Multimedia Information Laboratory (MILab)

Description of Activities

• Multimedia information modelling and retrieval
• Hypertext systems
• Web information modelling and retrieval
• Digital library
• Agent technologies
• Network monitoring, filtering, blocking and tracking
• Network caching and proxy server
• Parallel web and proxy server technologies
• High performance processors and systems

The laboratory also has connection with overseas research institutes to exchange research ideas and form joint projects.
 

Research Projects

• Multimedia Information Retrieval
• To develop a test bed (MediaHouse) to explore techniques for image and video retrieval. It uses multiple content attributes, including free-text, low-level features such as color, texture and shapes for image and text, audio, cenimatic parameters for video to represent the objects in the image. A database containing over 12,000 images and a large number of video clips (especially those domain-specified) has been setup for testing purposes. The test bed will be used as the basis for developing applications for multimedia on-demand system, video summarization and retrieval, and personalized video. The early http version of the retrieval sysytem is called CBIRRF (Content Based Image Retrieval with Relevent Feedback). More research results are adding on the system to achieve a true Multimedia information system.
• Research Issues tackled include:

(a) pseudo object-based techniques for content-based image/video retrieval;
(b) image feature extraction, classification, segmentation, and indexing;
(c) relevance feedback techniques for interactive MM retrieval;
(d) machine learning techniques for relevance feedback and feature extraction;
(e) neural network techniques for relevance feedback to various image/video features.
(f) automatic parsing, segmentation and indexing of video contents;
(g) virtual editing and summarization of video contents.
• Distributed Hypermedia System
• To develop a distributed hypermedia system over high-speed network. The hypermedia system supports: high-level nodes; dynamic links; sessions; multiple concurrent users; intelligent information customization; search and browsing over large hyperbases; and automatic hypertext engineering. The targeted applications for the system include computer-aided learning, and distributed information system.
• Automatic Classification and Indexing of Web Information
• The project goal is to perform automatic classification and indexing of web documents that pass through the proxy server. Issues of study include information categorization model, web document summary abstraction through segmentation, web document clustering model, indexing heuristics based on concept understanding, and finally implementation of information retrieval proxy system.
• Multimedia Object Dissemination Proxy System
• Centralized libraries for multimedia objects such as video and audio clips are being built and objects inside the libraries will be served by existent server software such as SGI?s media-base for videos. However, network bandwidth is the biggest problem. With no support for dynamic caching these objects in the multimedia object servers, significant redundant network traffic will be created. Current proxy server is good in caching, but will not store most multimedia objects, including video, audio, and applets. This project, called the active proxy server project, is to build the system framework that integrates both the proxy server and multimedia object servers together. Proxy server is responsible for the object management and will trigger the object servers to disseminate data to users efficiently.
• Network Caching and Proxy Server
• This project is to research new caching technologies for proxy servers and to implement them in SQUID, one of the best proxy servers being used. Research issues being studied include reference behavior of Web traffic, performance and simulation model of proxy server, internal proxy caching mechanism, prefetching, distributed proxy communication, hierarchical proxy structure, collaborative caching, ?, etc.. A SQUID simulator, which is derived from SQUID package, is being developed.
• Parallel Web and Proxy Server Design
• This project is to research on parallel web servers and proxy servers based on a cluster of PCs and workstations, and to build a prototype system for benchmarking. Issues of study in this project include load-balancing, parallelization of I/Os, distributed file systems, and resource management. A parallel simulation package for parallel web server design is being developed.
• Intelligent Data Caching for Recursive Data Structure
• This project is to research on new caching techniques to handle recursive data structures inside high-end microprocessors. Three approaches are studied: hardware only, compiler only, and hybrid of HW and SW. The RVPC (Reference Value Prediction Caching) model developed from this project has shown to have significant performance improvement in data caching.

Consultancy

• Strategy and planning for proxy servers and web servers
• Digital libraries and video-on-demand
• Multimedia information retrieval
• Network control, monitoring, filtering and blocking
• Internet commerce applications

Short Courses

• Multimedia Information Retrieval
• Content-Based Video Indexing and Retrieval
• Distributed Hypermedia Systems
• Network Caching and Proxy Servers
• Proxy-Based Content Transformation Systems
• Network Control, Monitoring, Filtering and Blocking Technologies
• Internet Commerce
• High Performance System Analysis

Facilities

Members of the Lab

A/Prof. CHUA Tat Seng, Director

• Multimedia Information Retrieval
• Distributed Hypermedia System

Dr. CHI Chi Hung, Director

• Web Information Indexing and Retrieval
• Network Caching and Proxy Server
• Internet and World Wide Web System Technologies
• Software Agent Architecture
• Internet Commerce
• Data Compression
• High Performance Processor and System Design
• Parallel Processing and Compiler Optimization

Dr. PRABHAKARAN Bala

• Multimedia Systems
• Media-On-Demand Systems
• Mobile Computing

Dr. KANKANHALLI, Mohan

• Multimedia Information Systems
• Image & Video Processing
• Information Security

Ms. BAI Chang (M.Sc. Candidate)

•  Internet Traffic Characterization and Network Caching Design

Mr. CHIONH Wei Ping (M.Sc. Candidate)

• Software Agents and Warehouse Infrastructure

Ms. DENG Jing (Research Assistant)

• Web Proxy Server Design and Web Information Retrieval

Ms. DING Chen (M.Sc. Candidate)

• Automatic Indexing and Classification of Web Information and its Retrieval

Dr. DONG Chun Lei (Post-Doc Fellow)

• Parallel Web and Video Server Systems

Mr. LI Xiang (M.Sc. Candidate)

• Active Proxy Server Infrastructure for Multimedia Objects

Mr. LIM Ser Nam (M.Sc. Candidate)

• Web Traffic Modelling and Proxy Server Design

Mr. LIM Yang Hong (M.Sc. Candidate)

• Network Load-Balancing and Proxy-Based Content Transformation

Ms. LIU Li (Ph.D Candidate)

• Network Caching and Proxy Prefetching

Mr. LU Si Fei (Ph.D Candidate and Research Assistant)

• High Performance Processor Design and its Memory Support

Ms. MO Li Hui (Ph.D Candidate)

• Distributed and Co-operative Network Caching

Mr. QU Hui (Ph.D Candidate)

• Parallel Web and Proxy Server Design

Mr. SIM, John (M.Sc. Candidate)

• Software Agent Technologies and Proxy Integration

Ms. SONG Ke (Part-Time Ph.D Candidate)

• Network Caching

Mr. YUAN Yun Li (Research Assistant)e)

• Electronic Commerce and High Performance System

Mr. ZHANG Zhi Guo (M.Sc. Candidate)

• Agent-Based Information Retrieval

Mr. ZHANG Nan (Research Assistant)

• Content-Based Image Retrieval Systems

Mr. ZHANG Yi (Teaching Assistant)

• Video Retrieval Systems

Mr. ZHAO Yun Long (Ph.D. Candidate)

• Video Segmentation

Ms. CHU Chun Xin (M.Sc.)

• Color Based Image Retrieval with Relevance Feedback

Mr. LIN Yi (M.Sc. Candidate)

• Image Retrieval by Shape Description

Ms. LI Yang (M.Sc. Candidate)

• Neural Network Based Relavance Feedback

Mr. ZHI De Gui (M.Sc. Candidate)

• Video Parsing

Mr. LOW Wai Chi (M.Sc.)

Publications

1. TS Chua, WC Low & TMC Sim, Visual information processing. The Journal of the Institute of Image Electronic Engineers of Japan, 27(1), (1998): 10-19.
2. W Hsu, TS Chua & HK Pung, Approximation content-based object-level image retrieval. To appear in Multimedia Tools and Applications.
3. BC Ooi, KL Tan, TS Chua & W Hsu, Fast image retrieval using color-spatial information. To appear in VLDB International Journal.
4. TS Chua, KL Tan & BC Ooi, Fast signature-based color-spatial image retrieval. Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Multimedia Computing and Systems'97, Jun 1997, Canada, 362-369. IEEE Press.
5. CY Yee, KL Tan, TS Chua & BC Ooi, An empirical study of color-spatial retrieval techniques for large image databases. Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Multimedia Computing and Systems '98, June 1998
6. Mohan S Kankanhalli, Benchmarking Multimedia Databases, "Multimedia Tools and Applications" Volume 4, No. 3, pp. 333-356, May 1997. (with A.D. Narasimhalu and J.K. Wu)
7. Mohan S Kankanhalli, Content-based Image Retrieval Using a Composite Color-Shape Approach, "Information Processing and Management", Vol. 34, No. 1, pp. 109-120, 1998. (with B.M. Mehtre and W.F. Lee)
8. Mohan S Kankanhalli, Content-based Representative Frame Extraction for Digital Video, "Proc. IEEE International Conference on Multimedia Computing and Systems (ICMCS'98)", pp. 190-193, Austin, Texas, July 1998.  (with X.D. Sun, Y.W. Zhu and J.K. Wu)
9. Mohan S Kankanhalli, Content-based Watermarking of Images, "Proc. of The 6th ACM International Multimedia Conference", pp. 61-70, Bristol, UK, September 1998. (with Rajmohan and K.R. Ramakrishnan)
10. Mohan S Kankanhalli, Adaptive Visible Watermarking of Images, "IEEE International Conference on Multimedia Computing and Systems (ICMCS'99)", Florence, Italy, June 1999. (with Rajmohan and K.R. Ramakrishnan)
11. Perceptually Consistent Segmentation of Texture Using Multiple Channel Filter. In Proceedings of Asian Conference on Computer Vision.  Zhang, Nan and Leow, Wee Kheng (1998).
12. B. Prabhakaran - `Adaptive Multimedia Presentation Strategies', accepted for publication in Multimedia Tools and Applications journal, Kluwer Academic Publishers.
13. E. Hwang,  B. Prabhakaran, and V.S. Subrahmanian - `Presentation Planning For Distributed Video Systems', accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering.
14. P. Bai, B. Prabhakaran, and A. Srinivasan - `Retrieval Scheduling Algorithm For Collaborative Multimedia Presentations', accepted for publication in ACM/Springer-Verlag Multimedia Systems Journal.
15. B. Prabhakaran - `Collaborative Multimedia Presentations in Mobile Environments', Multimedia Tools and Applications journal, Kluwer Academic Publishers, July 1999.
16. K.S. Candan,  B. Prabhakaran} and V.S. Subrahmanian - ` Retrieval Schedules Based on Resource Availibility and Flexible Presentation Specifications', ACM/Springer-Verlag Multimedia Systems Journal, Vol. 6

Contact Person

  
Dr. Chi Chi Hung
  Room #05-13, Block S17,
  School of Computing,
  National University of Singapore,
  Lower Kent Ridge Road,
  Singapore 119260.
  Tel:(65) 874 2832
  Fax:(65) 779 4580
  email: chich@comp.nus.edu.sg

Keywords

• Network Caching
• Web Server
• Proxy Server
• Internet Commerce
• High Performance Processors and Systems
• Content Transformation
• Information Systems
• Multimedia Information Retrieval
• Hypertext