Supporting Uncertainty in Biological Images: Algorithms and Data Management

Speaker:	Professor Ambuj SINGH
		Department of Computer Science
		University of California at Santa Barbara

Title:		"Supporting Uncertainty in Biological Images:
		 Algorithms and Data Management"

Date:		Monday, 16 March, 2009

Time:		4:00pm - 5:00pm

Venue:		Lecture Theatre F
		(Leung Yat Sing Lecture Theatre, near lifts 25/26)
		HKUST

Abstract:

Rapid advances in imaging technologies have opened the door for a new era
of biological research, leading to quantitative understanding of complex
systems. The realization of this huge potential, however, critically
depends on the availability of a new generation of image informatics
software. As has been demonstrated in the context of the human genome, the
acquisition of data is but a preliminary step, and true challenge lies in
developing effective means to analyze such data and endow them with
physical or functional meaning. The wealth of data acquired through
imaging contains invaluable spatio-temporal information on biological
processes and systems. The inherent nature of bioimages leads to
uncertainty in data, e.g., to which retinal image layer does a given pixel
belong, what is the thickness of a neurite, how many photoreceptors are
there, or what is the length of a microtubule. Probability distributions
are the natural way to model such phenomena. The aggregation of data (such
as the thickness of a layer measured at different spatial locations or the
length of all microtubules in an image) again leads to distributions. In
this talk, I will first introduce a few kinds of bioimage data. Then, I
will discuss image analysis and feature extraction techniques that produce
probabilistic data. Finally, I will present techniques for querying
probabilistic data, and the design of a probabilistic database system.


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Biogaphy:

Ambuj Singh is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of
California at Santa Barbara. He received his B.Tech. from the Indian
Institute of Technology and a PhD degree from the University of Texas at
Austin. His current research interests are in graph and bioimage data
management and analysis. He leads the database development effort at the
Center for Bioimage Informatics supported by the NSF. He has been involved
in a number of other multidisciplinary efforts. He has written over 130
technical papers in the areas of distributed computing, databases, and
bioinformatics, and advised over 30 students including 15 PhDs.