MSc in Vision, Visualization and Virtual Environments
School of Computer Studies
Examination Papers/Solutions


1995 BSc and MSc Exams Solutions 1996 BSc and MSc Exams Solutions

1997 Papers

Semester 1
  • AI8 Image Processing
  • CS4 Advanced Computing and Multimedia Networks
  • OOP Object Oriented Programming (JAVA)
  • VIS Distributed Visualization Systems, Visualization & High Performance Computing
Semester 2
  • AGR Advanced Computer Graphics and Virtual Environments
  • AI9 Computer Vision
  • DMS Future Directions in Distributed Multimedia Systems
  • VWE Virtual Working Environments

AI8 Image Processing, Exam 1997'
Delivered by Dr. Nick Efford

Venue: Sports Hall 1. 2hrs, Attempt three Questions.

Question 1.
(a) Explain how the technique of run length encoding (RLE) gives rise to image compression. [3 marks]
(b) In the 8-bit image below, the grey levels of the dark and bright pixels are 0 and 255, respectively. Calculate the best compression ratio that can be achieved for this image using RLE, assuming that runs can be no bigger than the width of the image. Show all your working.[3]

- - - - - - - - - -
- - - X X X X - - -
- - X X X X X X - -
- - X X - - - - - -
- - X X - - - - - -
- - X X - - - - - -
- - X X - - - - - -
- - X X X X X X - -
- - - X X X X X - -
- - - - - - - - - -

(c) For certain images, RLE can have unfortunate effect of increasing, rather than reducing, image file sizes. Describe the likely characteristics of such images. [3]
(d) Explain the general principles by which lossy image compression techniques operate. [4]
(e) What are the main advantages and disadvantages of lossy JPEG compression? [4]
(f) A 4-page document is to be scanned, then transmitted from one computer to another using a modem. The scanning process converts each 200mm x 300mm page into an 8-bit greyscale image. The scanner operates at the standard resolution of 95 'dots per inch', giving 30 pixels per cm. The modem transmits data at a rate of 9,600 bits per second. [2]

Question 2.
(a) Give a brief explanation of what is measured by the histogram of a digital greyscale image. [2]
(b) Describe how the histogram of an 8-bit image is calculated. [4]
(c) Is it valid, in general, to say that peaks in the histogram of an image correspond to specific shapes or patterns visible in that image? Explain your reasoning. [3]
(d) An 8-bit image has a minimum grey level of 30 and a maximum grey level of 100. Describe the effects of the following operations on the histogram of this image: (i) Subtraction of 50 from all pixel grey levels. (ii) Exponential mapping of grey level onto the range 0-255 (iii) Histogram Equalisation. [6]
(e) Explain carefully how a grey level mapping that carries out histogram equalisation is derived. [5]

Question 3.
(a) Explain briefly what is meant by the terms 'low pass filtering' and 'high boost filtering', and describe how the appearance of an image changes following these operations. [4]
(b) Give an example of a low pass filter and an example of a high boost filter, each in the form of 3x3 convolution masks. In each case, explain the significance of the mask coefficients you have chosen. [5]
(c) Write down a pair of masks that can convolved with an image to detect grey level gradients in the
x and y directions. Suggest a way in which the output from convolution with these masks can be combined to give a directionless measure of gradient magnitudes. [3]
(d) Convolve the two masks derived in (c) with the shaded 3x3 neighbourhood of pixels in the image below, to give gradients G
x and Gy. Then compute gradient magnitude from Gx and Gy using the method given in (c). In each case, show all your working. [5]

20 20 20 20 20
20 20 20 20 20
5 5 5 20 20
5 5 5 20 20
5 5 5 20 20

(e) How might we use gradient magnitudes to identify the pixels belonging to the boundary of an object in an image? [1]
(f) Explain how the nonlinear technique of rank filtering can be used to compute a quantity similar to gradient magnitude. [2]

Question 4.
(a) Describe the main characteristics of structuring elements (SEs) and explain briefly how they are used to perform morphological processing of binary images. [6]
(b) In the image shown below, the blank pixels have a value of 0 and the shaded pixels have a value of 1. Suppose that this image is subjected to erosion by a 3x3 square SE. The origin of this SE is its central pixels, and all SE pixels have a value of 1. Explain briefly how the erosion is computed and sketch the image produced by this operations. [4]

- - - - - - - - - -
- - X X X X X - - -
- - X X X X X - - -
- - X X X X X - - -
- - X X X X X - - -
- - X X - - - - - -
- - X X - - - - - -
- - X X - - X X - -
- - - - - - X X - -
- - - - - - - - - -

(c) Suppose that the output of the erosion operations in (b) is then subjected to dilation by the same SE. Explain briefly how the dilation is computed and sketch the image produced by this operations. [4]
(d) What is the term used to describe an erosion followed by a dilation. What would be the effect of a second cycle of erosion and dilation on the image produced in (c)? [2]
(e) A bank is developing a machine that can recognise the handwritten signatures of its customers. Binary images of the signatures are produced by scanning a document and thresholding the scanned image. In these binary images, pen strokes should appear as chains of connected pixels; however, image quality is often so poor that these chains are broken in many places.
Suggest a technique that will join up the broken pen strokes in these binary images, Draw diagrams to illustrate the different stages of the technique. [4]

Question 5.
(a) Give four reasons why images are normally acquired using radiation from the visible region of the electromagnetic spectrum. Give two examples of scenarios in which radiation from other parts of the the spectrum must be used and explain, in each case, why visible radiation is unsuitable. [8]
(b) Describe six structural or functional differences that exist between the human eye and a CCD-based electronic camera. [6]
(c) How many unique colours are available for use in a 24-bit colour image? Explain your reasoning. [2]
(d) It is unlikely that we would ever see a 24-bit image containing every representable colour. Why? [2]
(e) When performing intensity or colour enhancement operations on colour images, the HSI model is preferable to the RGB model. Explain briefly why this is so. [2]

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CS4 Advanced Computing and Multimedia Networks
Delivered by Dr. Mourad Kara

Venue: Roger Stevens LT20. 2hrs, Attempt three Questions.

Question 1.
(a) Most cell networks guarantee the delivery of cells in the order in which they are sent. Discuss the issues that an adaptation layer has to address if the underlying cell network does not guarantee the delivery of cells in the order in which they are sent.[6 marks]
(b) Explain why it is more suitable to use cell networking to support integrated multimedia services than packet switching networks. [4]
(c) Most cell networking technologies which support multimedia services do not re-transmit cell that are lost or corrupted. What would be the consequences if the cell network protocol re-transmit lost and/or corrupted cells? [6]
(d) The ITU-T standard body has initially proposed four ATM Adaptation Layers (AAL1-AAL4). AAL3 and AAL4 support data services (connectionless and connection-oriented). The following revision from the ITU-T combined AAL3 and AAL4 into AAL3/4. The ATM Forum decided to propose an alternative to AAL3/4 called AAL5. Explain the motivation behind the ATM forum proposal to put forward AAL5. [4]

Question 2.
(a) A user is planning to send a 1 Megabyte (MB) file from site A to site B. Sites A and B are linked by a communication channel and are separated by 2000 miles. The parameter a is defined as the ratio of the latency of the channel and the time it takes to pump one packet into the link.

(i) The user selects an X.25 packet network running at 64 Kb/s (kb: kilobits) (ii) The user select a T1 channel running at 1.544 Mb/s (Mb: Megabits)

(iii) The user select a 1.2 Gb/s link. (Gb: Gigabits)

Explain the latency/bandwidth issue in each case. [4, 4, 4]

(b) What are the main implications of the fiber optics technology for communication protocols in high speed networks? [3]
(c) In determining the ATM cell size at the Standard Committees, the telephony industry supported a small cell size (e.g. 16 bytes), while the computing industry preferred a large cell size (e.g. 128 bytes). Explain the motivations behind each industry's choice. Discuss the selected choice for an ATM cell (48 bytes). [5]

Question 3.
(a) Assume a cell network protocol with a fixed cell size of 53 bytes. This protocol guarantees cell retransmission of lost cells. It operates on a SONET (OC3) 155 Mbps link with a round trip time-outs (RTT) of 20 milliseconds. What should be the minimum field size for the cell sequence number in the cell header? What is the percentage of data rate lost due to the cell sequence number field? You should justify your answer. [4 & 3]
(b) In a local area network (LAN) environment, describe the three primary differences between the ATM technology and other shared media technologies such as Ethernet and FDDI.[3, 3, 3]
(c) There are at least two ways of programming an application over an ATM network: (1) with conventional transport and network protocols over ATM (e.g. TCP/IP) using multiprotocol encapsulation over AAL5, and (2) writing your programs at the the AAL level (native ATM programming). Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each approach. [4]

Question 4.
(a) What is the purpose of traffic shaping in high speed network providing different types of services for multimedia applications. [4]
(b) Describe the following two traffic shaping schemes : (1) the simple leaky bucket (p, B) scheme and (2) the (r,T) smooth traffic scheme. [4, 4]
(c) Discuss the major differences between simple leaky bucket and the smooth traffic schemes. [3]
(d) Assuming an ATM network with several ATM Adaptation Layer (AALs). What is the purpose of the Segmentation and Reassembly (SAR) and the Convergence Sublayer (CS) in an AAL? (You can use as an example TCP/IP over ATM AAL5). [5]

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OOP Object Oriented Programming, Exam 1997'
Delivered by Dr. Willi O. Riha

Venue: Roger Stevens LT15. 2hrs, Attempt all Questions.

Question 1.
Programs often take their input from an input file and optionally send the output to a specified output file instead of to the screen. The file parameters are then conveniently passed on to the command line, For example, the command

java test data -out results
causes the program test to read input from file data and write the output to file results. On the other hand, the command
java test data

will read from file
data and write the results to the screen. The command
java test -out results
is incorrect and should be rejected. Program test will therefore have to validate the command line parameters to establish if they are correct and meaningful. In a Java textbook, the author offers the following piece of code for the validation.

if (args.length <1){

System.out.println("USAGE: java test inputFile [-out outputFile]");
System.out.println(" -out outputFile is optional.");
System.exit(1);

}

String inFile = null;
String outFile = null;
boolean toFile = false;

for (int i=0; i< args.length; i++){

if (arg[i].equals("-out")){

if (arg.length>i+1){

outFile = new String(args[i+1]);
i++;
toFile = true;

} else {

System.out.println("No output file specified.");
System.exit(1);

}

} else

inFile = new String(args[i]);

}

Although this code will deal correctly with the first two command lines given above, it does not work in general since the underlying logic is wrong. For example, it does not deal correctly with the third command line above.
Modify, or rewrite the given code so that it deals correctly with all possible command lines. [10 marks]

Question 2.
The class
java.lang.System provides a method which is useful for copying (a portion of) an array to another array. IT has the following specification
/* Copies an array from the source array, beginning at the
specified position, to the specified position of the destination array.
This method does not allocate memory for the destination array/ The memory must already be allocated.
param src: the source data
param src_pos: start position in the source data
param dest: the destination
param dest_pos: start position in the destination data
param length: the number of array elements to be copied
exception: ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException, if copy would cause access of data outside array bounds.
public static native void arraycopy (Object src, int src_position, Object dst, int dst_position, int length);
Given the following declarations
char a[] = new char[20];
char b[] = new char[15];
Person p[] = new Person [10]; // Person is some user defined class
Person q[] = new Person [12];
assuming that the arrays have been suitably initialised, we may use the function as follows
System.arraycopy(p, 2, q, 4, 5); // copies p[2], ... p[6] to q[4], ... q[8]
System.arraycopy(b, 0, a, 18, 2); // copies b[0], b[1] to a[18], a[19]
System.arraycopy(a, 5, b, 10, 7); // throws ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException

(a) Why is the use of function arraycopy inconsistent with Java's type system, and why is it not possible to write, in Java, the body of a method which deal with the preceding three function calls? [3, 3]
(b) Attempt to give a Java implementation of a function
public static void ArrayCopy (Object src, int src_position, Object dst, int dst_position, int length);
with the the same specification as System.arraycopy, and explain its limitations. [11]
What would you have to do in order to ensure that all possible invocations of
Arraycopy can be performed? (A brief explanation is sufficient). [3]
Note: If you do not understand part b), or do not know how to do it, then simply write a function which copy a (portion of a)
char array to another char array as specified above. (You will only score 6 marks instead of 14).

Question 3.
Alongside
stacks and queues a data structure known as a deque is often used in certain applications. A deque is a dynamic linear structure which supports the following basic operations: checking if a deque is empty, adding, removing and inspecting the first element, adding, removing, inspecting the last element. We might call these operations isEmpty(), addFirst(item), removeFirst(), getFirst(), addLast(item), removeLast(), getLast().
a) From an implementation point view, what is the relationship (if any) between a deque and a queue and the built-in class Vector? (e.g. is the true that every queue is a deque etc.) [3]
b) Given an implementation of a
class Queue (as, for example, discussed in the lectures) is it possible or meaningful to derive a class Deque from it? Is it possible to make use of a class Queue in the implementation of a class Deque? (You are not required to write any code, just give a brief explanation). [2]
c) It is possible to implement a class
Deque in terms of class Vector. Show how to do this. (Here you are required to produce some Java code. Note that you only need to implement the operations mentioned above (and, obviously, at least one constructor). To keep things simple, no check for homogeneity are to be included). [5]

Question 4.
Suppose that you are required to write a Java program which reads in another Java program and outputs the program text contained in the input file
with all comments stripped. Explain how you would go about implementing such a program. You are not required to write any code - this would take too long - but you should attempt to explain the structure and the logic of the program in as much detail as is necessary.
Notes:
You are not allowed to store the entire input file in a
char array or a String.
You may assume that the input file contains a syntactically correct Java program, i.e. every multi-line comment is properly delimited by /* and */.


VIS Distributed Visualization Systems,
Visualization & High Performance Computing, Exam 1997'
Delivered by Dr. Ken Brodlie

Venue: Roger Stevens LT20. 2hrs, Attempt three Questions.

Question 1.
(a) Data values are given at the corners of a unit square as shown in Table 1:

x 0 0 1 1
y 0 1 0 1
data values 12 -2 -8 4

Draw an estimate of the zero level contour line. Explain in detail how you have arrived at this estimate. [10 marks]

(b) The following data relates to the length of rods produced by a manufacturing process. Table 2 shows the probability that any sample rod has a length which is less than a particular value.

Length (mm) 79.0 80.0 81.0 82.0 83.0 84.0 85.0
Probability that sample is less than this length 0.0 0.01 0.10 0.5 0.95 0.99 1.0

o A visualization is required which will give an indication of the probability over the entire range of lengths from 79.0mm to 85.0mm.[2]
o Describe the nearest neighbour and piecewise linear interpolation methods, sketching the estimate of the probability each generates. [2]
o Compare the strengths and weaknesses of the two methods. [2]
o Use the two methods to estimate the probability that a sample rod has length less than 81.8mm [2]
o Describe piecewise cubic interpolation. [2]
o What care is needed in applying piecewise cubic interpolation to this set of data [2]

Question 2.
(a) Consider a 3D dataset of CT data generated by a medical scanner. Describe the basic steps involved in visualizing this data using the ray casting volume rendering technique. Your answer should explain how the compositing of samples along a ray is carried out. [10]
(b) There is freedom in choosing the spacing between the samples taken along a ray. What would the advantage (in saving of computation) be in choosing samples to lie exactly one voxel width apart, each sample being chosen to lie on the face of a voxel? [5]
(c) If you were given a second 3D dataset, this time of SPECT data indicating bloodflow, suggest at least two ways in which a combination of the two datasets might be visualized. [5]

Question 3.
(a) Outline the spot noise technique as applied to the the visualization of 2D velocity data. [7]
(b) Consider a 3D dataset of velocity data defined on a rectilinear grid. Describe the basic steps involved in visualizing this data using a particle advection technique. [7]
(c) Suppose you were also given temperature and pressure values on the same grid. Design a glyph (ie a symbol) which would allow the velocity, temperature and pressure values to be collectively visualized at a point. Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of your design. [6]

Question 4.
(a) What is VRML? Distinguish the capabilities of version 1.0 and 2.0. [2]
Consider the role of VRML in terms of the visualization reference model (due to Haber and McNabb). Use this to explain how VRML can be used in combination with a visualization system such as IRIS Explorer, as a means of publishing visualization. [4]
Discuss how an IRIS Explorer visualization service might be provided via the World Wide Web. [4]
(b) Explain the history tree concept introduced by GRASPARC for maintaining an audit trail of computational experiments which involve an evolutionary (ie time-independent) process. [5]
If the computational experiments involve running a static simulation (ie time invariant) for different values of three parameters, suggest an


AGR Advanced Computer Graphics and Virtual Environments, Exam 1997'
Delivered by Dr. Terrence Fernando

Venue: Auditorium Gallery, Attempt all Questions.

Question 1.
(i) Imagine that you have been given the task of implementing a polygon renderer based on PHIGS. Explain how you would go about designing the renderer. Your answer should discuss the following.

(a) A diagram showing the main stages of the rendering pipeline which support Z-buffering and Gouraud shading. [3]
(b) Brief explanation of the function of each stage of the rendering pipeline. [3]
(c) Will the rendering pipeline be the same for performing Z-buffering and Phong shading? Please give your reasons for your answers. [2]

(ii) Explain how the Z-buffer algorithm and the Gouraud shading algorithm can be combined together to generate 3D images with hidden surface removal. Your answer should explain the main concepts used in both algorithms and their integration. [10]

One of the advantage of the Z-buffer algorithm is that polygons may be presented to it in any order. Does this mean that two renderings of the same scene created by sending polygons in different orders, will have identifical values in their Z-buffer and in their intensity buffer? Explain your answer. [2]

Question 2.
(i) When using Constructive Solid Geometry (CSG), primitives such as blocks and spheres are combined together using Boolean operations. Such CSG models are maintained in a binary tree called a CSG tree. Outline an algorithm for ray tracing such models. Your answer should include the following.

(a) how to compute the nearest intersection. [4]
(b) how to generate shadows, reflections and transparency [6]
(c) a lighting model which can be used to compute the final shading value of a pixel. [2]

(ii) Describe the spatial aliasing artefacts in ray tracing and explain how these artefacts can be reduced using adaptive supersampling techniques. Discuss the limitations of this method. [8]

Question 3.
(i) Virtual Environments are increasely developed for application in area such as Mechanical Engineering, Construction, Medicine etc. Imagine you have been given the task of designing and implementing a highly immersive virtual environment for one of the above applications. What issues would you consider in your design? Your answer should discuss the design issues under the following points:

(a) Direct man-machine interface. [4]
(b) Realism of the virtual world. [3]
(c) Performance issues. [3]

(ii) Open Inventor is an object oriented toolkit for building interactive graphical applications. Explain briefly how Open Inventor support the following facilities:

(a) construction of complex graphical scenes [3]
(b) ability to control level of detail [2]
(c) animation [2]

Compare and contrast the features of Open Inventor with Open GL. [3]


AI9 Computer Vision, Exam 1997'
Delivered by Prof. David Hogg and Dr. Roger Boyle

Venue: Auditorium Gallery, Attempt all Questions.

Question 1.
(a) For either the Robotic Sheepdog application described by Mr Sumpter or the Deformable Mesh system described by Dr. Bulpitt, describe the system under the heads o image processing o segmentation o shape extraction o shape characterisation o interpretation o understanding From all the information in your answer, it should be clear what the application is doing, and how (in overview form) it does it. [10]

(b) A well known car manufacturer wishes to develop a camera-based system to recognise standard road signs in order to provide auditory safety warning to the driver (e.g. there is a left-hand bend coming up for which you are going too fast). One of the problems will be dealing with the wide range of viewpoints from which road signs may be observed. Produce an outline design for the machine vision component of such a system. You should state precisely which techniques will be used and how they fit together. You are not required to give details of how the individual techniques work. Discuss the reasons for your choice of design and what you think are its weaknesses and strengths. Wherever possible you should use diagrams to illustrate the description. [10] (a) An ellipse at (a,b) with semi-axis r1, r2 is given by the equation

(x-a)^2   (y-b)^2
------- + -------- = 1
  r1^2      r2^2

Explain clearly how you would conduct a Hough Transform to search an M x N image for ellipses with the following three property; o have r1 in the range [10,20] (measured in pixels); o have aspect ratio (r1/r2) in the range [0.5, 0.7]; o are entirely within the image. [6]

+---------------------------+
|                           |
|  x                        |
|  x   xxx            S1    |  xx blobs
|  xxxxxxx                  |   P Pentagon 
|   xxxxxx       S2         |   H Hexagon
|                           |  S1 Semi-circle with intensity about 230
|                 P         |  S2 Semi-circle with intensity about 140
|         S1          H     |  S3 Semi-circle with intensity about 230
|  S3                       |
|             P      S3     |
|    S2            xxxxxxx  |
|               xxxx    xx  |
+---------------------------+

Suppose an image is known to contain a number of semi-circles of known radius R (among other things). Each semi-circle is of uniform intensity, but different semicircles may have different intensity. Explain how you might use a Hogu Transform to locate them (there is no need to repeat details of the conduct of the Transform algorithm). [6] (b)

+------------------------------------------------+
|1                                               |
|   xxxxxxx                                      |
|  xx2    xx                                     |
|   xxxxxxx                               xxxxx  |
|             x3x x4x   xx5               x6  x  |
|              x   x    xxxx              x   x  |
|        xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx   xxx|
|        x7                               x   x9 |
|        x                                x   x  |
|        x        xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx   x   x  |
|        x        x8                  x   x   x  |
|xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx|
|10                                              |
+------------------------------------------------+

A simple bar-room scene is known to contain only 6 sort of object - bar, floor, glass, mirror, student, wall. The following relationships are also known to hold; Bar is straight edged Floor occurs only once Glass is straight edged Mirror is oval Student is roughly rectangular Wall occurs only once Bar is directly above floor Floor is adjacent to the image border Only Floor is wholly beneath wall Glass is directly above bar Mirror is within wall Student is directly above floor Wall is adjacent to the image border Consider the figure, and use discrete relaxation to label the region 1-10 as unqiuely as possible. [6] Suggest a further restriction or restrictions that would resolve any remaining ambiguity. [2]

Question 3.
(a) A given pair of camera views are related by the following relationships between corresponding points in the two images:

         ( 0  1  0 )( x2 )
(x1 y1 1)( 1  0 -1 )( y2 )  = 0
         ( 0  1  0 )( 1  )

i. By substituting into this matrix equation, derive the equations of the epipolar lines in image 2 corresponding to the points

( x1 )   ( 3 )              ( x2 )   ( 6 )
( y1 ) = ( 1 )       and    ( y2 ) = ( 1 )    from image 1. [3]

ii. From these lines, derive the position of the epipole in image 2. Draw a diagram to illustrate the configuration of epipolar lines in image 2. [4]

iii. The fundamental matrix

    ( 0  0  0 )
F = ( 0  0 -1 )
    ( 0  1  1 )

is unusual in an important respect. What can you say about the associated epipolar lines and the geometrical setup of the pair of views? Justify your answers. [5]

(b) Alignment matching is well suited for matching 2D models against sets of 2D image features. However, it may also be used to match 3D models against sets of 3D points features derived from stereo processing.

i. How many points pairing would be required to completely determine the pose of an object in 3D? Explain your answer. [4]

ii. Suppose 12 three-dimensional point features have been derived from stereo processing. How many distinct candidate poses are generated during the alignment matching algorithm? Show your working. [4] Question 4. (a)

      |
      |a
   e  |  b
 ----- -----
      |
      |c
      |

 

Consider the edge relaxation scheme described in lectures (see Figure); suppose at some stage a=0.2, b=0.1, c=0.5. For what values of q (as defined in your notes) is this vertex of type 0? [2]

              i
            -----
    ##### a ##### d #####
    ##### | ##### | #####
    ##### | ##### | #####
   b------  --e--   -----g
    ##### | ##### | #####
    ##### | ##### | #####
    ##### c ##### f #####
            -----
              k

A problem with edge relaxation schemes is the generation of double edges - that is (see Figure), in addition to e, i and k may also be encouraged. Suggest a way you might amend the relaxation algorithm as describe in notes to compensate for this. [6]

(b) Pictures of starfish are collected from rockpools; the animal vary in size and while they are all 5 pointed, the 'limbs' are capable of independent movement. Provided with an algorithm that segments out the sihouette of a starfish, explain how you would automatically build a point distribution model of the shape. [4]

           xxx
           x  x
            x  x    xxxxxxxxxxX
             x  xxxxx  xxxxxxxX
     xxxxxxxxxx xx   xx
    xxx              x
     xxxxxxxxxxx  x x  x
              x  x   x   x
             x  x     xx  x
             xxx        xxxx            (A star fish)

Assume that a principal components analysis of your model has been conducted, and a low(er) dimensional representation is available. Explain clearly how you would use your model best to fit a shape in a new image. [5]

Suppose you also have information about how the starfish is moving (perhaps from accumulated video data) in the form of direction and speed, while retaining its approximate shape. Describe how you would augment the solution you have described, and mention any particular problems you might foresee. [3]


DMS Future Directions in Distributed Multimedia Systems, Coursework 1997'
Delivered by Dr. Ken Brodlie

Coursework 1 (30%)

Study the impact of distributed multimedia technology (and in particular WWW) on the traditional newspaper industry:

(i) explain the range of news services that are provided on the Web (for example, you might like to build a Web page with annotated links to different news sources, locally, globally, internationally)

(ii) pick one or two of these, and do a critical evaluation against the more traditional form of publication (as an example, you could pick an electronic version of a newspaper and assess it against the paper form - how well are they exploiting the potential of the new technology? what constraints does the new technology bring?)

(iii) looking ahead to the future, how will electronic newspapers develop? are there wider implications for society (for example, will it be easier or harder to disseminate local news? will it be easier or harder for someone like Rupert Murdoch, say, to dominate?) how will they be funded? how will the personalised newspaper develop?

Your answer should be built as Web page(s). The length should be approximately the equivalent of six A4 pages.

Coursework 2 (30%)

Creation of a Movie

The content should include:

  • a title
  • an opening sequence to introduce who you are, taken from camera input
  • an edited sequence where you highlight some feature of the GROUP assignment that you INDIVIDUALLY were involved in... I would anticipate that this would include a navigation through the VRML world you have created
  • a closing credit

You should edit your movie so that it runs as smoothly as possible, using whatever special effects you want. Also, the audio track should be synchronised with the movie.

You should create a `storyboard' that describes the sequences you want to include.

Group Project (40%)

Every fortnight, a challenge would be set and each group is suppose to tackle the problem separately and present the findings on a Website:

Challenge 1: "How web-sites manage network bottlenecks?"

Challenge 2: "How does Live Radio in Internet works?"

Challenge 3: "Use of credit card for transactions over the Internet. Is it safe? How it works?"

Challenge 4: "Browser Wars"

Finally, a group presentation on Browser Wars.


VWE Virtual Working Environments, Coursework/Exam 1997'
Delivered by Dr. Lydia Lau

Coursework 1 (35%)

Try out the user scenarios for the Adviser System
http://www.vsp.leeds.ac.uk:9000/cgi-bin/adviser/VSPGateway.pl and comment on the useability of the system. How it might be improved?

Write a set of user requirements for a student wishes to use an Adviser System to support your MSc course.

Draft out set of Web pages for a possible VWE system to meet your user requirements.

Discuss the technology you would propose to use.

You should submit a URL with your proposed design and report (no more than 10 pages).

Coursework 2 (35%)

To write a report (about 5000 words) on "The role of Information Technology in Virtual Organization and the future directions". It should include the following discussion (but not necessarily in that order):
  • Explain your understanding of the term "virtual organization".
  • Classify the kind of IT that could be used in a virtual organization (type of IT systems).
  • Assess the opportunities offered by those IT systems and obstacles to be overcome for their suceessful adoption; you might like to draw on the lessons learned from the VWE module and the associtated readings.
  • Discuss in detail the top 2 issues that require urgent attention now and in the immediate future (eg. Ecommerce - security, collobrative systems - maturity, more investments, etc).

Open Book Examination (30%)

1. In this module, a Virtual Working System is seen to have three components - People, Information and Technology. Explain the geenral issues associated with each of the three components (you are reminded that a reproduction of the lecture notes will not gain any marks). [3]

2. Assess how the Leeds Virtual Science Park Project (including associated projects Advisor and NEST) contributes to the three components of a virtual working system. [7]

3. The newly elected government in your country pledged to create a life-long learning culture within its offices throughout the country. You are appointed as one of the consultants to investigate the feasibility of using IT to support distance learning nation-wide. Discuss the opportunities provided by IT to fulfil this mission and outline the required technical infrastructure. State any assumption that you have made. [7]

4. Distributed Information Management is seen by the UK government as a critical issue for UK competitiveness. What do you think is meant by Distributed Information Management and why it is seen as strategic? [3]



Created in January 25, 1997. Last Revised: June 3, 1997