CSCI 497P/597P - Introduction to Computer Vision

Course Overview

Who

• Instructor: Scott Wehrwein (scott.wehrwein@wwu.edu)

Where and When

• Lecture: MTWF 2:00-2:50pm in AW 205
• Office hours (CF 461):
  • Monday 3:00pm–4:00pm
  • Tuesday 8:30am–9:00am
  • Thursday 11:00am–12:00pm
  • Friday 11:00am–11:30am
    
  • By appointment
• Course Website: https://facultyweb.cs.wwu.edu/~wehrwes/courses/csci497p_19w

What

Prerequisites

• For CSCI 497P: CS major standing, MATH 204; Math 341 recommended
• For CSCI 597P: Graduate standing

Synopsis from the WWU Course Catalog

A broad introduction to the fundamentals and applications of computer vision. Topics include basic image processing, the geometry and physics of image formation, multi-view scene reconstruction, segmentation, and detection and recognition of objects.

Official Course Outcomes

On completion of CSCI 497P, students will demonstrate:

• Thorough understanding of basic image filtering and transformations
• Thorough understanding of geometric and physical models of image formation
• Thorough understanding of two-view epipolar geometry
• Basic understanding of multi-view geometric reconstruction
• Basic understanding of machine learning fundamentals and their relevance to computer vision.
• Basic understanding of convolutional neural networks and their application to high-level vision problems.

On completion of CSCI 597P, students will additionally demonstrate:

• Thorough understanding of machine learning fundamentals and their relevance to computer vision.
• Thorough understanding of and practical experience with convolutional neural networks and their application to high-level vision problems.

Tentative Schedule

Textbooks

We will use the following textbook. A PDF preprint version is freely available online at http://szeliski.org/Book/.

• Computer Vision: Algorithms and Applications, by Richard Szeliski.

Assessment

Grades will be calculated as a weighted average of scores on the following course components:

• Programming assignments
• (possible) Written homework assignments
• Midterm exam
• Final exam
• In-class assessments

Programming assignments will contain add-ons beyond the base project; these add-ons will be required for students in CSCI597P and provide an opportunity for extra credit for students in CSCI497P.

Course Policies

Inclusive Classroom Environment

It is expected that everyone will promote a friendly, supportive, and respectful environment in the classroom, labs, and project groups. Everyone’s participation will be equally welcomed and valued.

Attendance

Strictly speaking, attendance at lectures is not mandatory and not explicitly tracked. That said, no credit will be given for missed in-class assessment activities.

Late Work

You have three “slip days” that you may use at your discretion to submit programming assignments late. Slip days apply only to programming assignments and can not be applied to any other deadline. You may use slip days one at a time or together - for example, you might submit each of three assignments one day late, or submit one assignment three days late. A slip day moves the deadline by exactly 24 hours from the original deadline; if you go beyond this, you will need to use a second slip day, if available.

After your slip days are exhausted, a penalty of 10% * floor(hours_late/24 + 1) - that is, 10% per day late.

Programming Guidelines

Your programs will be graded on correctness, clarity, and efficiency (in that order).

Correctness:

A correct program is one that always produces the correct output for a given input. Also, a correct program does not produce unintended side-effects. The most effective way to ensure that your program is correct is to test, test, test. Test each component as you introduce it; once you are confident that a component works you can use it in other routines. Try to break your program in testing, and if you succeed, locate the bug and fix it. The better you test your program, the more likely it is to be correct - the more likely it is to be correct, the more likely you’ll earn a good score. Most of your grade will depend on the correctness of your code.

Clarity:

The easier it is to read and maintain your code, the easier it is to locate and remove bugs. Your program should be well organized, appropriately commented, and easy to maintain. To have a well-organized program, design your program thoughtfully and modularly. Think before you code: hacking away blindly leads to ugly, difficult-to-read code. If you do hack away, producing a functional but ugly wall of code, try to clean it up a bit. Make sure that your cleaning does not introduce new bugs.

As for comments, please follow these simple guidelines proposed by Emeritus Professor Osborne:

• A comment at the top of the program states the program’s purpose, the author, and date.
• Each subprocedure is accompanied by a comment that states its purpose and describes pre and post conditions, and mentions any exceptions raised.
• Within a procedure, precede code sections by a comment that says what the section does. This is usually one line long. Occasionally in tricky pieces of code, a comment to the right explains what the code does.
• For each major variable, write a comment to explains its purpose.
• Do not over comment. Brief is best, but not so brief as to be cryptic.

Efficiency:

Your programs should be asymptotically efficient, e.g. checking graph reflexivity should be O(n), insertion into a balanced tree should be O(log n), etc. Do not optimize your code beyond the asymptotic level, as such tweaks are often at the expense of clarity, correctness, or both.

Academic Honesty

Collaboration Policy - Individual Assignments

Individual programming assignments are to be completed independently. Students are welcome to discuss assignments with each other on a conceptual level, but each student should be writing their code independently and without direct help from fellow students. Sharing your code with others or looking at someone else’s code is an explicit violation of this collaboration policy. To make sure you are collaborating appropriately, follow these two rules:

• Do not discuss programming assignments in the presence of computers - step away from the computer and talk at a whiteboard or sketch ideas on paper instead.
• After any discussion about the assignment, wait an hour (or watch an episode of Stranger Things, or go to the gym, or work on an assignment for another class) before sitting down to write up your solution.

Automated tools will be used to check your code for plagiarism at the push of a button. They are not fooled by tricks such as changing variable naming and whitespace: in fact, hiding plagiarism is harder than doing the assignment.

Collaboration Policy - Pair Programming

For pair programming assignments, the above policy applies to any collaborations with people outside your group. In addition, the following pair programming best practices must be followed:

• Both members of a pair programming team must be present for all work done on the project.
• The pair must switch Driver and Navigator often.
• Each partner must be able to independently explain all of the code.

University Policies

Please review the University policies outlined at http://syllabi.wwu.edu regarding:

• Academic Honesty
• Accommodations
• Ethical Conduct with WWU Network and Computing Resources
• Equal Opportunity
• Medical Excuse Policy
• Student Conduct Code