University of Leon, Spain
• Amaia Mendez, Universidad de Deusto, Bilbao, Spain
  
• Thomas Lavazais, ENSEEIHT, France
  
• Artzai Picon, Robotiker, Spain
  
• Dr. Antonio Fernandez, University of Vigo, Spain
  
• Prof. John Barron, Professor of Computer Science at The University of Western Ontario, Canada.
  
• D Ilea, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computers, Transilvania University Brasov, Romania
  
• Prof. Naser Prljaca, Dept of Electronic Engineering, University of Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina
  
• Andreas Abele, Fachhochschule (FH) Mannheim (Mannheim University Of Applied Sciences), Germany.
  
• Rafael Carmona, Ecole Nationale Superieure des Techniques Industrielles et des Mines d'ALES, France.
  
• Prof. B Batchelor, Dept of Computer Science, Cardiff University, Wales
  

Vincent Andrearczyk (Postdoc HES-SO Valais-Wallis), Dr. Julia Dietlmeier (Postdoc DCU), Dr. Robert Sadleir (Faculty - DCU), Dr. Derek Molloy (Faculty - DCU), Tony Marrero Barroso (Huawei Technologies), Dr. Michèle Péporté (National Archive, Luxembourg), Dr. Brendan Byrne (Technical Manager at Tomra Sorting Solutions), Dr. Ketheesan Thirusittampalam (Senior Lecturer, University of Jaffna, Sri Lanka), Dr. Stephen O'Brien (Canada Life), Dr. Aubrey Dunne (Jaliko/Movidius), Dr. Artzai Picon Ruiz (Principal Researcher at TECNALIA Research & Innovation), Sean Begely (Irish Life), Dr. Dana Ilea, Dr. Dahai Yu (Director of AI Research Institute at Midea Group), Dr. Felicia Brisc (University of Hamburg), Dr. Michael Lynch (Senior Project Manager, Product Development at NexJ Health Inc., Toronto), Dr. Tarik Chowdhury (Principal Engineer at Huawei Technologies), Dr. John Mallon (Principal Engineer, ReproInfo), Dr. Kevin Robinson, Dr. Nammalwar PadmaPriya (SSN College of Engineering, Chennai), Tim Carew (Owner - TSI Flowmeters Ltd.), Dr. Ovidiu Ghita (LeicaBiosystems), Tommy McGowan (Irish Central Bank), Dr. Mario Rojas (Valeo Germany), Dr. Federico Sukno (Faculty - Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona), Dr. M. Julius Hossain (Research Scientist - EMBL, Germany), Dr. Jacey Lynn Minoi (Universiti Malaysia Sarawak), Dr. Mark Sugrue (CTO Kinesense Ltd), Dr. Naser Prljaca (Full Professor of Control Systems and Robotics, University of Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina), Alexandru Drimbarean (Vice President, Advanced Research at FotoNation), Nicolas Sezille (Biometric Algorithm Developer at Daon), Ken McClannon (Technical Business Unit Director, Nypro Healthcare), Abhilash Miranda (Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium), Stig Petri (Oticon A/S, Denmark), Gabriel McMorrow (Harris Corporation), Julien Vallat (Creaform, France)

EU Fifth Framework Programme IST: Accompanying Measures; Motorola; Hewlett-Packard; Amdahl; Agilent-Ireland; Technology Systems International Ltd.; Tegral; Forbairt; European Commission: Framework IV; EOLAS/British Council; DCU Research Committee; DCU Educational Trust; RINCE; Irish Cancer Society; Mater Hospital; National Rehabilitation Board; Private Donors; Albert College Junior and Senior Fellowships; Health Research Board; Irish Research Council for Science; Engineering and Technology (IRCSET); NBIP; Enterprise Ireland (C+, Tech Dev, POC, ARGS); Irish Higher Education Authority (PRTLI I, IV, V); Wellcome Trust; Temple Street Children's Hospital; Industrial partners; Science Foundation Ireland (PI & RFP); EU FP7 [Marie-Curie, Co-Fund].