SUEMATSU-Yasuharu Award

  Kota Iwamoto received his M.E. degree in Electronics, Information and Communication Engineering from Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan, and joined NEC Corporation in Kawasaki in 2003. He is currently a principal researcher at Data Science Research Laboratories, NEC Corporation, where he has been engaged in research and development of image and video retrieval technologies.
   He developed a high-accuracy video identification technology “Video Signature,” which can be a countermeasure against video content piracy on the Internet. In order to prevent content piracy, unauthorized video copies are first identified from vast amounts of videos that exist around the world. However, neither digital watermarking technologies nor conventional video retrieval technologies using color or spatial features can identify video signals that have been altered through editing or modifications, which is a common characteristic of pirated videos. In order to solve this problem, he developed a new video feature technology by introducing multi-scale pattern variations in feature extraction, which can robustly identify videos that contain editing and/or modifications. This technology enabled, for the first time, identification of copied videos with practical accuracy and speed.
   He also made efforts for ISO/IEC standardization of Video Signature technology, so that the technology can be used as a standard tool for preventing content piracy. He led the standardization project and the proposed Video Signature technology was adopted as the standard due to its outstanding identification performance. He worked as a project editor and the standard was issued as ISO/IEC MPEG-7 Video Signature Tools in 2010.
   Moreover, he worked on commercializing the video identification software, the world’s first product compliant with the standard, which has been adopted by many customers for use in content piracy protection. In addition, he has been successful in commercializing Video Signature technology across a wide range of applications, from TV ad tracking systems to video management systems for broadcasting stations.
   For his outstanding achievements and contributions as described above, he is fully deserving of the SUEMATSU-Yasuharu Award.