Computer Vision (Fall 2021)

Instructor: Professor Zhigang Zhu

The City College of New York

Course No and Section (Code): CSC I6716-1GG (34289) Credits: 3.0
Class Meet Time: Monday 4:50 – 7:20 PM, Room: Vision Zoom Link
Office Hours: Every Thursday  2:00 pm – 4:00 pm, Room: Office Zoom Link

Course Update Information

Course Objectives

Computer vision has a rich history of fundamental work on color,  stereo and visual motion, which has dealt with the problems of color image understanding, 3D reconstruction from multiple images, and structure from motion from video sequences. In addition, the best successful vision systems that computer vision researchers can learn from are human vision systems. Therefore this course will also briefly discuss human vision science and explore how the brain sees the world, thus including introductory on computational neuroscience, motion, color and several other topics.  

Course Syllabus and Tentative Schedule (mm/dd) 

(Fall 2021 academic calendar)

Part 0. Introduction and Human Vision 

  • 0-1. Introduction (slides) and Human Eyes (slides)  – 08/30  
  • 0-2. Visual Brain (slides) – 09/13 (no class on 09/06)
  • 0-3. Depth (slides) -09/13
  • 0-4. Color (slides) -09/13

Part I. 2D Computer Vision Basics 

Part II.  3D Computer Vision

Part III. Exam, Projects and  Project Presentations

  • III-1. Exam  – 11/29
  • III-2. Discussions on Exam, Assignments and Projects + a quick pop quiz – 12/06
  • III-3. All Student Project Presentations (15 students, each 5 minutes talk + 5 minutes QA) – 12/13; Project Reports due 12/19 (Sunday) midnight!

Textbook and References

Main Textbook:    

  1. Computer Vision,  In the form of Lecture Notes and Slides;  will be provided by the instructor 
  2. Vision and Brain – How We Perceive the World, By James V. Stone, The MIT Press. Paperback | $30.00  | ISBN: 9780262517737 | 264 pp. | 6 x 9 in | 25 color illus., 132 b&w illus.| September 2012 (For students with little experience in vision and neuroscience to know human vision, brain and computational neuroscience)

Reference Textbook:

  1.   “Computer Vision – A Modern Approach” , David A. Forsyth, Jean Ponce, Prentice Hall, 2003 (ISBN: 0130851981 , 693 pages).
  2.   “Three Dimensional Computer Vision: A Geometric Viewpoint” , Olivier Faugeras, The MIT Press, November 19, 1993 (ISBN: 0262061589 , 695 pages)

Supplements:  

Online References and additional readings when necessary. 

Grading and Prerequisites

The course will accommodate both graduate and senior undergraduate students in GSOE at CCNY with background in computer science, electrical and computer engineering, biomedical engineering or applied mathematics. Students who take the course for credits will be required to finish 4 assignments (40%), one midterm exam (40%), and  one programming project (20%, including submit a report and give a  presentation to the class at the end of the semester). The topics of the projects will be given in the middle of the semester and will be related to the material presented in the lectures.

Students are required to have a good preparation in both mathematics (linear algebra/numerical analysis) and advanced programming.