CS 554: Computer Vision

Fall 2025

Instructor: Hamdi Dibeklioglu

Office hours: by appointment / online

Class hours:

Tuesday 08:30-10:20; Thursday 13:30-15:20.
While every other week we will have 2+2 hours of lectures, other weeks there will be one 2-hours lecture. Please see the schedule below for the dates of the lectures.

Class room:

EB-101

UPDATES / NEWS:

Lectures start as of 16 September 2025.

Catalog Description: Basic concepts in computational vision. Relation to human visual perception. The analysis and understanding of image and video data. Mathematical foundations, image representation, feature extraction, camera geometry and image alignment, stereo and 3-D reconstruction, convolutional neural networks, face processing, object and scene recognition, conditional and Markov random fields, tracking, action recognition.

Recommended Books:

R. Szeliski. Computer Vision: Algorithms and Applications, Springer Science & Business Media, 2010. [Available Online]
D.A. Forsyth and Jean Ponce. Computer Vision: A Modern Approach, Prentice Hall Professional Technical Reference, 2002.
I. Goodfellow, Y. Bengio, A. Courville. Deep Learning, MIT Press, 2016. [Available Online]

Assessment Methods:

Homework	20%
Literature Survey and Presentation	5% + 10%
Midterm:Essay/written	30%
Project	35%

Any of the following will directly result in an F grade:

not submitting a project or homework (including report),
not preparing/presenting a survey on the pre-scheduled date,
being absent in the midterm,
being absent in a project presentation.

Prerequisites:

Basic calculus and linear algebra.
Basic probability theory and statistics.
Good programming skills.

Passing Grade: No predetermined grade to pass the course.

Makeup Policy: Medical report holders will be entitled for the midterm make up. Makeup exam will be comprehensive.

Homework:
TBA

Literature Survey and Presentation:

Groups of four students will choose a topic related to computer vision, and prepare a short survey on it.
Surveys should be based on about 12 papers (report: 5 pages max.).
You will make a presentation on your survey in class. The presentation should be in parallel with your report.
Survey topics should be confirmed first. Very similar topics to others’ will not be allowed (priority: first come, first served).
Your chosen survey topic and a few lines explanation (indicating group members) should be sent to dibeklioglu@cs.bilkent.edu.tr by 26 September 2025, 23.59 (Turkey time).

Project:

By groups of four students.
Projects related to your research topics are encouraged.
Build a “real” computer vision application and test it on some data.
You may re-use existing code, but indicate what you code you have re-used and what code you have developed yourself.
Three stages:

Proposal: one-page description of the project topic and the planning (indicating group members) for the project should be sent to dibeklioglu@cs.bilkent.edu.tr by 28 September 2025 (23:59 Turkey time)
Progress presentation (no report)
Final report & presentation (report: 4 pages max.)

Examples of projects:

Performing face verification for automatic passport control
Recognizing the identity or expression of faces
Recognizing gestures for communication via sign language
Recognizing or detecting objects in images (Pascal VOC / ImageNet)
Segmenting parts in medical images
Performing restoration of old, deteriorated photographs
Performing automatic morphing of images
Performing video stabilization using object tracking
Identifying the writer of a piece of handwriting

Template for the Reports:
All reports (including homework report) must be prepared using the IEEE double-column transactions article template (i.e. "bare_jrnl.tex").

Important Dates:

Event	Date / Deadline
Midterm Exam	TBA
Literature Survey Proposal submission [subject line: cs554_2025f_survey]	26 September 2025, 23:59
Literature Survey Report submission (including the presentation) [via Moodle]	TBA
Literature Survey Presentation	TBA
Homework submission (including the report) [via Moodle]	TBA
Project Proposal submission [subject line: cs554_2025f_project]	28 September 2025, 23:59
Project Progress Presentation	TBA
Project Final Presentation	TBA
Project submission (including the report and presentation) [via Moodle]	TBA

Tentative Schedule & Lecture Notes:
Lecture notes below are downloadable only within Bilkent network. Use VPN to access from home.

Week	Topic	Dates	Lecture Notes
1	Introduction, human vision, overview of basics, Feature point extraction	16 September 2025 (09:00-10:20) 18 September 2025 (13:30-15:20)
2	Feature point description and matching	23 September 2025 (08:50-10:20)
3	Homography and image stitching, Camera geometry	30 September 2025 (08:50-10:20) 02 October 2025 (13:30-15:20)
4	Stereo vision and depth estimation	07 October 2025 (08:50-10:20)
5	Motion, Face Processing
6	Face Processing
7	Shape, scene, and object recognition
8	Conditional and Markov random fields
9	Visual Tracking, Action recognition and motion magnification
10	Action recognition and motion magnification, Deep learning
11	Midterm
12	Project Progress Presentations, Deep learning
13	Deep learning, Q&A
14	Literature Survey Presentations
15	Project Presentations