TC18 "Discrete Geometry" Newsletter (July 2011)
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Contents:
=========

1. DGCI 2013 in Seville

2. Call for Papers: Special Issues on Discrete Geometry

3. Short Report from DGCI 2011 in Nancy

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1) DGCI 2013 in Seville
------------------------

The steering committee recently decided that the next DGCI conference
will take place

     20-22 March, 2013
     in Seville, Spain

A two-year interval between DGCI Nancy and DGCI Seville (Spring 2011 -
Spring 2013) was chosen in order to avoid recurring conflicts with our
sister conference IWCIA. The conference will be organized by the
Andalusian research group Combinatorial Image Analysis (“CIA” research
group) in the Applied Math Department of Seville University. Rocio
Gonzalez-Diaz and Maria Jose Jimenez will act as co-chairs of the
organizing committee. The official Call for Papers will be issued in
Spring 2012, and will cover the classical topics of discrete geometry:

* Models for Discrete Geometry (grids, discrete objects, discrete model
   properties, digitization schemes, metrics,...)
* Discrete and Combinatorial Topology
* Geometric Transforms (image mappings, distance transformation, skeletons
   and medial axis,...)
* Discrete Shape Representation, Recognition and Analysis
* Discrete Tomography
* Morphological Analysis
* Discrete Modelling and Visualization
* Discrete and Combinatorial Tools for Image Segmentation and Analysis

I also hope that DGCI 2013 will again include a demo session for the
newest software, given that this new presentation form was implemented
very successfully at DGCI 2011.


2) Call for Papers: Special Issues on Discrete Geometry
-------------------------------------------------------

As usual, two special journal issues on discrete geometry are organized
after DGCI, this time in the journals "Discrete Applied Mathematics" and
"Computer Vision and Image Understanding". In contrast to previous
DGCIs, submission to these special issues is OPEN FOR ALL (not just for
invited DGCI authors). If you have an interesting paper on the classical
DGCI topics, we'd like to encourage you to submit. When you plan to submit
an extended version of your conference paper, be aware that publishers
are now requesting about 50% new material in the journal version. The
deadlines for submission of full papers are

Discrete Applied Mathematics:              September 15, 2011
Computer Vision and Image Understanding:   October 15, 2011

See dgci2011.loria.fr/cfpDAM.php and dgci2011.loria.fr/cfpCVIU.php
respectively for the complete call for papers and further submission
details.

In addition to traditional paper publications, DGCI organizers and TC 18
are also planning to participate in a new form of publication:
peer-reviewed executable code. The new journal "Image Processing On
Line" (see www.ipol.im) which promotes this form of publication, is an
ideal forum for disseminating your ideas in a form that can be directly
tried and used by your readers. Negotiations about a special issue on
discrete geometry are currently under way. Stay tuned for this exiting
new opportunity!


3) Short Report from DGCI 2011 in Nancy
---------------------------------------

The 16th Conference on Discrete Geometry for Computer Imagery (DGCI
2011) took place in Nancy, France from April 6-8, 2011. It was organized
by Isabelle Debled-Rennesson, Eric Domenjoud, Bertrand Kerautret and
their team in the nice conference hall of the Lorraine research center
in computer science and its applications. Many thanks to the organizers
for a very enjoyable conference!

In total, 92 participants from all over the world attended and listened
to 23 oral and 20 poster presentations. The proceedings were published by
Springer as LNCS vol. 6607 (see http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-19867-0).

Authors presented many new ideas in the central areas of discrete
geometry. Keynote talks were given by Jean Serra (Center of
Mathematical Morphology, Fontainebleau, France) on hierarchical
segmentations, Jarek Rossignac (Georgia Tech, USA) on ball-based shape
processing, and Agnès Desolneux (Paris Descartes University, France) on
probabilistic grouping principles. The newly introduced demo session
presented the latest developments in reusable software for discrete
geometry and related areas. I enjoied this session very much and hope
that it will be continued at the next DGCI. As a result, this conference
was equally appealing to both theoreticians and practitioners.

The "Best Student Paper Award" was awarded for the second time. The jury
had a tough job selecting the best among several very good candidates.
The prize was won by the paper

    Wagner Fortes, Kees Joost Batenburg, Lajos Hajdu, Robert Tijdeman:
    "Bounds on the difference between reconstructions in binary tomography",

but there were many interesting papers and the competition was very
challenging. We believe that this prize helps attracting young
researchers to our field and promoting their work, and we will continue
the competition at the next DGCI.


Best regards
Ulli (with Joost and Guillaume)