CAS CS 585 Image and Video Computing - Spring 2010

Staff	Email	Phone	Office Hours	Office
Margrit Betke	betke @ cs.bu.edu	353-8919	Wednesdays 10-11, Tuesdays 2-3:30 and Thursdays 2-2:30, and by appointment	MCS 286
Diane Theriault	deht @ cs.bu.edu	Please email.	Mondays 12:30-2, Tuesday 4-5, Wednesdays 4-5, and by appointment	Undergrad CS Lab, 730 Commonwealth Ave

Seeing Me in My Office:
Please feel free to stop by my office anytime. My office is in MCS 286 (111 Cummington St). I am generally around every day, but often in meetings, so the best time to reach me is during office hours. You can also make an appointment by email. I'm happy to talk with you about the course, computer vision research, your plans for the future, or anything else. Check out my personal web page to get to know me a little.

Teaching Fellow Responsibilities:
Diane is responsible for helping you out during her office hours and grading the homework. Please email her if you have questions about your homework grades.

Course Objectives

Our goal is to build computer systems that analyze images automatically and determine what the computer "sees" or "recognizes." The course gives you a fundamental introduction to computer vision methods. Applications include human-computer interfaces, face detection, medical image processing, infrared image analysis of animals, and vision systems for intelligent vehicles.

Prerequisites: 1 year programming experience (e.g., C, C++ or Java at CS 112 level), linear algebra, and calculus.

Course Materials

Handouts: The updated course syllabus and most handouts are made available online. Check our course web page at least once a week for homework assignments and other information.

Textbook: Robot Vision by BKP Horn, MIT Press. If you are concerned about the book's price, you could use the book I placed on reserve in the Science Library.

Computing Environment: You will use one of the Computer Science Department's servers csa2 or csa3, to download code and submit programming solutions.

To get an account, go to the Computer Science Department's Undergraduate Lab located at 730 Commonwealth Ave. You can work on various platforms in the lab there (and have immediate access to the computing staff). You can also access the servers remotely using scp and ssh. I discourage the use of telnet and ftp due to security problems.

For your course projects, you can also use the Human-Computer Interface Lab in 64 Cummington St. If you want to use the lab for your project, talk to me first, since access to the lab is restricted.

Grading Policy

Homework: The homework includes bi-weekly programming, reading assignments, and problem sets. The due dates are listed below. Programs and reports must be submitted electronically. Solutions to problem sets must be submitted in class. They do not need to be typed but should look professional (leave a margin for grading comments). Guidelines for submission are provided with each assignment. Late solutions will be levied a late penalty of 20% per day (up to three days). After three days, no credit will be given.

Project: Please read the project guidelines. You can propose your own project topic or use one of my project suggestions. I will discuss your project's scope, design, and presentation with you in my office hours and provide guidance throughout the semester. You may work in a group. You will be asked to select a project topic by the middle of the semester and present the final project in class at the end of the semester.

Computer Vision Talks: Students are encouraged to attend the Image and Video Computing talks (Thursdays 2:30-3:30 pm, MCS 135) and the CS Department Colloquia (typically Wednesdays 3-4 pm, MCS 135) on course related topics.

Class Participation: Come to class and participate regularly. Reading the textbook and listening in class will only give you a "passive understanding" of the material. I encourage discussions in class to help you acquire an "active understanding" of the material so that you can evaluate existing computer vision techniques critically and develop your own creative solutions. I may give a short (announced) quiz so that shy students have a chance to discuss a topic in written form.

Take-Home Exam: There will be one take-home exam on the material discussed in the class and practiced with homeworks. To prepare for the exam, come to class, participate in our discussions, and keep up with homework assignments. There will not be a final in-class exam.

Grading Policy: Your final grade will be determined roughly as follows:

• Homework 40%
• Projects (design, results, presentation) 20%
• Class participation 10%
• Take-home exam 30%

Collaboration and Academic Integrity

You are encouraged to collaborate on the solution of the homework. If you do, you must code up your solutions on your own and acknowledge your collaborators. Each student must submit his or her own electronic version of the solutions. You can request an exception to this rule for your final project. If you use algorithms or code that are not your own original work and that were not provided in class or discussed in the textbook, you must give a detailed acknowledgment of your source .

You are not allowed to collaborate on the solution of the take-home exam. Sources must be acknowledged.

Cheating and plagiarism are not worthy of Boston University students. I expect you to abide by the rule stated above and the standards of academic honesty and computer ethics policy described in http://www.bu.edu/computing/ethics/ and http://www.bu.edu/cas/students/undergrad-resources/code

Help

Image and Video Computing is an elective course that will introduce you to an exciting topic in computer science. It should be fun and not too much of a struggle for you. Make sure that you have had the prerequisites. Depending on your level of programming experience and/or mathematics background, the course may be challenging for you. If you do not understand the material, ask for help immediately. Ask questions in class. If one student is confused about something, then maybe others are also confused and grateful that someone asked. Come and see me or Diane for help or send us email. Our task is to help you learn a very interesting topic!

You may also ask help from graduate students who are tutors in the undergraduate laboratory. Many of them have expertise in image and video computing, e.g. John Magee and Gokberk Cinbis. The names of tutors and their hours are listed on the Tutoring Schedule.

Course Schedule

Assignments

Assignments A1-A5 will have some programming components.

• Homework instructions
• Homework template
• Results

There will be two assignments that relate to your projects. For project ideas, check here.

(Potential) Topics (links will became active when assignment is announced):

• A1 (1/28): Skin-based face detection. Template matching and normalized correlation.
• A2 (2/11): Activity recognition from real-time video.
• A3 (2/25): Connected components, multiple object detection, and segmentation with applications to segmentation of bats, living cells, irises, and hands.
• P1 (3/4): Project proposals

  P1 Feedback on project proposals

• A4 (3/25): Edge Detection. Segmentation and registration of medical images.
• P2 (4/26): Final project report
• A5 (4/29): Tracking with Recursive Bayesian Filters.

Exam

The take-home exam is due on Thursday, April 1, in class. It is not available electronically. Make sure to come to class on Thursday, March 25, to receive a copy.

Computer Vision Links

Check out http://www.cs.bu.edu/faculty/betke/links.html if you need additional ideas for your class project, if you are looking for a job in computer vision, or if you are interested in computer vision research. You will find a list of links to computer vision conferences, journals, research groups, and companies.

Calculus Background

You may find the first few chapters of these notes by Cain and Herod useful, in particular, partial derivatives, Taylor polynomial, Multivariate Taylor polynomial.

Margrit Betke, Associate Professor Computer Science Department Boston University 111 Cummington Street (campus map) Boston, MA 02215 Email: betke @ cs.bu.edu URL: http://www.cs.bu.edu/faculty/betke Phone: 617-353-8919 Fax: 617-353-6457 Last updated: January 13, 2010