Research has at least two key dimensions. One is the technical challenge of advancing knowledge; discovering new facts about the world, introducing new technologies, and how all this can be used to benefit society. The other is the human dimension of research: the fact that research is carried out by people, who bring great richness to a group as individuals, with their histories, their experiences and their personalities. In this talk, Emanuele focuses on the VAMPIRE (Vessel Assessment and Measurement Platform for images of the REtina) project both at the human and at the technical level. The talk also describes a non-invasive method of studying the vasculature through the eye.

Emanuele Trucco is the NRP Chair of Computational Vision in the School of Computing, University of Dundee, and an Honorary Clinical Researcher at Ninewells Hospital and Medical School. His 30-year research has covered applications of computer vision to manufacturing, subsea robotics, immersive videoconferencing, and medical image analysis, funded by UK research councils, EU programmes, charities and industry. Current medical image analysis research includes the VAMPIRE initiative (Vessel Assessment and Measurement Platform for images of the REtina), an international collaboration of 10 image processing and clinical centres which he co-leads with Dr Tom MacGillivray (University of Edinburgh). Emanuele has published more than 160 refereed papers and co-authored two textbooks, one of which ("Introductory techniques for 3-D computer vision", with Prof Alessandro Verri of the University of Genova, Italy) has become an international standard (2,516 citations, Google Scholar March 2014).

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx