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Min Chen
BSc (Fudan) PhD (Wales)
Prof. Computer Science Swansea University

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Research Interests

Visualization and Computer Graphics (1987-present); Video Processing and Visualization (2003-present); Interactive Techniques and Multimedia Communications (1996-present); Computer-Aided Engineering (1984-1992).


Please visit the www pages of the Visual and Interactive Computing Group.

My biggest wish is to have more time for research, and I enjoyed my part-time research sabbatical in the 2005/2007 sessions.

Teaching Interests

Computer Graphics II (CS_307, 1995-2005, 2007 with Dr. Mora); Computer Graphics Laboratory (CS_317, 2007 with Dr. Mora); Volume Graphics (MRes CS_M17, 2007); State of the Art in Visual Computing (MRes CS_M97, 2007); Operating Systems (CS_228, 1991-2002); Data Communications and Computer Networks (CS_238, 1995-2002); Computer Graphics Algorithms (1992-1994); Introduction to Algorithms (1991-1993); Projects Supervision (CS_334/344, 1991-present, my favourite).

Administration

Co-director of WDA-CETIC Centre for Computing and Software Technologies (2002-present); Departmental Director of Research (1996-2005); Departmental Course Handbook (1996-2005); MPhil/PhD Admissions (1996-2001); Examination Secretary (1992, 1995).

Curriculum Vitae

A short CV can be found here.
Tel.: (+44) 1792 295663

Fax: (+44) 1792 295708

E-mail: m.chen@swansea.ac.uk

Education and Employment

Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science, University of Wales Swansea. Permanent contract in Oct. 1991. Promoted to Grade B in Oct. 1992.

On 29 October 2001, I was most honoured to be invited by the then Prime Minister and Mrs. Blair to No. 10 Downing Street for a party to celebrate the excellence in the UK Higher Education.

Industry

Since 2002, I have been the co-director of the Centre for Computing and Software Technologies (CAST), which is one of a network of 18 Centres of Excellence for Technology and Industrial Collaboration (CETIC), accredited by the Welsh Assembly Government. Over the past 6 years, CAST has engaged in a total of 62 industrial projects with contract values of £2.9M, and provided consultancy services to around 170 companies per year.

In particular, I have been enthusiastically encouraging the development of a data industry in the region. I have worked with several commercial companies including Transmedia in areas of:

• Video-centered communications and software technologies
• Work and data flow management
• Customer-relationship management
• Internet services
• Virtual environments

Supervision

Since 1992, under my supervision or co-supervision, 19 PhD and 2 MPhil students have successfully completed their research programs. Between 1994 and 2002, under my supervision, 10 final-year project students won a total of 14 prizes (over £15,000 in total) in the annual competitions for the WDA Technology Prizes and the UK Students of the Year Awards.  Philip Roberts, who now works for Transmedia Technology was amongst these winning students:

VIEWMED: Visualising nuclear medical imaging

Aim: To assist in the visualisation of nuclear medical imaging

Student: Philip Roberts

Company: Swansea NHS Trust Singleton Hospital

Additional information: Winner of the Software & Internet Technologies and Healthcare & Bio Sciences categories of the WDA Technology Awards 2002



The objective was to develop a system to assist in the visualisation of nuclear medical imaging. Nuclear medicine images are generally of high quality but lack in structural information, making it difficult for doctors to associate accurately features in an image with a specific part of human anatomy.



A visualisation tool known as VIEWMED (Visualisation Interactive Environment With Medical Evaluation for Diagnosis), was developed to take a nuclear medicine image and combine it with an image containing structural information (such as an X-ray image). VIEWMED uses an image registration technique to align the two images correctly. The technique was designed to ensure real-time interaction and visualisation.



VIEWMED also provides a collection of visualisation effects, in terms of colour, opacity and artistic strokes, for enhancing the visual cues in the combined display. For example, a nuclear medicine image can be assigned a semi-transparent red colour, and be placed on the top of an X-ray image, coloured in blue with a pencil drawing stroke. This allows doctors to associate the structure information from the X-ray, without being confused by new features introduced through the combined display.



This tool has the potential to enhance doctor's capability of understanding of complex medical data, and hence improving correct diagnosis, surgical planning, and therapy planning.

Projects with Transmedia

Knowledge Exploitation Fund (KEF)- VISTA

This is a collaborative industrial research project which was led by the University of Wales Swansea and involved 6 academic and industrial partners. Transmedia was the primary partner in the Consortium. The aim of the project was to transform an innovative web-based 3D graphics concept and a research software system called VISTA into an integrated “ready-to-deploy” industrial system that manages huge volumes of imagery data, and to research into the scalability of managing very large volumes of imagery data in an industrial context. As imagery data capture storage and management is the core business of Transmedia, this project allowed the Company to acquire a new technology for managing large volumes of imagery data and enhance its capability of creating a new market of digital users.

Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) - INTEFLOW

This was a collaborative project with University of Wales, Swansea, Trans Media Technology and the DTI. 

The aim of this KTP project was to introduce an intranet-based task flow management system into the Company’s daily operations for:

1. Handling customer data
2. Security arrangement
3. Retrieval requests
4. Ontology of online and offline data storage
5. Service delivery monitoring
6. Resource monitoring
7. Quality assurance

This system enabled the Company to maintain its competitiveness in the UK and international market.