May/June 2010 Nº: 3

Albert Gubern’s personal experience in Nijmegen (Holland):

“From February to June of 2010, I am doing a stay at the DIAG

(Diagnostic Image Analysis Group). This group is part of the

Department of Radiology of

R a d b o u d U n i v e r s i t y

Nijmegen Medical Center

(The Netherlands) and it is led by Dr. Bram van Ginneken, Dr.

Henkjan Huisman and Dr. Nico Karssemeijer, who is supervising my

work. Its goal is to develop computer algorithms to aid clinicians in

the interpretation of medical images and thus improve the diagnostic

process. It has its roots in CAD (Computer Aided Detection) of breast

cancer in mammograms, but its interests have vastly expanded and

now include the analysis of breast MRI, ultrasound and

tomosynthesis, chest radiographs, chest CT, prostate MRI, neuro-

imaging and retinal imaging with fundus photography.

I aim to develop a

probabilistic atlas-based

segmentation method of

the breast MRI, being the

muscle segmentation the

main goal in order to use

it as a reference tissue

in the calibration of the

p h a r m a c o n k i n e t i c

models. This work will be

submitted as a master

thesis of the MIIACS.”

http://vicorob.udg.edu

International experiences: Albert Gubern & Gerard Pons

April 2010: ViCOROB Open

Day 2010

April/may: Exhibition “Coneix

la recerca que es fa a l’EPS”

13th May: “Jornada TIC-Salut” at Parc Científic i Tecnològic

of Girona’s University

16-18th June 2010: Interna-tional Workshop on Digital

Mammography

16th June 2010: Vibot Day

2010

- Agenda -

- Comming soon -

International Language Day 2010 celebration in ViCOROB

On February 19th, in ViCOROB, we celebrated the International Mother

Language Day. This celebration, officially the 21th February, was proposed by

one of VIBOT’s Master students (a masters jointly coordinated with Heriot Watt

University, United Kingdom, and the University of Bourgogne, France), ASM

Shihavuddin (Shihav) from Bangladesh. The IMLD, proclaimed by UNESCO’s

General Conference, has its origins there. Since the year 2000, this day

commemorates the 1952 Bangla revolt, which ended when Pakistani police fired

on the students despite their peaceful protests defending their mother language:

Bangla. The IMLD honors the students who lost their lives on that day.

For this celebration ViCOROB planned many oral presentations by students

from different countries, giving them the opportunity of share their culture with all

the group. Thirteen presentations of different countries were seen. Presentations

were given about Bangladesh, of India, of Pakistan, of Indonesia, of United States

of America, of Uzbekistan, of China, of Andalusia, of Hungary, of Slovakia, of

Romania, of Colombia and finally of Catalunya as hostess.

At the end there was a multicultural tasting with food from around the world that

was prepared and brought by the members of the group.

Gerard Pons’s personal experience in Oxford (England):

“Thank to Dr. Robert Martí’s collaboration with the BiomedIA

researching group from Oxford’s University (as has seen in last

newsletter) nowadays I am doing a research

collaboration in the same group under

supervision of Alison Noble. My task in Oxford is

implementing a segmentation method for injuries

in ultrasound image breast. I have never worked

on this before, so I needed some time to

understand this kind of images and I have

completed a study of the segmentation methods

that exist today. At the moment I am at the midpoint of my work,

performing tests to evaluate the new methods that we can submit as the

Final Project of MIIACS

master.

Finally, I would like to

comment that I find this

e x p e r i e n c e r e a l l y

benefi cial for me

because I can work with

new people who have

different methods and

c us t o m s t ha n i n

ViCOROB, and I can

adapt myself to a new

style of life in another

country.”

ViCOROB in “Coneix la recerca que es fa a l’EPS” Starting on 15th April, in the P1 corridors, there is an exhibition “Coneix

la recerca que es fa a l’EPS” (Escola Politècnica Superior), “Know the

research that is done in EPS”. In this exhibition there are informative

posters from each of EPS’s research groups giving an explanation of its

research and a description of the group. ViCOROB has two poster

there: one for vision & robotic labs and another for underwater

research.

Also for this exhibition there are oral presentations of the

groups, scheduled every Thursday for one month. ViCOROB was the

first to present. Jordi Freixenet was in charge of ViCOROB

presentations and Marc Carreras explained the SAUCE competition.

UdG's ViCOROB team had won this competition in 2006, but has not

particpated since. This year, the team is designing a new robot,

SPARUS, to participate in this year's competition. ViCOROB’s posters - ViCOROB’s presentation

IMLD’s moments

Nijmegen Oxford

Universitat de Girona - Campus de Montilivi, Edifici P4 17071, Girona (Spain)

Telf: +34 972 41 89 05 Fax: +34 972 41 89 76

Site: http://vicorob.udg.edu E-mail: vicorob@eia.udg.edu

- ViCOROB People -

Laura

Batlle Martín 24-10-1984

Banyoles

Laura has a degree in Tourism from the

University of Girona and nowadays she

is in the third year studying Economics,

also at the UdG. She has been working

i n di f ferent touri s t ic places ( l i ke

the Banyoles Tourism Office or Hotel Can Prat), but what she

really likes is economic politics and market studies.

She is doing her career practices in ViCOROB working at the

IWDM 2010 conference in June.

Her hobbies are the usual: going out with friends, enjoying free

time, traveling, studying English and German, and finally sharing

her life with her partner.

Ramón

Hegedüs 09-03-1982

Budapest

Scientific communication: ENGINYCAT

New projects: INSPECSUB

The National Agreement for Research and Innovation was signed

between Education, Innovation and Universities Ministry, Government,

Social Action and Citizenship to promote technological knowledge. With

this commitment, ENGINYCAT were gone on with some actions for

different targets.

ViCOROB proposed an outreach program targeted at secondary school

students. This consisted of workshops with interesting scientific and

technical activities to raise the students’ interest in technology and

encourage the values of engineering.

The workshops began with a presentation to explain underwater

robotics and their applications. Designs and prototype structure

construction were discussed (weight, robot’s floatness and the umbilical

cable to connect the micro cam that shows what the prototype sees).

They also designed the electric motor controllers for a correct future

teleoperation of the robot. During the workshops, ViCOROB teachers

instructed and guided the entire learning process and they also gave

extra knowledge to according to the student's needs. The students

always could touch, handle and build their own prototype while learning

the proper use of the tools.

He has graduated as a physicist in

2005, and completed his PhD in

Biological Physics at Eötvös University,

Budapest, Hungary in 2008. Since then

he has been working in VICOROB and this year he obtained a

EU Marie Curie post-doctoral fellowship. Previously, he focused

his studies on light polarization and all of its atmospheric optical

and biological implications (animal and human orientation,

navigation). Today in VICOROB his primary research interest is

exploring the potentials of imaging polarimetry in the field of

computational photography, image processing and especially in

underwater imaging.

He enjoys spending his free time with the family (now with his

recently born, lovely daughter) and travelling around.

INSPECSUB (Underwater Inspection) technology is the result of many years of research in the

laboratories of Underwater Robotics and Vision Underwater of VICOROB. This technology

takes georreferenced underwater images, in both marine and freshwater, for creating high resolution maps.

This technology, however, was not sufficiently commercializable because many of the applications were

based on various technical parameters. That is why in 2009 ViCOROB requested a project for the

evaluation of technologies provided by ACC1Ó (Catalan Government) in order to provide a more robust

and usable technology to

INSPECSUB system.

Some of the technology

applications are: safety

inspection of dam walls,

underwater inspections for

purposes of environmental

control and biological

applications , underwater

a r c h e o l o g y , a n d

inspection of underwater

structures.

Technology transfer: AQSENSE AQSENSE was born out of a group of

researchers at VICOROB as a response for bringing

3D technologies already developed at a research

level by group, to a commercial level. We strongly

belief that such technologies convey a significant

step forward, specially in laser triangulation and

point cloud processing, emphasizing increased

accuracy, processing speed, robustness, flexibility

and ease of use.

AQSENSE develops and commercializes 3D

point cloud acquisition and processing libraries, for

the Machine Vision Industry. Our approach to 3D

imaging and hardware independent point cloud

processing starts with a simple calibration procedure

for gathering metric measurements combined with

precise point cloud alignment resulting in an ultra fast 3D matching of any industrial product.

Key competences of the company are the laser stripe peak detector specially suited for laser triangulation,

standard C++ libraries for Multi-processor & Multi-core architectures or FPGA designs.

The company has gone through a number of steps, including the appointment of international distributors and the

increase of our workforce with top level programmers and scientists. As well as the participation in international

trade shows like Vision and the regular publication of articles in nspeciallized magazines. Until now, significant

developments solving 3D applications in the industry, either unsolved either made more cost-effective and reliable

have been achieved.

AQSENSE maitains an intensive contact and collaboration with the research group, which constitutes a strong

value for both the company and VICOROB, making innovative solutions much nmore affordable, accurate and

reliable as well as keeping the research group in direct contact with the industry.

3D view of a mechanical piece

Students that has made the workshop: ViCOROB’s members used:

IES Alexandre Deulofeu (Figueres). 27 students from 4t ESO i

1r Batxillerat, with two teachers. The 9th, 10th and 11th Desem-

ber 2009.

IES Castell d’Estela (Amer). 29 students and 2 teachers. The

20th, 21th and 22th de January 2010.

Miki Villanueva, Andrés El-Fakdi, Tali Hurtós, Joan

Massich, Aggelos Mallios, Pere Ridao, Jordi Freixe-

net i Xevi Cufí. With CIRS’s member collaboration.

INSPECSUB’s technologies advances