Picture of Margrit Betke Margrit Betke Camera Mouse Website IVC Logo Computer Vision Links Women in CS Cues 2001 CSR

Short Bio
Education: Ph.D. in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1995.
Research: Computer Vision, in particular, Human-Computer Interfaces, Medical Image Processing, Intelligent Vehicles, Video-sensor Networks, Statistical Object Recognition, and Thermal Video Analysis of Bats
Students: PhD students: Samuel Epstein, Zie Kone, John Magee, Zheng Wu. MA students: Esra Ataer Cansizoglu, Harshith Chennamaneni, Yili Pan, and Shuo Zeng, BA student: Eric Missimer. Current and former students.
Teaching: Artificial Intelligence (CS 440/640), Fall 2007. The Fall 2009 course webpage will appear soon. Tue, Thu 12:30-2:00 pm.
Image and Video Computation (CS 585) in Spring 2009, Tue, Thu 12:30-2 pm, room TBA
Seminar on Video-Based Human-Computer Interfaces (CS 591) in Fall 2001.
Directed Study in Image and Video Computing: CAS CS 492 or GRS CS 979, ongoing.
Office Hours: Sumer 2009: By appointment. Please call or email me.
Awards: Margrit Betke was one of two academics to win the "Top 10 Women to Watch in New England" Award. Press Release: doc, pdf, BU's Student Newspaper.
Her students have won several research awards: Caitlin Connor (Clare Booth Luce Undergraduate Summer Research Fellow, 2008), Angshuman Bachgi (BU President's Award 2005), Diane Hirsh (NASBR's Lubee Award 2003), Stephen Crampton (BU's Chancellor's Award 2003), and Harrison Hong (BU's Provost Award 2002).
In the Press: Camera Mouse: BU Today Kablenet, Belfast Telegraph, MassHighTech, Bradford Telegraph & Argus
Empathic Painting: BBC, ABC News, SydneyMH, The Hindu, Aljazeera, Turkish Daily News, DigitalWorld Tokyo, Inky, TecChannel - München, PCWorld - Romania. News, France, Frontpage - Netherlands GazetaWeb - Brazil
Free Software: Camera Mouse - a program that enables a person with severe disabilities to control the mouse pointer on the computer screen just by moving the head.
Animate! -- a program that enables people with disabilities to create animations of an anthropomorphic figure.
Patent: "Method and system for the detection, comparison and volumetric quantification of pulmonary nodules on medical computed tomography scans." Inventors Margrit Betke and Jane P. Ko., US Patent 7,206,462, issued on April 17, 2007.

Recent Papers:

Journal Papers:

N. I. Hristov, M. Betke, and T. H. Kunz, "Applications of thermal infrared imaging for research in aeroecology." Integrative and Comparative Biology. 48(1):50-59, July 2008. Abstract. Pdf file.

J. J. Magee, M. Betke, J. Gips, M. R. Scott, B. N. Waber, "A human-computer interface using symmetry between eyes to detect gaze direction," IEEE Transactions on Systems Man & Cybernetics: 38(6):1-14, November 2008.

W. Mullally, M. Betke, M. Albert, and K. Lutchen. "Explaining Clustered Ventilation Defects via a Minimal Number of Airway Closure Locations." Annals of Biomedical Engineering. 37(2):286-300, February 2009. Pdf file. Html file.

T. G. Hallam, A. Raghavan, H. Kolli, D. Dimitrov, P. Federico, H. Qi, G. F. McCracken, M. Betke, J. K. Westbrook, K. Kennard, T. H. Kunz. "Dense and sparse aggregations in complex motion: Video coupled with simulation modeling." Ecological Complexity. In press.

N. Hristov, M. Betke, A. Bagchi, D. Hirsh, T. H. Kunz. "Seasonal variation in colony size of Brazilian free-tailed bats at Carlsbad Cavern using thermal imaging" Journal of Mammalogy. 91(1), February 2010. In press.

Conference Papers:

Z. Wu, N. I. Hristov, T. L. Hedrick, T H. Kunz, and M. Betke "Tracking a Large Number of Objects from Multiple Views." International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV), Kyoto Japan, 2009.

C. Connor, E. Yu, J. Magee, E. Cansizoglu, S. Epstein, and M. Betke, 2009. "Movement and Recovery Analysis of a Mouse-Replacement Interface for Users with Severe Disabilities." 13th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (HCI International 2009), San Diego, CA, July. In press.

D. House, M. L. Walker, Z. Wu, J. Y. Wong, and M. Betke. "Tracking of cell populations to understand their spatio-temporal behavior in response to physical stimuli." In MMBIA 2009: IEEE Computer Society Workshop on Mathematical Methods in Biomedical Image Analysis, Miami, FL, June 2009. 8 pp.

S. Deshpande and M. Betke. 2009. "RefLink: An Interface that Enables People with Motion Impairments to Analyze Web Content and Dynamically Link to References." The 9th International Workshop on Pattern Recognition in Information Systems (PRIS 2009), Milan, Italy, May, 2009, pages 28-36, INSTICC Press. pdf.

Z. Wu, M. Betke, J. Wang, V. Athitsos, and S. Sclaroff, "Tracking with Dynamic Hidden-State Shape Models," Computer Vision - ECCV 2008, 10th European Conference on Computer Vision, Marseille, France, October 12-18, 2008, Proceedings, Part I, LNCS 5302, pages 643-656, Springer-Verlag. pdf.

Book Chapters:

M. Betke. Intelligent Interfaces to Empower People with Disabilities. In Handbook of Ambient Intelligence and Smart Environments. H. Nakashima, J. C. Augusto, and H. Aghajan (Editors), Springer Verlag. June 2009. ISBN: 0387938079.

T. H. Kunz, M. Betke, N. I. Hristov, and M. Vonhof. Methods for assessing colony size, population size, and relative abundance of bats. In T. H. Kunz and S. Parsons, editors, Ecological and Behavioral Methods for the Study of Bats. 2nd Edition. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, Maryland, 2009. In press.

Conference Abstracts and Technical Reports

M. L. Walker, D. M. House, M. Betke, and J. Y. Wong. "Using automated cell tracking tools to quantify durokinesis and durotaxis in real time." Proceedings of the Biophysical Society 53rd Annual Meeting, Boston, MA, USA, February 2009. Abstract.

T. H. Kunz, J. C. Chau, Z. Wu, L. Hong, J. D. Reichard, M. Betke, and T.D.C. Little. "A Novel, Remote-Controlled BatCam for Censusing Small Colonies of Bats." 38th Annual North American Symposium on Bat Research (NASBR 2008), Scranton, PA, October 2008. Abstract. Poster.

Earlier Publications


Image of Research Results
Margrit Betke, Associate Professor
Computer Science Department
Boston University
111 Cummington Street, Rm MCS 286
Boston, MA 02215 ( campus map )
Email: betke @ cs.bu.edu
URL: http://www.cs.bu.edu/faculty/betke
Phone: 617-353-8919 (or 6412)
Fax: 617-353-6457
Last updated: June 2009