Semantic Vectorisation: From Bitmaps to Intelligent Representations

The objective of this innovative project is to provide a solution to the open question of representing natural images by semantically rich vector graphics. The challenges are to identify key visual and temporal elements for images and videos, and efficiently decompose the visual data into semantic vector representations that are faithful to original data, compact and editable. The project aims to investigate new bitmap-to-vector conversion methods. It is expected to develop a framework where semantic labels and hyperlinks can be embedded in visual data automatically. It hopes to pioneer the creation of a web of images where the links are on image/video regions. New image simplification, stylisation, and non-photorealistic rendering methods are expected to be provided.