Community of Domain Experts in Medical Multimedia

Acronym: CODE-MM
Start:          02.2012
End:            01.2015

Overview Information

Collaborative knowledge in big communities (known as Wisdom of the crowds) and self‐ organization of huge amount of networked participants have shown a lot of potential in diverse fields of computer science and information systems. Still, there are many scenarios, in particular in highly professional applications, where a critical mass of users (experts) cannot be found in order to safely create this knowledge. In several scenarios a top down model providing generally agreed domain knowledge can be used as common ground for communication. However, for other scenarios, diversity in terms of interest, motivation, information need, and many other characteristics prevent top down approaches, for which an à priori consensus between participating members must be found. Within the project at hand we focus on small and medium sized groups of people, who (i) have common interests but are too diverse for applying a commonly agreed model and (ii) who are bound to use multimedia systems to satisfy their needs. Further, we consider these people being experts with intense domain knowledge, such as medical doctors.

Abstract

In our project we plan to investigate (i) how communities of domain experts can be supported by multimedia information systems and (ii) how to leverage self‐organization within those groups to a new level by novel and innovative multimedia services.

Project Partner

With the help of our project partner, the KARL STORZ GmbH & Co. KG, we will employ our research results to a real world scenario: a multimedia information system for endoscopic videos supporting surgeons spread all over the world. While content storage can be regarded as a solved problem, intelligent and specialized content annotation, retrieval, and analysis methods are totally missing in this domain. Tools for exchanging information among the domain experts are missing as well.

Research Objectives

The research objectives in the project are divided into three major parts:

1. In the user part we focus on the user context and investigate individual as well as emergent group intentions. We will facilitate our research on intentions to leverage emergent semantics and self‐organization within multimedia information systems. 
2. In the content part we will develop novel and innovative multimedia tools and techniques that integrate contextual information as well as domain‐specific knowledge and emergent semantics to provide enhanced multimedia services in the 
3. scenario part to support surgeons in their daily routine.

With this project we want to strengthen the expanding expertise in the field of medical video analysis and multimedia medical information systems in Carinthia. Through a successful project we will open new and exciting scientific and economic opportunities for the location of Klagenfurt. The long term goal is a (semi-)financed center of excellence for medical information systems by KARL STORZ or a foundation of a private company to develop this technology in the area of Klagenfurt.

Website of the project