Dorothea Blostein Home Page

Dorothea Blostein
Professor, School of Computing at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario.

Address
Dorothea Blostein
School of Computing
Goodwin Hall 720
Queen's University
Kingston, Ontario, Canada
K7L 3N6
(613) 533-6537
blostein@cs.queensu.ca

Dr. Blostein received computer science degrees from the University of Illinois (B.Sc. in 1978, Ph.D. in 1987) and Carnegie Mellon University (M.Sc. in 1980). Since 1988 she has been on the faculty of Queen's University, and is director of the Diagram Recognition Lab. Dr. Blostein was an invited speaker at CICM 2009 and serves on the Program Committees for GREC 2009, Diagrams 2010, ICPR 2008, VLC 2009, ICDAR 2009 ICDAR 2011. She was Chair of GREC2001, the Fourth IAPR International Workshop on Graphics Recognition, Kingston, Ontario, in September, 2001.

Research Interests

Dorothea Blostein's main research goal is to smooth the interface between paper and electronic versions of documents. This includes development of computer technology to read, write, and edit diagram notations, such as music notation, math notation, maps, schematics, and architectural drawings. The text portions of scanned documents can be analyzed with OCR (Optical Character Recognition), but further processing is required to extract the information contained in diagram notations. Dr. Blostein and her students are investigating the use of techniques such as graph transformation and tree transformation, in order to construct an interpretation of the 2D arrangement of symbols in a diagram. Dr. Blostein is interested in exploring and exploiting the relationship between diagram recognition and diagram generation.

Other projects include classification of document pages (particularly for biomedical documents) and the use of internet searches to validate document recognition results.

Dr. Blostein has coauthored Lime, an editor for music notation. Both Macintosh and IBM PC versions are available for trial use.

Selected Publications

Classification of Biomedical Documentsn

H. Shatkay, N. Chen and D. Blostein, "Integrating Image Data into Biomedical Text Categorization", Bioinformatics, Vol. 22, No 14, July 2006, pp. e446-453.
N. Chen and D. Blostein, "A Survey of Document Image Classification: Problem Statement, Classifier Architecture and Performance Evaluation", Int'l Journal on Document Analysis and Recognition, Vol. 10, No. 1, June 2007, pp. 1-16.

Formulating and Evaluating Recognition Algorithms using the Recognition Strategy Language

R. Zanibbi, D. Blostein, J. Cordy, "Decision-Based Specification and Comparison of Table Recognition Algorithms", in Machine Learning in Document Analysis and Recognition, Eds. Marinai and Fujisawa, Studies in Computational Intelligence, Vol. 90, Springer Verlag, to appear March 2008.
R. Zanibbi, D. Blostein, J. Cordy, "Recognition Tasks are Imitation Games", in Pattern Recognition and Data Mining, Eds. S. Singh et al., Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 3686, pp. 209-218, 2005.
R. Zanibbi, D. Blostein, J. Cordy, "Historical Recall and Precision: Summarizing Generated Hypotheses", Proc. 8th Int'l Conf. on Document Analysis and Recognition, pp. 202-206, Seoul, Korea, 2005.
R. Zanibbi, D. Blostein, J. Cordy, "The Recognition Strategy Language", Proc. 8th Int'l Conf. on Document Analysis and Recognition, pp. 565-569, Seoul, Korea, 2005.
R. Zanibbi, D. Blostein, J. Cordy, "A Survey of Table Recognition: Models, Observations, transformations, and Inferences", Int'l Journal on Document Analysis and Recognition, Vol. 7, No. 1, pp. 1-16, 2004. (The original online version of the publication is available at www.springerlink.com)

Surveys on Topics in Diagram Recognition

D. Blostein, E. Lank, A. Rose, R. Zanibbi, "User Interfaces for On-line Diagram Recogntion", in Graphics Recognition, Algorithms and Applications, D. Blostein and Y.-B. Kwon, Editors, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Volume 2390, Springer Verlag, 2002, pp. 92-103. (A discussion of issues and open problems.)
D. Blostein, E. Lank, R. Zanibbi, "Treatment of Diagrams in Document Image Analysis", in Theory and Application of Diagrams, Eds. M. Anderson, P. Cheng, V. Haarslev, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 1889, Springer Verlag, 2000, pp. 330-344.
D. Blostein and A. Grbavec, "Recognition of Mathematical Notation," in Handbook of Character Recognition and Document Image Analysis, Eds. H. Bunke and P. Wang, World Scientific, 1997, pp. 557-582.
D. Blostein, "General Diagram-Recognition Methodologies," in Graphics Recognition: Methods and Applications, Eds. R. Kasturi and K. Tombre, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 1072, Springer Verlag, 1996, pp. 106-122.
D. Blostein and H. Baird, "A Critical Survey of Music Image Analysis," in Structured Document Image Analysis, Eds. H. Baird, H. Bunke, and K. Yamamoto, Springer Verlag, 1992, pp. 405-434.

Recognition of Mathematics Notation Using Tree Transformation

L. Zhang, D. Blostein, R. Zanibbi, "Using Fuzzy Logic to Analyze Superscript and Subscript Relations in Handwritten Mathematical Expressions," Proc. 8th Int'l Conf. onDocument Analysis and Recognition, pp. 972-976, Seoul, Korea, 2005.
R. Zanibbi, D. Blostein, J. Cordy, "Recognizing Mathematical Expressions Using Tree Transformation", IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, Vol. 24, No. 11, pp. 1455-1467, November 2002.
The software that is described in this paper is available here.
D. Blostein, J. Cordy, R. Zanibbi, "Applying Compiler Techniques to Diagram Recognition", Proc. Sixteenth Intl. Conf. on Pattern Recognition, Quebec City, Canada, August 2002, Vol. III, pp. 123-126.
R. Zanibbi, D. Blostein, J. Cordy, "Baseline Structure Analysis of Handwritten Mathematics Notation", Proc. Sixth Intl. Conf. on Document Analysis and Recognition, Seattle, Washington, Sept. 2001, IEEE Computer Society Press, pp. 768-773.

Graph Transformation and Application to Diagram Recognition

D. Blostein and A. Schuerr, "Computing with Graphs and Graph Transformation," Software Practice and Experience, Vol 29, No 3, 1999, pp. 1-21.
D. Blostein and A. Schuerr, "Visual Modeling and Programming with Graph Transformations", notes for a VL'98 tutorial (14th IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, Sept. 1998), Title & Table of Contents & Glossary & Chapter 1 & Chapter 2; Chapter 1 & Chapter 3 & Chapter 5 & Chapter 6; Chapter 4; Conclusion & Bibliography.
H. Fahmy and D. Blostein, "A Graph-Rewriting Paradigm for Discrete Relaxation: Application to Sheet-Music Recognition," International Journal of Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence, Vol. 12, No. 6, Sept. 1998, pp. 763-799.
D. Blostein, H. Fahmy, A. Grbavec, "Issues in the Practical Use of Graph Rewriting," Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 1073, Springer Verlag, 1996, pp. 38-55.
H. Fahmy and D. Blostein, "A Graph Grammar Programming Style for Recognition of Music Notation," Machine Vision and Applications, Vol. 6, No 2, 1993, pp. 83-99.

Lime Music Notation Software

D. Blostein and L. Haken, "Using Diagram Generation Software to Improve Diagram Recognition: A Case Study of Music Notation," IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, Vol. 21, No. 11, November 1999, pp. 1121-1136.
D. Blostein and L. Haken, "The Lime Music Editor: A Diagram Editor Involving Complex Translations," Software Practice and Experience, Vol. 24, No 3, March 1994, pp. 289-306.
L. Haken and D. Blostein, "The Tilia Music Representation: Extensibility, Abstraction, and Notation Contexts for the Lime Music Editor," Computer Music Journal, Vol. 17, No. 3, 1993, pp. 43-58.
D. Blostein and L. Haken, "Justification of Printed Music," Communications of the ACM, Vol. 34, No. 3, March 1991, pp. 88-99.

Computer Vision

D. Blostein and N. Ahuja, "Shape from Texture: Integrating Texture-element Extraction and Surface Estimation," IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, Vol. 11, No. 12, December 1989, pp. 1233-1251.
D. Blostein and N. Ahuja, "A Multi-scale Region Detector," Computer Vision, Graphics, and Image Processing, Vol. 45, No. 1, January 1989, pp. 22-41.

Visiting Researchers

Oleg Golubitsky, Postdoctoral Fellow, January 2005 to August 2006.
Research topic: structural representations for document recognition. This builds on existing work with Lev Goldfarb on ETS (Evolving Transformation Systems).

Sergei Levashkin, visiting sabbaticant, August 2004 to August 2005.
Research on recognition of cartographic maps.

Gulila Adongbieke, visiting professor from Xinjiang University, P.R. China.
Research May-Oct 2003 on classification of documents, using linguistic methods.

Clemens Oertel, graduate exchange student.
Research Jan-Aug 2003 on external verification of the results produced by business-card recognition.

Li Zhifeng, visiting researcher from Chinese HanWang Company, Beijing, P.R. China.
Research Oct 2001-Jan 2002 on character recognition and document analysis.

Research Supervision

Current Graduate Students

(this list may be out of date)

Stephen Thomas	PhD student
Na Harrington	PhD student	co-supervised with Hagit Shatkay
Yin Lam	MSc student	co-supervised with Hagit Shatkay
Andrew Seniuk	MSc student
Matthew Kelly	MSc student

Theses Supervised

Adrien Lapointe	M.Sc. thesis	Issues in Performance Evaluation of Mathematical Notation Recognition Systems	May 2008
Steven (Jianhui) Chen	M.Sc. thesis	A Wavelet-based Approach to the Classification of Remotely Sensed Images: A Comparison of Different Feature Sets in an Urban Environment (co-supervised with DongMei Chen, Geography)	January 2007
Nicole Mitchell	M.Sc. thesis	Music Similarity Metrics: Recognizing tempo, Transposition, Ornamentation, and Accentuation properties	January 2007
Marcus Miller	M.Sc. thesis	A Structured Approach to Object Segmentation in Aeronautical Charts	May 2006
Ling Zhang	M.Sc. thesis	Fuzzy Logic Approach to Recognition of Mathematical Notation	February 2005
Richard Zanibbi	Ph.D. thesis	A Language for Specifying and Comparing Table Recognition Strategies (co-supervised with Jim Cordy)	December 2004
Nawei Chen	M.Sc. thesis	Exploring a Space of Document Image Classifiers	December 2004
Yang Li	M.Sc. thesis	Asymmetric Graph Matching for Registering Satellite Images to Road Maps (co-supervised with Purang Abolmaesumi)	April 2004
Sean Chen	M.Sc. thesis	A Multiscale Domain-Independent Algorithm for Document Image Segmentation	July 2003
Hanaa Barakat	M.Sc. thesis	Training with Positive and Negative Data Samples: Effects on a Classifier for Hand-Drawn Geometric Shapes	May 2001
Ed Lank	Ph.D. thesis	Retargetable On-Line Recognition of Diagram Notations	March 2001
Medha Shukla Sarkar	Ph.D. thesis	GXL - A Graph Transformation Language with Scoping and Graph Parameters (co-supervised with Jim Cordy)	August 2000
Jianping Wu	M.Sc. thesis	Bayesian Estimation of Stereo Disparity from Phase-Based Measurements (co-supervised with David Fleet)	March 2000
Richard Zanibbi	M.Sc. thesis	Recognition of Mathematics Notation via Computer Using Baseline Structure	January 2000
Ben Gatien	M.Sc. thesis	Segmentation of Hand-Written Documents Using Minimum Spanning Trees	July 1997
Mark Rhodenizer	M.Sc. thesis	Automatic Extraction of Features from Line Drawings	July 1997
Hoda Fahmy	Ph.D. thesis	Reasoning in the Presence of Uncertainty	March 1995
Ann Grbavec	M.Sc. thesis	Recognition of Mathematics Notation Using Graph Rewriting	January 1995
Anton Driesse	M.Sc. thesis	Tempo Tracking in Real Time	June 1992
Hoda Fahmy	M.Sc. thesis	A Graph-Grammar Approach to High-level Music Recognition	September 1991
Guylaine Cantin	M.Sc. thesis	The Use of Function-Tables to Specify Complex Algorithms (co-supervised with David Parnas)	July 1991

Undergraduate Research Assistants

Shauna O'Shea	summer 2004 summer 2005	Classification of document images
Adam Bodnar	summer 2002 summer 2003	Classifying text on business cards
Tim Collier	summer 2003	Classifying text on business cards
David Tausky	summer 2002 summer 2001	Recognition of road networks in topographic maps Recognition of matrices in math notation
Alvin Jugoon	summer 2002 summer 2001	Recognition of business cards User interface for recognition of UML notation
Arlis Rose	summer 2002 summer 2001	Recognition of business cards User interfaces for diagram recognition
Sean Chen	summer 2001 summer/fall 2000	Recognition of handwritten UML notation
Randall Tuesday	summer 2001	Graph display; animation of graph algorithms
Jeremy Hussel	summer 2001	User interface for recognition of UML notation
Jeb Thorley	summer/fall 2000	Recognition of handwritten UML notation
Nick Willan	summer 1999	Recognition of handwritten math notation
Richard Zanibbi	summer 1998	Visual Language work applied to math recognition
David Kidston	summer 1995	Graph rewriting with the PROGRES system
Dwi Faulus	summer 1993, 1994	Symbol-recognition for music notation
Hoda Fahmy	summer 1989, 1990	High-level recognition of music notation

Teaching

Current Courses

CISC 859Pattern Recognition

CISC 365 Algorithms I. Fall 2010. Also Winter 2003 and previous years.

Other Courses I have Taught

CISC 124 Introduction to Computing Science II. Fall 2002.

Java image manipulation code

CISC 324 Operating Systems. Winter 2009 and previous years.

CISC 352 Artificial Intelligence. Fall 2003.

CISC 221 and CISC 231. Computer Architecture. Winter 1997 and previous years.