CSC I6716  Computer Vision- Spring 2008
Instructor: Professor Zhigang Zhu

Credits:     3.0
Class Meet Time:     Tuesday 04:30-07:00 PM,  Room: SH-22
Office Hours:
    Tuesday 03:15-04:15 PM,  Room: NAC  8/210 at CCNY
    Wednesday 10:00 - 11:30 am, Rm 4439 at CUNY Graduate Center

Course Update Information

  January 29, 2008. First class meet.
  February 19, 2008.  Assignment 1 is due today before class.  Assignment 2 is online.
  February 26, 2008.  Grading for Assignment 1.
  February 26, 2008.  Assignment 3 and Project Topics (tentative) online.
  March 12, 2008.  Grading for Assignments 1 & 2.
  March 12, 2008.  Assignment 4  online.
  March 17, 2008.  You are welcome to attend a talk by Dr. Quynh Dinh on March 18, 2008, 1:45 pm - 2:45 pm, at NAC 8/207. The office hours will be moved to 7:30 pm - 8:30 pm, at NAC 8/210, after our class meet.
  March 18, 2008.  We will not have class meet on March 25. Please finish your assignement 3 and sumit your hardcopy to me on April 1 (Tuesday). Please also use this time to start your project design and let me know by email your team and project selection. Each team please only send me ONE email message (with full names of your team member and IDs)!
 April 03, 2008.  Grading for Assignments 1 & 2 & 3.
April 08, 2008.  Assignment 4  was revised for grading rules.
April 30, 2008,  Project Presentation Schedule. Each student will have 10 minutes, including presentation, demo, QA and transition. We will also discuss exams and projects during each of the class meets.  Please bring your report (in hard copy) to class. You'd better have it ready before your presentation.  But for those who will do presentations on May 6, you may select to submit your report before the class of May 13. No submission will be accepted after that.  Everyone please be on time - the attendance will contribute to the grading of your final project.
May 08, 2008.  Grading for Assignments 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 & Exam. We are going to discuss exam at the begining of the May-13 class. Student presentations will begin right after that. Please be on time.
May 22, 2008.  Final Grading

Course Objectives

Computer vision has a rich history of work on stereo and visual motion, which has dealt with the problems of 3D reconstruction from multiple images, and structure from motion from video sequences. Recently, in addition to these traditional problems, the stereo and motion information present in multiple images or a video sequence is also being used to solve several other problems, for instance video modeling, video mosaicing, video segmentation, video compression, and video surveillance an monitoring. This is summarized as video computing. Computer vision is playing an important and somewhat different role in solving these problems in video computing than the original image analysis considered in the early days of vision research.The course "Computer Vision" will include advanced topics in video computing as well as fundamentals in stereo and motion.

Note: In addition to attending regular course lectures, students may also be arranged (if appropriate) to attend seminars of the CCNY Lecture Series on Computer Vision, Robotics and Human-Computer Interaction  hosted  by Prof. Zhu of CS and Prof. Xiao of EE. Students will have opportunities to talk with leading researchers in the fields of computer vision, robotics and HCI.

Course Syllabus and Tentative Schedule

Part I. Computer Vision Basics 

I-1. Introduction and Image Formation  (Assignment 1) - Jan 29
I-2. Image Enhancement  (Note:  Talks on Feb 05 and 06)- Feb 05
I-3. Edge Detection  (Assignment 2) - Feb 19 (No class meet on Feb 12)

Part II.  3D Computer Vision

II-1.  Camera Models ( Assignment 3 ) ( Project Topics)- Feb 26, March 4
II-2.  Camera Calibration (Project Topics Discussion)   - March 4, March 11
II-3.  Stereo Vision ( Assignment 4)  - March 18, (then after II-4) April 1
II-4.  Project Design and Homework #3 - March 25 (no class meet)
II-5.  Visual Motion , Exam Review -April 08, April 15

Part III. Evaluations, Discussions & Project Presentations

III-1. Midterm Exam - April  29
 III-2. Student Project Presentations - May 06, May 13, 4:30 - 6:30 pm
III-3. Exam & Project Discussions - May 06, May 13, 6:30 - 7:00 pm

Textbook and References

Textbook:
    “Introductory Techniques for 3-D Computer Vision”,  Trucco and Verri, 1998.

References:

  1.     “Computer Vision – A Modern Approach” Forsyth and Ponce, 2003.
  2.     “Three Dimensional Computer Vision: A Geometric Viewpoint” O. Faugeras
  3.     “Image Processing, Analysis and Machine Vision” Sonika, Hlavac and Boyle, 1999
Supplements:  Online References and additional readings when necessary.
 

Grading and Prerequisites

The course will accommodate both graduate and senior undergraduate students with background in computer science, electrical and computer engineering, or applied mathematics. Students who take the course for credits will be required to finish 4 assignments of paperwork only (40%), one midterm exam (40%), and  one programming project with exit interview (20%, including submit a report and give a small presentation to the class at the end of the semester). The topics of the projects will be given in the middle of the semester and will be related to the material presented in the lectures.

This course will be counted for both "Intelligent Systems" and "Scientific and Statistical Computing Computer Science" Groups for graduate students, and for both "Computational Techniques for Science and Engineering" and "Net-Centric Computing"  Electives for undergraduate students.  The students are required to have a good preparations in both linear algerbra/numerical anaysis and advanced programming.

Copyright @ Zhigang Zhu , Spring  2008