Website: https://www.imageclef.org/2020/coral 

*** CALL FOR PARTICIPATION ***

The 3rd Edition of the ImageCLEF Coral Annotation Challenge 2021

Data

Advances in automatically annotating images for complexity and benthic composition have been promising, and we are interested in automatically identify areas of interest and to label them appropriately for monitoring coral reefs. Coral reefs are in danger of being lost within the next 30 years, and with them the ecosystems they support. This catastrophe will not only see the extinction of many marine species, but also create a humanitarian crisis on a global scale for the billions of humans who rely on reef services. By monitoring the changes and composition of coral reefs we can help prioritise conservation efforts.

New for 2021:

in its 3rd edition, the training and test data will form the complete set of images required to form a 3D reconstruction of the environment. This allows the participants to explore novel probabilistic computer vision techniques based around image overlap and transposition of data points. Participants will be given instruction on the preparation of 3D reconstruction, the output files (.obj) and a visualisation of each model without labels (for example, https://skfb.ly/6SooQ).

In addition, participants are encourage to use the publicly available NOAA NCEI data to train their approaches. 

Challenge description

Participants will be require to annotate and localise coral reef images by labelling the images with types of benthic substrate together. Each image is provided with possible class types. 

Data

The data for this task originates from a growing, large-scale collection of images taken from coral reefs around the world as part of a coral reef monitoring project with the Marine Technology Research Unit at the University of Essex.
Substrates of the same type can have very different morphologies, color variation and patterns. Some of the images contain a white line (scientific measurement tape) that may occlude part of the entity. The quality of the images is variable, some are blurry, and some have poor color balance. This is representative of the Marine Technology Research Unit dataset and all images are useful for data analysis. The images contain annotations of the following 13 types of substrates: Hard Coral – Branching, Hard Coral – Submassive, Hard Coral – Boulder, Hard Coral – Encrusting, Hard Coral – Table, Hard Coral – Foliose, Hard Coral – Mushroom, Soft Coral, Soft Coral – Gorgonian, Sponge, Sponge – Barrel, Fire Coral – Millepora and Algae – Macro or Leaves.
The test data contains images from four different locations:

• same location as training set
• similar location to training set
• geographically similar to training set
• geographically distinct from training set

Important dates

• 16.11.2020: registration opens for all ImageCLEF tasks
• 04.02.2021: development data released
• 15.03.2021: test data release starts
• 07.05.2021: deadline for submitting the participants runs
• 28.05.2021: deadline for submission of working notes papers by the participants
• 21-24.09.2021: CLEF 2021, Bucharest, Romania

Participant Registration

https://www.imageclef.org/2021#registration

Organizing Committee

• Jon Chamberlain <jchamb(at)essex.ac.uk>,University of Essex, UK
• Thomas A. Oliver <thomas.oliver(at)noaa.gov>, NOAA/ US IOOS, USA
• Hassan Moustahfid <hassan.moustahfid(at)noaa.gov>, NOAA/ US IOOS, USA
• Antonio Campello <a.campello(at)wellcome.ac.uk>,Wellcome Trust, UK
• Adrian Clark <alien(at)essex.ac.uk>,University of Essex, UK
• Alba García Seco de Herrera <alba.garcia(at)essex.ac.uk>,University of Essex, UK

For more details and updates, please visit the task website at: https://www.imageclef.org/2021/coral 

And join our mailing list: https://groups.google.com/d/forum/imageclefcoral  

Dr Alba García Seco de Herrera PhD

Lecturer

Department of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering (CSEE)

University of Essex

T +44 (0) 1206 872907

E alba.garcia@essex.ac.uk

► https://www.essex.ac.uk/

The Proaction Laboratory (Jorge Almeida's lab; proactionlab.fpce.uc.pt) at the University Coimbra Portugal is looking for Researchers at different levels of their career from newly phd graduates, to assistant, associate or full level researchers to be part of the lab in a joint competitive application to a Portuguese Science Foundation (FCT) independent researcher call. We particularly encourage applications from women, and from underrepresented groups in academia.

The applicants should have an interest in cognitive neuroscience, vision science and preferably (but not limited to) object recognition, conceptual processing, and action and perception. We are particularly interested in motivated and independent Researchers addressing these topics with strong expertise in behavioral, motion tracking, neuromodulation, fMRI and/or EEG approaches (in particular Multivariate EEG decoding, and EEG/fMRI multimodal approaches). Good programming skills, great communication and mentoring skills, and a great command of English are a plus.

The applicant and the lab will work on a competitive project to be submitted. Results from the application are expected to be out in October/November 2020. The application deadline is around February 29.

The positions are as independent researchers in the Proaction Lab, are for 6 years, and the salary is the same as the Portuguese payroll for University Professors (net values for junior, assistant, associate positions, for instance are approximately 1500, 1900 and 2100 euros per month in a 14 month salary per year; these are competitive salaries for the cost of living in Portugal and especially in Coimbra).  

The Proaction Lab is currently very well funded as we have a set of on-going funded projects including a Starting Grant ERC to Jorge Almeida and several FCT projects. We have access to a 3T MRI scanner with a 64-channel coil (with EEG inside the scanner), to tDCS, and to a fully set psychophysics lab. We have a 256 ch EEG, motion tracking and eyetracking on site. We also have a science communication office dedicated to the lab.

Finally, the University of Coimbra is a 700 year old University and has been selected as a UNESCO world Heritage site. Coimbra is one of the most lively university cities in the world, and it is a beautiful city with easy access to the beach and mountain.

The deadline for this pre-application is January 30, but you should apply as soon as you can – the sooner the better so that we can prepare the application. If interested send an email to jorgecbalmeida@gmail.com, with a CV, and motivation/scientific proposal letter. If there is a fit, we will jointly apply to these positions.