Best paper prize at 12th IEEE Conference on Automatic Face and Gesture Recognition

Researchers from the Division of Child Health, Obstetrics and Gynaecology and the School of Computer Science have won the Best Conference Paper at the prestigious 12th IEEE Conference on Automatic Face and Gesture Recognition (FG2017) in Washington DC. 

Submitted papers were reviewed by over 250 experts to decide on the winner. The paper, presented orally by Dr Mercedes Torres-Torres, described the clinical trial, GestATion, undertaken in Nottingham aiming to use machine learning to estimate gestation age in newborn babies using still images of the babies foot, face and ear.  The method could be used in low-middle income countries where antenatal care is poor and many babies are born prematurely with no record of this or unable to decide on the care they require. 

Dr Don Sharkey, Associate Professor of Neonatal Medicine and chief investigator, Dr Caz Henry, Carole Ward (all from Academic Child Health) and Dr Michel Valstar (Lecturer in Computer Science) were also authors of the paper.  The study was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.