Colloquium Computer Science, Professor Frederic Leymarie (Goldsmiths Univ. London)

Title: Medial scaffolds of 3D data

Abstract:

We will briefly survey the historical evolution of graphs built from the Medial Axis (MA) of
Harry Blum and its related representations (e.g. Voronoi diagrams), emphasising shock
graphs (for 2D object fields) and shock scaffolds (for 3D object fields). The notion of shocks
is directly linked to the mathematical area of singularity theory (itself the child of catastrophe
theory) and hence sits on an established theoretical basis. We will review the key notions when
applied to the (now classical) MA representation: the main outcome being the idea that the
MA is somewhat redundant and the essential information (about the shape of an object)
is preserved in a class of singularities (or shocks) and their connectivity and associated
functions (e.g. radii or “time of shock”). We will briefly review the key applications of such
graphs from the past decade including for: (object-based) information retrieval and surface
meshing. If time permits, we will introduce a more recent viewpoint which combines recent
ideas and results from studies in human perception (of shape, static or articulated) and lead
us to define a field-based medialness and its “hot spots” (equivalent to shocks).

Speaker’s biography:

Frederic Fol Leymarie is a Professor of Computing at Goldsmiths, University of London since late 2004.

Previously he was the co-founder of the SHAPE Lab. at Brown University (1999)
and later its Lab manager (2002-4) while a postdoctoral fellow. He completed
his PhD thesis at Brown in 2002 on the topic of
3D Shape Representation by Shock Scaffolds. This work was supported in part
by two (US) NSF grants Frederic co-wrote and one IBM Doctoral Fellowship
(1999). Since joining Goldsmiths, Frederic has launched and directed the MSc
Arts Computing (2004-7) and the MSc Computer Games Entertainment (since
2008, in collaboration with Prof. William Latham). More details on his
publication record and research and other interests can be found on his LinkedIn profile:
www.folleymarie.com

Colloquium coordinators are Prof.dr. M. Aiello (e-mail : M.Aiello rug.nl ) and
Prof.dr. M. Biehl (e-mail: M.Biehl rug.nl )

http://www.rug.nl/research/jbi/news/colloquia/computerscience