[visionlist] Special Issue on New Methods for Omni-directional and Equirectangular Image and Video Processing

[Liliana Lo Presti]

******** Apologies for multiple posting *******

Dear Colleagues,
we are happy to invite you to contribute a paper to the Special Issue “New
Methods for Omni-directional and Equirectangular Image and Video
Processing” in the Journal of Imaging.

For details, please check the following link:
https://www.mdpi.com/journal/jimaging/special_issues/omnidirectional

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 June 2022.

Journal of Imaging is an international, multi/interdisciplinary,
peer-reviewed, open access journal of imaging techniques published online
monthly by MDPI.

Please, extend this invitation to your colleagues and collaborators that
may be interested in attending this call, it could be a good occasion to
publish studies and ongoing researches about  Omni-directional and
Equirectangular image and video processing.

Below, details  about the call for papers.

Sincerely,
Marco La Cascia & Liliana Lo Presti
University  of Palermo, Italy


Call  for papers:

Omni-directional (or 360°) cameras are devices able to record a spherical
view of the whole environment, unlike traditional cameras that have a
predefined field of view. Indeed, 360° cameras can generally acquire
panoramic images with a 360° horizontal view and 180° vertical view,
resulting in a complete representation of the environment. The newest
omni-directional devices use multiple calibrated cameras with partially
overlapping fields of view. Each camera can shoot part of the scene, and
the final image is reconstructed by stitching algorithms after correcting
the distortion introduced by lenses. The most popular 360° cameras
typically comprise two wide-angle lenses; the entire system is relatively
inexpensive, and the stitching process is much simpler and quite efficient.
Recently, such cameras have gained popularity and their use is spreading,
especially in consumer and cultural heritage applications. Users may
interact with a recorded video by navigating around the environment through
changing the point of view; 360° pictures and videos are uploaded and
usable on several social platforms (such as Facebook and YouTube) and can
also be viewed through head-mounted viewers (Google Cardboard, Oculus
Quest, etc.) to improve the users’ sense of immersivity.

Regardless of the acquisition device, pixels of the sensed images are
mapped onto a sphere and then projection techniques, such as
equirectangular or cubic projections, are used. Cubic projections are
mainly adopted to navigate through the environment. Equirectangular
projections represent the sphere on a single image (2:1 ratio) and are
mainly used to store the data. This projection introduces distortions
particularly visible around the poles of the sphere.

These 360° videos are potentially very attractive in the fields of mixed
reality, mobile robotics, video surveillance, and distancing applications.
Nonetheless, few studies have been proposed about the processing of
equirectangular images in these fields. This might be ascribable to the
challenges presented by these images and videos, which may hinder the
development of methods for their processing, especially deep learning
techniques. Indeed, equirectangular images have high resolution and display
severe deformations that may inhibit the adoption of state-of-the-art
computer vision and image processing techniques. Some attempts have been
made to adapt pre-trained networks to equirectangular formats (i.e.,
SphereNet) or to adopt cubic projections on demand; however, there are
still issues linked with the high computational demand and loss of
resolution when processing large images.

The aim of this Special Issue is to present novel and diverse research
articles that demonstrate new methods for the efficient processing of
equirectangular images and videos. Topics of interest include, but are not
limited to, the following:

- Compression techniques for spherical views;
- Stabilization and pre-processing techniques in 360° videos;
- Novel 360° datasets and experimental protocols;
- Novel applications involving the use of omni-directional and
equirectangular images or videos;
- Visual tracking approaches for equirectangular images;
- Segmentation techniques and detection approaches for spherical images;
- Action detection and classification from 360° videos;
- Visual attention techniques in 360° videos;
- Depth estimation in spherical views;
- Applications based on multi-camera systems involving 360° cameras;
- Novel learning methods specifically designed for spherical images.


Guest Editors:
Prof. Marco La Cascia, University of Palermo, Italy, marco.lacascia at unipa.it
Prof. Liliana Lo Presti, University of Palermo, Italy,
liliana.lopresti at unipa.it

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 June 2022.

Manuscript Submission Information

Please, visit
https://www.mdpi.com/journal/jimaging/special_issues/omnidirectional

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and
logging in to the website. Once you are registered, go to the submission
form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All papers will be
peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the
journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special
issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short
communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract
(about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on
this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be
under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference
proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a
single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant
information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions
for Authors page. Journal of Imaging is an international peer-reviewed open
access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a
manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this
open access journal is 1600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be
well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing
service prior to publication or during author revisions.
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