============================================================================ IAPR TC-11 Newsletter March 2016 http://www.iapr-tc11.org ========== Contents ======================================================== * Message from the Editor * Dates 'n' Deadlines - ICPR 2016, Cancun, Mexico April 4 (http://www.icpr2016.org/) - ICFHR 2016, Shenzen, China April 30 (http://www.nlpr.ia.ac.cn/icfhr2016) * Call for Participation: - ICFHR 2016 Competitions (Overview) (http://www.nlpr.ia.ac.cn/icfhr2016/competitions.htm) - ICFHR 2016 Competition on Handwritten Text Recognition on the READ Dataset (http://www.transcriptorium.eu/~htrcontest/) - ICFHR 2016 Competition on Recognition of Handwritten Mathematical Expressions (ICFHR 2016 CROHME) * Call for Proposals: - 23rd Int. Conf. on Pattern Recognition (ICPR) 2016 Demos, Exhibits, Contests, Tutorial and Workshop * Call for Papers: - 23rd Int. Conf. on Pattern Recognition (ICPR) 2016 (repost) Cancun, Mexico, December 5-8, 2016 (http://www.icpr2016.org/) * New and Recently Published Datasets * Call for Dataset Submissions * Call for Contributions ============================================================================ ========== Message from the Editor ========================================= Welcome to the March edition of our newsletter. This edition brings to you an overview of the numerous competitions that will be organized in conjunction with ICFHR 2016 as well as more detailed calls for participation for the "Competition on Handwritten Text Recognition on the READ Dataset" and the "Competition on Recognition of Handwritten Mathematical Expressions". Furthermore, you will find below the Call for Proposals for ICPR 2016 Demos, Exhibits, Contests, Tutorials and Workshops. Gernot A. Fink, IAPR TC-11 Newsletter Editor / Education Officer Gernot.Fink@udo.edu ============================================================================ ========== Dates 'n' Deadlines ============================================= Event/Location/Web: Event Date: Deadline (paper submission): ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- * BMVC 2016, York, UK September 19-22 2016 May 9 (http://bmvc2016.cs.york.ac.uk/) * ICFHR 2016, Shenzen, China October 23-26, 2016 April 30 (http://www.nlpr.ia.ac.cn/icfhr2016) * ICPR 2016, Cancun, Mexico December 4-8, 2016 April 4 (http://www.icpr2016.org/) * ICDAR 2017, Kyoto, Japan November 10-15, 2017 April 16, 2017 (http://u-pat.org/ICDAR2017) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - * DAS 2016, Santorini, Greece April 11-14, 2016 - passed - (http://www.primaresearch.org/das2016) * CVPR 2016, Las Vegas, United States June 26-July 1, 2016 - passed - (http://www.pamitc.org/cvpr16/) ============================================================================ ========== New and Recently Published: TC-11 Datasets ====================== For a list of all datasets available visit: http://www.iapr-tc11.org/mediawiki/index.php/Datasets_List ============================================================================ ========== Call for Participation: ICFHR 2016 Competitions ================= Welcome to participate in the competitions of ICFHR2016. Please visit the competition URLs for details. 1. ICFHR2016 Competition on the Classification of Medieval Handwritings in Latin Script Organizers: Dominique Stutzmann, Véronique Eglin, Nicole Vincent, Florence Cloppet, Marlène Helias-Baron URL: http://oriflamms.hypotheses.org/1388 Contact: dominique.stutzmann@irht.cnrs.fr 2. ICFHR2016 Competition on Analysis of Handwritten Text in Images of Balinese Palm Leaf Manuscripts Organizers: Jean-Christophe Burie, Jean-Marc Ogier, Mickael Coustaty, Made Windu Antara Kesiman, Setiawan Hadi, Erick Paulus, Kimheng Sok, Dona Valy, I Made Gede Sunarya URL: http://amadi.univ-lr.fr/ICFHR2016_Contest/ Contact: jean-marc.ogier@univ-lr.fr 3. ICFHR2016 Competition on Arabic Online Text Recognition using Online-KHATT Database Organizers: Mohammad Tanvir Parvez, Hamzah Luqman, Baligh Al-Helali, Sabri A. Mahmoud URL: http://onlinekhatt.ideas2serve.net/competition/ Contact: m.parvez@qu.edu.sa 4. ICFHR2016 Competition on Multi-script Writer Demographics Classification Using "QUWI" Database Organizers: Chawki Djeddi, Somaya Al-Maadeed, Abdeljalil Gattal, Imran Siddiqi, Abdellatif Ennaji, Haikal El Abed URL: http://mswdc2016.sciencesconf.org Contact: djeddi_2008@yahoo.fr 5. ICFHR2016 Competition on Recognition of Handwritten Mathematical Expressions (CROHME2016) Organizers: Harold Mouchère, Christian Viard-Gaudin, Richard Zanibbi, Utpal Garain URL: http://ivc.univ-nantes.fr/CROHME/ Contact: harold.mouchere@univ-nantes.fr 6. ICFHR2016 Handwritten Keyword Spotting Competition (H-KWS 2016) Organizers: Basilis Gatos, Ioannis Pratikakis, Joan Puigcerver, Alejandro H. Toselli, Enrique Vidal, Konstantinos Zagoris URL: https://www.prhlt.upv.es/contests/icfhr2016-kws/index.html Contact: ipratika@ee.duth.gr 7. ICFHR2016 Handwritten Document Image Binarization Competition (H-DIBCO 2016) Organizers: Ioannis Pratikakis, Konstantinos Zagoris, Georgios Barlas, Basilis Gatos URL: http://vc.ee.duth.gr/h-dibco2016/ Contact: ipratika@ee.duth.gr 8. ICFHR2016 Competition on Local Attribute Detection for Improving Handwriting Recognition Organizers: Shawn Reid, Michael Murdock, Jack Reese, Blaine Hamilton URL: http://collections.ancestry.com/ANDAR-AD-2016/Home Contact: mmurdock@ancestry.com 9. ICFHR2016 Competition on Handwritten Text Recognition on the READ Dataset Organizers: Joan Andreu Sánchez, Verónica Romero, Alejandro H. Toselli, Enrique Vidal URL: http://transcriptorium.eu/~htrcontest/ Contact: jandreu@prhlt.upv.es [Source: ICFHR 2016 - http://www.nlpr.ia.ac.cn/icfhr2016/competitions.htm] ============================================================================ ========== CfP: ICFHR 2016 HTR Competition ================================= CALL FOR PARTICIPATION CfP - ICFHR2016 Competition on Handwritten Text Recognition on the READ Dataset http://www.transcriptorium.eu/~htrcontest/ The "ICFHR2016 Competition on Handwritten Text Recognition on the READ Dataset" competition is organized in the framework of the ICFHR 2016 competitions by the Pattern Recognition and Human Language Technologies research centre with the collaboration of the READ partners. This contest aims to bring together researchers working on off-line Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) and provide them a suitable benchmark to compare their techniques on the task of transcribing typical historical handwritten documents. Previous editions of this contest were organized at the ICFHR 2014 and at the ICDAR 2015. The proposed dataset consists of a subset of documents from the Ratsprotokolle collection (http://stadtarchiv-archiviostorico.gemeinde.bozen.it/) composed of minutes of the council meetings held from 1470 to 1805 (about 30.000 pages), which will be used in the READ project. This dataset is written in Early Modern German. The number of writers is unknown. Handwriting in this collection is complex enough to challenge the HTR software. The dataset for this competition is composed of 450 pages; most of the pages consist of a single block with many difficulties for line detection and extraction. The dataset is divided into 2 batches for the competition: 1 batch for training and 1 batch for testing (see web pages for detail). The first batch is composed of 400 pages. The ground-truth in this set is in PAGE format (Pletschacher, 2010) and it will be provided annotated at line level in the PAGE files. For making easier the participation, several tools will be provided for extracting the lines as we describe below. Training data will be provided from March, 1st 2016. DESCRIPTION AND GOALS The systems entering this contest should try to obtain the most accurate recognition results in the test partition. The available data for the first batch will consist of: 1. The original images of all the training pages 2. The PAGE file corresponding to each page image. For each text line in this image, the PAGE file contains a baseline and an automatically obtained bounding polygon (Romero, 2015), and the corresponding diplomatic transcript. All baselines have been checked and corrected manually. A series of tools will be provided for extracting the lines from the polygon information and the corresponding transcript. The test images, with the transcript fields empty, will be eventually provided in the same format as first batch for evaluation purposes (see schedule below). A baseline system based on HTK hidden Markov models and SRILM language modelling will be provided, including a set of scripts to perform a basic training and test experiment. The participants can use this baseline system as an initial approach to their own systems, where they will be allowed to improve this baseline by changing one or several of the following steps: - page-level pre-processing and line extraction - line pre-processing and normalization - feature extraction - recognition system and/or approach - types of character, lexical and/or language models - etc. Several submissions per participant will be allowed and all the results will be considered when presenting the competition results. Regarding the tokenization, the transcripts in each submission have to be as similar as possible to the training data. In each submission, the participant must provide a brief description of the characteristics of the submitted system, emphasizing the main characteristics of the submitted system. The final goal is to analyze the different proposals of the participants. EVALUATION MODALITIES The evaluation will be performed on the transcription results provided by each recognition system. The evaluation metric will be a linear combination of the Word Error Rate (WER) and the Character Error Rate (CER) (50% each) between the reference transcript and the transcript provided by the system from each line. The winner will be the system which obtains the least value of the linear combination on the test set. A web-based platform will be available for the participants to submit their test results. Two tracks are planned in this competition: 1. Restricted track: in this track the participants can use only the data provided by the organizers for training and tuning their systems 2. Unrestricted track: in this track the participants can use any data of their choice The baseline system will be prepared only for the restricted track. It is mandatory that the entrants participating in the "Unrestricted track" participate in the "Restricted track". The idea of this obligation is to be able to compare several systems in analogous training conditions. REGISTRATION AND ACCESS TO DATA To register in this contest send an e-mail to jandreu_AT_prhlt_DOT_upv_DOT_es with the subject ICFHR 2016 HTR competition registration (see details in the web page). SCHEDULE - 1 March 2016 Competition opens, start of inscription period, training data available, baseline system available. - 31 May 2016 Registration deadline (no more participants would be admitted). - 12 June 2016 Test data available - 24 June 2016 Deadline for systems results - 26 June 2015 Deadline for sending short description of the submitted systems Oct 23-26, 2016 Winners and final ranking of all teams will be made public at the ICFHR 2016 conference. ORGANISERS Joan Andreu Sanchez Veronica Romero Alejandro H. Toselli Enrique Vidal Pattern Recognition and Human Language Technologies research centre Universitat Politecnica de Valencia With the support of the READ project (READ is funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 674943) ============================================================================ ========== CfP: ICFHR 2016 CROHME ========================================== ** Call for Participation ** ICFHR 2016 Competition on Recognition of Handwritten Mathematical Expressions (ICFHR 2016 CROHME) We are pleased to announce the Fifth International Competition on Recognition of Handwritten Mathematical Expressions (CROHME). CROHME 2016 is being held as part of the upcoming International Conference on Frontiers in Handwriting Recognition in Shenzen, China (ICFHR: http://www.nlpr.ia.ac.cn/icfhr2016/). The first four CROHME competitions have advanced the state-of-the-art for handwritten math recognition systems. The competition has produced a large, freely available corpus of handwritten formulae for academic research, along with new structrual representations, evaluation metrics, and automated error analysis and visualization techniques. Results from previous competitions are published in the proceedings of ICDAR 2011/2013, ICFHR 2012/2014, and in a soon-to-appear journal paper in IJDAR. Important dates, an overview of tasks in the competition, data formats, and other details are provided below. Additional information will be available from the competition web pages (http://ivc.univ-nantes.fr/CROHME/) in the coming weeks. Important Dates ----------------- April 1st Training data available April 18th Registration deadline (registration available soon online: http://ivc.univ-nantes.fr/CROHME/) June 15th Test data available June 30th Test result submissions are due CROHME 2016 Tasks ----- *CROHME2016-Formulas: Formula recognition from handwritten strokes (main task) *CROHME2016-Symbols: Classification of isolated math symbols *CROHME2016-Structure: (**New) Parsing formula structure from given (valid) handwritten symbols *CROHME2016-Matrices: (**Experimental) Expression recognition with matrices Note: System rankings and awards will be determined by the main formula task (CROHME2016-Formulas). However, participants are encouraged to participate in whichever tasks they would like. The main task compares complete recognition systems, which must address the key problems of symbol segmentation, symbol classification, and expression structure recognition (CROHME2016-Formulas). The Symbols and Structure sub-tasks consider symbol classification and structure recognition in isolation, providing a more controlled comparison (in particular, without complex artifacts due to segmentation errors). We will also again have an experimental task for recognition of formulas that contain matrices, which remains a very challenging problem. The language of formulas to be recognized in Tasks 1-3 will be the same as for the last CROHME in 2014 - we will re-use the same expression grammar (Grammar IV) and symbol set (101 symbols). For the first time, the CROHME organizers will provide a large corpus of over 500,00 fomulae taken from English Wikipedia for training language models (e.g. Stochastic Context-Free Grammar production probabilities). New test sets will be provided for all tasks but CROHME2016-Structure, which will use expressions from CROHME 2014. This is necessary because symbol recognition results will need to be provided in test inputs for this sub-task. Data Sets, File Formats and Tools ------------------------ Data from CROHME 2014 and earlier competitions is available online from IAPR TC-11: http://tc11.cvc.uab.es/datasets/CROHME-2014_2. For CROHME 2016 training data will be provided in the same InkML (XML) format used in previous competitions. These InkML files may be visualized using an online tool: http://saskatoon.cs.rit.edu/inkml_viewer/. Recogniiton outputs will be in a Comma-Separated Variable (.csv) format representing a labeled graph over handwritten strokes (.lg). Updated libraries for conversion between InkML and LG formats (CROHMELib) along with tools for evaluation and visualization (LgEval) will be provided on the competition web page. Earlier versions of these tools are available online: https://www.cs.rit.edu/~dprl/Software.html. Please forward this email to any researchers, companies or students that may be interested in the competition. Sincerely, The ICFHR 2016 CROHME Organizing Committee Utpal Garain (Indian Statistical Institute, India) Harold Mouchère (University of Nantes, France) Christian Viard-Gaudin (University of Nantes, France) Richard Zanibbi (Rochester Institute of Technology, USA) ============================================================================ ========== Call for Proposals: ICPR 2016 Demos, etc. ======================= Call for Proposals Demos, Exhibits, Contests, Tutorial and Workshop The ICPR 2016 Organizing Committee invites proposals for demos, exhibits, contests, tutorials and workshops in conjunction with the 23nd International Conference on Pattern Recognition (www.icpr2016.org). These events will be held on December 04, 2016, immediately before the main conference. Demos, Exhibits We seek demos and exhibist on core techniques, application areas and emerging research topics that are of interest within the ICPR community. Deadline Demos and Exhibits proposal July 01, 2016, Acceptance Demos and Exhibits proposal July 07, 2016 Contests The aim of contests and challenges is to advance algorithm and method development by objective evaluation on common data sets. The contest organizer is responsible for providing good quality data and defining objective evaluation criteria that are applied to the results of submitted algorithms. Deadline contest demos and Exhibits proposal March 01, 2016, Acceptance contest proposal March 07, 20016. Deadline for contest paper: September 05, 2016 Demos, Exhibits and Contests Chairs Prof. Chi Keung Tang (HKUST- Hong Kong), cktang@cse.ust.hk Prof. Alfredo Petrosino (Parthenope University, Italy), petrosino@uniparthenope.it Prof. Ehud Rivlin (Technion, Israel), ehudr@cs.technion.ac.il Prof. Michael Brown (National University of Singapore, Singapore) brown@comp.nus.edu.sg Tutorials We seek tutorials on core techniques, application areas and emerging research topics that are of interest within the ICPR community. A good tutorial should provide a broad introduction to the chosen research area as well as in-depth coverage on selected advanced topics. Proposals that focus exclusively on the presenters' own work or commercial presentations are not eligible. Deadline tutorial proposal July 01, 2016, Acceptance tutorial proposal July 07, 2016 Contact Prof. Alberto Sanfeliu (Universitat Polithechnical de Catalunya, Spain) sanfeliu@iri.upc.edu Prof. Rita Cucchiara (Univ. of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy) rita.cucchiara@unimore.it Prof. Cris Luengo Hendriks (Flagship Biosciences, Inc., Westminster, Co., USA) luengo@ieee.org Workshops Workshops provide an informal setting for discussing specific topics in depth. Good workshops encourage discussion and interaction between the participants. This can be achieved in a number of ways, e.g., through presentations of submitted work, panel discussions and hands-on sessions. Deadline workshop proposal March 01, 2016, Acceptance workshop proposal March 07, 20016 Contact Prof. Octavia Camps (North Eastern USA) camps@ece.neu.edu Prof. Humberto Sossa Azuela (CIC, México) humbertosossa@gmail.com Prof. Markus Vincze (Inst. für Autom. Regelungs, Vienna, Austria)Vincze@acin.tuwien.ac.at Prof. Hugues Talbot (Proffesor Asociated of the ESIEE, Paris, France)hugues.talbot@esiee.fr Guideline for submitting proposals To propose a contest, tutorial or workshop, a PDF file containing the information outlined below must be sent to the ICPR 2016 Contest, Tutorial and Workshop Co-chairs. The proposal should contain the following: 1. Title and abstract 2. Name and contact information of the main organizers and any committees involved. 3. Brief discussion of the scope and target audience. Estimate the number of participants. Both smaller and larger events will be hosted. 4. Tentative schedule. Indicate here if a half or full day event is planned. 5. Overall organization. Depending on the event type, for example, review process and paper selection, submission deadlines, invited speakers, distribution of submitted contributions, description of data sets and evaluation procedures, coverage of any additional costs of the event, etc. Proposal assessment Each proposal will be assessed based on its scientific merit, proposed structure, overall relevance, and how it complements the main conference. Notification of acceptance will be given according the acceptance dates cited above. ICPR 2014 will be responsible for: - Providing a meeting venue with necessary technical equipment and catering services during the coffee breaks. - Providing staff to help with the on-site organization. - Advertising the event on the ICPR web site. - Scheduling the event together with the organizers and including it in the conference program. Organizers of a contest, tutorial or workshop are responsible for: - Publishing a webpage with information about the event and its program. - Sending out a call for papers/contributions. - Reviewing and selecting submitted papers, if applicable. - Compiling and distributing accepted contributions to the participants. - Inviting speakers and ensuring their participation, if applicable. - Obtaining funding or sponsorship for any additional cost that may arise, e.g., for prizes or awards. - Leading the event at ICPR2016. Costs and terms A registration fee will be set by ICPR 2016 to cover costs for meeting rooms, technical equipment and staff, catering services and other administrative costs. The cost will be the same for all contests, tutorials and workshops. ICPR 2016 reserves the right to cancel any event if the above responsibilities are not fulfilled, if deadlines are missed, or if too few attendees register for the event to support its costs. Organizers can apply for sponsorship for the event from the IAPR Conferences and Meetings Committee. Organizers cannot request to use the levy. http://www.iapr.org/conferences/applications.php Without such sponsorship, the name and logo of IAPR cannot be used for the event. ============================================================================ ========== Call for Papers: ICPR 2016 =========================== (repost) = CALL FOR PAPERS 23rd INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON PATTERN RECOGNITION DECEMBER 4 - 8, 2016, CANCUN CENTER, CANCUN, Q.ROO, MEXICO www.icpr2016.org Welcome to the 23rd International Conference on Pattern Recognition in Cancun, Mexico, December 2016, hosted by the Mexican Association for Computer Vision, Neurocomputing and Robotics (MACVNR). ICPR will be an international forum for discussions on recent advances in the fields of Pattern Recognition, Machine Learning and Computer Vision, and on applications of these technologies in various fields. The Scientific Program is organized in five tracks, addressing several Pattern Recognition topics. ORGANIZING COMMITTEE GENERAL CHAIR Prof. Eduardo Bayro-Corrochano (CINVESTAV, Mexico) FINANCE CHAIRS Dr. Francisco Martinez (INAOE, Mexico) Ricardo A. Wilhelm (ONCE, Mexico) CO-CHAIRS Prof. Gerard Medioni (USC, USA) Prof. Gabriella Sanniti di Baja (CNR, Italy) LOCAL ARRANGEMENT CHAIRS Dr. Jorge Rivera-Rovelo (Universidad Anáhuac Mayab, Mexico) Dr. Jaime Ortegón-Aguilar (Universidad de Quintana Roo, Mexico) CONFERENCE COORDINATOR Prof. Rangachar Kasturi (University of South Florida, USA) INVITED SPEAKERS CHAIRS Prof. Walter Kropatsch (Vienna University of Technology, Austria) PROGRAM CHAIRS Prof. Larry Davis (University of Maryland, USA) Prof. Alberto Del Bimbo (University of Firenze, Italy) Prof. Brian C. Lovell (University of Queensland, Australia) CONFERENCE SECRETARIAT contact_info@icpr2016.org TRACKS Track 1: Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning Prof. Edwin Hancock (University of York, UK) Prof. Enrique Succar (INAOE, Mexico) Prof. Liang Wang (Nat Lab of Pattern Recognition, China) Dr. Tin Kam Ho (IBM Watson NY, USA) Track 2: Computer Vision and Robot Vision Prof. Richard Hartley (Australian National University, Australia) Prof. Anders Heyden (Lund University, Sweden) Prof. Ales Leonardis (University of Birminghan, UK) Prof. Sudeep Sarkar (University of South Florida, USA) Track 3: Image, Speech, Signal and Video Processing Prof. Michael Felsberg (University of Linköping, Sweden) Prof. Vaclav Hlavac (Czech Technical University, Czech Republic) Prof. Dong Xu (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore) Track 4: Document Analysis, Biometrics and Pattern Recognition Applications Prof. Anil Jain (Michigan State University, USA) Prof. Mark Nixon (University of Southampton, UK) Prof. Tieniu Tan (Chinese Academy of Sciences, China) Track 5: Biomedical Image Analysis and Applications Prof. Xiaoyi Jian (University of Münster, Germany) Prof. Ioannis Kakadiaris (University of Houston, USA) Prof. Reinhard Klette (Auckland University of Technology, NZ) IMPORTANT DATES Submission paper opens Jan. 04, 2016 Notification of acceptance. Early bird registration opens * Jul. 11, 2016 Deadline for workshop &contest proposal Mar. 01, 2016 Publication of the list of accepted papers Jul. 18, 2016 Acceptance of workshop &contest proposal Mar. 07, 2016 Deadline for submission of Camera-Ready papers. End of early bird registration Sep. 05, 2016 Deadline for paper submission Apr. 04, 2016 Deadline for contest papers Sep. 05, 2016 Deadline for tutorial Jul. 01, 2016 Last day for guaranteed hotel reservation Oct. 04, 2016 Acceptance of tutorial Jul. 07, 2016 Deadline for late registration fees Nov. 20, 2016 Conference Dec. 04 - 08, 2016 * At least one author of accepted papers must register during the early bird registration period for the paper to be published in the proceedings. ============================================================================ ========== Call for Dataset Submissions ==================================== We would like to remind you that the TC10 and TC11 welcome contributions of new datasets or other resources related to the community. We would like to particularly encourage authors of articles that introduce new datasets, software or other material to submit such material to TC11 for hosting. Please check the TC11 site on information about how to submit datasets for archiving ( http://www.iapr-tc11.org/mediawiki/index.php/Datasets) also feel free to contact Marcus Liwicki, the TC11 dataset curator, for any doubts you might have on the process. Marcus Liwicki, TC-11 Dataset Curator liwicki@dfki.uni-kl.de ============================================================================ ========== Call for Contributions ========================================== This newsletter needs your support in order to provide useful information to the TC11 community. Therefore, please contribute relevant news by sending a short notice to the newsletter editor Gernot A. Fink . Such news could be the obvious announcements of conferences and workshops, job opportunities, reports on past conferences, book reviews, or anything that might be of interest to a wider audience involved in the construction of reading systems. ============================================================================ ========== Subscription Information ======================================== This newsletter is sent to subscribers of the IAPR TC11 mailing list. To manage your subscription, please visit the mailing list homepage at: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=IAPR-TC11 The homepage for IAPR TC11 is http://www.iapr-tc11.org ============================================================================