iMINDS (Belgium)

iMinds VZW

Profile of the organization

The Department of Electronics and Informatics (www.etro.vub.ac.be) of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) is as research team embedded in the Department of Future Media and Imaging of iMinds (IMINDS).

iMinds is an independent research institute founded by the Flemish government to stimulate ICT innovation. The iMinds team offers companies and organizations active support in research and development. iMINDS unites more than 1000 researchers from 5 research departments specialized in one or more of the basic competencies of iMinds. The composition of the research groups is flexible and aligned to the evolving needs of companies and organizations. It brings together companies, authorities, and non-profit organizations to join forces on research projects. Both technical and non-technical issues are addressed within each of these projects.

Specific skills: iMinds-ETRO’s focus is making sense with visionary electronics & computer engineering. The research of the research team is focused on sensors, image and multi-dimensional signal processing applied in various sectors such as medical imaging, media systems, digital heritage, industrial processing and research activities range from visionary demand-driven to fundamental research, with as goal to deliver unique solutions leveraging cross-boundary expertise in micro-electronics & photonics, HW-SW co-design and networks & systems.

 

Role in the project

In WP2 Infrastructure and tools for content access, use and storage, our expertise and standardization activities in JPSearch will be exploited. This will allow for a higher interoperability between Europeana image repository and legacy repositories such that an increased dissemination of Europeana content can be achieved.

Moreover, iMinds expertise in image security-related standardization activities (JPEG context) will be exploited. Specifications to ensure the security of transaction, protection of contents (IPR), and protection of technologies (IP), and that allow applications to generate, consume, and exchange JPEG Secured bitstreams will be investigated and deployed. Attention will be spend to the deployment of the JPEG Systems layer that is envisioned, among other functionality, to provide image security support.

iMinds will also take the lead, together with Promoter, of WP4 EuropeanaSpace Scenarios: concept, development, validation, demonstration.

Next to this key role, iMinds will participate in investigating teaching, learning and research services. iMinds will contribute to WP5 with the specific use case of the restoration campaign of Van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece.

 

Key Personel

Ann Dooms obtained the PhD in Mathematics in 2004 from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB).  She currently holds a professorship at iMinds-VUB-ETRO, where she leads a research team in Multimedia Forensics to discover, retrace or invert the successive operations a multimedia item (or its source) has undergone or the path it has followed, based on digital image processing. Three main research areas are watermarking, digital painting analysis and perceptual image quality assessment.

 

Peter Schelkens holds a professorship at the Department ETRO of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) and he is research director at iMinds . His research interests are situated in the field of multidimensional signal processing while focussing especially on cross-disciplinary research. He is co-editor of the books, ‘‘The JPEG 2000 Suite’’ and “Optical and Digital Image Processing”, published by Wiley. Peter Schelkens chairs the ‘Coding and Analysis’ subgroup in the ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29/WG1 (JPEG) standardisation committee. He is co-founder of the spin-off Universum Digitalis that is among other developping museum related applications.

Frederik Temmermans obtained the Master of Science degree in Computer Science in 2006, at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). Currently he is working on a PhD at the Department of Electronics and Informatics (ETRO) of iMinds-VUB on information retrieval and medical imaging. He is co-founder of the VUB spin-off company Universum Digitalis. Since 2006 he participates in the JPEG standardization committee as a member of the JPSearch ad-hoc group and he is co-editor of JPSearch Part 1: System framework and components.