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Position: PhD (CASE) Studentship in multimedia signal processing (3 years)
Location: London, UK 
Title: Perceptually-sensitive video encoding

Applications are invited for a CASE PhD studentship with the Digital Signal Processing and Multimedia Research Group of the Electronic Engineering Department, Queen Mary, University of London in collaboration with BT Group CTO Research and Venturing.

Project description:
The development of new compression or transmission systems is driven by the need of reducing the bandwidth and storage requirements of images and video while increasing their perceived visual quality. Traditional compression schemes aim at minimizing the coding residual in terms of mean squared error (MSE) or peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR). This is optimal from a purely mathematical, but not a perceptual point of view. Ultimately, perception is the more appropriate and more relevant benchmark. Therefore, the objective must be to define a codec that maximizes perceived visual quality such that it produces better quality at the same bit rate as a traditional encoder or the same visual quality at a lower bit rate.
The research will centre on standard video coders and will exploit semantic segmentation, human visual attention models and foveation. The main objectives of the project are the following: (1) to develop a perceptually-sensitive video encoding algorithm; (2) to study a model of visual attention in video and to validate it with subjective experiments using an eye tracker; (3) to extensively test and evaluate the improved encoder with standard data sets

Workplace:
The normal place of work will be Queen Mary, University of London, but the candidate will have the opportunity to spend some periods, distributed over the project life and totalling a minimum of 3 months, within BT. The successful candidate will join an expanding research group engaged in a variety of national and international projects on digital media and content technologies.
Queen Mary, University of London is situated in Mile End, bordering Regents Canal, close to Canary Wharf and to the City of London (
http://www.qmul.ac.uk  ).

Eligibility:
The studentship is open to UK and EU students only.
For UK residents it covers the cost of home student tuition fees as well as a tax-free EPSRC maintenance stipend ( http://www.epsrc.ac.uk ). For EU students it only covers the cost of tuition fees and does not include a maintenance stipend. In addition, for both UK and EU students, a stipend contribution of GBP 3,000 per annum will be made by the CASE sponsor.
Applicants must have a first degree in mathematical science, physics, statistics, computer science, electronic engineering or allied disciplines (minimum 2:1 or equivale
nt), and excellent mathematical and programming skills. Previous experience of digital signal processing or computer vision is desirable, although not mandatory.

Start date: 1st May 2006

Application: Applicants should follow the guidelines that can be found at  http://www.elec.qmul.ac.uk/study/phd/res-stud.htm

For informal enquiries: contact Dr Andrea Cavallaro ( andrea.cavallaro@elec.qmul.ac.uk )

Links:
DSP and Multimedia Group: http://www.elec.qmul.ac.uk/research/dsp/index.html 
BT Group CTO Research and Venturing: http://www.bt.com

 
 

 

 
 
   

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