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Dr. Francois Pitie
Ussher Assistant Professor, Electronic & Elect. Engineering

Biography

François Pitié is an Ussher Assistant Professor in Media Signal Processing, Trinity College Dublin. Ussher professors are part of Trinity's strategy to recruit excellent academics in areas where Trinity has proven strengths.

He has made several key contributions in the field of Video Processing and Computer Vision and published over 60 publications, with a combined total of 1100+ citations.

He has attracted over 1.5M euros in research funding and is the recipient of a Google Faculty Research Award. He has participated in the writing of 8 successful research proposals and was PI of two EI commercialisation fund projects and the TCD research lead for a 3 year FP7 EU project. He has supervised 4 postdoc, 4 Ph.D. students and 13 M.Sc. students.

In 2018, François Pitié received the 'Outstanding Academic Achievement of the Year' award at the Technology Ireland Industry Awards 2018.

He is a reviewer in first tier conferences and journals such as Siggraph and IEEE Transactions in Image Processing, co-chair of IMVIP 2015 and CVMP 2017, organised a number of workshops.

Dr François Pitié is holder of 3 patents and developed algorithms and software that are used by companies such as Google, Disney, The Foundry and Weta Digital, and by post-production artists all over the world.

He is also the founder and director of PixelPuffin, a TCD Campus company for commercialising media post- production technology.

Publications and Further Research Outputs

Peer-Reviewed Publications

Marco Forte, Brian Pricey, Scott Coheny, Ning Xuy, François Pitié, Interactive Training and Architecture for Deep Object Selection, IEEE International Conference on Multimedia & Expo, London, 2020 Conference Paper, 2020

S. Dev, M. Hossari, M. Nicholson, K. McCabe, A. N. Clare Conran, J. Tang, W. Xu, F. Pitie, The ALOS Dataset for Advert Localization in Outdoor Scenes , 2019 Eleventh International Conference on Quality of Multimedia Experience (QoMEX) , 5-7, , ( ), 2019, pp1 - 3 Conference Paper, 2019 DOI

S. Dev, M. Hossari, M. Nicholson, K. McCabe, A. Nautiyal, C. Conran, J. Tang, W. Xu, F. Pitié, The CASE Dataset of Candidate Spaces for Advert Implantation , 2019 16th International Conference on Machine Vision Applications (MVA) , 27-3, , ( ), 2019, pp1 - 4 Conference Paper, 2019 DOI

S. Dev, H. Javidnia, M. Hossari, M. Nicholson, K. McCabe, A. Nautiyal, C. Conran, J. Tang, W. Xu, F. Pitié, Identifying Candidate Spaces for Advert Implantation , IEEE 7th International Conference on Computer Science and Network Technology (ICCSNT) , , ( ), 2019, pp503 - 507 Conference Paper, 2019 DOI

Domijan Katarina, Bloomfield D. Shau, Pitié François, Solar Flare Forecasting from Magnetic Feature Properties Generated by the Solar Monitor Active Region Tracker, Solar Physics, 294, (1), 2019, p6- Journal Article, 2019 DOI URL

Atul Nautiyal, Killian McCabe, Murhaf Hossari, Soumyabrata Dev, Matthew Nicholson, Clare Conran, Declan McKibben, Jian Tang, Xu Wei, François Pitié, An Advert Creation System for Next-Gen Publicity, 2018 Conference Paper, 2018

Wu Hao, Jones Gareth J. F, Pitié François, Lawless Séamus, A Two-stage Transfer Learning Approach for Storytelling Linking., 2018 TREC Video Retrieval Evaluation, TRECVID 2018, Gaithersburg, MD, USA, November 13-15, 2018, 2018, 2018 Conference Paper, 2018 URL

Ringis, D.J., Singh, D., Pitie, F., Kokaram, A., Using modern motion estimation algorithms in existing video codecs, 10752, 2018 Conference Paper, 2018

Soumyabrata Dev, Matthew Nicholson, Murhaf Hossari, Killian McCabe, Atul Nautiyal, Clare Conran, Jian Tang, Wei Xu, François Pitié, ADNet: A Deep Network for Detecting Adverts, 2018 Conference Paper, 2018

Buggy, R., Forte, M., Pitié, F., Neural net architectures for image demosaicing, 10752, 2018 Conference Paper, 2018

François Pitié, An alternative matting Laplacian, Image Processing (ICIP), 2016 IEEE International Conference on, Phoenix, Arizona, IEEE, 2016, pp3623 - 3627 Conference Paper, 2016 DOI URL

Damien Kelly, Frank Boland, Francois Pitie, Anil Kokaram, 'Automated video production system and method ', USPTO, US9305600 B2, 2016, Provost Fellows And Scholars Of The College Of The Holy And Undivided Trinity Of Queen Elizabeth, Near Dublin Patent, 2016 URL

François Pitié, Rank Reduced Alternative Matting Laplacian, CVMP 2016 Proceedings of the 13th European Conference on Visual Media Production (CVMP 2016), London, United Kingdom, December 12-13, ACM, 2016 Conference Paper, 2016 DOI

(ed.), IRISH MACHINE VISION & IMAGE PROCESSING Conference proceedings 2015, Irish Pattern Recognition & Classification Society (ISBN 978-0-9934207-0-2), 2015, 1 - 139 p Proceedings of a Conference, 2015 Handle Other TARA - Full Text

Francois Pitie and Damien Kelly and Thierry Foucu and Naomi Harte and Anil C. Kokaram , Assessment of Audio/Video synchronisation in streaming media., International Workshop on Quality of Multimedia Experience, Singapore, 2014, pp171 - 176 Conference Paper, 2014

Gary Baugh, Anil Kokaram, François Pitié, Advanced video debanding, CVMP '14: Proceedings of the 11th European Conference on Visual Media Production, CVMP '14: Proceedings of the 11th European Conference on Visual Media Production, ACM, 2014, ppa7- Conference Paper, 2014 TARA - Full Text

Elgharib, Mohamed A Pitié, François Kokaram, Anil , Blotch and scratch removal in archived film using a semi-transparent corruption model and a ground-truth generation technique , EURASIP Journal on Image and Video Processing , 2013 , (1 ), 2013, p1 - 20 Journal Article, 2013 TARA - Full Text

Rowley-Brooke, R., Pitié, F., Kokaram, A. , Nonrigid recto-verso registration using page outline structure and content preserving warps, M International Conference Proceeding Series, M International Conference , 2013, pp8-13 Conference Paper, 2013 DOI

Raimbault, F., Pitié, F., Kokaram, A. , User-assisted sparse stereo-video segmentation, ACM International Conference Proceeding Series, ACM International Conference, 6-7 Nov, 2013, ppa3- Conference Paper, 2013 TARA - Full Text DOI

Crawford, Andrew and Kokaram, Anil and Kelly, Francis and Denman, Hugh and Pitié, François, 'Dominant motion estimation for image sequence processing', USPTO, US8385418 B2, 2013, Google, Inc Patent, 2013 URL

Elgharib, M.A., Pitite, F., Kokaram, A., Saligrama, V. , User-assisted reflection detection and feature point tracking, ACM International Conference Proceeding Series, ACM International Conference, 6-7 Nov, 2013, ppa13- Conference Paper, 2013 TARA - Full Text DOI

Rowley-Brooke, R., Pitie, F., Kokaram, A. , A non-parametric framework for document bleed-through removal, Proceedings of the IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, 6619224, 2013, pp2954-2960 Conference Paper, 2013 DOI

Róisín Rowley-Brooke, François Pitié, and Anil Kokaram, Degraded manuscript restoration: A case study, Annual Conference of the Society for Musicology in Ireland, 2013 Conference Paper, 2013

F. Raimbault, F. Pitié and A. Kokaram, Stereo Video Completion for Rig and Artefact Removal, Workshop on Image Analysis for Multimedia Interactive Services, 2012 Conference Paper, 2012

Rowley-Brooke, R., Pitié, F., Kokaram, A. , A ground truth bleed-through document image database, Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics), 7489 LNCS, 2012, p185-196 Journal Article, 2012 DOI

Pitié, François and Baugh, Gary and Helms, John, Depthartist: a stereoscopic 3d conversion tool for cg animation, 9th European Conference on Visual Media Production, London, United Kingdom, ACM, 2012, pp32 - 39 Conference Paper, 2012 DOI

M. Ahmed, F. Pitie and A. Kokaram, Motion Estimation for Regions of Reflections Through Layer Separation, IEEE European Conference on Visual Media Production, London, 2011 Conference Paper, 2011

M. Ahmed, F. Pitie and A. Kokaram, Reflection Detection in Image Sequences, IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, 2011 Conference Paper, 2011

D. Corrigan, F. Pitié and A. Kokaram, Restoring Image Burnout in 3D-Stereoscopic Media using Temporally Consistent Disparity Maps, Irish Signals and Systems Conference, Dublin, Ireland, 2011 Conference Paper, 2011

Advances in automated restoration of archived video in, Digital Imaging for Cultural Heritage Preservation: Analysis, Restoration, and Reconstruction of Ancient Artworks, CRC Press, 2011, pp299 - 322, [Kokaram, Anil and Pitié, François and Corrigan, David and Vitulano, Domenico and Bruni, Vittoria and Crawford, Andrew] Book Chapter, 2011 URL

D. Corrigan, F. Pitié and A. Kokaram. , Restoration of Image Burnout in 3D-Stereoscopic Media using Inter-View Gradient Interpolation, European Signal Processing Conference, Barcelona, Spain., Eurasip, 2011 Conference Paper, 2011

Francois Pitie, Anil Kokaram, 'Method for matching color in images', USPTO, US 7796812 B2, 2010, Google, Inc Patent, 2010 URL

D. Corrigan, F. Pitié, V. Morris, A. Rankin, M. Linnane, G. Kearney, M. Gorzel, M. O'Dea, C. Lee and A. Kokaram, A Video Database for the Development of Stereo-3D PostProduction Algorithms, European Conference on Visual Media Production, London, 2010 Conference Paper, 2010

D. Corrigan, F. Pitié, V. Morris, A. Rankin, M. Linnane, G. Kearney, M. Gorzel, M. O'Dea, C. Lee, and A. Kokaram., A video database for the development of stereo-3d post-production algorithms, European Conference on Visual Media Production, London, 2010 Conference Paper, 2010

F. Pitié and A. Kokaram, Matting with a Depth Map, International Conference on Image Processing, Hong Kong, 2010 Conference Paper, 2010

D. Ring and F. Pitie, Feature-Assisted Sparse to Dense Motion Estimation using Geodesic Distances., IEEE Irish Machine Vision and Image Processing conference (IMVIP '09, Dublin, Ireland, September 2-4, IEEE, 2009, pp7-12 Conference Paper, 2009 TARA - Full Text DOI

Ahmed, Mohamed A.; Pitie, Francois; Kokaram, Anil C., Extraction of Non-Binary Blotch Mattes. , Image Processing (ICIP), 2009 16th IEEE International Conference on , IEEE Conference on image Processing (ICIP'09). , Cairo, Egypt, IEEE, 2009, pp2757 - 2760 Conference Paper, 2009 TARA - Full Text DOI

F. Pitie , Using One Graph-Cut to Fuse Multiple Candidate Maps in Depth Estimation., IEEE European Conference on Visual Media Production (CVMP), London, UK, 2009, pp1-8 Conference Paper, 2009 TARA - Full Text URL

Action Recognition in Multimedia Streams in, editor(s)Petros Maragos, Alexandros Potamianos, Patrick Gros , Multimodal Processing and Interaction, Springer Verlag. , 2008, pp127 - 142, [Daire Lennon, Naomi Harte, and Anil Kokaram, Rozenn Dahyot, Francois Pitie] Book Chapter, 2008

Enhancement of digital photographs using color transfer techniques in, editor(s)Rastislav Lukac , Single-Sensor Imaging: Methods and Applications for Digital Cameras, CRC Press, 2008, pp295 - 321, [Francois Pitié, Rozenn Dahyot and Anil Kokaram] Book Chapter, 2008 URL

D. Kelly, F. Pitie,A.Kokaram, F. Boland,, A Comparative Error Analysis of Audio-Visual Source Localization, International Workshop on Multi Camera and Multi-modal Sensor Fusion, ECCV 2008, Marsaille, October 2008, 2008 Conference Paper, 2008 TARA - Full Text

Gigonzac, G. Pitie, F. Kokaram, A. , Electronic slide matching and enhancement of a lecture video, Visual Media Production, IETCVMP. 4th European Conference on Visual Media Production, 2007., London, 27-28 Nov. 2007 , 2007, 1 - 7 Conference Paper, 2007 TARA - Full Text URL

F. Pitie, A. Kokaram and R. Dahyot, Automated Colour Grading using Colour Distribution Transfer , Computer Vision and Image Understanding, 107, 2007, p123 - 137 Journal Article, 2007

Pitie, F. Kokaram, A. , The linear Monge-Kantorovitch linear colour mapping for example-based colour transfer, Visual Media Production, 4th European Conference on Visual Media Production, London, UK , 27-28 Nov. 2007, 2007, pp1 - 9 Conference Paper, 2007 URL TARA - Full Text

Francois Pitie, Statistical Signal Processing Techniques for Visual Post-Production, 2006 Thesis, 2006

F. Pitie; B. Kent; B. Collis; A. C. Kokaram;, Localised deflicker of moving images, 3rd European Conference on Visual Media Production, 2006, 2006, pp134 - 143 Conference Paper, 2006 TARA - Full Text URL

F. Pitié, S-A. Berrani, R. Dahyot and A. Kokaram, Off-line multiple object tracking using candidate selection and the viterbi algorithm , IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP'05), Genoa, Italy, 11-14 Sept., 3, 2005, pp109 - 112 Conference Paper, 2005 URL URL TARA - Full Text DOI

F. Pitié, A. Kokaram and R. Dahyot, N-dimensional probability density function transfer and its aplication to colour transfer, IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV'05), Beijing, China, 17-21 Oct., 2, 2005, pp1434 - 1439 Conference Paper, 2005 URL URL TARA - Full Text DOI

Pitie, F. Kokaram, A.C. Dahyot, R., Towards automated colour grading, Visual Media Production, The 2nd IEE European Conference on Visual Media Production, 2005. , 30 Nov. - 1 Dec. 200, 2005, pp9 - 16 Conference Paper, 2005 URL

A. Kokaram, F. Pitié, R. Dahyot, N. Rea and S. Yeterian, Content Controlled Image Representation for Sports Streaming, IEEE workshop on Content Based Multimedia Indexing (CBMI'05), Riga, Latvia, June, (ISBN: 952-15-1364-0), Suvisoft, 2005 Conference Paper, 2005 TARA - Full Text URL

A. Crawford, H. Denman, F. Kelly, F. Pitie and A. Kokaram , Gradient Based Dominant Motion Estimation with Integral Projections, IEEE International Conference on Image Processing, Singapore, 2004 Conference Paper, 2004

F. Pitié, A. C. Kokaram and R. Dahyot, Oriented Particle Spray: A New Probabilistic, Irish Machine Vision and Image Processing, Dublin, 2004 Conference Paper, 2004

Pitié, F., Dahyot, R., Kelly, F., Kokaram, A., A new robust technique for stabilizing brightness fluctuations in image sequences, Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics), 3247, 2004, p153-164 Journal Article, 2004

F. Pitié, R. Dahyot, F. Kelly and A. Kokaram, A New Robust Technique for Stabilizing Brightness Fluctuations in Image Sequences, , 2nd Workshop on Statistical Methods in Video Processing In conjunction with ECCV, Prague, Czech Republic, 16 May, edited by Dorin Comaniciu, Kenichi Kanatani, Rudolf Mester and David Suter , LNCS 3247, Springer Verlag, 2004, pp153 - 164 Conference Paper, 2004 URL

F. Pitié, A. Kokaram and R. Dahyot, Oriented Particle Spray: A New Probabilistic Contour Tracing with Directional Information,, Irish Machine Vision and Image Processing (IMVIP), , Dublin, Sept , 2004, pp159 - 165 Conference Paper, 2004

Andrew Crawford, Hugh Denman, Francis Kelly, Francois Pitié and Anil Kokaram, Gradient Based Dominant Motion Estimation with Integral Projections for Real Time Video Stabilisation,, IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP'04), Singapore, 24-27 Oct., 5, 2004, pp3371 - 3374 Conference Paper, 2004 TARA - Full Text URL URL DOI

F. Pitié, R. Dahyot and A. Kokaram, Suppression du bruit de pompage dans les vidéos,, GRETSI conference on signal and image processing, Paris, France., September 2003, 2003 Conference Paper, 2003

Anil C. Kokaram, Rozenn Dahyot, Francois Pitié, Hugh Denman, Simultaneous Luminance and Position Stabilization for Film and Video, , Visual Communications and Image Processing, San Jose, California USA, Jan , 5022, 2003, pp688 - 699 Conference Paper, 2003 URL

François Pitié, Removing Flicker from Old Movies,, 2002 Thesis, 2002 URL

Non-Peer-Reviewed Publications

Steve Woods, John Scott, Philip Connaughton, Michelle Boulé, François Pitié, Matt Porter , 'iDuet', 2015, - Film production, 2015 URL

PixelPuffin, 'DepthArtist', 2012, - Software, 2012

Sophie Merry, Francois Pitie, Anil Kokaram, Trevor Whelan, Chris Timms, 'Clockhead', 2011, - Film production, 2011

The Foundry, 'Deflicker2, part of the Academy Award winning software suite Furnace', 2008, - Software, 2008

The Foundry, 'MatchGrade, part of the Academy Award winning software suite Furnace', 2007, - Software, 2007

GreenParrotPictures, 'FilmFix', 2004, - Software, 2004

Research Expertise

Projects

  • Title
    • Advanced Video Debanding
  • Summary
    • Improving the quality of online videos is a key challenge for video streaming companies. We considered in this project the issue of banding, which is a quantisation artefact that affects most videos and does not go away by simply increasing the allowed bandwidth. We built on our experience in developing tools for the movie-postproduction industry to produce a solution that targets the whole range of videos, from low-bandwidth to high quality movies.
  • Funding Agency
    • Google
  • Date From
    • 2013
  • Date To
    • 2013
  • Title
    • 3DScam
  • Summary
    • Producing stereoscopic 3D content for TV's and cinema turns out to be be a very expensive task. In the case of animated movies, a 3D stereo version can in theory be simply created by rendering the 3D object data from the two views for left and right eye. This however consumes a huge amount of rendering time, has a massive impact on the traditional production pipeline and thus result in an dramatically increased production cost. It was proposed in 3DSCAM to create a technology suite that allows digital artists to have full artistic control over the creation of a stereoscopic scene in its final version, while not requiring any change to the production pipeline. Technology issued from this project has been licensed to PixelPuffin (www.pixelpuffin.com).
  • Funding Agency
    • Enterprise Ireland
  • Date From
    • 2011
  • Date To
    • 2013

Keywords

Computer Vision and Image Processing; Signal, Video & Audio Processing; VIDEO PROCESSING

Recognition

Awards and Honours

ADAPT Industry Impact Award 2019

'Outstanding Academic Achievement of the Year' award at the Technology Ireland Industry Awards 2018 2018