About
Track Record
The Digital Imaging Research Centre (DIRC) at Kingston University is one of the largest computer vision groups in the UK with internationally recognised expertise in visual surveillance, medical imaging and intelligent environments.
DIRC’s Visual Surveillance Research Group has become recognised as perhaps the leading centre for intelligent visual surveillance research in the UK. Research activity and industrial consultancy has focused on the development of robust, plug and play surveillance components, integrated wide-area multi-camera systems, and behavioural analysis, with a particular emphasis on the public transport sector. VSRG has developed strong and long-standing relationships with Police, Home Office, security end-users, and transport operators both within the UK and across Europe. In particular, DIRC worked closely with the Home Office Scientific Development Branch and the Police Information Technology Organisation through the EPSRC-funded ViTAB Network on promoting video-interpretation technologies most likely to reduce the level of crime in town centres, public transport and sensitive sites.
The Medical Imaging Research Group is a new synthesis of long standing national and international medical imaging expertise. This expertise includes computer aided diagnosis targeting suspicious pathology within the lung, heart and colon; live cell imaging focussing on cell function and dynamic processes in cells; computer aided retinal vasculature analysis addressing the quantification of diabetic pathologies and the retinopathy of prematurity; and the assessment of mandibular asymmetry as a means of determining the effectiveness of maxillofacial surgery and orthodontic treatment. In particular, the live cell imaging research underpins an important and long standing collaboration with Cancer Research UK aiming at understanding the metastasis of cancer cells.
DIRC members are involved in many EPSRC funded crime-related research projects including “PerSec: Image Processing Techniques as a Means of Improving Personal Security in Public Transport” (GR/M29436/02); “Traffic Simulation and Optimisation on an Intelligent Video Surveillance Network” (GR/N17706/01); “IMCaSM: Intelligent Multi-Camera Surveillance and Monitoring” (GR/M58030); “REVEAL: Recovering Evidence from Video by fusing Video Evidence Thesaurus and Video Meta-Data” (GR/S98443/01); and “REASON: Robust Methods for Monitoring and Understanding People in Public Spaces” (EP/C533410), and more recently “MEDUSA: Multi Environment Deployable Universal Software Application” (Reducing Gun Crime EP/E001025/1).
Medical research projects include “Retinal Microvascular Structure in British Children of Asian, African-Caribbean and White Origin” (BUPA Foundation, Medical Research Grant), “Computer aided analysis in infant and adult retinal images” (Royal Society) and “LIVE-CELL: Development of a live-cell imaging system for direct viewing in a flow chamber” (EPSRC GR/S34250/01)
Emerging expertise in pose- and action-analysis particularly applied to sports has been funded on two recent EPSRC projects: “CAPS: Modelling the Coordinated Activities of Players in High-Dimensional, High-Volume Sports Datasets” (GR/S78841/01) modelling the interaction between tennis players, and “PRoCeSS: Pose Recovery in Context Specific Scenarios” (EP/E033288) addressing the recovery of body pose in athletics.
In addition to UK funding, DIRC has also collaborated with a large number of European partners on the EU projects including “ADVISOR: Annotated Digital Video for Surveillance and Optimised Retrieval” (IST-1999-11287); “PRISMATICA: Pro-active Integrated Systems for Security Management by Technological Institutional and Communication” (GRD1–2000–10601); “INMOVE: Intelligent Mobile Video Environment” (IST-2001-37422) and – more recently – “CARETAKER: Content Analysis and Retrieval Technologies to Apply Knowledge Extraction to massive Recording” (IST-4-027231)”.
Last updated on March 29, 2008