Summary of research

The objective of CBA is to carry out research and education in computerized image analysis and perceptualization. We are pursuing this objective through a large number of research projects, ranging from fundamental mathematical methods development, to application-tailored development and testing, the latter mainly in biomedicine and forest industry. We are also developing new methods for perceptualization, combining computer graphics, haptics and image processing in new ways. Our research is organized in a large number of projects (57) of varying size, ranging in effort from a few person months to many person years. There is a lot of interaction between different researchers: generally a person is involved in several different projects in different constellations with internal and external partners. In this context, the university affiliation of the particular researchers seldom is of importance.

On the theoretical side, most of our work is based on discrete mathematics with fundamental work on sampling grids, fuzzy methods, skeletons, distance functions, and tessellations, in three and more dimensions.

Several projects deal with light microscopy, developing tools for modern quantitative biology and clinical cancer detection and grading. We are collaborating with local biologists and pathologists, research centers in the US and India, and a Danish company. A PhD thesis presented results on how spectral information can be handled in different kinds of microscopy images. Another PhD thesis analyzed mouse embryo heart beats to detect adverse effects on embryo development of chemical compounds. During the year, we started a close collaboration with the strategic project SciLifeLab through which we formed a research platform in quantitative microscopy.

We also work with electron microscopy (EM) images; one application is focused on finding viruses in EM images. Since the texture of the virus particles is an important feature in identification of the different virus types, this project has also led to basic research on texture analysis.

New techniques are creating 3D images on microscopic scales. We have been analyzing electron microscope tomography images of protein molecules for several years. This year we became part of a project on light microscope tomography. Initial results from this work were presented in a PhD thesis. Another technique is X-ray microtomography; we are developing methods to use such images to study the internal structure of paper, wood fibre composites and bone, and bone-implant integration. The latter project was presented in a PhD thesis this year.

On a macroscopic scale we are working with interactive segmentation of 3D CT and MR images by use of haptics. We have developed a segmentation toolbox, WISH, which is publicly available. This work was presented in a PhD thesis.

Over the last several years we have expanded our activities in perceptualization under leadership of Guest Professor Ingrid Carlbom, with the goal of creating an augmented reality system in which you can see, feel, and manipulate virtual 3D objects as if they were real using a haptic glove. We have created a unique haptic gripper through which virtual objects can be grabbed and manipulated.

Please, see Section 5 for details on all our research projects.

An activity bridging research and education is the supervision of master thesis projects. This year we completed thirteen such projects. In Section 3.2, we describe these theses.