March/April 2010 Nº: 2

Joaquim Salvi’s personal experience in Edinburgh:

My relationship with the Overseas Lab of Heriot-Watt University dates from

2004 when I invited Dr. Manuel Trucco (University of Dundee) to the evaluation

tribunal of Jose Forest’s thesis. The relationship was strengthened when together

with the Université de Bourgogne (France) we got the Erasmus Mundus MSc

VIBOT 2005. Since then, meetings have been constant in both educational and

researching level, and the collaboration between VICOROB and the Oceans Lab

has been so fruitful. At the end of my stage in the UdG goverment I did

sabbatical year (from 01/08/07 to 31/07/08) in Ocean Lab, this time with Dr. Yvan

Petillot. During this period I focused on SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and

Mapping) using video cameras and acoustic systems. Nowadays we have

together research projects, one of them to highlight is the FP7 STREP Project

Trident, thesis co-directed between the two laboratories and publications in

prestigious journals and conferences internationally known. The relationship is

fully consolidated, so VICOROB and Oceans Lab are usual partners in many

European projects as in

the research and teaching

level.

Robert Martí’s personal experience in Oxford:

I was from August to December 2009 in the Biomedical Image Analysis Lab

(Biomed IA), in Oxford University, led by the teacher Alison Noble (http://

www.ibme.ox.ac.uk/biomedia). The BiomedIA lab is within the IBME (Institute of

Biomedical Engineering) which includes all the biomedical engineering research

(computer vision, fluid analysis, tissue engineering, electronics etc.). IBME is

found inside of the building devoted exclusively to biomedical research and

surrounded by other hospitals and research centres, which facilitates

multidisciplinary and collaborative research among different groups.

The group of Oxford is internationally recognized for his work in ultrasonic

image analysis. The purpose of my stay was to work with subjects I had some

experience in, such as registration of images, but from another perspective.

Finally, I worked in elastography technique to analyze the characteristics of

tissue from the analysis of their deformation in a set of images. Regarding this

subject, and after analyzing the

state of art, new proposals

were suggested in the sense of

incorporating methods of

recording images, from which

there has come so far an article

submitted to ICIP 2010

conference.

http://vicorob.udg.edu

International Experiences: J.Salvi & R.Martí

21th February: International

Mother Language Day

February 2010: Convocation Ramón y Cajal, Juan de la Cierva,

Torres Quevedo and PTA

February 2010: Convocation Plan

Avanza R+D 2010

March 2010: Convocation TRACE

2010

April 2010: VICOROB Open Day

2010

16-18 June 2010: International Workshop on Digital

Mammography

- Agenda -

- Comming soon -

International Workshop on Digital Mammography 2010 in Girona

Next June, the tenth edition of the

International Workshop on Digital

Mammography will take place in the

Auditori – Palau de Congressos de

Girona (www.iwdm2010.org). As some

already know, the conference is a

meeting point for the community which

works with medical imaging in the breast

field, and it includes both researchers

(mathematicians, physicists, computer

scientists, engineers), as members of the

Health field (radiologists, oncologists,

surgeons), and, as well, industry representatives. All of them will have the chance

to put together the latest advances and innovations in the development of

technologies that help in early detection of breast cancer.

The IWDM conferences began in 1992 in San Jose (US), and since then, it has

been celebrated every two years alternating the venue between Europe and North

America. In order to be the venue of the tenth edition, there were also in the

competition the cities of Berlin and Stockholm, where also important research

groups closely linked with research in early detection of breast cancer are found.

The use of computer systems in the analysis of mammography began in the

late 70’s, it was recently that its use has became important in most of centres

where programs aimed at integrating computing techniques in the process of

diagnosis are practiced. A proof of this is the increase of research programs

aimed at integrating computing techniques in the process of diagnosis, and the

increase of specialized publications and the researching meetings focused on this

topic, such as IWSDM congress.

Dr. Joan Martí is the manager of entire organization and coordination of the

workshop.

Palau de Congressos de Girona,

the venue for the IWDM 2010

Elastography simulation

Universitat de Girona - Campus de Montilivi, Edifici P4 17071, Girona (Spain)

Telf: +34 972 41 89 05 Fax: +34 972 41 89 76

Site: http://vicorob.udg.edu E-mail: vicorob@eia.udg.edu

- ViCOROB People - Marc

Carreras Pérez 23-03-1975

Figueres

Marc Carreras is Industrial

Engineer since 1998. He finished his

PhD in 2003 at the UdG, in

ViCOROB research team. He

received two awards for PFC and another award for best

doctoral thesis of the computer field in UdG.

He is working in CIRS on projects related to underwater

robotics. His current interests are learning applied to robotics

and trajectory planning for autonomous robots . He

participated in the winning team of underwater robots

SAUCE'06 the competition and is at present conducting a new

team of students who participate in the 2010 edition in Italy

next July. Marc is known among colleagues in the group for

his effectivesness in spearfishing, he is famous for collecting

"big staff".

Gerard

Pons Rodríguez 12-11-1986

Sant Feliu de Guíxols

Scientific communication: ViCOROB at Televisió de Girona

New projects: TRIDENT

Televisió de Girona has a programme called “Health”, it is a magazine devoted to health that, through interviews and

reports, tries to provide solutions and advice to health issues that most concern to people from Girona. Last November, they

came to VICOROB in order to make 3 reports of the medical applications that our group is achieving through research and

investigation.

In the first item, they talked with Joan Martí about the progress being achieved in early detection of breast cancer, a key to

improve the cure rate. Through collaborations with other research centres and hospitals as Josep Trueta in Girona, Parc Taulí

in Sabadell, Hospital Clínic or Hospital Vall d'Hebron, we are developing tools that will help doctors to discern benign or

malignant characteristics during the diagnosis, and also to characterize lesions through the analysis of images.

The following report was about prostate cancer, this time they spoke with Jordi Freixenet. Jordi explained them the benefits

provided by the use of resonances, which do not show the same as the ultrasound scan, in order to help doctors to locate

cancer in the biopsy from patients who have signs of having it.

In the last item recorded in VICOROB, they talked with Xavier Lladó about the project SALEM (Automatic segmentation of

lesions for diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis). He explained that the programs that they are developing will help doctors in

detecting these lesions of Multiple Sclerosis. As the program automatically analyzes a series of images, the arduous work

which only depended on the objectivity of the radiologist or neurologist, now, has speeded. This research is being done

together with Hospital Trueta, Hospital Clínic and Hospital Vall d'Hebron.

If you want to watch again these items, here you have the links:

- Breast cancer – Joan Martí – 12/03/2009 – (27:20)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bn78BXx6lNg&feature=PlayList&p=6C882B540A99AE4A&index=1

- Prostate – Jordi Freixenet – 12/12/2009 – (21:20)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6fgGonEuv4&feature=PlayList&p=6C882B540A99AE4A&index=3

- Multiple Sclerosis – Xavier Lladó – 12/08/2010 – (15:03)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSlBW89YbIc

Gerard is UdG Computer Engineer

and now he’s studying a Master in

Computer Engineering, Automatics,

Computer Science and Systems. He

has collaborated on projects ViCOROB for two years and he’s

currently doing his master's thesis at University of Oxford in

the BioMed Laboratory Institute of Biomedical Engineering.

His task is to perform the segmentation of breast masses in

ultrasound images in 2D and 3D ultrasound.

Outside VICOROB, Gerard plays bass in a group of

Catalan Rock and he occupies his time with hobbies like

Barça, films, series, friends and his girlfriend.

The TRIDENT is a collaborative project that is part of the European ICT

agenda of 7FP (Seventh Framework Program). The project is coordinated

by the University Jaume I, from Castelló (Spain), and in the University of

Girona VICOROB is in charge of its development. To carry it out, our group

has received a grant of € 460,000. The team is managed by Pere Ridao,

and counts the collaboration of Joaquin Salvi, Rafael Garcia, Xevi Cufí,

Marc Carreras, and all team working in Underwater Robotics and Underwater Vision Lab.

This new project proposes a new methodology for mulipurpose underwater intervention tasks

with diverse potential applications like underwater archaeology, oceanography and offshore

industries. TRIDENT basically consists of: a team of two cooperative hererogeneous with

complementary skills, and autonomous surface craft and an intervention autonomous underwater

vehicle, used to perform underwater manipulation tasks. This manipulations is done through a

skillful hand arm attached to the autonomous underwater vehicle.

Particular emphasis will be put on the research of the vehicles intelligent control architecture to

provide the embedded knowledge representation framework and the high-level reasoning agents

required to enable a high degree of autonomy and on-board decision making of the platform. The

new methodology will allow the user to specify an intervention task, among a set of predefined

ones, to be undertaken with regards to a particular target object selected by the end user by means

of the map previously built. Hence the intervention task is seen as a semi-automatic process where

the target is manually selected but then it is automatically recognized and manipulated by the robot

in a complete autonomous way.

The TRIDENT project brings together research skills specific to marine environments in

navigation and mapping for underwater robotics, multi-sensory perception and a range of control

techniques relating to intelligent control architectures, vehicle-manipulator systems and dexterous

manipulation.

ViCOROB members in “Salut”

Schemes operating TRIDENT