Computational Photography and Videography

Seminar – Winter Semester 2009/2010

Images courtesy of respective authors.

News

Date	What
04.12.2009	added details about presentation, paper writing, and participation added paper template added slides

Overview

Digital photography and image analysis has lead to more flexible ways for computerized extraction of information about the physical world. Computational techniques are valuable tools in enhancing information acquired by digital cameras and enable novel applications such as digital post-processing of image data, novel modes of interacting with cameras, 3D scene analysis and automated model generation for computer graphics.

This seminar covers advanced topics in the field of computer vision and computer graphics. It aims at providing background knowledge in the area of computational photography and 3D scene analysis. We will discuss the most important and influential developments, both classic and recent, in this field.

The target audience are graduate students in computer science or related fields. Basic knowledge about 3D geometry, image processing, and computer graphics are required. Every participant will give a talk on a chosen scientific topic. Afterwards, the topic will be discussed within the seminar group. This is a great opportunity for students to improve their research and presentation skills and to learn about the latest developments in computer vision and computer graphics. The seminar language is English.

Seminar Structure

Presentation

Every participant will perform a detailed reading on one topic and present the main ideas in class in an approximately 45 min presentation.

Working on one topic usually requires reading and understanding of the papers to be presented as well as acquiring background information necessary to understand the topic. For background knowledge usually some of the papers/books referenced in the paper will have to be consulted.

The presentation should cover the main ideas of the chosen topic. Usually, this means that content has to be selected from the paper; it will often not be possible to present all results of the two articles. Try to focus on the topic instead. Find a common thread linking the two papers and build your presentation on that. If you use formulas in your presentation make sure that all symbols are introduced properly. Similarly, make sure that figures are labeled correctly and that all terminology that is new to the topic is introduced appropriately. You can of course assume that your audience is familiar with the topics that have already been presented in class. It is very important for a good presentation to find a good balance between overview and detail. Most importantly, the general theme of your topic should become clear from your presentation. Your goal is that the other participants have a general knowledge about your topic after your presentation. You can pick one or two things that you find interesting and present those in more detail. Finally, prepare your presentation on time. Our feedback will help you to improve it. Also plan to spend some time on practicing your talk.

Important: We expect you to lead the discussion after your presentation. This requires that you prepare some questions, remarks or provocative statements for the audience. Try to challenge them. The discussion is also a good place to collect information and thoughts for the paper section where you present your own ideas. Keep this in mind when preparing your questions.

Paper

In addition to in class presentations, we require a written report on the topic. This report should summarize the main ideas of the paper and discuss limitations and drawbacks of the work. Based on this analysis, participants should develop and sketch an idea of their own of how to address one specific shortcoming. The report should consist of 6-8 pages for the material covering the presented papers and about 2-3 pages for the improvement proposed by the student.

The paper uses a template for one of the two major computer vision conferences, the IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition. Please use the review version of this template. It makes it easier to refer to certain parts of your text if need arises. For your convenience we provide the template links here:

.tar.gz (Linux) .zip (Windows)

Your paper should be emailed to us by 2010/02/19. The format is .pdf. Please keep that in mind when using the Word template.

We will grade your paper based on a number of criteria. Again, as in the presentation, focus on getting the "big picture" right. Present your topic in context. Try to link the two articles, present a coherent text, i.e. a structure of simply

Paper 1
Paper 2

is usually insufficient. Also, try to avoid copying the structure of the original papers as far as this is possible. Equations can of course be reproduced, but do not stick too closely to the original text. Use your imagination to find a way for presenting the topic in your own words. The articles have been chosen such that they provide different views on a common theme. Try to exploit that link. Also keep in mind to structure your paper well in a formal sense. An abstract, summarizing the paper provides a short overview. The introduction expands on that. Give an overview of your paper's structure. After that present your topic and details of interest to you. Then expand on the topic, i.e. add your own ideas. Finally, a conclusion summarizes the paper, this is also the place where you can add your own opinions about the topic.

We encourage you to use additional literature in the research on your own ideas. We expect 3-4 additional references, if you want to include more you are welcome to do so. Cite the references in appropriate places, i.e. if you use concepts developed in a different publication or if you want to link to additional information. Your own research idea can be developed from scratch - if you have a great idea, try to sketch it and a possible solution. You can also discuss limitations or ideas that you feel are missing from the paper (You can choose one of the two). A further possibility is to perform research on developments that followed the papers of your topic. If you persue this route, make sure that you do not simply copy parts of other papers. In this case you should base your "own ideas" section on several follow-up publications. A good resource for researching links between articles is Google Scholar. The "cited by" link can sometimes give useful information. Often free links to pdf's can be found as well. Another source for freely downloadable scientific articles is Citeseer. If you can only find a pay link, send us an email - we will try to get you a copy.

Participation

Participants are expected to read every paper in preparation for the upcoming presentations. We expect students to actively engage in discussions to further understanding of the presented material. We aim at creating a creative atmosphere - ideas developed during the seminar work might lead to Master thesis projects.

To encourage a more lively atmosphere in the discussion we decided that you can improve your grade by one step, e.g. from 2.0 to 1.7, if you participate actively in the discussions after the talks.

Time and Place

Time:	Wednesdays 14:00-16:00
First seminar:	October 21, 2009
Room:	Building E1.4 (Max-Planck-Institut), Room 019
Registration:	closed

Registration for the Seminar

The details of the seminar and the available subjects will be discussed in the first class on Oct 21. Attendance is required in all classes. In case you want to participate in the seminar, please register by sending an Email to theobalt@mpii.de or ihrke@mpii.de. If possible, also take a moment already to look through the list of topics and provide a ranked list of the three favorite topics you would like to work on: (1) best, (2) second best etc. It will still be possible to provide that list after the first class, but, in any case, please register before the first class via Email. Based on your preference we plan to assign topics by Friday, Oct 23.

Instructor Office Hours

Christian	Mondays: 1-2 pm, room 228
Ivo	Wednesdays after the seminar, room 225

List of Papers

Topic	Authors	Paper Title	Published at	Contact	Presenter	Date	Slides
First Meeting					Christian and Ivo	21.10.2009	Slides
Image-Based Rendering Concepts	Edward H. Adelson, James R. Bergen Marc Levoy, Pat Hanrahan	The Plenoptic Function and the Elements of Early Vision Light Field Rendering	Computational Models of Visual Processing, MIT Press, 1991 SIGGRAPH 1996	Ivo	Stefan Densow	18.11.2009
Camera Models and Noise	Glenn E. Healey, Raghava Kondepudy Craig Kolb, Don Mitchell, Pat Hanrahan	Radiometric CCD Camera Calibration and Noise Estimation A Realistic Camera Model for Computer Graphics	IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (PAMI), 1994 SIGGRAPH 1995	Ivo	Stoyan Furnadzhiev	25.11.2009
Geometric Camera Calibration	Zhengyou Zhang Richard Hartley, Andrew Zisserman	A Flexible New Technique for Camera Calibration Multiple View Geometry in Computer Vision, Chapter 6	IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (PAMI), 2000 Cambridge University Press, 2000	Ivo	Alexander Reuter	02.12.2009
Fourier Analysis of Light Fields	Aaron Isaksen, Leonard McMillan, Steven J. Gortler Ren Ng	Dynamically Reparameterized Light Fields Fourier Slice Photography	SIGGRAPH 2000 SIGGRAPH 2005	Ivo	Oliver Barth	09.12.2009
Light Field Capture with Non-Refractive Modulators	Ashok Veeraraghavan, Ramesh Raskar, Amit Agrawal, Ankit Mohan, Jack Tumblin Douglas Lanman, Ramesh Raskar, Amit Agrawal, Gabriel Taubin	Dappled Photography: Mask Enhanced Cameras for Heterodyned Light Fields and Coded Aperture Refocusing Shield Fields: Modeling and Capturing 3D Occluders	SIGGRAPH 2007 SIGGRAPH Asia 2008	Ivo	not taken	---	---
Multi-View Basics	Aldo Laurentini Wojciech Matusik, Chris Buehler, Ramesh Raskar, Leonard McMillan, Steven Gortler	The Visual Hull Concept for Silhouette-Based Image Understanding Image-Based Visual Hulls	IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (PAMI), 1994 SIGGRAPH 2000	Ivo	Haichao Guan	16.12.2009
Multi-View Stereo for Static and Dynamic Scenes	Yasutaka Furukawa and Jean Ponce L. Zitnick, S.B. Kang, M. Uyttendaele, S. Winder, and R. Szeliski,	Accurate, Dense, and Robust Multi-view Stereopsis High-Quality Video View Interpolation Using a Layered Representation	IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), 2007 ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proc. of SIGGRAPH), 2004	Christian	Wolfgang Burgard	06.01.2010
Marker-less Performance Capture	Daniel Vlasic, Ilya Baran, Wojciech Matusik, Jovan Popovic, E. de Aguiar, C. Stoll, C. Theobalt, N. Ahmed, H.-P. Seidel, S. Thrun,	Articulated Mesh Animation from Multi-view Slhouettes Performance Capture from Sparse Multi-view Video	ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proc. of SIGGRAPH), 2008 ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proc. of SIGGRAPH), 2008	Christian	not taken	---	---
Marker-less Motion Capture	Christoph Bregler and Jitendra Malik, Alexandru Balan, Leonid Sigal, Michael Black, James Davis, and Horst Haussecker	Tracking People with Twists and Exponential Maps Detailed Human Shape and Pose from Images	IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), 1998 IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), 2007	Christian	Aliaksandr Talaika	13.01.2010
Reconstruction from Community Photo Collections	Noah Snavely, Steven M. Seitz, Richard Szeliski Michael Goesele, Noah Snavely, Brian Curless, Steven M. Seitz, Hugues Hoppe	Photo Tourism: Exploring image collections in 3D Multi-View Stereo for Community Photo Collections	ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proc. of SIGGRAPH), 2006 Proc. of International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV), 2009	Christian	Sebastian Schwarzbach	20.01.2010
Reconstruction with Time-of-Flight Cameras	Qingxiong Yang, Ruigang Yang, James Davis, and David Nister Dean Anderson, Herman Herman, Alonzo Kelly	Spatial-Depth Superresolution for Range Images Experimental characterization of commercial flash ladar devices	International Conference on Sensing and Technology, 2005	Christian	Shujie Li	27.01.2010
Video Recinematography	Michael Gleicher and Feng Liu Feng Liu, Michael Gleicher, Hailin Jin and Aseem Agarwala	Re-Cinematography: Improving the Camerawork of Casual Video Content-Preserving Warps for 3D Video Stabilization	ACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing Communications and Applications (TOMCCAP), 5, 1, 2. October 2008 ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH), 2009	Christian	Dina Mahmoud	03.02.2010
Final Seminar	Christian Theobalt, Ivo Ihrke	Current Research Topics (after paper presentation on that day)			Christian & Ivo	03.02.2010