Roger Boyle: research and other projects (completed)

Roger Boyle is Professor of Computing at, and currently Head of, the School of Computing at the University of Leeds.

Any comments made on these pages made be taken for publication, with due attribution, without seeking permission.

Analysis of Dynamic MRI of the metacarpophalangeal joint
With Ms Olga Kubassova

2004 - 2008 We consider data-rich 4D images of the wrist and seek visualisation techniques of use to clinicians. This has led to work in data registration, segmentation and evaluation.

Key Publications:
Quantitative Analysis of Dynamic Contrast-Enhanced MRI Datasets of the Metacarpophalangeal Joints O Kubassova, R D Boyle, A Radjenovic, Academic Radiology, 14(10), Pages 1189-1200, 2007

Computing on the buses

2002 - 2003 A Public Understanding of Science award to produce posters on metropolitan buses that provoke interest in computer science.
Computer Science: what's it got to do with you?
More than you think!

Key Publications:
The background supporting web site persists.

Aspects of Intelligent Tutoring Systems
With Dr Vania Dimitorova

2001 - 2006 A number of projects have been conducted in this area.

Key Publications:
Adaptive feedback generation to support teachers in web-based distance education, E M Kosba, V Dimitrova and R D Boyle, User Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction, 17, 379-413, 2007.
Capturing Human teachers Strategies for Supporting Schema-based Cognitive Tasks to Inform the Design of an Intelligent Pedagogical Agent, Z Ibrahim and V Dimitrova and R D Boyle, F N Akhras and B du Boulay (eds.), Proceedings of the ITS 2004 Workshop on Modelling Human Teaching Tactics and Strategies, Maceió, Brazil, 5-14, 2004.

Who shall we put on the postage stamps?

2001 - 2003 The role of personality is strong but dangerous, and it is misleading to see individuals as unassisted architects of development. But knowing our pantheon is part of our definition as computer sceintists. An informal survey generates someinteresting observations on who should be on the postage stamps celebrating computer science.

Key Publications:
Who shall we put on the postage stamps?, R D Boyle, School of Computing report 2003.10.

"Whatever became of X-rays?"

2001 A Public Understanding of Science award to produce video material for the gneral public outlining developments n medical imaging.

Key Publications:
Video: Whatever became of X-rays?, University of Leeds.

Terahertz imaging
With Dr James Handley>
2000 - 2004 The terahertz band occupies an as-yet underexploited part of the EM spectrum. As opportunitities to generate THz heaply and reliably emerge, exploitation opportunities become interesting.

Key Publications:
An Empirical Analysis of Noise in Pulsed Terahertz Systems, Fluctuation and Noise Letters, J W Handley, N Cohen, R D Boyle, E Berry, 6(1), 65-76, 2006.
Experimental Signature of Registration Noise in Pulsed Terahertz Systems, N Cohen, J W Handley, R D Boyle, S L Braunstein, E Berry Fluctuation and Noise Letters, 6(1), 77-84, 2006.
Wavelet Compression in Medical Terahertz Pulsed Imaging, J Handley, A Fitzgerald, E Berry, R D Boyle, Physics in Medicine and Biology, 47(1), 3885-92, 2002,
Multispectral classification techniques for Terahertz pulsed imaging: an example in histopathology, E Berry, J Handley, A Fitzgerald, W Merchant, R D Boyle, N Zinov'ev, R Miles, J Chamberlain, M Smith, Medical Engineering and Physics, 26, 423-430, 2004.

Reliable multicast protocols
with Dr Somnuk Puangpronpitag

2000 - 2003 Multicast presents new problems for protocol designers since recipients may have different bandwidth cpabilitities, and any solution should not compete unfairly with traditional TCP/IP traffic. We developed a protocol - ERA - to meet these challenges.

Key Publications:
Explicit Rate Adjustment ({ERA}): Responsiveness, Network Utilization Efficiency and Fairness for Layered Multicast, S Puangpronpitag and R Boyle and S Sanguangpong, Journal of Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics, 4(6), 2006.

Tracking of sports players
With Dr Chris Needham,

1999 - 2003 Given that it is possible to track the 23 individuals running around a soccer pitch, how might we model and analyse their behaviour? This work opened up this problem in a smaller domain, considernig the tracking and evaluation issues.

Key Publications:
Tracking multiple sports players through occlusion, congestion and scale, C J Needham and R D Boyle, Proc. British Machine Vision Conference, 93-102, Manchester, UK, 2001.
Performance Evaluation Metrics and Statistics for Positional Tracker Evaluation, C J Needham and R D Boyle, Proc. International Conference on Computer Vision Systems, Springer Verlag, LNCS 2626, 278-289, Graz, Austria, 2003.

The Electronic Stockman's Eye
With Dr Derek Magee,

1997 - 2000 In the modern farm, cattle may go days without human observation. There is a need for automatic monitoring to detect, e.g., lameness. This project built a passive camera-based appraoch.

Key Publications:
Building Class Sensitive Models for Tracking Applications, D R Magee and R D Boyle, September, Proc. British Machine Vision Conference, Nottingham, 2, 594-603, 1999.
Detecting Lameness in Livestock Using Re-sampling Condensation and Multi-stream Cyclic Hidden Markov Models, D R Magee and R D Boyle, Image and Vision Computing, 20, 581-594, 2002.

The Robotic Sheepdog
With Dr Neil Sumpter

1995 - 1999 The Robotic Sheepdog was a collaboration between Leeds, Oxford and Bristol to build a robot that could gather herding animals [ducks, in fact]. This part of the project looked at the Vision aspects.
It worked!

Key Publications:
Modelling collective animal behaviour using extended PDMs, N Sumpter, R D Boyle, R D Tillet, Proc. British Machine Vision Conference, 242-251, Colchester, UK, 1997.
R D Boyle, Scaling additional contributions to Principal Components Analysis, Pattern Recognition, 1998, 31(12), 2047-2053, 1998.

Deformable models in imaging of the knee
With Dr Naomi Hill

1995 - 1999 The knee represents a very difficult imaging area - rigid aspects (the patella) image poorly, especially with the hardware of the mid-90s. This project looked at tools to support synovial membrane problems in knee MRI.

Key Publications:
A Deformable Model using Probabilistic Labelling and Statistical Relaxation to segment MR Volumes, N Hill, R D Boyle, E Berry, Proc. British Machine Vision Conference, 350-359, Colchester, UK, 1997,

Chicken tracking
With Dr Derek Sergeant

1994 - 1999 Optimal management of broiler houses necessitates knowledge of when and how often birds feed. Animal welfare issues also require monitoring of movememnt or the animals are prone to easy leg injury. Human monitoring is very dull, subjective and unreliable - we sought to create an automatic passive monitoring sustem that did this job.

Key Publications:
Computer Visual Tracking of Poultry, D M Sergeant, R D Boyle, J M Forbes, Computers and Electronics in Agriculture, 21(1), 1-18, 1998,

Petrol drop sizing through imaging
With S Skippon (Shell)

1993 - 1997 A particular perol-industry application delivers images of petrol drops within a combustion chamber. these needs isolated and counting. The optics made this an accessible problem.

Key Publications:
Interferometric laser imaging for droplet sizing: a method for droplet-size measurement in sparse spray systems, A R Glover, S M Skippon, and R D Boyle , Applied Optics, 34, 8409-8421 1995.

Approaches to text recognition and understanding
With Dr Steven Hanlon, Dr N B Venkataswarlu and Dr Kia Ng

1991 - 1997 One project sought to "read" handwriting at the word level rather than the text lelve: some success is seen in this by deploying simple synatx constarints.
Another project sought o attempt the challenging "reading" of Hindi. An elaborate database was generated.
A third demonstrated success in reading musical scores: this has since evolved into a commercial product.

Key Publications:
Evaluating a Hidden Markov Model of Syntax in a Text recognition System, S J Hanlon and R D Boyle, Proc. British Machine Vision Conference, 462-471 Leeds, 1992.
N B Venkateswarlu and R D Boyle, New Segmentation Techniques for Document Image Analysis, Image and Vision Computing, 13(7), 573-583, 1995.
Recognition and Reconstruction of primitives in music scores, K C Ng and Boyle R D, Image and Vision Computing, 14(1), 39-46, 1996,

Patterns in traffic
With Dr Mark Dougherty and Dr Haibo Chen

1991 - 1997 Modern traffic monitoring hardware can generate enormous quantities of data; it is a problem to extract from them anomalous incidents, or to use them as predictors of likely congestion. A range of AI techniques is used to solve these, and related, problems.

Key Publications:
M S Dougherty, H R Kirby, R D Boyle, The use of neural networks to recognise and predict traffic congestion, Traffic Engineering and Control, 34(6), 311-314, 1993
Motorway incident detection using PCA, H Chen, R D Boyle, F O Montgomery, H R Kirby, M S Dougherty, Proc. IEE Colloquium on Incident Detection and Management, 1/1 - 1/5, London, 1997,

Improvements to K-means
With Mr Qiwen Zhang

1990 - 1991 Various algorithms were developed to assist the convergence of K-means to better solutions.

Key Publications:
A Clustering Algorithm for Data-sets with a Large Number of Classes, Q Zhang, Q R Wang, R D Boyle, Pattern Recognition, 24(4), 331-340, 1991
A New Clustering Algorithm with Multiple Runs of Iterative Procedures, Q Zhang and R D Boyle, Pattern Recognition, 24(9), 835-848, 1991
Trans-Basic - a Unix native RSTS interpreter
with Dr Anthony McCann

1986 - 1989 In the 1980s, sytems such as RSTS Basic were well embedded and popular; it became necesary to emulate them on the emerging Unix platforms. We did this with an indirect-threaded code interpreter that won all benchmarks.

Key Publications:
Trans-Basic: A Portable Compiler for a Widely Used Commercial Language, A P McCann, R D Boyle, A Shaw, Proceedings of the First International Conference on Advanced Computing, Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria, Valparaiso, Chile, 1989,

For more information: Prof. Roger Boyle.
School of Computing
University of Leeds
Leeds LS2 9JT
United Kingdom

+44 113 343 5487
+44 113 343 5868 (fax)

Analysis of Dynamic MRI of the metacarpophalangeal joint With Ms Olga Kubassova 2004 - 2008	We consider data-rich 4D images of the wrist and seek visualisation techniques of use to clinicians. This has led to work in data registration, segmentation and evaluation. Key Publications: Quantitative Analysis of Dynamic Contrast-Enhanced MRI Datasets of the Metacarpophalangeal Joints O Kubassova, R D Boyle, A Radjenovic, Academic Radiology, 14(10), Pages 1189-1200, 2007
Computing on the buses 2002 - 2003	A Public Understanding of Science award to produce posters on metropolitan buses that provoke interest in computer science. Computer Science: what's it got to do with you? More than you think! Key Publications: The background supporting web site persists.
Aspects of Intelligent Tutoring Systems With Dr Vania Dimitorova 2001 - 2006	A number of projects have been conducted in this area. Key Publications: Adaptive feedback generation to support teachers in web-based distance education, E M Kosba, V Dimitrova and R D Boyle, User Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction, 17, 379-413, 2007. Capturing Human teachers Strategies for Supporting Schema-based Cognitive Tasks to Inform the Design of an Intelligent Pedagogical Agent, Z Ibrahim and V Dimitrova and R D Boyle, F N Akhras and B du Boulay (eds.), Proceedings of the ITS 2004 Workshop on Modelling Human Teaching Tactics and Strategies, Maceió, Brazil, 5-14, 2004.
Who shall we put on the postage stamps? 2001 - 2003	The role of personality is strong but dangerous, and it is misleading to see individuals as unassisted architects of development. But knowing our pantheon is part of our definition as computer sceintists. An informal survey generates someinteresting observations on who should be on the postage stamps celebrating computer science. Key Publications: Who shall we put on the postage stamps?, R D Boyle, School of Computing report 2003.10.
"Whatever became of X-rays?" 2001	A Public Understanding of Science award to produce video material for the gneral public outlining developments n medical imaging. Key Publications: Video: Whatever became of X-rays?, University of Leeds.
Terahertz imaging With Dr James Handley> 2000 - 2004	The terahertz band occupies an as-yet underexploited part of the EM spectrum. As opportunitities to generate THz heaply and reliably emerge, exploitation opportunities become interesting. Key Publications: An Empirical Analysis of Noise in Pulsed Terahertz Systems, Fluctuation and Noise Letters, J W Handley, N Cohen, R D Boyle, E Berry, 6(1), 65-76, 2006. Experimental Signature of Registration Noise in Pulsed Terahertz Systems, N Cohen, J W Handley, R D Boyle, S L Braunstein, E Berry Fluctuation and Noise Letters, 6(1), 77-84, 2006. Wavelet Compression in Medical Terahertz Pulsed Imaging, J Handley, A Fitzgerald, E Berry, R D Boyle, Physics in Medicine and Biology, 47(1), 3885-92, 2002, Multispectral classification techniques for Terahertz pulsed imaging: an example in histopathology, E Berry, J Handley, A Fitzgerald, W Merchant, R D Boyle, N Zinov'ev, R Miles, J Chamberlain, M Smith, Medical Engineering and Physics, 26, 423-430, 2004.
Reliable multicast protocols with Dr Somnuk Puangpronpitag 2000 - 2003	Multicast presents new problems for protocol designers since recipients may have different bandwidth cpabilitities, and any solution should not compete unfairly with traditional TCP/IP traffic. We developed a protocol - ERA - to meet these challenges. Key Publications: Explicit Rate Adjustment ({ERA}): Responsiveness, Network Utilization Efficiency and Fairness for Layered Multicast, S Puangpronpitag and R Boyle and S Sanguangpong, Journal of Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics, 4(6), 2006.
Tracking of sports players With Dr Chris Needham, 1999 - 2003	Given that it is possible to track the 23 individuals running around a soccer pitch, how might we model and analyse their behaviour? This work opened up this problem in a smaller domain, considernig the tracking and evaluation issues. Key Publications: Tracking multiple sports players through occlusion, congestion and scale, C J Needham and R D Boyle, Proc. British Machine Vision Conference, 93-102, Manchester, UK, 2001. Performance Evaluation Metrics and Statistics for Positional Tracker Evaluation, C J Needham and R D Boyle, Proc. International Conference on Computer Vision Systems, Springer Verlag, LNCS 2626, 278-289, Graz, Austria, 2003.
The Electronic Stockman's Eye With Dr Derek Magee, 1997 - 2000	In the modern farm, cattle may go days without human observation. There is a need for automatic monitoring to detect, e.g., lameness. This project built a passive camera-based appraoch. Key Publications: Building Class Sensitive Models for Tracking Applications, D R Magee and R D Boyle, September, Proc. British Machine Vision Conference, Nottingham, 2, 594-603, 1999. Detecting Lameness in Livestock Using Re-sampling Condensation and Multi-stream Cyclic Hidden Markov Models, D R Magee and R D Boyle, Image and Vision Computing, 20, 581-594, 2002.
The Robotic Sheepdog With Dr Neil Sumpter 1995 - 1999	The Robotic Sheepdog was a collaboration between Leeds, Oxford and Bristol to build a robot that could gather herding animals [ducks, in fact]. This part of the project looked at the Vision aspects. It worked! Key Publications: Modelling collective animal behaviour using extended PDMs, N Sumpter, R D Boyle, R D Tillet, Proc. British Machine Vision Conference, 242-251, Colchester, UK, 1997. R D Boyle, Scaling additional contributions to Principal Components Analysis, Pattern Recognition, 1998, 31(12), 2047-2053, 1998.
Deformable models in imaging of the knee With Dr Naomi Hill 1995 - 1999	The knee represents a very difficult imaging area - rigid aspects (the patella) image poorly, especially with the hardware of the mid-90s. This project looked at tools to support synovial membrane problems in knee MRI. Key Publications: A Deformable Model using Probabilistic Labelling and Statistical Relaxation to segment MR Volumes, N Hill, R D Boyle, E Berry, Proc. British Machine Vision Conference, 350-359, Colchester, UK, 1997,
Chicken tracking With Dr Derek Sergeant 1994 - 1999	Optimal management of broiler houses necessitates knowledge of when and how often birds feed. Animal welfare issues also require monitoring of movememnt or the animals are prone to easy leg injury. Human monitoring is very dull, subjective and unreliable - we sought to create an automatic passive monitoring sustem that did this job. Key Publications: Computer Visual Tracking of Poultry, D M Sergeant, R D Boyle, J M Forbes, Computers and Electronics in Agriculture, 21(1), 1-18, 1998,
Petrol drop sizing through imaging With S Skippon (Shell) 1993 - 1997	A particular perol-industry application delivers images of petrol drops within a combustion chamber. these needs isolated and counting. The optics made this an accessible problem. Key Publications: Interferometric laser imaging for droplet sizing: a method for droplet-size measurement in sparse spray systems, A R Glover, S M Skippon, and R D Boyle , Applied Optics, 34, 8409-8421 1995.
Approaches to text recognition and understanding With Dr Steven Hanlon, Dr N B Venkataswarlu and Dr Kia Ng 1991 - 1997	One project sought to "read" handwriting at the word level rather than the text lelve: some success is seen in this by deploying simple synatx constarints. Another project sought o attempt the challenging "reading" of Hindi. An elaborate database was generated. A third demonstrated success in reading musical scores: this has since evolved into a commercial product. Key Publications: Evaluating a Hidden Markov Model of Syntax in a Text recognition System, S J Hanlon and R D Boyle, Proc. British Machine Vision Conference, 462-471 Leeds, 1992. N B Venkateswarlu and R D Boyle, New Segmentation Techniques for Document Image Analysis, Image and Vision Computing, 13(7), 573-583, 1995. Recognition and Reconstruction of primitives in music scores, K C Ng and Boyle R D, Image and Vision Computing, 14(1), 39-46, 1996,
Patterns in traffic With Dr Mark Dougherty and Dr Haibo Chen 1991 - 1997	Modern traffic monitoring hardware can generate enormous quantities of data; it is a problem to extract from them anomalous incidents, or to use them as predictors of likely congestion. A range of AI techniques is used to solve these, and related, problems. Key Publications: M S Dougherty, H R Kirby, R D Boyle, The use of neural networks to recognise and predict traffic congestion, Traffic Engineering and Control, 34(6), 311-314, 1993 Motorway incident detection using PCA, H Chen, R D Boyle, F O Montgomery, H R Kirby, M S Dougherty, Proc. IEE Colloquium on Incident Detection and Management, 1/1 - 1/5, London, 1997,
Improvements to K-means With Mr Qiwen Zhang 1990 - 1991	Various algorithms were developed to assist the convergence of K-means to better solutions. Key Publications: A Clustering Algorithm for Data-sets with a Large Number of Classes, Q Zhang, Q R Wang, R D Boyle, Pattern Recognition, 24(4), 331-340, 1991 A New Clustering Algorithm with Multiple Runs of Iterative Procedures, Q Zhang and R D Boyle, Pattern Recognition, 24(9), 835-848, 1991
Trans-Basic - a Unix native RSTS interpreter with Dr Anthony McCann 1986 - 1989	In the 1980s, sytems such as RSTS Basic were well embedded and popular; it became necesary to emulate them on the emerging Unix platforms. We did this with an indirect-threaded code interpreter that won all benchmarks. Key Publications: Trans-Basic: A Portable Compiler for a Widely Used Commercial Language, A P McCann, R D Boyle, A Shaw, Proceedings of the First International Conference on Advanced Computing, Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria, Valparaiso, Chile, 1989,