The Image, Video and Intelligent Multimedia Systems Lab (IVML) was established in 1988, in the School of Computer and Electrical Engineering of NTUA. The members of the Lab (which are about 35, including research scientists, researchers, Ph.D students, programmers, and supporting staff) are active members of the research community having published more than 100 journal and 200 international conference contributions. Prof. S. Kollias and Dr. G. Stamou have co-edited a book on “Multimedia and Semantic Web”, published by Wiley in June 2005. IVML has organised ICANN-2006, SAMT-2006, on semantic multimedia analysis, WIAMIS-2007 & CBMI-2009 on content based multimedia analysis. IVML has been involved in about a hundred European R&D projects.
IVML participates in the design and implementation of intelligent semantic analysis and retrieval of multimedia content, following the MPEG (4,7,21) and Semantic Web standards. IVML has participated in the FP6 IP ACEMEDIA, NoE MUSCLE, NoE Knowledge-Web, NoE K-Space, IP Mesh, IP X-Media, STREP Boemie, IP We-Know-It IP. IVML has been a key technological member in the Digital Libraries and particularly in the EUROPEANA developments. S. Kollias has been a member of the EC ‘Interoperability Group’ on Digital Libraries in 2007, and a member of the Member States Expert Group on Digital Libraries (2007-). He has organised the Workshop on “Semantic Interoperability in the European Digital Library” in the European Semantic Web Conference, 2008. IVML has participated in the ICT E-Culture Imagination project, on knowledge-based access to historical content, in Videoactive & EU_Screen projects, in Michael Plus, in Minerva-ec & EDLNet NoE. IVML participated in the Europeana v1.0 Network, Europeana Connect, ATHENA, Judaica, Carare, E-CLAP, Linked Heritage, DCA, dealing with content analysis and interoperability issues in EUROPEANA. In this framework they have developed the MINT tool for metadata interoperability that is being used by EUROPEANA and has been selected as one of six beta sprints by the evolving Digital Public Library of America.
NTUA is also participating in standardizing organization and activities. In particular, NTUA participates in the Media Annotations Working Group of W3C. One of the main issues of this task force is semantic interoperability in different metadata schemas. Also, NTUA are participating in the RuleML initiative, which aims at defining shared rules in the semantic web. Finally, NTUA is one of the key parties in designing the architecture of Europeana.