For our January 2018 issue, we cover recent patents granted in the area of applications of medical MR or CT data segmentation.

The invention no. 9,659,370 relates to a method for segmenting MR Dixon image data. A processor and a computer program product are also disclosed for use in connection with the method. The invention finds application in the MR imaging field in general and more specifically may be used in the generation of an attenuation map to correct for attenuation by cortical bone during the reconstruction of PET images.

Engineering safety and computer security have traditionally been viewed as separate fields: safety concentrates on the avoidance of physical harm; security protects information and privacy. When computers and physical plants did not interoperate, separation of safety and security was both reasonable and prudent. Given the advent of CPSs, we can no longer consider these problems as separate.

We are very pleased to announce that the 2nd IEEE International Workshop on Wireless Communications and Networking in Extreme Environments (IEEE WCNEE) will be held on April 16, 2018, in Honolulu, HI, USA (with IEEE INFOCOM 2018). The workshop website is available at http://wcnee.eng.buffalo.edu/.

Nominations Due: 5 February 2018

In accordance with the provision of IEEE Bylaw 307, the Division IX Nominating Committee hereby solicits your nominations for the position of Division IX Director-Elect.  Please send your nominations to Theresa Argiropoulos, SPS Senior Manager, Operations, via t.argiropoulos@ieee.org, as she will be collecting the nominations on my behalf.

The Signal Processing Society (SPS) has 12 Technical Committees and 3 Special Interest Groups (SIGs) that support a broad selection of signal processing-related activities defined by the scope of the Society.

The Board of Governors of the IEEE Signal Processing Society (SPS) has allocated $20,000 for Member-Driven Initiatives for the 2017 calendar year.

Webinar Details: Wednesday, 13 December 2017 from 2:30pm - 3:30pm (New York time) 
Attendee Registration Link: Register for Webinar, by Dr. Nikos Sidiropoulos

CAMSAP 2017 Plenary - Tensors and Probability: An Intriguing Union: Abstract: We reveal an interesting link between tensors and multivariate statistics. The rank of a multivariate probability tensor can be interpreted as a nonlinear measure of statistical dependence of the associated random variables. 

Join the 25th IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP), held at the Megaron Athens International Conference Centre in Athens, Greece. ICIP is the world's largest and most comprehensive technical conference focused on image and video processing and computer vision. 

Boston Dynamics, a leading developer of advanced dynamic robots, recently released a video showing that their humanoid robot Atlas can do backflips now.