IAPR-TC11: Newsletter 2017/05

May, 2017

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Table of Contents

This Month:

• Message from the Editor
• Dates and Deadlines
• ICDAR 2021: Call for Proposals
• Conferences and Workshops
  • ICDAR 2017: Competitions, Workshops, Tutorials
  • Call for Papers: DAS 2018
  • ICDAR Workshop on Machine Learning
  • CFRP: Int'l. Work. Human-Document Interaction (repost)
• ICDAR 2017: Competitions
  • Link to Complete List of ICDAR Competitions
  • Recognition of Documents with Complex Layouts
  • Recognition of Early Indian Printed Documents
  • Page Object Detection (POD) Competition
  • SMARTDOC Competition
  • Arabic Text Detection and Recognition in Multiresolution Video Frames
  • RRC-MLT: Call For Participation (repost)
  • Post-OCR Text Correction (repost)
• ICDAR 2017: Doctoral Consortium (repost)
• Journal Issues and News
  • IJDAR Discount for IAPR Members
  • IJDAR Special Issue: Deep Learning for Doc. Rec. and Analysis
  • IEEE Trans. Human-Machine Systems: Special Issue
• Submissions and Subscriptions

Message from the Editor

This new edition of the TC11 newsletter reflects the vibrancy and diversity of activity in our community. There are numerous calls for submissions to ICDAR workshops and competitions, along with Calls for Papers for DAS 2018 and an upcoming special issue of IJDAR on Deep Learning. Springer is offering a discount on IJDAR subscriptions for IAPR members (details are provided below).

Note that in addition to the specific ICDAR competitions advertised in this newsletter, a complete list of ICDAR competitions with links is available online: http://u-pat.org/ICDAR2017/program_competitions.html.

Also regarding ICDAR, submissions for the Doctoral Consortium are still being accepted. Finally, a Call for Proposals to host ICDAR 2021 may be found below - we ask that those in a position to do so, to please make a bid to host the flagship conference for TC-11.

Richard Zanibbi, TC-11 Communications Officer
(rxzvcs@rit.edu)

Dates and Deadlines

2017

• July 15: ICDAR Doctoral Consortium Applications
• Aug. 31: IJDAR Special Issue: Deep Learning for Document Analysis and Recognition (Call for Papers)
• Nov. 15: ICPRAI 2018 Paper Submission (Call for Papers)
• Nov. 20: DAS 2018 Paper Submission (Call for Papers)

2018

• Jan. 19: DAS 2018 Short Paper Submission (Call for Papers)
• Mar. 2: ICFHR 2018 Submissions (Call for Papers)

ICDAR 2021: Call for Proposals

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON DOCUMENT ANALYSIS AND RECOGNITION (ICDAR)
CALL FOR PROPOSALS TO HOST ICDAR 2021
Deadline: June 15, 2017
Submissions: Send email to dimos@cvc.uab.es / bart.lamiroy@loria.fr

The ICDAR Advisory Board is seeking proposals to host the 16th International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition, to be held in 2021 (ICDAR2021). ICDAR is the premier IAPR event in the field of Document Analysis and Recognition with 300 to 500 participants. The aim of this conference is to bring together international experts to share their experiences and to promote research and development in all areas of Document Analysis and Recognition.

Any consortium interested in making a proposal to host an ICDAR should first familiarise themselves with the "Guidelines for Organizing and Bidding to Host ICDAR" document which is available on the TC10 and TC11 websites ( http://iapr-tc10.univ-lr.fr and http://www.iapr-tc11.org respectively).

A link to the most current version of the guidelines appears below. Small updates in the guidelines are expected during the next few weeks, so please check on the Web site of TC11 for the latest version.

http://www.iapr-tc11.org/mediawiki/images/ICDAR_Guidelines_2016_02_27.pdf

The submission of a bid implies full agreement with the rules and procedures outlined in that document. The submitted proposal must define clearly the items specified in the guidelines (Section 5.2).

It has been the tradition that the location of ICDAR conferences follows a rotating schedule among different continents. Hence, proposals from America are encouraged. However, high quality bids from other locations, for example, from countries where we have had no ICDAR before, will also be considered. Proposals will be examined by the ICDAR Advisory Board.

Proposals should be emailed to Dr. Dimosthenis Karatzas at [dimos@cvc.uab.es ] and Dr. Bart Lamiroy at [bart.lamiroy@loria.fr ] by June 15, 2017.

ICDAR Advisory Board

• Dimosthenis Karatzas (Chair, TC11)
• Bart Lamiroy (Chair, TC10)
• Dan Lopresti (Chair, IAPR C&M)
• Jean-marc Ogier
• Josep Llados
• Simone Marinai
• Cheng-Lin Liu

Conferences and Workshops

Upcoming Conferences

• ICDAR 2017 Kyoto, Japan (Nov. 9-15, 2017)
• DAS 2018 Vienna, Austria (24-27 April, 2018)
• ICPRAI 2018 Montreal, Canada (May 14-17, 2018)
• ICFHR 2018 Niagara Falls, USA (August 6-8, 2018)
• ICFHR 2020 Dortmund, Germany (September 8-10, 2020)

ICDAR 2017: Competitions, Workshops, Tutorials

ICDAR 2017 will be hosting a variety of interesting competitions, workshops and tutorials. Current information may be found at the links provided below. Additional details for some of the ICDAR competitions and workshops may be found below.

• ICDAR Competitions
• ICDAR Workshops
• ICDAR Tutorials

Please note that some of these important events may still be accepting participants. I encourage you to contact event organizers directly with any questions that you may have.

Richard Zanibbi, TC-11 Communications Officer
(rxzvcs@rit.edu)

Call for Papers: DAS 2018

13th IAPR International Workshop on Document Analysis Systems (DAS 2018)
April 24-27 2018, Vienna, Austria
http://www.das2018-conference.org

Important Dates

Full papers due:            Nov. 20, 2017  
* Decision notification:    Jan. 15, 2018  
Short papers due:           Jan. 19, 2018  
* Decision notification:    Jan. 31, 2018  
Tutorial proposals due:     Nov. 30, 2017

Overview. DAS 2018 is the 13th edition of the 100% participation single-track IAPR sponsored workshop focusing on system-level issues and approaches in document analysis and recognition. The workshop comprises invited speaker presentations, oral, poster, tutorial and demo sessions as well as working group discussions.

DAS 2018 will be organized at TU Wien (Vienna University of Technology), in the heart of Vienna’s city center, which places the attendees within walking distance to a large variety of world-famous historical and cultural attractions. The program will include long and short papers, posters and demonstrations of working or prototype systems. All submissions will undergo a rigorous review process with a minimum of 3 reviews considering the originality of work, the quality of research or analysis of experience, the relevance to document analysis systems, and quality of presentation.

Information regarding paper submissions is provided below. Note: Submission of a paper involves a commitment that, if accepted, one or more authors will attend the workshop.

Full Papers. Full papers should describe complete works of original research. Authors are invited to submit original, unpublished research papers that are not being considered in another form, up to 6 pages length.

Short Papers. Short papers provide an opportunity to report on research in progress and to present novel positions on document analysis systems. Authors may submit short papers (up to 2 pages in length). Short papers will also undergo review and will appear in an extra booklet, not in the official DAS 2018 proceedings.

Demonstrations. DAS 2018 seeks public demonstrations of novel systems, to be presented to the workshop as a whole during breaks between paper sessions. Prospective demonstrators should submit a two-page summary of the system to be demonstrated. Demonstration proposals will undergo review and summaries of accepted demonstrations will appear in the extra DAS 2018 booklet, as in the case of short papers.

For Topics & Technologies and Commitees, please see the DAS 2018 website: http://www.das2018-conference.org

Contact: das2018@caa.tuwien.ac.at

Robert Sablatnig and Florian Kleber, DAS 2018 General Chairs
(sab@caa.tuwien.ac.at, kleber@caa.tuwien.ac.at)

ICDAR Workshop on Machine Learning

Submission Deadline

Paper Submissions:   July 5, 2017

Please consider participating in the Workshop on Machine Learning in Kyoto, Japan on November 11, 2017, which is co-located with the ICDAR 2017 conference. The workshop aims to facilitate interaction, collaboration and engagement between the document analysis community and other research communities including pattern recognition, machine learning, computer vision, and image analysis.

We ask that you please consider submitting your work to this workshop. For more details about the workshop, please visit: http://u-pat.org/ICDAR2017/program_workshops.html

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Analysis and recognition of document images and handwritings using machine learning techniques, such as deep learning
• Convolution Neural Networks (CNNs)
• Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs)
• Semantic Analysis (e.g., Word Embedding and Topic Models)
• Graphical Models and their Optimization (e.g., HMM and CRF/MRF)
• Feature Reduction and Selection (e.g., Sparse Representation and Latent Space Analysis)
• Metric Learning, Ensemble Learning (e.g., Boosting and Random Forests)
• Semi-Supervised and Weakly-Supervised Learning
• Support Vector Machines (SVM)
• Instance-Based Methods (e.g., k-Nearest Neighbor classifier)
• Applications of Machine Learning

Manuscript length: IEEE format with 6 pages (maximum). WML-2017 follows a single-blind review process, and so authors are asked to include their names and affiliations in their paper submissions. Submissions will be made through EasyChair.

For further information please contact to WML Secretariat through icdarwml@gmail.com.

Thanks and Regards,
Umapada Pal and Eric Granger, General Chairs for WML-2017
(umapada_pal@yahoo.com, eric.granger@etsmtl.ca)

Call for Papers: 1st International Workshop on Human-Document Interaction (repost)

Location: Kyoto Japan (in conjunction with ICDAR 2017)
Web Page: www.cvc.uab.es/HDI2017
Important Dates:

Regular paper submissions:    July 1, 2017
ICDAR resubmission deadline:  July 15, 2017  
Notifications:                July 31, 2017  
Camera Ready:                 September 1, 2017  
Workshop Dates:               November 10 or 11th, 2017  (TBD) 

HDI 2017 will focus on how humans interact with written information around them, and the interfaces between users and documents. The term document is meant in the wider possible sense, to refer to any physical object that carries written information.

The workshop aims to create a space for debate between the Document Image Analysis and Recognition and the Human-Computer Interaction communities, and it is motivated by a number of recent developments that point to a coming change of paradigm in the way we interact with written information around us.

Fresh paper submissions as well as re-submissions of improved versions of rejected ICDAR papers (submitted along with the original reviews) are welcome. Accepted papers will be published in the "ICDAR 2017 Workshops" IEEE CPS volume.

Topics of interest include, among others:

• Augmented documents
• Linking physical and digital content
• Reading behaviour analysis
• Human factors
• User experience and usability
• Wearable sensors in reading
• Interaction for facilitating Document Image Analysis (teaching reading systems through the way humans interact with written information)
• Document Image Analysis for enabling Interaction
• Content personalisation
• Applications (e.g. document editing, interactive translation, collaborative editing)

Workshop Chairs

Jean-Christophe Burie (L3i Laboratory, University of La Rochelle, France)
Mickaël Coustaty (L3i Laboratory, University of La Rochelle, France)
Dimosthenis Karatzas (Computer Vision Centre, Spain)
Koichi Kise (Osaka Prefecture University)
Kai Kunze (Keio University, Japan)

Dimosthenis Karatzas, HDI 2017 Workshop Co-Chair
(dimos@cvc.uab.es)

ICDAR 2017: Competitions

ICDAR 2017: Complete List of Competitions

Please note that in addition to the specific ICDAR competitions advertised below, a complete list of ICDAR competitions with links is available online: http://u-pat.org/ICDAR2017/program_competitions.html.

ICDAR 2017 Competition on Recognition of Documents with Complex Layouts (RDCL2017)

Web Page: http://www.primaresearch.org/RDCL2017

This competition presents challenges for page segmentation, region classification, and text recognition in an end-to-end scenario. The dataset contains scanned pages from contemporary magazines and technical articles. Participants will be provided with know-how and tools that aid the development or extension of their page analysis systems.

Details may be found on the competition web page.

Apostolos Antonacopoulos, Competition Organizer
(a.antonacopoulos@primaresearch.org)

ICDAR 2017 Competition on Recognition of Early Indian Printed Documents (REID2017)

Web Page: http://www.primaresearch.org/REID2017

The British Library is currently undertaking a ground breaking project, Two Centuries of Indian Print, to digitise and make available as open access 4,000 early printed Indian books (1713-1914) written in Bengali. Complementary material, the Quarterly Lists, consist of catalogue records for all books published in India between 1867 and 1967, will also be made openly available through the project. As part of this project a challenge is posed to find an optimal solution for accurately and automatically transcribing the Bengali books and Quarterly Lists, to form a unique dataset that can be used with computational tools and methods, and to enable full-text search and discovery.

Details may be found on the competition web page.

Apostolos Antonacopoulos, Competition Organizer
(a.antonacopoulos@primaresearch.org)

ICDAR 2017 Page Object Detection (POD) Competition

Important Dates

Release Examples with Ground Truth: March 20, 2017
Release Training Dataset:           April 20, 2017
Release Testing Dataset:            May 1, 2017
Result Submissions:              ** May 30, 2017 **
Release Testing Dataset Annotations and Evaluation Tools: 
  June 30, 2017

The organizers of the ICDAR 2017 Page Object Detection (POD) Competition invite potential participants to submit their systems for the competition. The goal for the POD competition is to detect specific page objects (e.g. tables, formulas, figures(including charts)) in document images.

The competition consists of four sub tasks:

• Detection of formulas
• Detection of tables
• Detection of figures
• Detection of all above page objects

Participants can select one or more sub tasks to participate. We look forward to your participation.

For detailed information please visit the competition website: http://www.icst.pku.edu.cn/cpdp/ICDAR2017_PODCompetition/index.html

POD Competition Organizers
(chlxyd@pku.edu.cn)

ICDAR 2017 SmartDoc Competition

Important Dates

Registration:   May 26th
Competition:    May 29th - June 2nd

In conjunction with the 14th IAPR International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition (ICDAR 2017), the L3i (Univ. La Rochelle) and the CVC (UAB) would like to invite you to participate in our new challenge. The official website is http://smartdoc.univ-lr.fr.

The new SmartDoc edition focuses on video-captured document images by mobiles. It targets large documents and reflective documents. The capture in video mode provides extra information that can be used to reconstruct a high quality image and prevent defects such as out-of-focus blur and spotlights (which usually make isolated pictures useless).

The SmartDoc competition will be held from May 29th to June 2nd. Participants can check out available training material and start preparing their methods from now. The deadline for registration of interest is May 26th.

A sample dataset is already available, and more tools (evaluation, example method) will be released very soon. Participants do not need to submit their binaries nor their source code.

Muzzamil Luqman, Competition Organizer
(mluqma01@univ-lr.fr)

ICDAR 2017 Competition on Arabic Text Detection and Recognition in Multiresolution Video Frames

​ ​In conjunction with the 14th IAPR International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition (ICDAR'17), in Kyoto, during 10-15 November 2017.

After the success of the first edition of the “Arabic Text in Videos Competition ̶ AcTiVComp”, we are proposing to organize a more challenging second edition in conjunction with ICDAR’17. The main objective is to contribute in the evolution of Arabic Video-OCR research area. The first edition was held in the framework of the 23rd International Conference on Pattern Recognition (ICPR’16). The achieved results have shown that there is still room for improvement in both detection and recognition of Arabic video text.

The goals of this competition are i) to evaluate the performance of participating systems to automatically locate and recognize overlay text objects in multiresolution Arabic video frames and ii) to unify the groundtruth formats, the evaluation protocols and metrics used in the Arabic Video-OCR domain. For the purposes, we provide the participants with a new version of the Arabic-Text-in-Videos (AcTiV) dataset which is freely available for researchers.

This second edition has a special focus on the evaluation of the multiresolution impact on the detection and recognition performances. The participating systems will be evaluated in both “channel-dependent” and “channel-free” contexts. For this, new data / resolution have been prepared and new evaluation protocols are defined.

Researchers working on other scripts (e.g., Latin, Japanese, Chinese, Urdu texts, etc) or other environment (e.g., scene image texts, born digital images) are strongly invited to participate in this competition to see how their systems perform on the AcTiV dataset. ​ ​For more details about the contest, please visit the competition website: http://diuf.unifr.ch/diva/AcTiVComp.

If you have any specific questions, do not hesitate to contact Oussama Zayene (email is provided below).

Oussama Zayene, Competition Co-Organizer
(oussama.zayene@unifr.ch)

ICDAR 2017 Competition -- RRC-MLT : Call For Participation (repost)

Robust Reading Competition:
Challenge on Multi-Lingual Scene Text Detection and Script Identification

We invite you to participate in our challenge on multi-lingual scene detection and script identification. This year: more scenes and more languages in scene text images!

Download the call here: http://rrc.cvc.uab.es/files/RRC-MLT-2017-CFP.pdf
See more information at our website: http://rrc.cvc.uab.es/?ch=8

Nibal Nayef, RRC-MLT Competition Organizer
(nibal.nayef@univ-lr.fr)

ICDAR 2017 Competition -- Post-OCR Text Correction: Call for Participation (repost)

Important Dates:

Training dataset available online:   Late Feb. 2017  
Registration deadline:               30th March 2017  
Result submission:                   15th June 2017

Competition Web Page: http://l3i.univ-larochelle.fr/ICDAR2017PostOCR

The goal of this competition is to improve/denoise OCR-ed texts, based on an original corpus of OCRed documents composed of 12M characters (2.1M tokens) aligned with their corresponding Gold Standard, with an equal share of English- and French-written materials. There are two independent subtasks: 1) Detection of OCR errors, and 2) Correction of OCR errors. A competition report including both the description of the methodology and a comparative analysis of participants' performances will be submitted for publication at ICDAR 2017.

To participate, please contact the competition organizers below.

Guillaume CHIRON (BnF/L3i), Antoine DOUCET (L3i), and Jean-Philippe MOREUX (BnF), Competition Organizers
(guillaume.chiron@bnf.fr, antoine.doucet@univ-lr.fr, jean-philippe.moreux@bnf.fr)

ICDAR 2017: Doctoral Consortium

ICDAR 2017 Doctoral Consortium (repost)

Important Dates

Submission deadline:   July 15  
Doctoral Consortium:   November 12

In 2011, the first Doctoral Consortium in the Document Analysis community was organized in conjunction with the International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition (ICDAR). This has led to successful successor events at ICDAR 2013 and ICDAR 2015. The tradition of having a Doctoral Consortium as a satellite event to the ICDAR main conference will be continued at ICDAR 2017 in Kyoto, Japan.

The goal of the ICDAR 2017 Doctoral Consortium is to create an opportunity for Ph.D. students to test their research ideas, present their current progress and future plans, and receive constructive criticism and insights related to their future work and career perspectives. A mentor (a senior researcher who is active in the field) will be assigned to each student to provide individual feedback. In addition, students will have the opportunity to present an overview of their research plan during a special poster session.

Participation in the ICDAR 2017 Doctoral Consortium will be limited to 25 students. Prospective participants are encouraged to submit their application by July 15 (submission procedure to be announced). The Doctoral Consortium Chairs will then review all applications received. Preference will be given to students who are at a stage in their studies most likely to benefit (i.e., they have identified a research direction and published some initial results, but the thesis is not yet set in stone).

Participation to the Doctoral Consortium will be free for all accepted students, i.e., there will be no extra registration fees!

The ICDAR 2017 Doctoral Consortium will take place the day before the main conference, i.e., on Sunday, November 12.

We are looking forward to your participation!

Véronique Eglin & Rafael Dueire Lins, ICDAR 2017 Doctoral Consortium Co-Chairs
( veronique.eglin@insa-lyon.fr, rdl.ufpe@gmail.com )

Journals

IJDAR Discount for IAPR Members (repost)

IAPR is pleased to announce a partnership agreement with Springer, the publisher of IJDAR, the International Journal on Document Analysis and Recognition. This new agreement will allow IAPR members to receive a subscription to the electronic version of IJDAR at a discount of nearly 50%. For additional details, see the links below:

• http://www.iapr.org/publications/intjournal.php
• http://www.iapr.org/publications/intjrnlsub.php

Koichi Kise, Daniel Lopresti and Simone Marinai, IJDAR Editors-in-Chief
( kise@cs.osakafu-u.ac.jp, lopresti@cse.lehigh.edu, simone.marinai@unifi.it )

IJDAR Special Issue:
Deep Learning for Document Analysis and Recognition (repost)

In recent years, applying Deep Learning techniques to Document Analysis and Recognition (DAR) tasks has produced significant performance gains. These have included impressive advances in handwriting recognition, word-spotting in document images, document segmentation, and text detection in natural scenes.

This special issue aims to report new advances in DAR using deep learning methods. Articles presenting reviews, perspectives, new methods and applications in DAR are cordially invited. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to uses of Deep Learning for:

• Document image processing and segmentation
• Layout analysis
• Character and text recognition
• Scene text detection and recognition
• Writer identification and signature analysis
• Document retrieval
• Context modeling
• Graphics and symbol recognition
• Other DAR tasks

Paper submissions are due August 31, 2017. For further information, please see the Call for Submissions.

Koichi Kise, Daniel Lopresti and Simone Marinai, IJDAR Editors-in-Chief
( kise@cs.osakafu-u.ac.jp, lopresti@cse.lehigh.edu, simone.marinai@unifi.it )

IEEE Transactions on Human-Machine Systems: Special Issue on Drawing and Handwriting Processing for User-Centered Systems (repost)

The April 2017 issue of IEEE Transactions on Human-Machine Systems is concerned with interactive systems that incorporate handwriting and/or drawing. The Special Issue aims to bring together some of the most valuable research contributions and applicable solutions in the field of drawing and handwriting processing for human–machine interaction.

Twelve papers are included in the special issue concerning diverse topics such as signature verification, user-centered document segmentation, sketch retrieval, combined speech and handwriting entry, emotion and handwriting, and dysgraphia.

The issue is available online now: THMS April 2017. Please spread the word, and take a moment to peruse the Table of Contents.

Réjean Plamondon, Guest Editor, IEEE THMS Special Issue
(rejean.plamondon@polymtl.ca)

Contributions and Subscriptions

Call for Contributions: To contribute news items, please send a short email to the editor, Richard Zanibbi (rxzvcs@rit.edu). Contributions might include conference and workshop announcements/updates/reports, career opportunities, book reviews, or anything else of interest to the TC-11 community.

Subscription: This newsletter is sent to subscribers of the IAPR TC11 mailing list. To join the TC-11 mailing list, please click on this link: Join the TC-11 Mailing List. To manage your subscription, please visit the mailing list homepage: TC-11 Mailing List Homepage.

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