Jean Serra
Encyclopedia
Jean Paul Frédéric Serra (born 1940 in Algeria
) is a French mathematician
and engineer, and known as one of the co-founders (together with Georges Matheron
) of mathematical morphology
.
in 1957, and an engineering degree
from the École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Nancy
in 1962. He also obtained a Bachelor
degree in philosophy/psychology
, from the University of Nancy, in 1965. He obtained a PhD in Mathematical Geology
from the University of Nancy in 1967, and a doctorat d'etat in Mathematics
, from the Pierre and Marie Curie University
, Paris, in 1986. He speaks French, Russian, English, and Spanish.
, France, Serra was a PhD student under the supervision of Georges Matheron
. The subject of his thesis
was "stochastic
modeling
of the iron deposit
of Lorraine
, at various scales," one of the goals of which was to quantify petrographic characteristics of its iron ore
body. During that period, Serra came up with the idea of using structuring element
s for transforming images of cross section
s of the ore, in order to gain information about it. The result was a device called "Texture Analyser", which was patented in 1965. This work also lead to the concept of hit-or-miss transform
, which evolved into the concepts of erosion
, dilation
, opening
and closing
due to Matheron. Granulometry
and other concepts followed. In the Winter of 1966, in a pub of Nancy, Matheron, Philippe Formery, and Serra decided to give a name to this body of works: "Mathematical morphology". The new theory and method has since evolved to be applied in a variety of image processing
problems and tasks, and is researched worldwide (main article: Mathematical morphology
).
In 1968, the Centre of Mathematical Morphology (CMM) of the École des Mines de Paris was created (after 1979, it was called Centre of Geostatistics and Mathematical Morphology). Matheron was named director, and Serra was hired as master of research ("Maître de Recherches") and assistant director
. In 1986, upon the split of the Centre of Geostatistics and Mathematical Morphology into two separate centers, Serra became director of research ("Directeur de Recherches") and the director of the new CMM.
Serra has continued to contribute to mathematical morphology over the years; In fact, some of the most important theoretical developments are due to him:
Algeria
Algeria , officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria , also formally referred to as the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of Northwest Africa with Algiers as its capital.In terms of land area, it is the largest country in Africa and the Arab...
) is a French mathematician
Mathematician
A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....
and engineer, and known as one of the co-founders (together with Georges Matheron
Georges Matheron
Georges François Paul Marie Matheron was a French mathematician and geologist, known as the founder of geostatistics and a co-founder of mathematical morphology. In 1968 he created the Centre de Géostatistique et de Morphologie Mathématique at the Paris School of Mines in Fontainebleau...
) of mathematical morphology
Mathematical morphology
Mathematical morphology is a theory and technique for the analysis and processing of geometrical structures, based on set theory, lattice theory, topology, and random functions...
.
Education
Serra received a scientific baccalauréatBaccalauréat
The baccalauréat , often known in France colloquially as le bac, is an academic qualification which French and international students take at the end of the lycée . It was introduced by Napoleon I in 1808. It is the main diploma required to pursue university studies...
in 1957, and an engineering degree
Academic degree
An academic degree is a position and title within a college or university that is usually awarded in recognition of the recipient having either satisfactorily completed a prescribed course of study or having conducted a scholarly endeavour deemed worthy of his or her admission to the degree...
from the École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Nancy
École nationale supérieure des Mines de Nancy
The école nationale supérieure des mines de Nancy is one of the prestigious French generalist engineering Grandes Ecoles...
in 1962. He also obtained a Bachelor
Bachelor
A bachelor is a man above the age of majority who has never been married . Unlike his female counterpart, the spinster, a bachelor may have had children...
degree in philosophy/psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
, from the University of Nancy, in 1965. He obtained a PhD in Mathematical Geology
Mathematical Geology
Mathematical Geosciences is a scientific journal, published by the International Association of Mathematical Geology. It is published semi-quarterly by Springer Science+Business Media and contains original papers in numerical mathematical geosciences...
from the University of Nancy in 1967, and a doctorat d'etat in Mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
, from the Pierre and Marie Curie University
Pierre and Marie Curie University
The Paris VI University , or the Pierre and Marie Curie University , is a university located on the Jussieu Campus in the Latin Quarter of the 5th arrondissement of Paris, France....
, Paris, in 1986. He speaks French, Russian, English, and Spanish.
Mathematical morphology
From 1962 to 1966, while a research engineer at the Institut de recherche de la sidérurgieInstitut de recherche de la sidérurgie
The Institut de recherche de la sidérurgie is the old name of ArcelorMittal Maizières Research SA, a private research center related to the siderurgical society ArcelorMittal , situated at Maizières-lès-Metz, in Lorraine...
, France, Serra was a PhD student under the supervision of Georges Matheron
Georges Matheron
Georges François Paul Marie Matheron was a French mathematician and geologist, known as the founder of geostatistics and a co-founder of mathematical morphology. In 1968 he created the Centre de Géostatistique et de Morphologie Mathématique at the Paris School of Mines in Fontainebleau...
. The subject of his thesis
Thesis
A dissertation or thesis is a document submitted in support of candidature for an academic degree or professional qualification presenting the author's research and findings...
was "stochastic
Stochastic
Stochastic refers to systems whose behaviour is intrinsically non-deterministic. A stochastic process is one whose behavior is non-deterministic, in that a system's subsequent state is determined both by the process's predictable actions and by a random element. However, according to M. Kac and E...
modeling
Geologic modelling
Geologic modelling or Geomodelling is the applied science of creating computerized representations of portions of the Earth's crust based on geophysical and geological observations made on and below the Earth surface. A Geomodel is the numerical equivalent of a three-dimensional geological map...
of the iron deposit
Deposition (geology)
Deposition is the geological process by which material is added to a landform or land mass. Fluids such as wind and water, as well as sediment flowing via gravity, transport previously eroded sediment, which, at the loss of enough kinetic energy in the fluid, is deposited, building up layers of...
of Lorraine
Lorraine (région)
Lorraine is one of the 27 régions of France. The administrative region has two cities of equal importance, Metz and Nancy. Metz is considered to be the official capital since that is where the regional parliament is situated...
, at various scales," one of the goals of which was to quantify petrographic characteristics of its iron ore
Ore
An ore is a type of rock that contains minerals with important elements including metals. The ores are extracted through mining; these are then refined to extract the valuable element....
body. During that period, Serra came up with the idea of using structuring element
Structuring element
In mathematical morphology, a structuring element is a shape, used to probe or interact with a given image, with the purpose of drawing conclusions on how this shape fits or misses the shapes in the image...
s for transforming images of cross section
Cross section (geometry)
In geometry, a cross-section is the intersection of a figure in 2-dimensional space with a line, or of a body in 3-dimensional space with a plane, etc...
s of the ore, in order to gain information about it. The result was a device called "Texture Analyser", which was patented in 1965. This work also lead to the concept of hit-or-miss transform
Hit-or-miss transform
In mathematical morphology, hit-or-miss transform is an operation that detects a given configuration in a binary image, using the morphological erosion operator and a pair of disjoint structuring elements...
, which evolved into the concepts of erosion
Erosion (morphology)
For use of "Erosion" in dermatopathology, see Erosion Erosion is one of two fundamental operations in Morphological image processing from which all other morphological operations are based...
, dilation
Dilation (morphology)
Dilation is one of the basic operations in mathematical morphology. Originally developed for binary images, it has been expanded first to grayscale images, and then to complete lattices...
, opening
Opening (morphology)
In mathematical morphology, opening is the dilation of the erosion of a set A by a structuring element B:A\circ B = \oplus B, \, where \ominus and \oplus denote erosion and dilation, respectively....
and closing
Closing (morphology)
In mathematical morphology, the closing of a set A by a structuring element B is the erosion of the dilation of that set,A\bullet B = \ominus B, \, where \oplus and \ominus denote the dilation and erosion, respectively....
due to Matheron. Granulometry
Granulometry (morphology)
In mathematical morphology, granulometry is an approach to compute a size distribution of grains in binary images, using a series of morphological opening operations...
and other concepts followed. In the Winter of 1966, in a pub of Nancy, Matheron, Philippe Formery, and Serra decided to give a name to this body of works: "Mathematical morphology". The new theory and method has since evolved to be applied in a variety of image processing
Image processing
In electrical engineering and computer science, image processing is any form of signal processing for which the input is an image, such as a photograph or video frame; the output of image processing may be either an image or, a set of characteristics or parameters related to the image...
problems and tasks, and is researched worldwide (main article: Mathematical morphology
Mathematical morphology
Mathematical morphology is a theory and technique for the analysis and processing of geometrical structures, based on set theory, lattice theory, topology, and random functions...
).
In 1968, the Centre of Mathematical Morphology (CMM) of the École des Mines de Paris was created (after 1979, it was called Centre of Geostatistics and Mathematical Morphology). Matheron was named director, and Serra was hired as master of research ("Maître de Recherches") and assistant director
Assistant director
The role of an Assistant director include tracking daily progress against the filming production schedule, arranging logistics, preparing daily call sheets, checking cast and crew, maintaining order on the set. They also have to take care of health and safety of the crew...
. In 1986, upon the split of the Centre of Geostatistics and Mathematical Morphology into two separate centers, Serra became director of research ("Directeur de Recherches") and the director of the new CMM.
Serra has continued to contribute to mathematical morphology over the years; In fact, some of the most important theoretical developments are due to him:
- Generalization of mathematical morphology to complete latticeComplete latticeIn mathematics, a complete lattice is a partially ordered set in which all subsets have both a supremum and an infimum . Complete lattices appear in many applications in mathematics and computer science...
s - Theory for morphological filtering, with Matheron
- Connections
Additional highlights
- 1979–1983: Vice-president of the International Society for Stereology.
- 1983–: Member of the editorial boardEditorial boardThe editorial board is a group of people, usually at a publication, who dictate the tone and direction the publication's editorial policy will take.- Board makeup :...
of Acta Stereologica. - 1988–1991: Member of the scientific board of the French T.V. cultural program.
- 1989–: Member of the editorial boardEditorial boardThe editorial board is a group of people, usually at a publication, who dictate the tone and direction the publication's editorial policy will take.- Board makeup :...
of the Journal of Visual Communications and Image Representation. - 1990–: Member of the editorial board of the Journal of Mathematical Imaging and Vision.
- 1991–1993 : Chairman of the "Image Algebra and Morphological Processing Conference" in SPIE annual meeting, San Diego, California, USA.
- 1993: Chairman of the first Int. Conf. in Mathematical Morphology, BarcelonaBarcelonaBarcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...
, Spain. - 1994: Chairman of the second Int. Conf. in Mathematical Morphology, FontainebleauFontainebleauFontainebleau is a commune in the metropolitan area of Paris, France. It is located south-southeast of the centre of Paris. Fontainebleau is a sub-prefecture of the Seine-et-Marne department, and it is the seat of the arrondissement of Fontainebleau...
, France.
Honors and awards
- 1982 : ESCLANGON prize, awarded by the French Society of Physics.
- 1988 : First award of the great prize of the AFCET Society.
- 1989 : Chevalier of the National Order of Merit.
- 1993 : Doctor Honoris Causa of the Autonomous University of BarcelonaAutonomous University of BarcelonaThe Autonomous University of Barcelona is a public university mostly located in Cerdanyola, near the city of Barcelona in Catalonia, Spain....
, Spain. - 1993 : Founder of the International Society for Mathematical Morphology, and first president of this society.
Main Publications
- Image Analysis and Mathematical Morphology, ISBN 0126372403 (1982)
- Image Analysis and Mathematical Morphology, Volume 2: Theoretical Advances, ISBN 0-12-637241-1 (1988)