The annual workshop of the Austrian Association for Pattern Recognition (“Österreichische Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Mustererkennung”) provides a platform for bringing together researchers in the fields of image analysis, image processing, and pattern recognition to discuss relevant and important topics in the computer-vision discipline. It is organized in workshop form and presents the latest work of Austrian (Central European) and international institutes in the domain of computer vision and pattern recognition.

During the two-day meeting, nearly 50 participants from academia and industry met at the conference centre “over the rooftops of Linz”. The workshop was organised by Arjan Kuijper (Johann Radon Institute for Computational and Applied Mathematics (RICAM), Austrian Academy of Sciences, Linz) and Bettina Heise and Leila Muresan (Fuzzy Logic Laboratory Linz FLLL), Johannes Kepler University, Linz).

The call for papers resulted in 27 submissions, of which 19 were presented: an acceptation rate of 70%. The papers originated from eight different countries and were carefully reviewed by three members of the international program committee.

This year, special attention was paid to the theme “Challenges in the Biosciences: Image Analysis and Pattern Recognition Aspects”. Due to generous sponsoring of the Software Competence Center Hagenberg and the Austrian Research Centers, four speakers could be invited.

Prof. Lucas J. van Vliet (Quantitative Imaging Group at Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands) presented the work done in his group on extremely small scales in  “Quantitative microscopy: The role of image processing to study cells, sub-cellular constituents and individual molecules”.

Prof. Fred A. Hamprecht (Robert-Bosch endowed Associate Professor for Multidimensional Image Processing at the University of Heidelberg, Germany) presented work on merging location and spectrum information in “Exploiting Spatial Context in the Classification of Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopic Images”.

Prof. Wiro Niessen (Biomedical Image Processing at the Erasmus Medical Centre, Rotterdam, The Netherlands) gave a presentation on objective gauges in image-guided medicine in “Advanced Image Analysis for developing Quantitative Imaging Biomarkers”.

Finally, Prof. Gerhard J. Schütz (Biophysics Institute at the Johannes Kepler University in Linz) presented challenging imaging and pattern recognition tasks in “Single Molecule Fluorescence Microscopy - Applications to Biology”.

Besides the invited presentations, two oral sessions and several posters were dedicated to this topic. Obviously, the OAGM workshop covers all computer vision aspects on pattern recognition and image analysis & processing that are relevant to the OAGM/AAPR community. So these topics were presented in the other oral sessions and posters.

That both areas are important became nicely highlighted in the AAPR-sponsored best student award. Two presentations received the same points: Cardiac 4D Image Sequence Registration Using Bridging Points, by Alfredo Lopez (et al.), and Kernel-based Tracking Using Spatial Structure, by Nicole M. Artner (et al.). These papers showed a successful collaboration between academia and scientific partners as well.

Besides academic discussions, the participants enjoyed a traditional Austrian dinner with a traditional Austrian view. Impressions and more details on the program can be found on the conference web site.

The next AAPR workshop will be organized by Peter M. Roth from the Institute for Computer Graphics and Vision in Graz and will be held in May 2009 in the area around Graz. Further details will be announced at the AAPR homepage: www.aapr.at/

Non-IAPR Workshop Report: 

OAGM/AAPR 2008

Conference Proceedings

Printed copies of the conference proceedings can be ordered from:

www.ocg.at/en/index.html

 

Arjan Kuijper, Bettina Heise, Leila Muresan (eds.)

 

Challenges in the Biosciences: Image Analysis and Pattern Recognition Aspects

32nd Workshop of the Austrian Association for Pattern Recognition (AAPR/OAGM)

 

Published by

Oesterreichische Computer Gesellschaft

ISBN 978-3-85403-232-8

 

 

Report prepared by

Arjan Kuijper, Chair