# IAPR TC-11 (Reading Systems) Newsletter ## March, 2019 **Online, phone-friendly version:** [March 2019 Newsletter](http://www.iapr-tc11.org/mediawiki/index.php?title=IAPR_TC11_Newsletter_2019_03) **TC-11:** [TC-11 Homepage](http://www.iapr-tc11.org)    **Twitter:** [iapr_tc11](https://twitter.com/iapr_tc11) ### TABLE OF CONTENTS - Message from the Editor - Dates and Deadlines - Deadlines - Upcoming Conferences and Events - Conferences - IGS 2019: 2nd Call for Papers - ICPRAI 2020: Call for Papers, Exhibitions, and Sponsors - ICDAR: Awards and Proposals - Call for Nominations for ICDAR 2019 Awards *(repost)* - Call for Proposals to host ICDAR 2023 *(repost)* - ICDAR 2019: Workshops - CBDAR 2019: Call for Papers - WIADAR 2019: Call for Papers - GREC 2019: First Announcement *(repost)* - HIP 2019: Call for Papers *(repost)* - ICDAR-OST 2019: Call for Papers *(repost)* - ICDAR 2019: Competitions - List of ICDAR 2019 Competitions - ICDAR 2019: Tutorials - GMPRDIA 2019: First Announcement - Journals - PRL Special Issue on Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence Techniques for Cultural Heritage - PRL Special Issue on Hierarchical Representations: New Results and Challenges for Image Analysis *(repost)* - IJDAR: Latest Issue (Vol. 22, Issue 1) - IJDAR Discount for IAPR Members *(repost)* - Datasets - TC11 Datasets Repository *(repost)* - Careers - Student Industrial Internship Opportunities (IAPR) *(repost)* Message from the Editor ======================= After the ICDAR paper submission deadline, organizers are busy preparing satellite events for you. New ICDAR workshop announcements include the call for papers for the 1st International Workshop on Industrial Applications of Document Analysis and Recognition [(WIADAR 2019)](http://ece.boisestate.edu/wiadar/) and the 8th International Workshop on Camera-Based Document Analysis and Recognition [(CBDAR 2019)](https://cbdar2019.univ-lr.fr). The list of ICDAR competitions has been updated. New calls for participation are related to [floorplan images](https://orf.univ-lr.fr), [comic characters](https://fgc.univ-lr.fr), [scene text](http://rrc.cvc.uab.es/?ch=14), [multi-lingual scene text](http://rrc.cvc.uab.es/?ch=15), [street view text](http://rrc.cvc.uab.es/?ch=16), [complex layouts](https://www.primaresearch.org/RDCL2019/), [digitized magazines](https://www.primaresearch.org/DMAS2019/), [early Indian prints](https://www.primaresearch.org/REID2019/), and [historical Arabic manuscripts](https://www.primaresearch.org/RASM2019/). Regarding ICDAR tutorials, we are looking forward to the 2nd Tutorial on Graph-based Methods in Pattern Recognition & Document Image Analysis [(GMPRDIA 2019)](http://gmprdia.univ-lr.fr). Other conference news include the call for papers for the 19th International Graphonomics Conference [(IGS 2019)](http://igs2019-boa.egr.uh.edu), with an extended paper submission by March 28th, and the 2nd International Conference on Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence [(ICPRAI 2020)](https://users.encs.concordia.ca/~icprai20) with paper submission by November 15th. Finally, a new [PRL special issue](https://www.journals.elsevier.com/pattern-recognition-letters/call-for-papers/pattern-recognition-and-artificial-intelligence-techniques) has been launched on Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence Techniques for Cultural Heritage. And new articles are available in the March issue of the International Journal on Document Analysis and Recognition (IJDAR), which has just been released. Happy reading. **Andreas Fischer, TC11 Communications Officer** ( ) **Join us!** If you are not already a member of the TC11 community, please consider joining the [TC11 mailing list](https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=iapr-tc11&A=1). **Follow us on Twitter (iapr\_tc11):** Dates and Deadlines =================== Deadlines --------- **2019** - **March 28:** - EXTENDED - Paper submission [IGS 2019](http://igs2019-boa.egr.uh.edu) - **May 1**: Nominations for ICDAR 2019 Awards - **May 10**: Paper submission [CBDAR 2019](https://cbdar2019.univ-lr.fr) - **May 20**: Paper submission [GREC 2019](http://grec2019.univ-lr.fr) - **May 20**: Paper submission [WIADAR 2019](http://ece.boisestate.edu/wiadar/) - **May 31**: Paper submission [PRL Special Issue (Hierarchical Representations)](https://www.journals.elsevier.com/pattern-recognition-letters/call-for-papers/special-issue-hierarchical-representations-new-results) - **June 1**: Proposals for hosting ICDAR 2023 - **June 1**: Paper submission [HIP 2019](https://www.primaresearch.org/hip2019/) - **June 1**: Paper submission [ICDAR-OST 2019](https://sites.google.com/view/icdar-ost2019/) - **June 30**: Paper submission [PRL Special Issue (Cultural Heritage)](https://www.journals.elsevier.com/pattern-recognition-letters/call-for-papers/pattern-recognition-and-artificial-intelligence-techniques) - **Nov. 15**: Paper submission [ICPRAI 2020](https://users.encs.concordia.ca/~icprai20) Upcoming Conferences and Events ------------------------------- **2019** - [IGS 2019](http://igs2019-boa.egr.uh.edu), Cancún, Mexico (June 9-13, 2019) - [ICDAR 2019](http://www.icdar2019.org), Sydney, Australia (September 22-25, 2019) **2020 and Later** - [ICFHR 2020](http://www.icfhr2020.org). Dortmund, Germany (September 8-10, 2020) - **DAS 2020.** Wuhan, China (May 17-20, 2020) - [ICPRAI 2020](https://users.encs.concordia.ca/~icprai20). Zhongshan, China (May 12-15, 2020) - **ICFHR 2022**. Hyderabad, India (December, 2022) Conferences =========== IGS 2019: 2nd Call for Papers ----------------------------- The [19th International Graphonomics Conference (IGS 2019)](http://igs2019-boa.egr.uh.edu) will be held in Cancún, Mexico from June 9-13, 2019. **Important Dates** Mar 28, 2019 *EXTENDED* Paper submission Apr 15, 2019 *EXTENDED* Author Notification Apr 29, 2019 Camera-Ready Papers Due For more information about the International Graphonomics Society, please visit . The Conference theme is *"Graphonomics and Your Brain on Art, Creativity and Innovation"* and will be a single track international forum for discussion on recent advances at the intersection of the creative arts, neuroscience, engineering, media, technology, industry, education, design, forensics, and medicine. Participants will convene to review the state of the art, identify challenges and opportunities and create a Roadmap for the field of Graphonomics and Your Brain on Art. Topics to be addressed include but are not limited to: Integrative Strategies for Understanding Neural, Affective and Cognitive Systems in Realistic, Complex Environments; Neural and Behavioral Individuality and Variation; Neuroaesthetics; Creativity and Innovation; Neuroengineering and Brain-Inspired Art, Creative Concepts and Wearable MoBI Designs; Creative Art Therapy; Informal Learning; Education; and Forensics. Findings, including contributed papers and discussions, will appear in a peer-reviewed special issue on Graphonomics and your Brain on Art. **Jose L Contreras-­Vidal, IGS 2019 General Chair** ( ) ICPRAI 2020: Call for Papers, Exhibitions, and Sponsors ------------------------------------------------------- The [2nd International Conference on Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence (ICPRAI 2020)](https://users.encs.concordia.ca/~icprai20) will be held in Zhongshan, China from May 12-15, 2020. **Important Dates** Nov 15, 2019 Paper Submission Jan 25, 2020 Author Notification Feb 15, 2020 Camera-Ready Papers Due Feb 28, 2020 Early Registration Following the success of the first ICPRAI (, ), in Montreal, Canada, CENPARMI (Centre for Pattern Recognition and Machine Intelligence) of Concordia University will organize a second ICPRAI in 2020 in Zhongshan, China (with direct transportation, linking the airport in Hong Kong) in collaboration with its scientific and cultural communities. Zhongshan is a hub in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area. It is the hometown of great historical figure Dr. Sun Yat-Sen, and has emerged as a beautiful city of innovation and vitality. Hosted in Zhongshan City, ICPRAI 2020 is organized by CENPARMI and journal editors/scientists: *Ching Y. Suen, Yuan Y. Tang, Edwin Hancock, Patrick Wang, Farida Cheriet, Cheng-Lin Liu, Yue Lu, Nicole Vincent, Pong C. Yuen; Igor Gurevich, Xiaoyi Jiang, Adam Krzyzak, Seong-Whan Lee, Jay Liebowitz, Qin Lu, Umapada Pal, Kam-Fai Wong,* plus numerous prominent leaders and researchers from China and the International Community. **Technical Session Tracks** - **Track 1:** Recognition of different types of patterns, handwriting, document, text, face, fingerprint, iris, brain, and strategic objects and targets. - **Track 2:** Computer vision and image processing, bio-medical analysis, 2D and 3D images and graphics, healthcare and tomography, audio/video, and multimedia applications. - **Track 3:** Artificial Intelligence, machine learning, neural networks, SVM, deep learning and classification techniques, language processing, semantic analysis, computational linguistics, e-learning and innovative teaching methods. - **Track 4:** Security and forensic studies, mobile applications, big data, small sample size, supercomputing, data mining and performance evaluation, intelligent systems and practical applications. - **Track 5:** Industrial Applications of PRAI, intellectual properties and ownership, innovation and technology transfer, financial trends and analysis, traffic analysis and smart transportation systems, robotics and autonomous vehicles. **Publication Notes:** Best papers will be selected for a Special Issue in the [International Journal of Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence](https://www.worldscientific.com/worldscinet/ijprai). Papers of general interest will be considered for new books in the Book Series of Language Processing, Pattern Recognition, and Intelligent Systems (), and depending on the submissions, we may also propose Special Issues to other journals on papers of special interest on emerging topics. For more information, visit , . **Nicola Nobile, ICPRAI Secretariat** ( ) ICDAR: Awards and Proposals =========================== Call for Nominations for ICDAR 2019 Awards *(repost)* ----------------------------------------------------- **Important Dates** May 1, 2019 Nominations Due Submission Method: email to / The ICDAR Award Program is an established program designed to recognize individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the field of Document Analysis and Recognition in one or more of the following areas: - Research - Training of students - Research/Industry interaction - Service to the profession Every two years, two awards categories are presented. Namely, the IAPR/ICDAR Young Investigator Award (less than 40 years old at the time the award is made), and the IAPR/ICDAR Outstanding Achievements Award. Each award will consist of a token gift and a suitably inscribed certificate. The recipient of the Outstanding Achievements award will be invited to give the opening key note speech at the ICDAR 2019 conference, introduced by the recipient from the previous conference. Nominations are invited for the ICDAR 2019 Awards in both categories. The nomination packet should include the following: 1. A nominating letter (1 page) including a brief citation to be included in the certificate. 2. A brief vitae (2 pages) of the nominee highlighting the accomplishments being recognized. 3. Supporting letters (1 page each) from 3 active researchers from at least 3 different countries. A nomination is usually put forward by a researcher (preferably from a different Institution than the nominee) who is knowledgeable of the scientific achievements of the nominee, and who organizes letters of support. Submission procedure is strictly confidential, and self-nominations are not allowed. Please send nominations packets electronically to the Awards Committee Co-Chairs Dimosthenis Karatzas () and Alicia Fornes (). The deadline for receipt of nominations is May 1st, 2019 but early submissions are strongly encouraged. The final decision will be made by the Awards Committee which is composed of the ICDAR advisory board and the previous awardees. **ICDAR Advisory Board** Call for Proposals to host ICDAR 2023 *(repost)* ------------------------------------------------ **Important Dates** Jun 1, 2019 Proposals Due Submission Method: email to / The ICDAR Advisory Board is seeking proposals to host the 17th International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition, to be held in 2023 (ICDAR2023). ICDAR is the premier IAPR event in the field of Document Analysis and Recognition with 300 to 500 participants. The aim of this conference is to bring together international experts to share their experiences and to promote research and development in all areas of Document Analysis and Recognition. Any consortium interested in making a proposal to host an ICDAR should first familiarise themselves with the "Guidelines for Organizing and Bidding to Host ICDAR" document which is available on the TC10 and TC11 websites ([iapr-tc10.univ-lr.fr](http://iapr-tc10.univ-lr.fr) and [www.iapr-tc11.org](http://www.iapr-tc11.org), respectively). A link to the most current version of the guidelines appears below. Small updates in the guidelines are expected during the next few weeks, so please check on the Web site of TC11 for the latest version. The submission of a bid implies full agreement with the rules and procedures outlined in that document. The submitted proposal must define clearly the items specified in the guidelines (Section 5.2). It has been the tradition that the location of ICDAR conferences follows a rotating schedule among different continents. Hence, proposals from America are encouraged. However, high quality bids from other locations, for example, from countries where we have had no ICDAR before, will also be considered. Proposals will be examined by the ICDAR Advisory Board. Proposals should be emailed to Dr. Dimosthenis Karatzas at and Dr. Alicia Fornes at by June 1, 2019. **ICDAR Advisory Board** ICDAR 2019: Workshops ===================== CBDAR 2019: Call for Papers --------------------------- The [8th International Workshop on Camera-Based Document Analysis and Recognition (CBDAR 2019)](https://cbdar2019.univ-lr.fr) will be held in conjunction with ICDAR, on September 22, 2019 in Sydney, Australia. **Important Dates** May 10, 2019 Submission Deadline (normal papers) May 20, 2019 Submission Deadline (ICDAR resubs) Jun 15, 2019 Acceptance notification Jun 30, 2019 Camera-Ready Papers Due The workshop will be the successor of the previous seven workshops held in Seoul/Korea (2005), Curitiba/Brazil (2007), Barcelona/Spain (2009), Beijing/China (2011), Washington DC/USA (2013), Nancy/France (2015) and Kyoto/Japan (2017), as satellite workshops of the respective ICDAR conferences. The CBDAR series has a special focus on the analysis of camera captured documents and text. CBDAR is a forum for presenting up-to-date research, sharing experiences and fomenting discussions on future directions. The goal of CBDAR is to explore new research directions through the presentation of up-to-date research as well as discussions on future directions. **Topics of interests include, but are not limited to:** - Camera based acquisition of written information - Restoration of camera captured documents (dewarping, deblurring, etc.) - Camera-based document analysis and recognition - Document image quality assessment / estimation - Image degradation models for camera captured characters/documents - Text extraction from scene images - Text in video - Document image retrieval - Device constrained techniques and algorithms - Performance evaluation and metrics - Mobile OCR - Smartphone-based document scanning - Applications - Feature extraction in camera capture situations **Lluis Gomez-Bigorda and Muhammad Muzzamil Luqman, Workshop Organizers** WIADAR 2019: Call for Papers ---------------------------- The [1st International Workshop on Industrial Applications of Document Analysis and Recognition (WIADAR 2019)](http://ece.boisestate.edu/wiadar/) will be held in conjunction with ICDAR, on September 23-25, 2019 in Sydney, Australia. **Important Dates** May 20, 2019 Paper Submission Deadline Jun 15, 2019 Acceptance notification Jul 01, 2019 Camera-Ready Papers Due This workshop invites researchers and engineers from industry, or public administrations, or universities in partnership with industry or administrations, to briefly present their applied research results and innovative applications. Usually, applied research is not published due to a lack of methodology novelty or, for confidential reasons preventing any accurate description of methodologies. However, all these works are of interest to attendees of ICDAR. This workshop allows these publications, focusing more on experiments with business cases, or original applications, than on the methodology novelty. This workshop is an opportunity to build more interaction between industry, public administrations and academia. **Workshop topics include (but are not limited to):** - Applications of document analysis - Document analysis systems - Document Image Processing - Physical and logical layout analysis - Character and text recognition - Pen-based document analysis - Historical document analysis - Symbol and graphics recognition - Document forensics - Human document interaction - Scene text detection and recognition - Document retrieval - Verification and writer identification - Multimedia documents - Performance evaluation - Machine learning for document analysis - Cognitive issues of documents - Semantic information extraction from documents - Document summarization classification and translation - Document simulation and synthesis For more information please visit: **Elisa Barney Smith and Vincent Poulain d'Andecy, Organizing Chairs** GREC 2019: First Announcement *(repost)* ---------------------------------------- The [13th IAPR International Workshop on Graphics Recognition (GREC 2019)](http://grec2019.univ-lr.fr), organized by the IAPR TC10, will be held on September 20-21, 2019 (Sydney, Australia) in conjunction with ICDAR 2019. **Important Dates** May 20, 2019 Paper Submission Deadline Jun 15, 2019 Acceptance notification Jun 30, 2019 Camera-Ready Papers Due The GREC workshops provide an excellent opportunity for researchers and practitioners at all levels of experience to meet colleagues and to share new ideas and knowledge about graphics recognition methods. The aim of this workshop is to maintain a very high level of interaction and creative discussions between participants, maintaining a "workshop" spirit, and not being tempted by a "mini-conference" model. Three special sessions will focus on: Music Scores Recognition, Comics Analysis and Understanding Sketch Recognition and Understanding. We encourage authors to submit papers on these topics, but papers on other GR topics are also welcome. **Jean-Christophe Burie, GREC 2019 General Chair** HIP 2019: Call for Papers *(repost)* ------------------------------------ The [5th International Workshop on Historical Document Imaging and Processing (HIP 2019)](https://www.primaresearch.org/hip2019/) will be held in conjunction with ICDAR, on September 20-21, 2019 in Sydney, Australia. **Important Dates** Jun 01, 2019 Paper Submission Deadline Jul 15, 2019 Acceptance notification Aug 01, 2019 Camera-Ready Papers Due The workshop brings together researchers working with historical documents and is intended to be complementary and synergistic to the work in analysis and recognition featured in the main sessions of ICDAR, the premier international forum for researchers and practitioners in the document analysis community. **Workshop topics include (but are not limited to):** - Imaging and Image Acquisition (fragile materials, multispectral, non-invasive, applications, ...) - Digital Archiving Considerations (compression, metadata, collection, records, archives, ...) - Document Restoration/Improving readability (dealing with defects, enhancement, interactive tools, ...) - Content Extraction (retrieval, transcription, user interfaces, algorithms, context, ontologies, ...) - Family History Documents and Genealogies (collections, extracting / linking, historical networks, ...) - Automated Classification, Grouping and Hyperlinking of Historical Documents (style identification, online navigation, querying, summarisation, tagging, ...) For more information please visit: **Stefan Pletschacher (Organising Chair), Apostolos Antonacopoulos (General Chair), Clemens Neudecker and Christian Clausner (Program Chairs)** ( ) ICDAR-OST 2019: Call for Papers *(repost)* ------------------------------------------ The [2nd ICDAR Workshop on Open Services and Tools for Document Analysis (ICDAR-OST 2019)](https://sites.google.com/view/icdar-ost2019/) will be held in conjunction with ICDAR, on September 21, 2019 in Sydney, Australia. **Important Dates** Jun 01, 2019 Paper Submission Deadline Jul 15, 2019 Acceptance notification Aug 01, 2019 Camera-Ready Papers Due The workshop aims at promoting open tools, software, open services (for processing, evaluation or visualization), as well as facilitating public dataset usage, in the domain of Document Image Analysis Research, building on the experience of our community and of other ones. Such tools, softwares, services, formats or datasets should observe the principles of being reusable (I can use it on my data), transferable (I can use it on my premises) and reproducible (I can obtain the same results). The accepted contributions are presented during interactive pitch and demo sessions, enabling authors to advertise their work, identify potential issues and solutions in their approach, as well as igniting collaboration with other participants. While this is encouraged, releasing tools with a free/open-source license is not required. **Topics of interests include, but are not limited to:** - Fully Open Source Tools - Web Services for Document Image Analysis - Collaborative Platforms - Creating Ground Truth - Performance Evaluation - Coordination systems for DAR - Deployment of document image processing tools for production - All methods or tools related to Document Image Analysis Research in general For more information please visit: **Fouad Slimane and Lars Vögtlin (Main Organizers), Marcel Würsch and Marcus Liwicki (Program Chairs)** ( ) ICDAR 2019: Competitions ======================== List of ICDAR 2019 Competitions ------------------------------- ICDAR2019 will organize a set of competitions dedicated to a large set of document analysis problems. The list of accepted competitions can be [accessed online](http://icdar2019.org/competitions-2/). **Category: Handwritten Historical Document Layout Recognition** - [ICDAR 2019 Competition on Historical Book Analysis](http://hba.litislab.eu/) (M. Mehri et al.) - [ICDAR 2019 Competition on Digitised Magazine Article Segmentation](https://www.primaresearch.org/DMAS2019/) (L. Wilms et al.) - ICDAR 2019 Competition on German-Brazilian Newspaper Layout Analysis (A. Araujo) - [ICDAR 2019 Competition on Baseline Detection and Page Segmentation](https://scriptnet.iit.demokritos.gr/competitions/11/) (M. Diem et al.) **Category: Historical Handwritten Script Analysis** - [ICDAR 2019 Competition on Recognition of Historical Arabic Scientific Manuscripts](https://www.primaresearch.org/RASM2019/) (A. Schoonbaert et al.) - [ICDAR 2019 Competition on Recognition of Early Indian Printed Documents](https://www.primaresearch.org/REID2019/) (T. Derrick et al.) - ICDAR 2019 Historical Document Reading Challenge on Large Structured Family Records (F. Liwicki et al.) - ICDAR 2019 Competition on Image Retrieval for Historical Handwritten Documents (V. Christlein) **Category: Document Recognition (Layout analysis & Text Recognition)** - ICDAR 2019 Competition on Table Detection and Recognition in Archival Documents (H. Déjean et al.) - ICDAR 2019 Competition on Table Recognition (L. Gao et al.) - ICDAR 2019 Scanned Receipts OCR and Information Extraction (Z. Huang et al.) - ICDAR 2019 Competition on Form Understanding in Noisy Scanned Documents - [ICDAR 2019 Competition on Recognition of Documents with Complex Layouts](https://www.primaresearch.org/RDCL2019/) **Category: Handwriting recognition** - [ICDAR 2019 Competition on Recognition of Handwritten Mathematical Expressions and Typeset Formula Detection](http://www.cs.rit.edu/~crohme2019) (M. Mahdavi et al.) **Category: Document Image Binarization** - ICDAR 2019 Competition on Binarization of Handwritten, printed, or mobile captured Documents (R. Lins) - ICDAR 2019 Competition on Document Image Binarization (I. Pratikakis et al.) **Category: Robust Reading** - [ICDAR 2019 Competition on Robust Text Reading from Large-scale Street View Images with Partial Labels](http://rrc.cvc.uab.es/?ch=16) (Y. Sun et al.) - ICDAR 2019 RRC on Scene Text Visual Question Answering (A. Biten et al.) - [ICDAR 2019 RRC on Arbitrary-shaped scene text detection and recognition](http://rrc.cvc.uab.es/?ch=14) (Y. Sun et al.) - ICDAR 2019 RRC on Reading Chinese text on signboard (Dong Wang) - [ICDAR 2019 RRC on Multi-lingual scene text detection and recognition](http://rrc.cvc.uab.es/?ch=15) (M. Busta et al.) **Category: Post-OCR Correction** - [ICDAR 2019 Competition on Post-OCR Text Correction](https://l3i.univ-larochelle.fr/ICDAR2019PostOCR) (C. Rigaud et al.) **Category: Chart Parsing** - ICDAR 2019 Competition on Chart Elements Parsing (C. Tensmeyer) - ICDAR 2019 Competition on Harvesting Raw Tables from Infographics (R. Setlur) **Category: Miscellaneous Competitions** - [ICDAR 2019 Competition on Fine-Grained Classification of comic characters](https://fgc.univ-lr.fr) (J.-C. Burie) - [ICDAR 2019 Competition on Object Detection and Recognition in Floorplan images](https://orf.univ-lr.fr) (M. Luqman) - [ICDAR 2019 Competition on Signature Verification based on an On-line and Off-line Signature Dataset](https://sigcomp2019.cursorinsight.com/) (G. Hanczar, E. Griechisch) **Marcus Liwicki and Luiz Eduarde S. Olivera, ICDAR2019 Competition Chairs** ( , ) ICDAR 2019: Tutorials ===================== GMPRDIA 2019: First Announcement -------------------------------- The [2nd Tutorial on Graph-based Methods in Pattern Recognition & Document Image Analysis (GMPRDIA 2019)](http://gmprdia.univ-lr.fr) will be held at ICDAR on September 22, 2019, in Sydney, Australia. **Description** Many tasks in Pattern Recognition and Document Image Analysis are formulated as graph matching problems. Despite the NP-hard nature of the problem, fast and accurate approximations have led to significant progress in a wide range of applications in pattern recognition. Therefore learning graph-based representations and related techniques is a real interest of the community. In this tutorial, we will present many methodologies for obtaining stable graph representation for different applications. Afterwards, we will explain different graph-based algorithms, methods and techniques for performing recognition, classification, detection, and many other tasks in graph domain. We will present the recent trends including the graph convolutional networks and message passing in graphs highlighting the applications to various pattern recognition problem such as chemical molecule classification and community detection in graph representation of social networks. Moreover, in addition to different applications of these algorithms in the field of Document Image Analysis & Recognition in particular and Pattern Recognition in general, a hands-on experience for working with graphs will also be provided. **Keywords** - Structural Pattern Recognition - Graph-based representations - Graph matching - Graph embedding - Graph kernel - Graph serialization - Graph indexing - Graph hashing - Subgraph spotting - Graph Neural Network **Anjan Dutta and Muhammad Muzzamil Luqman, Tutorial Organizers** Journals ======== PRL Special Issue on Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence Techniques for Cultural Heritage ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- **Important Dates:** Jun 30, 2019 Paper Submission Call for Papers: Artificial Intelligence is rapidly contaminating new areas of our life day by day. On the other hand, the management of Cultural Heritage is increasingly in need of new solutions to document, manage and visit (even virtually) the enormous amount of artifacts and information that come from the past. The contamination of these two worlds is now a reality and creates the bounds of the main topics of this Virtual Special Issue (VSI). Currently, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Pattern Recognition (PR) technologies are already employed in the fields of cultural heritage preservation and exploitation. From these fields, two main issues arise: - the information contained in digital representations of physical objects like scanned documents, scanned artifacts, maps, digital music, etc. are not easy to exploit and some kind of smart analysis is needed; - at the same time, the production of digital material such as augmented reality, Cultural Heritage games, robotics applications, etc. need innovative techniques and methodologies. The above issues are leading AI and PR researchers to develop new methodologies and applications, which are able to analyze the available data or to generate new ones in a smart way (for augmented reality, serious games, etc.). The aim of this special issue is to present recent advances in AI and PR for data analysis and representation in Cultural Heritage, bringing together the works of many experts in this multidisciplinary subject that involves different skills and knowledge, which span from the study of the cultural heritage to the development of PR/AI techniques for cultural heritage analysis, reconstruction and understanding. At the same time, the SI is aimed at highlighting the advances on these topics from a wide-angle perspective, as well as to stimulate new theoretical and applied research for better characterizing the state of the art in this subject. **Topics** We are interested in original research that addresses the multitude of issues in artificial intelligence for cultural heritage. Topics include, but are not limited to the following: - Ancient document analysis - Digital artifact capture, representation and manipulation - Automatic annotation of tangible and intangible heritage - Interactive software tools for cultural heritage applications - Multimedia music classification and reconstruction - Augmented and Virtual Reality applications - Image processing, classification and retrieval - Semantic segmentation - Serious Game for Cultural Heritage - Robotic applications - Ontology Learning for cultural heritage domain - Knowledge representations and reasoning - Techniques for exploring and interacting with repositories of digital artifacts **Guest Editors:** - Francesco Colace, Università di Salerno, Italy - Francesco Fontanella, Università di Cassino e del Lazio meridionale, Italy - Mario Molinara, Università di Cassino e del Lazio meridionale, Italy - Alessandra Scotto di Freca, Università di Cassino e del Lazio meridionale, Italy - Filippo Stanco, Università di Catania, Italy PRL Special Issue on Hierarchical Representations: New Results and Challenges for Image Analysis *(repost)* ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- **Important Dates:** May 31, 2019 Paper Submission Call for Papers: Image representations based on hierarchical, scale-space models and other non-regular / irregular grids have become increasingly popular in image processing and computer vision over the past decades. Indeed, they allow a modeling of image contents at different (and complementary) levels of scales, resolutions and semantics. Methods based on such image representations have been able to tackle various complex challenges such as multi-scale image segmentation, image filtering, object detection, recognition, and more recently image characterization and understanding, potentially involving higher level of semantics. The proposed virtual special issue will consider extended and updated versions of papers published at the recent ICPRAI 2018 conference as well as submissions from anybody proposing innovative methods in the field of image representation with emphasis, but not restricted to computer vision and image processing, medical imaging, 2D and 3D images, multi-modality, remote sensing image analysis, image indexation and understanding. **Topics** The main topics of this HIERARCHY virtual special issue include, but are not limited to: - image decomposition on the basis of frequency spaces (Fourier, wavelets, etc.) - hierarchies linked to the image space, mathematical morphology, connected operators - scale-space representations - non-regular / irregular grid image representations - multi-scale representation in computer-vision - evaluation of hierarchical image representations The aim of this special issue is to popularize the use of hierarchical methods in image processing and analysis. Indeed, although these methods have become very popular in computer vision over the last 20 years, their potential impact is largely underexploited in image processing and analysis. **Guest Editors:** - Nicolas Passat - Camille Kurtz - Antoine Vacavant IJDAR: Latest Issue (Vol. 22, Issue 1) -------------------------------------- The March 2019 issue of IJDAR has been released. Click on the links below to go directly to the Springer Link page for each article. **Table of Contents** 1. [An improved discriminative region selection methodology for online handwriting recognition.](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10032-018-0314-1) *Subhasis Mandal, S. R. Mahadeva Prasanna & Suresh Sundaram* 2. [A comparative study of delayed stroke handling approaches in online handwriting.](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10032-018-0313-2) *Esma F. Bilgin Tasdemir & Berrin Yanikoglu* 3. [Stroke order normalization for improving recognition of online handwritten mathematical expressions.](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10032-019-00315-2) *Anh Duc Le, Hai Dai Nguyen, Bipin Indurkhya & Masaki Nakagawa* 4. [Online signature verification based on string edit distance.](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10032-019-00316-1) *Kaspar Riesen & Roman Schmidt* 5. [A framework for information extraction from tables in biomedical literature.](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10032-019-00317-0) *Nikola Milosevic, Cassie Gregson, Robert Hernandez & Goran Nenadic* IJDAR Discount for IAPR Members *(repost)* ------------------------------------------ IAPR is pleased to announce a partnership agreement with Springer, the publisher of IJDAR, the International Journal on Document Analysis and Recognition. This new agreement will allow IAPR members to receive a subscription to the electronic version of IJDAR at a discount of nearly 50%. For additional details, see the links below: - - [http://www.iapr.org/publications/intjrnlsub.php](http://www.iapr.org/publications/intjournal.php) **Koichi Kise, Daniel Lopresti and Simone Marinai, IJDAR Editors-in-Chief** ( , , ) Datasets ======== TC11 Datasets Repository *(repost)* ----------------------------------- TC11 maintains a collection of datasets that can be found online in the [TC11 Datasets Repository](http://www.iapr-tc11.org/mediawiki/index.php/Datasets). If you have new datasets (e.g., from competitions) that you wish to share with the research community, please use the [online upload form](http://tc11.cvc.uab.es/upload/). For questions and support, please contact the TC11 Dataset Curator (contact information is below). **Joseph Chazalon (TC11 Dataset Curator)** ( ) Careers ======= Student Industrial Internship Opportunities (IAPR) *(repost)* ------------------------------------------------------------- [IAPR's Industrial Liaison Committee](http://www.iapr.org/committees/committees.php?id=5&subid=53) is pleased to announce the opening of its Company Internship Brokerage List. The web page lists internship opportunities for students at different levels of education and specialism. We expect many additional internship opportunities to be listed here as the community becomes more aware of the site. IAPR Company Internship Brokerage List: **Bob Fisher, Chair, IAPR Industrial Liason Committee** ( ) Contributions and Subscriptions ================================== **Call for Contributions:** To contribute news items, please send a short email to the editor, [Andreas Fischer](mailto:andreas.fischer@hefr.ch). Contributions might include conference and workshop announcements or reports, career opportunities, book reviews, or anything else of interest to the TC11 community. **Subscription:** This newsletter is sent to subscribers of the IAPR TC11 mailing list. To join the TC11 mailing list, please click on [this link](https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=iapr-tc11&A=1). To manage your subscription, please visit the [mailing list homepage](https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=IAPR-TC11). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ IAPR TC11 HOMEPAGE: [http://www.iapr-tc11.org](http://www.iapr-tc11.org) The IAPR is the International Association for Pattern Recognition. IAPR's Technical Committee No. 11 (TC11) includes researchers and practitioners working with Optical Character Recognition (OCR), and more generally the analysis and recognition of information in documents.