Overview

Research interests

Machine learning for intelligent image and video understanding.   Bayesian modelling and variational approximation.   Sea wave prediction and quiescent period prediction.   Maritime applications of Bayesian modelling and simulation.
 

Current projects

Sea Wave Prediction
Working with Prof. Michael Belmont, Hon. Prof. Dr Bernard Ferrier and Dr Mustafa (Fass) Al-Ani to make significant improvements to the safety of maritime launch and recovery operations by providing short-term predictions of the profiles of the waves. We are pioneering research into Quiescent Period Prediction (QPP) which aims to predict when short periods of relative calm are about to occur. This has the potential to allow a range of wave critical marine operations to be safely carried out at considerably larger wave amplitudes than would otherwise be possible. Our work has been funded by the EPSRC (ref EP/N009142/1) and we are currently working directly with the Royal Navy and MOD.
PhD student Antonis Loizou has recently passed his PhD viva, subject to minor corrections, working on methods for measuring the sea surface from radar and video.

Multi-Light Imaging
Together with PhD student Matthew McGuigan and the Metropolitan Police, we are working on a multi-light imaging method for extracting images of latent fingerprints from difficult surfaces, such as lighbulbs. The new technique is described in "Remote Extraction of Latent Fingerprints (RELF)", which demonstrates how good the results are. RELF is fully automated, contactless and chemical-free, meaning that the original latent prints remain available for other forms of forensic analysis.
Matthew and I are also working on a method for enabling Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) to be carried out on specular surfaces.

Real-time Bayesian inference for non-stationary systems
Noisy sensors may be in situ for a considerable (possibly effectively infinite) period of time, and the system they are sensing may be statistically non-stationary. In "Non-stationary, online variational Bayesian learning, with circular variables" I introduce a means of continuously learning from such time-series streams, potentially in real time.

Projects in the pipeline
I have further projects in the pipeline, with partners in: Babcock and BMT; QinetiQ; the Royal Navy and MOD; the Metropolitan Police; and the Austrian Institute of Technology and a number of police and forensic institutes across Europe.

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Publications

_{Copyright Notice: Any articles made available for download are for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the copyright holder.}

| 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 |

2024

• Corbett A, Christmas J, Lawrence C, Feenan J. (2024) Simulating spectral images of natural waters and submerged objects from a bird’s-eye view, Mathematics and Computers in Simulation, volume 215, pages 184-207, DOI:10.1016/j.matcom.2023.07.025. [PDF]

2023

• Ferrier B, Taylor R, Belmont MR, Christmas JT. (2023) AUTOMATED UAV LAUNCH AND RECOVERY REGARDLESS THE SHIP PLATFORM OR STATE OF THE SEAWAY BY QUIESCENT PERIOD PREDICTION (QPP), Autonomous VTOL Technical Meeting and Electric VTOL Symposium 2023, pages 43-56.
• Taylor R, Kish J, Belmont MR, Christmas JT. (2023) Launch and Recovery of Traditional VTOL UAVs by Quiescent Period Prediction (QPP), the development of QPP for All Weather Operations (AWOPS), Proceedings of the Vertical Flight Society 79th Annual Forum, DOI:10.4050/f-0079-2023-18187.
• Buist A. (2023) Development of a standard methodology for cryogenic fixation, DNA-PAINT super-resolution microscopy, and Bayesian analysis of the internal structures of healthy and infected plant cells.
• McGuigan M. (2023) Surface analysis and fingerprint recognition from multi-light imaging collections.

2022

• Ferrier B, Taylor RJ, Belmont MR, Christmas J, Fedrick L. (2022) SIMULATION TECHNIQUES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE QUIESCENT PERIOD PREDICTION (QPP) FLIGHT DECK MOTION FORECASTING TOOL, ICCAS 2022, DOI:10.3940/rina.iccas.2022.09.
• Ferrier B, Taylor RJ, Belmont MR, Christmas J, Fedrick L. (2022) THE DESIGN AND HYDRODYNAMIC ASSESSMENT OF A SUBMARINE CONCEPT WITH OFF-AXIS RESOLVING THE IMPACT OF SHIP’S DESIGN ON DECK AND WELL-DECK LAUNCH AND RECOVERY OPERATIONS BY APPLYING OF QUIESCENT PERIOD PREDICTION (QPP), Warship 2022, DOI:10.3940/rina.ws.2022.10.
• Ferrier B, Taylor R, Belmont MR, Christmas J, Fedrick L. (2022) Emergent Technology to Forecast Flight Deck Motions for Vehicle Auto-Launch and Recovery The development of the Quiescent Period Prediction (QPP) tool, SNAME Maritime Convention, SMC 2022, DOI:10.5957/SMC-2022-003.
• McGuigan M, Christmas J. (2022) Contactless automated lifting of latent fingerprints from difficult curved surfaces, Signal Processing: Image Communication, volume 109, pages 116858-116858, article no. 116858, DOI:10.1016/j.image.2022.116858. [PDF]
• Srivastava R, Christmas J. (2022) Analysis of Sea Waves and Ship Wake Detection, OCEANS 2022 - Chennai, DOI:10.1109/oceanschennai45887.2022.9775452.
• Christmas J. (2022) Non-stationary, online variational Bayesian learning, with circular variables, Pattern Recognition, volume 122, pages 108340-108340, DOI:10.1016/j.patcog.2021.108340. [PDF]

2021

• Tupman C, Christmas J, Kangin D. (2021) Reconsidering the Roman workshop: using computer vision to analyse the making of ancient inscriptions, Umanistica Digitale, volume 10, DOI:10.6092/issn.2532-8816/12471.
• Belmont MR, Christmas J, Ferrier B, Duncan JD, Duncan J. (2021) Air-Wake Prediction Based Air-Vehicle Recovery Aids, The International Journal of Maritime Engineering, volume 163, no. A3, DOI:10.5750/ijme.v163ia3.802.
• Loizou A, Christmas J. (2021) Sea state from ocean video with singular spectrum analysis and extended Kalman filter, Signal, Image and Video Processing, volume 16, no. 6, pages 1497-1504, DOI:10.1007/s11760-021-02103-0. [PDF]
• Loizou A. (2021) Sea state from monoscopic ocean video in real environments.
• Loizou A, Christmas J. (2021) Sea State Estimation from Uncalibrated, Monoscopic Video, SN Computer Science, volume 2, no. 4, article no. 328, DOI:10.1007/s42979-021-00727-0. [PDF]
• Ferrier B, Belmont MR, Christmas JT, Duncan J. (2021) The systematic methods to define the deck environment of a non-traditional ship platform for a VTOL UAS, 9th Biennial Autonomous VTOL Technical Meeting and 8th Annual Electric VTOL Symposium.

2020

• Al-Ani M, Belmont M, Christmas J, Tarczynski A, Ahmad BI. (2020) On Random Sampling and Fourier Transform Estimation in Sea Waves Prediction, 2020 6th International Conference on Event-Based Control, Communication, and Signal Processing (EBCCSP), DOI:10.1109/ebccsp51266.2020.9291348.
• Al-Ani M, Belmont M, Christmas J, Paolo AD. (2020) DETERMINISTIC SEA WAVES PREDICTION FROM X-BAND RADAR: NEW ALGORITHM AND SEA TRIAL, Coastal Engineering Proceedings, no. 36v, DOI:10.9753/icce.v36v.waves.41.
• Alamri F. (2020) CONTEXTUAL INFORMATION FOR OBJECT DETECTION.
• McGuigan M, Christmas J. (2020) Remote Extraction of Latent Fingerprints (RELF), 2020 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN), 19th - 24th Jul 2020, 2020 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN), DOI:10.1109/ijcnn48605.2020.9207376. [PDF]

2019

• Al-Ani M, Belmont M, Christmas J. (2019) Statistical Properties of Quiescent Periods from Wave Power Spectral Density, OCEANS 2019 - Marseille, 17th - 20th Jun 2019, OCEANS 2019 - Marseille, DOI:10.1109/oceanse.2019.8867574. [PDF]
• McGuigan M, Christmas J. (2019) Automating RTI: Automatic light direction detection and correcting non uniform lighting for more accurate surface normals, Computer Vision and Image Understanding, volume 192, pages 1-13, DOI:10.1016/j.cviu.2019.102880.
• Christmas J, Belmont MR, Duncan JM, Duncan J, Ferrier B. (2019) Maritime applications of air-wake prediction using doppler lidar, RINA, Royal Institution of Naval Architects - 19th International Conference on Computer Applications in Shipbuilding, ICCAS 2019, volume 2.
• Al-Ani M, Belmont MR, Christmas J, Duncan JM, Duncan J. (2019) Planning tools for quiescent periods, RINA, Royal Institution of Naval Architects - 19th International Conference on Computer Applications in Shipbuilding, ICCAS 2019, volume 2.
• Ferrier B, Duncan J, Belmont MR, Christmas JT, Duncan J. (2019) LiDAR technology development applied to ship motion prediction (QPP) and air wake over-deck definitions using simulation and at sea analysis, RINA, Royal Institution of Naval Architects - 19th International Conference on Computer Applications in Shipbuilding, ICCAS 2019, volume 2.
• Abuhammad H. (2019) Emotion Classification Using Combinations of Texture Descriptors.
• De Ath G. (2019) Object Tracking in Video with Part-Based Tracking by Feature Sampling.
• Al-Ani M, Christmas J, Belmont MR, Duncan JM, Duncan J, Ferrier B. (2019) Deterministic Sea Waves Prediction Using Mixed Space-Time Wave Radar Data, JOURNAL OF ATMOSPHERIC AND OCEANIC TECHNOLOGY, volume 36, no. 5, pages 833-842, DOI:10.1175/JTECH-D-17-0146.1. [PDF]
• Belmont M, Al-Ani M, Challenor P, Christmas J, Wilson P. (2019) Obtaining the distribution of quiescent periods directly from the power spectral densities of Sea waves, Applied Ocean Research, volume 85, pages 65-72, DOI:10.1016/j.apor.2019.01.027.

2018

• Loizou A, Christmas JT. (2018) Estimating pixel to metre scale and sea state from remote observations of the ocean surface, International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS), Valencia, Spain, 23rd - 27th Jul 2018.
• Christmas JT, Pitts MEJ. (2018) Classifying and visualising Roman pottery using computer-scanned typologies. http://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue50/14/toc.html, Big Data on the Roman Table. New approaches to tablewares in the Roman world, Internet Archaeology. [PDF]

2017

• Ferrier B, Duncan J, Belmont MR, Christmas JT, Duncan J. (2017) All weather ship operational prediction using simulation - technology developments and results from a dedicated royal navy and related sea trials, RINA, Royal Institution of Naval Architects - International Conference on Computer Applications in Shipbuilding, ICCAS 2017, volume 3, pages 15-24.
• Al-Ani M, Christmas JT, Belmont MR, Duncan JM, Duncan J, Ferrier B. (2017) Improving Launch and Recovery Operations Through Quiescent Period Prediction from Radar, International Conference on Computer Applications in Shipbuilding (ICCAS) 2017, Singapore, 26th - 28th Sep 2017, Proceedings of the International Conference on Computer Applications in Shipbuilding.
• Belmont MR, Christmas JT, Duncan JM, Duncan J, Ferrier B, Potts R. (2017) Real-Time Ship Air-Wake and Free Stream Measurements Using Doppler LiDAR, International Conference on Computer Applications in Shipbuilding (ICCAS) 2017, Singapore, 26th - 28th Sep 2017, Proceedings of the International Conference on Computer Applications in Shipbuilding.

2016

• Christmas J. (2016) Theoretical motion functions for video analysis, with a passive navigation example, 2016 INTERNATIONAL JOINT CONFERENCE ON NEURAL NETWORKS (IJCNN), pages 4001-4008. [PDF]
• Christmas J. (2016) Predicting sea waves in the presence of pink noise, 2016 IEEE CONGRESS ON EVOLUTIONARY COMPUTATION (CEC), pages 2321-2328. [PDF]
• Christmas JT, Pitts M. (2016) Classifying and visualising Roman pottery using computer-scanned typologies, Big Data on the Roman Table, Exeter, Uk, 6th - 7th Jul 2016.
• Christmas JT, Belmont MB. (2016) Progress in Quiescent Period Prediction, Warship 2016: Advanced Technologies in Naval Design, Construction, & Operation, Bath, Uk, 15th - 16th Jun 2016.
• Christmas JT. (2016) Predicting sea waves in the presence of pink noise, International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN), Vancouver, Canada, 24th - 29th Jul 2016.
• Christmas JT. (2016) Theoretical Motion Functions for Video Analysis, with a Passive Navigation Example, International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN), Vancouver, Canada, 24th - 29th Jul 2016.

2015

• Christmas JT, Belmont M. (2015) Sea Wave Prediction from Wave Profiling Radar, Advances in Ocean Wave Measurement, London, Uk, 21st - 21st Oct 2015.
• Namburi A, everson R, Christmas JT. (2015) Detecting, tracking and identifying small animals in video sequences, UK Workshop on Computational Intelligence (UKCI), Exeter, Uk, 7th - 9th Sep 2015.

2014

• Christmas J, Everson RM, Bell J, Winlove CP. (2014) Inexact Bayesian point pattern matching for linear transformations, Pattern Recognition, volume 47, no. 10, pages 3265-3275, DOI:10.1016/j.patcog.2014.04.022.
• Christmas JT. (2014) Learning spatial transformation functions for Particle Image Velocimetry, International Conference on Applications for Image based Measurements (iCAIM), Leipzig, Germany, 24th - 25th Jun 2014, Proceedings of the International Conference on Applications for Image based Measurements (iCAIM) 2014.
• Littlejohn GR, Mansfield JC, Christmas JT, Witterick E, Fricker MD, Grant MR, Smirnoff N, Everson RM, Moger J, Love J. (2014) An update: improvements in imaging perfluorocarbon-mounted plant leaves with implications for studies of plant pathology, physiology, development and cell biology, Front Plant Sci, volume 5, DOI:10.3389/fpls.2014.00140. [PDF]
• Christmas JT. (2014) Bayesian Spectral Analysis with Student-t Noise, IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, volume 62, no. 11, pages 2871-2878, DOI:10.1109/TSP.2014.2316139.
• Christmas JT, Everson RM, Bell J, Winlove CP. (2014) Inexact Bayesian point pattern matching for linear transformations, Pattern Recognition, volume 47, no. 10, pages 3265-3275, DOI:10.1016/j.patcog.2014.04.022.
• Bell JS, Christmas JT, Mansfield JC, Everson RM, Winlove CP. (2014) Micromechanical response of articular cartilage to tensile load measured using nonlinear microscopy, Acta Biomaterialia, volume 10, no. 6, pages 2574-2581, DOI:10.1016/j.actbio.2014.02.008.
• Belmont MB, Christmas JT, Dannenberg J, Hilmer T, Duncan J, Duncan JM, Ferrier B. (2014) An Examination of the Feasibility of Linear Deterministic Sea Wave Prediction in Multi-Directional Seas Using Wave Profiling Radar: Theory, Simulation and Sea Trials, Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology, volume 31, no. 7, pages 1601-1614, DOI:10.1175/JTECH-D-13-00170.1. [PDF]

2013

• Christmas J, Everson R, Rodriguez-Munoz R, Tregenza T. (2013) Variational Bayesian Tracking: Whole Track Convergence for Large-scale Ecological Video Monitoring, 2013 INTERNATIONAL JOINT CONFERENCE ON NEURAL NETWORKS (IJCNN). [PDF]

2012

• Christmas JT, Everson RM. (2012) Variational Bayesian smoothing: structured approximations and whole track convergence, 9th IMA International Conference on Mathematics in Signal Processing, Birmingam, Uk, 17th - 20th Dec 2012.

2011

• Christmas JT, Everson RM. (2011) Robust autoregression: Student-t innovations using variational Bayes, IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, volume 59, no. 1, pages 48-57, DOI:10.1109/TSP.2010.2080271.
• Christmas JT, Keedwell EK, Frayling TM, Perry JR. (2011) Ant colony optimisation to identify genetic variant association with type 2 diabetes, Information Sciences, volume 181, no. 9, pages 1609-1622, DOI:10.1016/j.ins.2010.12.005.
• Christmas J, Keedwell E, Frayling T, Perry J. (2011) Ant Colony Optimisation to identify Genetic Disease Association for Type 2 Diabetes, Information Sciences, volume 181, no. 9, pages 1609-1622, DOI:10.1016/j.ins.2010.12.005.

2010

• Christmas JT, Everson RM. (2010) Temporally coupled Principal Component Analysis: A Probabilistic autoregression method, IEEE International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN), Barcelona, Spain, 18th - 23rd Jul 2010.
• Christmas JC, Everson RM. (2010) Robust autoregression: Student-t innovations using variational Bayes, IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, volume 59, pages 48-57, DOI:10.1109/TSP.2010.2080271.
• Christmas J, Everson RM. (2010) Temporally Coupled Principal Component Analysis: A Probabilistic Autoregression Method, International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN), Barcelona, 19th - 23rd Jul 2010.

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