TC18-Newsletter-April 2007

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Contents:
=========

1. TC-18 Chairs

2. DGCI 2008 in Lyon

3. Report on DGCI 2006 in Szeged

4. Spread the TC18 and the Discrete Geometry activies

5. Web site updates

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1) TC 18 Chairs
---------------

As announced a couple of months  ago, the TC18  governing board is now
composed of three members:

  - Stina  Svensson (vice-chair): in  charge  of the relationship with
  DGCI.  Indeed, a member of  the TC18 governing board  is now in  the
  DGCI Steering Committee.

  - Reneta  Barneva (vice-chair): in charge  of the TC18 International
  affairs.

  - David Coeurjolly (chair): relationships with  the IAPR and overall
  organization.

Keep  in mind that  this governing board should   be updated every two
years (synchronized  with the IAPR Steering  Committee  meeting in the
ICPR conferences).


2) DGCI 2008 in Lyon
--------------------

The next TC18 main conference, DGCI 2008,  will held in Lyon in April.
Some the details concerning  the conference have  already been sent to
you in  a previous TC18 message  with the first  call for  papers (see
http://liris.cnrs.fr/dgci2008).

In these paragraphs, we would like to give  you some details about the
internal organization of this event.

During  the DGCI Steering Committee  (SC)  meetings in Szeged, several
decisions have been taken to improve again  the overall quality of the
conference:

  - Make  the Program Committee members involved  in  all the steps of
  the  reviewing process  (paper  allotment, final decisions,...), and
  reduced it;

  - enhance the  "offline" tasks  (pre-selection of reviewers,   topic
  assignments,...).

Based  on these suggestions, the  DGCI 2008 Organization Committee, in
coordination with the SC,  decided to slightly modify the organization
structures while keeping the DGCI philosophy:

  - Update  of the  conference  topics in  order to  disambiguate some
  points.
 
  - Reduction of  the program committee: the  idea is to associate one
  or two  PC member(s) to  DGCI  topics.  Hence, during  the reviewing
  process, PC members of a given topic will participate to the process
  of the submitted papers in the same topic.

  - New Reviewing  Committee:   researchers grouped into    categories
  according  to the new  DGCI  topics  who carry  out the  reviews  of
  submitted papers. Note  that this committee is updated continuously,
  and will also be updated according the submissions.

All committees are available on the DGCI 2008 web page.

Isabelle Sivignon - David Coeurjolly, LIRIS, Lyon, France 


3) Report on DGCI2006 in Szeged - TC18 main conference
------------------------------------------------------

The  13th International Conference on  Discrete  Geometry for Computer
Imagery Conference (DGCI  2006) was held in Szeged,  Hungary, 25 to 27
October, 2006.

DGCI  is the main conference  of  IAPR Technical Committee on Discrete
Geometry  (TC18, http://www.tc18.org/) and is held approximately
every 18th  month.  The 2006   edition  of DGCI was  organized  by the
Department of Image Processing   and Computer Graphics, University  of
Szeged, Hungary,  with  an organizing  committee  consisting of Attila
Kuba, Laszlo G. Nyul, and Kalman Palagyi. The  conference venue was at
the József Attila  Study and Information  Centre of the University  of
Szeged. The conference was sponsored  by the International Association
of Pattern Recognition  (IAPR). Financial and infrastructural help was
also given by Institute of Informatics, University of Szeged.

DGCI generally attracts a large number  of research contributions from
academic and research   institutions     in the field    of   discrete
geometry.  For the 2006 edition,  the number of submissions was larger
than ever before, which  is a clear  indication that the impact of the
conference is increasing. In total, 99  papers were submitted from all
around the world. Of these 99, 55 contributions were accepted - 28 for
oral and 27 for  poster presentation. All accepted  contributions were
scheduled in single-track sessions.

The oral  and poster sessions covered many  fascinating topics such as
Discrete Geometry, Topology,  Image  Analysis and Segmentation,  Shape
Representation,   Distance,  Discrete Tomography, Skeletonization, and
Surfaces and Volumes. The three invited speakers showed some important
views on their researches related to the field of discrete imagery:

  - Jean-Marc Chassery (LIS Laboratory, Grenoble,  France) gave a talk
  on Duality and Geometry Straightness, Characterization and Envelope,

  - T. Yung Kong (City University of New York, USA)  a talk on Minimal
  Non-Simple   and Minimal Non-Cosimple    Sets, and  

  - Laszlo Lovasz (Eötvös Lorand University, Budapest, Hungary) one on
  Geometric Representations and Algorithms.

Note that the slides of the invited lectures are available on the TC18
web page (http://www.tc18.org/events.html#dgci).

The  conference brought together  93  registered participants  from 23
different   countries. Hence, not  only  the number of submissions was
larger than  ever before, but also the  number of participants as well
as  the  number of  represented countries.   The  conference  was well
organized, the program run smoothly without any problem. The available
infrastructure,   including the audio/projections, computer equipment,
Internet connection, worked according to high standard.

Together  with  the  scientific   part,  there was  also  a   nice and
appreciated social program. During the first  evening, a rich wine and
cheese  party  was held  at  the conference   site. During  the second
evening, the participants were guided through the famous Votive Church
(Dom) and could  also  enjoy a nice   organ concert. After  the guided
tour, the gala dinner was held at Fehértói Halászcsárda, a famous fish
restaurant nearby the Fehértói landscape protection  area. The food as
well  as  the  entertainment   was  very  much appreciated   among the
participants.

Proceedings  of the  conference  was published  by Springer-Verlag  in
Lecture  Notes in Computer Science  Series (as volume number 4245). At
least one special issue is scheduled (Discrete Applied Mathematics).

At the gala dinner, it was announced by the chair of the DGCI steering
committee   Jean-Marc Chassery that the   next DGCI conference will be
held in Lyon, France, in April  2008 and that it  will be organized by
the Multiresolution, Discrete  and Combinatorial Models Team (M2Disco)
(Laboratoire LIRIS, University    de Lyon) with David  Coeurjolly  and
Isabelle       Sivignon      as         general       co-chair,    see
http://liris.cnrs.fr/dgci2008.  Jean-Marc  also pointed  out that  the
aim of the steering  committee is to   find an organizer  from outside
France for the edition after Lyon and from  outside Europe the edition
after that.

Finally, I, probably together with the rest of the participants, would
like  to   acknowledge the   organizers   for the  excellent  way  the
conference days were handled, despite the fact  that the general chair
Attila   Kuba could not   attend  and,  further  more, to   express my
condolences for his death just a few days later.

Dr Stina Svensson, Centre for Image Analysis, Uppsala, Sweden


4) Spread the TC18 and the Discrete Geometry activies
-----------------------------------------------------

Discrete  Geometry Community, nowadays represented by  IAPR  TC 18, is
comparatively a small one.  Nevertheless, in the  last 15 years it has
made a significant progress in terms of organizing new research groups
in several countries (mainly  in   Europe), increasing the number   of
researchers involved  and the intensity of  research  performed.  As a
result, its reputation is constantly growing. However, in recent years
an  increasing number of  members understand (and express the opinion)
that,  in order to  go  further with the above-mentioned achievements,
broader dissemination    of  the  ideas    of  discrete  geometry   is
needed. Moreover, new relationships should be established with leading
research centers where discrete geometry is developed. This would also
help TC 18 community to refresh its research subjects. In this regard,
some recent initiatives will be mentioned in the present report.

- Special Track  on  "Discrete  and Computational Geometry  and  their
Applications  in   Visual  Computing"   at  the  Second  International
Symposium   on Visual Computing  (ISVC),   Lake  Tahoe, Nevada,   USA,
November 2006

  Although the symposium    has  only two year   history,  it  quickly
  developed  as  an  important  event in  the   broad area  of  visual
  computing.  Its Program Committee includes  over 200 scientists from
  many  different countries,  and  the participants'  body is from all
  over the  world.  The last proceedings of   the symposium occupy two
  LNCS volumes with over 1800 pages. Many  of the papers presented are
  within the broad scope of discrete geometry and its applications.

  Eleven special tracks have been  organized in the framework of ISVC.
  The largest   one was on "Discrete  and   Computational Geometry and
  their Applications in Visual Computing". The track had two sessions.
  It  was organized by V.E.  Brimkov  and  R.  Barneva.  The following
  scientists served as PC members: E.  Andres, D. Coeurjolly, Isabelle
  Debled-Rennesson, G.    Gamiand,   Ch.    Fiorio,  A.  Imiya,    and
  R. Klette.

  An informal round table was  organized among the participants in the
  special   track "Discrete  and   Computational  Geometry   and their
  Applications in Visual Computing" at  the International Symposium of
  Visual  Computing,   Lake tahoe, Nevada,   November 6-8,  2007.  The
  participants informed each other about the current problems they are
  working  on and made  a list of  the  discrete geometry centers they
  belong to and the main researchers there.


- Other forthcoming events related to the TC18 activies:

  * 8th ISMM (Math. Morphology, Oct. 2007) http://ismm.dpi.inpe.br/2007/
  * IWCIA 2008 (April) http://www.cs.fredonia.edu/iwcia08/
  * DGCI 2008 (April) http://liris.cnrs.fr/dgci2008/
  * ICPR 2008 (December) http://www.icpr2008.org/

Reneta P. Barneva, Professor, Kasling Lecturer, Department of Computer
Science State University of New York at Fredonia, USA.


5) Web site updates
-------------------

Few changes on the TC18 web pages:

  -    DGCI      2006  invited   lecture     slides   are   available:
  http://www.tc18.org/events.html#dgci

  - Educational, in the "nD  Object and recognition" section, we  have
  added a link to Jean  Bernoulli's article (1771) on the  periodicity
  of digital straight lines (in Old French).

  http://www.tc18.org/subfields/nD_objects/


  - Challenges "DPS recognition": source codes have been updated and a
  subversion (SVN)  repository   has    been created  to     track the
  development process.

  http://www.tc18.org/code_data_set/Challenges/DPSRecognition/