The EMVA Young Professional Award 2015 goes to Benjamin Busam, for his work on adaptable high-resolution real-time stereo tracking. Busam, who is 27 years old holds a Master degree in mathematics and is currently external PhD Student in informatics with focus on Computer Vision at the Chair for Computer Aided Medical Procedures of the Technical University of Munich, in cooperation with FRAMOS GmbH where he works as development engineer in the imaging systems department.

Real-time optical tracking system
State-of-the art solutions for position and orientation information in real-time for clinical interventions and diagnostic imaging techniques are bulky and rely on external tracking systems, hampered either by the limited accuracy of electromagnetic tracking or the requirement for a constant line of sight between the tracked devices and the external optical tracking systems respectively.
The awarded work presents an adaptable high-resolution tracking system based on stereo computer vision that can be used for real-time tracking applications which require high accuracy. Furthermore, the technological advantage lies in the ability to overcome current practical difficulties such as line of sight problems while opening the way for further developments of inside-out tracking solutions in the medical domain.
The Optical Tracking System facilitates high-precision, real-time pose estimation of tools and objects with a new concept in both hard- and software which robustly operates even in case of partial object occlusion.
By this, the system is not subject to medical applications only but also generally applicable for many industrial tasks involving highly accurate robot-guidance, tool-navigation and 3D measurements.

Young professional award part of EMVA Business Conference
The EMVA Young Professional Award is an annual award to honor the outstanding and innovative work of a student or a young professional in the field of machine vision or image processing. It is the goal of the European Machine Vision Association EMVA to further support innovation in the machine vision industry, to contribute to the important aspect of dedicated machine vision education and to provide a bridge between research and industry. With the annual Young Professional Award the EMVA intends to specifically encourage students to focus on challenges in the field of machine vision and to apply latest research results and findings in computer vision to the practical needs of the industry. The awardee was announced on June 13 during the 13th EMVA Business Conference in Athens/Greece, where he also had the opportunity to present his work as part of the regular conference program.

The 14th EMVA Business Conference will take place from 09.-11. June 2016 in Edinburgh/Scotland.