1st European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV 90)

The 1st European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV) took place at Juan les Pins, Cap d'Antibes, France between 23 - 26 April 1990. The main confer- ence, attended by about 40 people, was sandwiched between two ESPRIT-sponsored workshops. This report presents some personal impressions of the main conference.

Opening ECCV 90, Olivier Faugeras pinpointed two unifying themes: the first was the topical focus of vision research on the areas of shape and motion inter- pretation; the second theme was methodological, concerning the increasing mathematical sophistication required by computer vision. In many ways the second theme was the dominant.

The conference highlighted a number of very nice pieces of theoretical research. The only weakness was probably a lack of results to show what impact this work was likely to have on practical vision systems.

Topically, the conference concentrated on the analy- sis of shape and motion, shape description taking four sessions and motion analysis six. The remainder of the programme was devoted to image features, match- ing and stereo. All the work was of a high standard, and for the most part presented in a lucid and accessi- ble way. The bulk of the programme took the form of a plenary track, with only three of the 13 sessions held in parallel. Sixty papers were presented orally, with an additional 20 allocated to a poster session. Authors were predominantly based in the European Community, Scandinavia and North America.

Work on 3D shape description and recovery covered both range-volumetric and contour-based approaches. Some noteworthy ideas included using deformable part- models, charting surface structure using smoothness constraints, the inference of projective invariants, and the tracking of external shape contours using snakes. Steve Zucker deserves a mention for the dexterity with which he animated the parts and protrusions approach using playdough.

Motion and tracking provided some of the most interesting ideas of the conference. John Aloimonos argued for the 'purposive' paradigm in active vision. This favours the evolution of goal-directed vison processes over more general-ized ones. The approach was well demonstrated on a real-time tracking problem. In a talk that spanned both shape and motion, Olivier Faugeras presented a method for tracking 3D curves using the geometric features of the spatio-temporal surface.

Work on matching and recognition was represented at a variety of levels. At the lower level there were several papers on accumulator-based model matching. Higher level approaches included work on consistent labelling and the application of ATMS for feature- labelling.

Papers on edge detection provided the mainstay for sessions on image-features. Work reported included a novel regularized diffusion method, multiscale contour linking, a comparison of different filter optimality criteria and work on 3D edge detection. One idea gain- ing in popularity was the use of phase rather than amplitude as the basis for characterizing image features. This concept was evoked in connection with scale-space representation, and also in stereo feature matching.

Faugeras's second theme of mathematical methodol- ogy was evident in a variety of topical areas. One example was the extent to which methods from differ- ential geometry are being used in both shape and motion analysis. Further evidence for this came from the interest in Jan Koenderink's book Solid Shape, displayed on the conference bookshelf.

Bayesian approaches to vision were also receiving much attention. In high level vision one paper argued for their use as an alternative to symbolic strategies, while at the intermediate level they were being exploited for 2D motion estimation and image recon- struction. Several papers reported work on the mean- field theory, which provided an interesting way of reconciling stochastic and mechanistic approches to scene reconstruction.

Edwin Hancock

The organizers of the 1st ECCV are to be congratulated on putting together a high quality technical programme, and providing Europe with a vision forum of inter- national excellence.

From all of the submissions to the conference, the Programme Committee and its associated team of reviewers selected some 63 papers for inclusion in the final programme. After the conference, these papers were subjected to a further two-stage review process to select those that would appear in this Special Issue of Image and Vision Computing. During the first stage the Programme Committee selected 27 papers for

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further consideration. These authors were invited to submit their full length papers to a second review process, one appropriate to an international archival journal.

About half of the papers emerged from this process with either an 'excellent' or a 'very good' classification from at least two referees. Space limitations have conspired to prevent all of these papers from being published in one Special Issue of Image and Vision Computing, but because of the consistently high quality of the papers that have been so successful in this unusual review process, those not appearing in this issue will be published in subsequent regular issues of the journal.

We would like to thank all of the reviewers whose dedicated efforts have made this Special Issue possible. The standards set here auger well for the continuation of this conference series, the second of which will be held in Genova, Italy in 1992.

Keith Baker General Editor

In 1991, Image and Vision Computing will be published bimonthly instead of quarterly, as at present. It is hoped this will alleviate the pressure we have faced over the last two years with the greatly increased number of submissions that have been received.

In addition to the special issues covering major inter- national conferences, special issues on topics of partic- ular interest are also planned. The first of these, to be Guest Edited by Professor J K Aggarwal (University of Texas, USA) and Dr B C Vemuri (University of Florida, USA), is scheduled for publication in August 1991, and will concentrate on 'Range Image Understanding'. Further details on this issue are included in the Call for Papers on the back of this issue.

In addition, we also hope to expand the book reviews section to include comprehensive reviews of the latest relevant books published of interest to readers on a more regular basis.

Jeremy Thompson Executive Editor

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