Image Processing and Pattern Recognition, Sensor and Information Fusion

The research group "Discrete Systems" headed by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Volker Lohweg and research group leader Christoph-Alexander Holst has been established as a research group at the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering at the Ostwestfalen-Lippe University of Applied Sciences in Lemgo since 2004. The research focus of the AG is on image processing and pattern recognition, sensor and information fusion, and machine intelligence. The goal is Technical Cognitive Systems, which are used in the research fields of document security (Banknote and Document Inspection and Analysis), automation (Machine Conditioning and Flaw Diagnosis) and health technology (Smart Health Sciences) in a resource-optimized and real-time manner. Since 2006 the research group is part of the inIT - Institute for Industrial Information Technology, Prof. Lohweg is a founding and board member of the inIT.

In the context of applied research, two main thrusts have been defined by the professorship:

On the one hand, topics of Industry 4.0 and Health 4.0 are specifically addressed in the area of sensor and information fusion. Intelligent analysis of technical systems is optimized by self-adaptation and orchestration of multiple sensors as well as sensor conflict analysis and reduction. Relevant information of the system is identified and specifically condensed.

On the other hand, in the area of image processing, pattern recognition and machine intelligence, the focus is on the analysis of security documents, in particular banknotes. The research work is based on various topics and is actively driving them forward. These include adaptive wavelets, motif discovery algorithms, fast classification algorithms on resource-constrained systems, implementation-optimized machine learning and image processing algorithms, new approaches for color-true illumination of objects in different scenarios, and creative image modeling using deep learning methods.

Within the activities of the research group, a total of about ten journal and conference papers (peer-reviewed) are published each year; furthermore, a number of more application-oriented articles are published in corresponding industry-related journals. In addition, members of the WG give about 3-5 invited lectures per year, nationally and internationally, in the context of Industry 4.0, digitalization, medicine and smart health, information fusion and document security.

Prof. Lohweg is a member of the AMA Scientific Council, German Association for Pattern Recognition, German Chapter IAPR (DAGM), Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), IEEE Senior Member (SPS), Signal Processing Society (SPS), Computational Intelligence Society (CIS), European Association for Signal, Speech and Image Processing (EURASIP), International Society for Information Fusion (ISIF), Society of Photonics and Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE), SPIE Senior Member, VDE - Verband der Elektrotechnik, Elektronik, Informationstechnik e. V., VDI/VDE-Gesellschaft Mess- und Automatisierungstechnik (GMA), Member of the Expert Committee 5.14 "Computational Intelligence", Informationstechnische Gesellschaft im VDE (ITG).

In addition, Prof. Lohweg is a reviewer for the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FGG), a reviewer for Project Management Jülich (PTJ), a reviewer for the Data & Knowledge Mining Journal, Elsevier, a reviewer for at-Automatisierungstechnik, De Gruyter, and a "Programme Committee" member or reviewer for the following conferences: IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ISIP), The Conference on Optical Security and Counterfeit Deterrence (ODS), Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation (ETFA), Image Processing in Automation (BVAu), and Machine Learning for Cyber-Physical Systems (ML4CPS).

Furthermore, Volker Lohweg is active in the leading-edge cluster it'sOWL as an expert and member of the steering committee (system architecture team).