Our colleagues Marek Hrúz, Jakub Kanis, and Zdeněk Krňoul won the HANDS19 Challenge Task 2. HANDS19 Challenge is a public competition designed for the evaluation of the task of 3D hand pose estimation in both depth and color modalities in the presence and absence of objects. The goal of Task 2 is depth-based 3D Hand Pose Estimation while Interacting with Objects: This task builds on F-PHAB dataset. Objects appear to be manipulated by a subject in an egocentric viewpoint. Some hand shapes and objects are strategically excluded from the training set in order to measure the interpolation and extrapolation capabilities of submissions. The first prize was announced and presented at a workshop held at the International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV) 2019.
Our colleague from the Department of Cybernetics and NTIS Research Center, Ing. Miroslav Jiřík, Ph.D. and his application Lisa (Liver Surgery Analyzer) have been awarded the Czech DIGI @ MED Award 2019 by the Roche Biotechnology Company. In 2013, it ranked 3rd among the largest pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies in the world (in terms of sales). The Evaluation Jury, composed of renowned long-term health care professionals and IT technology consultants, aims to stimulate young innovators and promote innovative ideas using digital technologies in healthcare and health promotion. The award ceremony took place on 26.11.2019 in Carolina.
Ing. Miroslav Jirik, Ph.D. is an employee of the Biomedical Center of the Faculty of Medicine in Pilsen and the NTIS Research Center of the University of West Bohemia. His long-term research topic is in computer vision and machine learning methods in the field of medical applications. For our departments, it mediates contact with medical research conducted at the Biomedical Center of the Faculty of Medicine.
The user of Lisa is a doctor, a researcher who has specific liver-motivated requirements that cannot be satisfied with common commercial tools. The application serves as a platform to support the research of the blood perfusion in the liver. The basic idea is to extend the possibilities of current clinical care of patients with liver cancer and to allow surgeries at the margin of operability by modeling the outcome of surgery and estimating the restoration potential of the rest of the organ. A significant shift in the knowledge line in favor of patient rescue is made possible by combining the latest technology and medical research, which is being developed jointly by the Faculty of Medicine in Pilsen, Charles University and the Faculty of Applied Sciences, University of West Bohemia. These include the currently implemented AMTMI project – Application of modern technologies in medicine and industry (reg. No .: CZ.02.1.01 / 0.0 / 0.0 / 17_048 / 0007280) supported within the framework of the Pre-Application Research call for the ITI Pilsen Metropolitan Areas.
The facial animation created by our colleague Zdeněk Krňoul received the “Golden Lips Award for Intelligibility” in the first visual speech synthesis challenge: LIPS 2008, which was a special session held at the Interspeech conference, Sept. 22-26, 2008 in Brisbane, Australia.
