Course overview
This course is designed to give marine ecology students and scientists an appreciation of the potential of automated plankton identification. The course will first review current automatic plankton recognition system and how they work. Their performance will be contrasted to that of human experts doing the same tasks. Students will get an opportunity to analyse plankton water samples themselves, and gain a first-hand understanding of the problems of identification and consensus. The second part of the course will look at image analysis and recognition techniques, allowing students to gain some experience in pattern recognition methods that underpin plankton recognition. Finally students will put this all together by using ZooImage and related software to analyse and recognise plankton images. Reviews of performance and system limitations, with a look at the future potential of these types of instruments, will conclude the course. Fig.1 (a-d) shows images from a similar course held at University of Concepçion, Chile.

 

For all enquiries please email Phil Culverhouse : P.Culverhouse@plymouth.ac.uk

Deadline for applications: Monday 23rd February 2009. Bursaries and shortlists will be published shortly afterwards