Events Calendar

Image Segmentation with Optimization Techniques Used for Medical Imaging

Speaker: Dr. Dorit S. Hochbaum, ISE, University of Southern California

Talk Title: Image Segmentation with Optimization Techniques Used for Medical Imaging

Abstract: Image segmentation is to determine a partition to the "main" areas of the image and identify them as associated with different types of objects. This is of particular importance in medical imaging where blur conceals information of critical importance. The problem is modeled as minimization of deviation penalty, from the captured colors of the pixels, and separation penalty, which is associated with two adjacent images having different colors.

We describe a very efficient and best possible polynomial time algorithm for the problem. This algorithm is more efficient than most procedures based on spectral techniques, partitioning approaches or heuristic clustering. We then demonstrate how to apply the procedure for the purpose of recovering hidden features in de-blurred medical images.


Biography: Dorit S. Hochbaum is a Daniel Epstein chair professor at the ISE department at USC. Professor Hochbaum holds a Ph.D from the Wharton school of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. Professor Hochbaum held a faculty position at Carnegie Mellon university's Tepper school of business (GSIA), and then joined UC Berkeley where she was a full professor and chancellor chair at the department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research (IEOR). Her research interests are in the areas of approximation algorithms and design and analysis of computer algorithms and discrete and continuous optimization. Her recent work focuses on efficient techniques for network flow related problems, ranking, data mining and image segmentation problems.

Professor Hochbaum is the author of over 140 papers that appeared in the Operations Research, Management Science and Theoretical Computer Science literature. Professor Hochbaum was named in 2004 an honorary doctorate of Sciences of the University of Copenhagen, for her work on approximation algorithms. Professor Hochbaum was awarded in 2005 the title of INFORMS fellow.


Host: Prof. Rahul Jain

Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Estela Lopez