Conference report by Efthimia Bilissi GIS ARPS

The PICS annual international technical conference on the science and systems of digital photography was held in Rochester, New York, from 13 to 16 of May 2003. This year, it included the Fifth International Symposium on Multispectral Color Science.

The first day of the conference was dedicated to tutorials in a wide range of specialised topics. The second day of the conference started with a plenary session which was opened by Mark Fairchild, General Chair of the conference, and continued with three keynote speakers: Don Waters, who talked on "Imaging and Scholarly communication", Ken Parulski, who analysed issues on consumer digital photography in his talk "From Megapixels to Memories: The Challenge of consumer Digital Photography", and Ian Gatley who closed the plenary session with his talk on "Image Algorithms and Systems Research".

During the plenary session, the Society for Imaging Science and Technology (IS&T) Honours and Awards session took place. Yoichi Miyake was awarded Honorary Membership in recognition 'for contributions to colour and spectral image processing and analysis, and the education of a new generation of leaders in colour science' and Kay Marsh was given the Service award 'for invaluable assistance with technical publications and the management of trademark and copyright issues'.

The technical program started after the plenary session, with over a hundred oral and poster presentations. The oral technical presentations ran in two simultaneous tracks, Track 1 and Track 2. The poster session took place on the third day of the conference.

Track 1 included the following sessions:

• Vision and Psychophysics, which included papers on colour and image quality, eye tracking observers during rating tasks, a colour visual model for JPEG compression, visibility of noise and banding-like artifacts, perception of depth in photographic images, and prediction of print defect perception.
• Digital Image Capture, which focused on image sensor characterisation, presentation of new types of image sensors, random noise in the colour processing of image data and methods to reduce its amplification, and real - time wavefront coded microscopy. It finished with a talk on the progress on ISO/TC42 standards for Digital image capture imaging performance.
• Image Quality Standards, in which the scope and progress of the INCITS W1.1 Standards was presented.
• Image Performance Measurement and Analysis, with topics on metrics of image differences, perceptibility and acceptability of gamma differences of displayed images, and image quality measuring systems.

Track 2 included the Fifth International Symposium on Multispectral Color Science. The sessions were on:

• Engineering of Multispectral Systems, with subjects on Colour and spectral image acquisition and colour reproduction.
• Evaluation on Multispectral Systems, which focused on colour and spectral imaging.
• Processing and Output of Multispectral Images, with topics on watermarking, compression, representation of multispectral images with different number of bands, spectral redundancy of printers and control algorithms for 6-primary displays minimising effects of observer metamerism.
• Multispectral Imaging Applications, which included topics on applications such as medical, spectral remote sensing, textile industry, e-commerce, and file formats.
• Archiving and Museum Imaging, with papers on printing technologies and on methods used for recovery of information on manuscripts and historical documents.
• Colour Image Processing, which focused on colour correction methods, cast shadow identification and image restoration, level - successive encoding, noise removal, and extension of the colour gamut and dynamic range of sRGB images.

I attended most of the papers in the "Vision and Psychophysics", "Digital Image Capture", "Image Performance Measurement and Analysis" and "Colour Image Processing" sessions. I also attended selected talks in other sessions as well. Overall, the conference was very satisfying, well organised and the technical quality of the papers high. The presentations were very interesting and were followed by fruitful discussions between the participants.

The presentation of my paper entitled, "Perceptibility and Acceptability of Gamma Differences of Displayed sRGB images" took place on the last day of the conference. The talk, which was placed in the "Image Performance Measurement and Analysis" session, went well and I received some interesting questions. I also had the opportunity to discuss my work with other researchers in the field, which I found particularly useful. The opportunity to learn about new aspects of imaging science and the positive feedback I received on my work made this conference a worthwhile experience.

I wish to thank the Royal Photographic Society Imaging Science Group for the award of the Research Student Travel Grant that gave me the opportunity to present my paper at the PICS 2003 conference.