“Deblurring Cataract Surgery Videos Using a Multi-Scale Deconvolutional Neural Network” has been accepted

The paper “Deblurring Cataract Surgery Videos Using a Multi-Scale Deconvolutional Neural Network” has been accepted for publication at the “IEEE International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging”, located at Iowa City, Iowa, USA (April 3-7, 2020). This conference is a joint initiative from the IEEE Signal Processing Society (SPS) and the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS).
Authors: Negin Ghamsarian, Klaus Schoeffmann, Mario Taschwer

Abstract: A common quality impairment observed in surgery videos is blur, caused by object motion or a defocused camera. Degraded image quality hampers the progress of machine-learning-based approaches in learning and recognizing semantic information in surgical video frames like instruments, phases, and surgical actions. This problem can be mitigated by automatically deblurring video frames as a preprocessing method for any subsequent video analysis task. In this paper, we propose and evaluate a multi-scale deconvolutional neural network to deblur cataract surgery videos. Experimental results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed approach in terms of the visual quality of frames as well as PSNR improvement.

Keywords: Video Deblurring, Deconvolutional Neural Networks, Cataract Surgery Videos

Acknowledgment: This work was funded by the FWF Austrian Science Fund under grant P 31486-N31

Mathias Lux

Hüttenjam 2019 is over and it has been a hugely successful event

The Hüttenjam 2019 is over and it has been a hugely successful event. 26 participants jammed for two days and two nights in four chalets at Marktlalm, on Turracher Höhe. Six games have been developed matching the topic “Can’t see the wood for the trees”. Games ranged from multiplayer hide and seek, to simulations, platformers, stealth, and puzzle games. All games can be found on Itch.io [1]. Besides working on the games we could socialize and network with joint breakfast and lunches and trips to the Nockiflitzer and Panoramaalm. For the motivated participants, there were running sessions in the morning and a hike to Rinsennock. 

General feedback by the participants indicated that people wanted to have a second edition next year. Responses on social networks like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram indicated that many more people are interested beyond the ones already attending. For Twitter top tweets had more than 70 likes [2], with the initial Facebook video we reached more than 700 people within a month, with the latest video we reached more than 70 people in a day [3]. 

Thanks a lot to all the sponsors who made this possible: Bitmovin, Förderverein Technische Fakultät, and Technische Fakultät der Universität Klagenfurt. If you want to spread the word about the event, feel free to use any photos or video from [4].

[1] All games online: https://itch.io/jam/huettenjam

[2] Hüttenjam on Twitter https://twitter.com/search?q=%23h%C3%BCttenjam

[3] Gamebert on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/gamebert

[4] Photos and videos: https://photos.app.goo.gl/BNEPzjoLJwLiP4kR6

Mathias Lux

2nd GSE & Game Jam Retreat

The second Game Studies and Engineering and Game Jam retreat took place on June 27-29 at Marktlalm on Turracher Höhe. The curriculum committee, game jam volunteers and organizers of the GamePics jam and show came together to discuss ongoing and future activities of the AAU in the context of games.

“Something Something Videogame” – Talk of Mathias Lux

Mathias Lux, a former student of Peraugymnasium Villach, gave a talk with the topic “Something Something Videogame”.

See more: https://www.peraugymnasium.at/item/714-vortrag-von-di-mathias-lux

 

Networked Multimedia Systems course in SS 2019 – Ass.-Prof. Ali C. Beğen

ITEC is delighted to announce the next speaker in our guest lecture series – Ass.-Prof. Ali C. Beğen from Ozyegin University, Istanbul, Turkey. The course will take place April 1-12, 2019. This course introduces different types of applications that enhance the world of multimedia and the Web, and the systems and data structures that are used by them.

For more information on the course, click HERE.

Augmented Reality course in SS 2019 – PD Dr. Ralf Klamma

ITEC is delighted to announce the next speaker in our guest lecture series – PD Dr. Ralf Klamma from RWTH Aachen University. The course will take place from June 12-19, 2019.

This course presents an introduction to Augmented Reality, with emphasis on designing and developing Augmented Reality applications. For more information on the course, click HERE.

 

 

Radu Prodan @ Kleine Zeitung

An interview with Radu Prodan was published in the local newspaper Kleine Zeitung – learn more HERE.

 

 

,

Klaus Schöffmann, Bernd Münzer & Sabrina Kletz @ ACM International Conference on Multimedia in Seoul, South Korea

From October 22-26, 2018, Klaus Schöffmann and people from his group (Sabrina Kletz and Bernd Münzer) participated in the ACM International Conference on Multimedia in Seoul, South Korea. Klaus Schöffmann presented two well-attended tutorials – one on “Interactive Video Search“ together with colleagues from Prague University, JOANNEUM RESEARCH, and NIST – and another one on “Medical Multimedia” together with Bernd Münzer and colleagues from Simula Research (the slides for both tutorials can be found below). Moreover, Sabrina Kletz successfully presented her PhD work there in the Doctoral Consortium and received some feedback from the community.

Read more

Prof. Radu Prodan
, ,

Prof. Radu Prodan @ India

From October 13-22, 2018 Prof. Radu Prodan visited Chandigarh University and Lovely Professional University in India for interaction with research scholars and discussions about the common research projects.

 

Philipp Moll

Philipp Moll’s Research Stay at UCLA

During the summer break, Philipp Moll was visiting his Mentor Jeff Burke at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). The main focus of the stay was to progress the dissertation project, which is about Gaming over Named Data Networking. During the stay, Philipp Moll worked together with researchers from two different research groups from UCLA, Jeff Burke’s Center for Research in Engineering, Media and Performance (REMAP) and Lixia Zhangs Internet Research Lab (IRL). Together with Jeff Burke, the decision was made to use Minecraft to build a prototype for a distributed game architecture with NDN as network protocol. Finally, a network protocol for that architecture was designed, which is now the base for future publications.

Currently, the prototype of Minecraft over NDN is build at AAU. One part of the prototype, the synchronization of the game state among multiple game servers, is currently developed in the course of a master thesis under the supervision of Prof. Hermann Hellwagner and Philipp Moll.