Ocean Networks Canada hosted a group of scientists and students from around the world at the third Marine Imaging Workshop from 24-28 June at the University of Victoria.

The purpose of the workshop was to continue encouraging multidisciplinary communication between researchers, industry and engineers who perform biological, geological and computer science using underwater images (photos and/or videos) to discuss the challenges and future directions in marine imaging.

The international workshop—chaired by ONC’s Mauricio Carrasquilla and Maia Hoeberechts—featured keynote talks by Roger Hanlon (senior scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Brown University) and Peter Mieras (Rendezvous Dive Adventures and Subvision Productions, Port Alberni, B.C.) along with a scientific program of talks and posters by attendees of the workshop.

“The workshop was a great opportunity to advance on annotation standardizations from an interdisciplinary perspective,” says Carrasquilla. “It also showcased the latest research in machine learning, data acquisition and image enhancement, and how this can improve our understanding of the marine environment.”

Discussions centred on automated and semi-automated annotation using new and emerging machine learning methods, which led to the idea of standards to reduce variability between datasets and research institutions to increase reusability.

Participants also discussed survey design, imaging tools, image processing methods, image storage, annotation methods, machine learning and some holistic examples of the entire process, with the goal of sharing information between research groups.

The workshop was attended by 56 experts from 10 different countries, including Canada, the U.S., the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, France, Germany, Spain, Poland and Brazil.