Notes from DAS2006
I just got back today from the 7th IAPR International Workshop on Document Analysis Systems (proceedings), held in Nelson from 13-15 Feb.
The presentations were all about document or image analysis, but the heavy use of AI techniques could make some of it relevant to what I work on these days.
Some of the interesting people I met or caught up with:
- Adam Behringer (Exbiblio)
 - Abdel Belaid (Loria)
 - Jim Fruchterman (Benetech)
 - Koichi Kise (Osaka Prefecture University)
 - Bertin Klein (DFKI)
 - Marcus Liwicki (University of Bern)
 - Larry Spitz (DocRec Ltd)
 - Noorazrin Zakaria (Université de la Rochelle)
 
Projects I should take a look at:
- GroupLens (recommendation system)
 - Semantic Wikis (workshop)
 - PRImA Research document database
 - OpenCV
 - Digital Library of India
 - IUPR camera-captured document archive
 - Tohoku University's OCR web service
 - IAM-OnDB pen-captured writing database
 
Techniques I should learn (or re-learn):
- Gabor filters
 - Hidden Markov models
 - Standard classifiers: NNC, LDC
 - Analytical segmentation
 - Dynamic programming
 - Viterbi algorithm
 - Dynamic time warping
 - RAST algorithm for alignment
 - X-tree spatial indexing algorithm
 - Affine invariants
 - Gaussian mixed models
 
Things that should exist:
- A better browser for mailing lists - that thinks more about the message content and tries to figure out what's going on, presenting more statistics etc in the list view to help you find interesting messages.
 - A browser for academic papers with tagging so you can collect together papers on a very specific subject without prejudicing the normal categorisation.
 - Realtime image stitching - build a panorama out of a video. (Existing: traffic monitoring.)
 - Connected component analysis on colour images.