Plenary Talks
Images and Technologies Revealing Secrets of the Sand
Dr. Zahi Hawass
Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities
Cairo, Egypt
Abstract
Robotics and Imaging Techniques are used for discovery and authentications of various archeological works in Egypt and the world. This talk will provide a number of examples from the Great Pyramids to the Valley of the Kings. The talk will also refer to CT analysis of King Tut and deployment of smart robotics in studying the great pyramids of Egypt.
Biography
Dr. Zahi Hawass, a renowned archaeologist, is secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities and director of excavations at Giza, Saqqara and the Bahariya Oasis. He has brought the world of the pharaohs into homes around the world, made numerous television appearances, including features on National Geographic specials, The Discovery Channel and The Learning Channel, two live productions for Fox television and segments on Good Morning America and The Today Show. He recently received an Emmy from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for his special on ancient Egypt.
In 2006, Time magazine chose Hawass one of the Top 100 Most Influential People for the year 2005. He is responsible for such discoveries as the tombs of the pyramid builders at Giza and the Valley of the Golden Mummies at Bahariya Oasis.
Dr. Hawass received his education in Alexandria University, Egypt, and received the PhD degree from the University of Pennsylvania, USA. He holds a number of honorary degrees from various prestigious institutions worldwide.
Tracking a Large Number of Migrating and Proliferating Cells in Time-Lapse Microscopy Imagery
Takeo Kanade
Robotics Institute
Carnegie Mellon University
Abstract
Image motion analysis technologies have great opportunities to help rapid advancement of biological discovery and its transition into new clinical therapies. In Tissue Engineering, for example, the development of tissue substitutes to restore or improve the human tissues involves implanting scaffolds (biodegradable exracellular matrices) and seeding and culturing cells with hormones to induce growth of tissue. By analyzing a time-lapse microscope-image sequence, typically from a phase-contract or differential interference contrast (DIC) microscope, we could precisely and individually track a large number of cells, while they undergo migration (translocation), mitosis (division), and apoptosis (death), and could construct complete cell lineages (mother-daughter relations) of the whole cell population. Such a capability of high-throughput spatiotemporal analysis of cell behaviors allows for “engineering individual cells” - directing the migration and proliferation of tissue cells in real time.
The low signal-to-noise ratio of microscopy images, high and varying densities of cell cultures, topological complexities of cell shapes, and occurrences of cell divisions, touching and overlapping pose significant challenges to existing image-based tracking techniques. In collaboration with biomedical engineers, my group has been developing techniques to efficiently cope with these difficulties, ranging from physics-based preprocessing to bottom-up and top-down analysis by integrating multiple collaborative modules and motion filtering. I will present the challenges, results, and excitement of the new application area of motion image analysis.
Biography
Takeo Kanade is the U. A. and Helen Whitaker University Professor of Computer Science and Robotics and the director of Quality of Life Technology Engineering Research Center at Carnegie Mellon University. He is also the director of Digital Human Research Center in Tokyo, which he founded in 2001. He received his Doctoral degree in Electrical Engineering from Kyoto University, Japan, in 1974. After holding a faculty position in the Department of Information Science, Kyoto University, he joined Carnegie Mellon University in 1980, where he was the Director of the Robotics Institute from 1992 to 2001.
Dr. Kanade works in multiple areas of robotics: computer vision, multi-media, manipulators, autonomous mobile robots, medical robotics and sensors. He has written more than 300 technical papers and reports in these areas, and holds more than 20 patents. He has been the principal investigator of more than a dozen major vision and robotics projects at Carnegie Mellon.
Dr. Kanade has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering; the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; a Fellow of the IEEE; a Fellow of the ACM, a Founding Fellow of American Association of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). The awards he has received include the Franklin Institute Bower Prize, Okawa Award, C&C Award, Joseph Engelberger Award, IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Pioneer Award, and IEEE PAMI Azriel Rosenfeld Lifetime Accomplishment Award.
