DICTA 11

The International Conference on Digital Image Computing: Techniques and Applications (DICTA) is the main Australian Conference on computer vision, image processing, pattern recognition, and related areas. DICTA was established as a biannual conference in 1991 and became an annual event in 2007. It is the premiere conference of the Australian Pattern Recognition Society (APRS).

The venue for DICTA 2011 was the Sheraton Noosa Resort & Spa located between the Noosa River and Noosa's renowned Hastings Street. The format of the conference was dual-track with oral presentations and posters. DICTA 2011 was technically co-sponsored by the IEEE and IAPR.

There were four international keynote speakers:

· Bob Duin, IAPR Fellow, from Delft University of Technology;

· Yi Ma from Microsoft Research Asia;

· David Hawkes from University College London; and

· Arun Ross from West Virginia University.

Together, these world-leading researchers presented a diverse sample of modern directions within digital image computing, including topics such as dissimilarity representation, analysis of low-rank image structures, medical image diagnosis, and future trends in biometrics. All of the keynote presentations were well received and served to provide an up-to-date overview of their fields and to inspire delegates in new research directions.

DICTA 2011 had 194 papers submitted for review. Each 6-page paper was reviewed by at least two independent review panel members using a double blind system. From these, the committee accepted 112 papers, representing an acceptance rate of just less than 57%. The organizing committee then selected 42 papers for oral and 70 papers for poster presentation. The IEEE published all accepted papers and the proceedings appear in the IEEE Xplore online database.

Four prizes were awarded at the conference dinner:

· The APRS/IAPR Best Paper Prize awarded by the DICTA 2011 Committee, the IAPR, and the APRS: to Aleš Neubert, Jurgen Fripp, Kaikai Shen, Olivier Salvado, Raphael Schwarz, Lars Lauer, Craig Engstrom, and Stuart Crozier for their paper "Automated 3D Segmentation of Vertebral Bodies and Intervertebral Discs from MRI;"

· The APRS Best Student Paper Prize awarded by the DICTA2011 Committee and the APRS: to Thomas Albrecht, Geoff West, Tele Tan, and Thanh Ly for their paper "Visual Maritime Attention Using Multiple Low-Level Features and Naïve Bayes Classification;"

· The Canon "Best Colour Paper" Prize awarded by Canon Information Systems Research Australia (CiSRA): to David Sandberg, Per-Erik Forssen, and Jens Ogniewski for their paper "Model-Based Video Coding Using Colour and Depth Cameras;"

· The DSTO Best Fundamental Contribution to Image Processing Paper Prize awarded by Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO): to Ruben Gonzalez for his paper "Robust Image Registration via Cepstral Analysis."