Mr. Jan Hanca

Biography

Jan Hanca (born 1986) received the M.Sc. and Ing. degrees in electronics and telecommunications from Poznan University of Technology in 2010. In 2010 he was also a visitor of Vrije Universiteit Brussel, where he prepared his master thesis and where he is currently working toward the Ph.D. degree. In 2011 he obtained a grant from Flemish agency for Innovation by Science and Technology (IWT) for the years 2012-2016 for the preparation of his doctoral thesis. His professional interests include video compression in multiview systems, depth estimation from stereoscopic images and view synthesis for free view television.

Research Interest

Jan’s main interest are technologies used in 3D video systems, namely video + depth representation and its processing. His initial research focuses on low complexity depth maps compression, exploiting intra-frame, inter-frame, and inter-view correlations in the signal. His goal is to develop a stand-alone depth map codec and to combine his solution with the state-of-the art in video coding. In the future he plans to study further depth-based rendering algorithms and depth estimation techniques, both having a major impact on the quality of reconstructed views. Video compression is an essential component of broadcast and entertainment applications such as digital television, DVD/BluRay and Internet streaming. Jan’s research is centered on the design of a depth map codec applicable in stand-alone solutions, such as time of flight cameras, as well as in the 3D video processing pipeline. 3D video provides much more realism and joy to the end user than popular stereo systems by enabling free viewpoint navigation in the scene. Changing the viewpoint gives the feeling of participating in sport event, or movie, it also gives a new meaning to term “telepresence videoconferencing”.