Speaker: Prof. Jean Christophe Burie, L3I, University of La Rochelle
Topic: Segmentation and indexation of complex objects in comic book images
Date: 2:00pm – 3:30pm, April 15th 2015
Location: Room 606, USTH building, 18 Hoang Quoc Viet, Cau Giay, Hanoi.

Abstract: Born in the 19th century, comics is a visual medium used to express ideas via images, often combined with text or visual information. It is considered as a sequential art, spread worldwide initially using newspapers, books and magazines. Nowadays, the development of the new technologies and the World Wide Web is giving birth to a new form of paperless comics that takes advantage of the virtual world freedom. However, traditional comics still represent an important cultural heritage in many countries. They have not yet received the same level of attention as music, cinema or literature about their adaptation to the digital format. Using information technologies with classic comics would facilitate the exploration of digital libraries, faster theirs translations, allow augmented reading, speech playback for the visually impaired etc. The design process of comics is so typical that their automated analysis may be seen as a niche research field within document analysis, at the intersection of complex background, semi-structured and mixed content documents. In this work, three different approaches for comic book image analysis has been proposed. The first approach is called “sequential” because the image content is described in an intuitive way, from simple to complex elements using previously extracted elements to guide further processing. The second method is called “independent” because it is composed by several specific extractors for each elements of the image content. The third approach introduce a knowledge-driven system that combines low and high level processing to build a scalable system of comics image understanding.