Digital Imaging Research Centre

Introduction

The Digital Imaging Research Centre (DIRC) at Kingston University is one of the largest computer vision groups in the UK, with internationally recognised expertise in visual surveillance, medical imaging and intelligent environments. Launched in 2000, DIRC was created to integrate and enhance research excellence. By applying high quality academic research to the solution of real industrial problems, the centre aims to strengthen its external links with industry and other medical and academic institutions. In the past, DIRC has worked with the Home Office, the Police and transport operators across the UK and Europe.

DIRC members are involved in a number of EPSRC funded crime related research projects, including:

PerSec: Image Processing Techniques as a Means of Improving Personal Security in Public Transport;
Traffic Simulation and Optimisation on an Intelligent Video Surveillance Network;
REVEAL: Recovering Evidence from Video by fusing Video Evidence Thesaurus and Video Meta-Data
REASON: Robust Methods for Monitoring and Understanding People in Public Spaces
IMCaSM: Intelligent Multi-Camera Surveillance and Monitoring; and
MEDUSA: Multi Environment Deployable Universal Software Application

In addition to UK funding, DIRC has also collaborated with a large number of European partners on the EU projects including: ADVISOR: Annotated Digital Video for Surveillance and Optimised Retrieval and CARETAKER: Content Analysis and Retrieval Technologies to Apply Knowledge Extraction to massive Recording.

Research Groups

DIRC’s Visual Surveillance Research Group has become recognised as one of the leasing centres for intelligent visual surveillance research in the UK. Research activity and industrial consultancy has focused on the development of robust, plug and play surveillance components, integrated wide-area multi-camera systems and behavioural analysis, with a particular emphasis on the public transport sector.