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Violeta Chang

Assistant Professor
Departamento de Ingeniería Informática
Universidad de Santiago de Chile

Violeta Chang holds a PhD in Computer Science from the Universidad de Chile. Since 2019, Violeta has been a professor in the Departament de Ingeniería Informática at the Universidad de Santiago, Chile. She is currently the head of the Ingeniería de Ejecución en Computación e Informática program. Her research interests have always involved computer vision (machine learning, image processing, and analysis) and focus on artificial intelligence applications with social impact in areas such as male infertility, breast and prostate cancer diagnosis through biopsies, low-dose radiation CT scan reconstruction, and identification of anomalous patterns in fishing discards. Violeta has been awarded several competitive research grants, such as Fondecyt Iniciación y Exploración, FONDEF IDeA I+D, and STIC-AmSud.

Interests

  • Machine learning, Deep learning, Computer vision, Image processing and analysis, Artificial intelligence with social impact

Education

PhD in Computer Science

Universidad de Chile
Santiago, Chile

Thesis: Segmentation and classification of human sperm heads towards morphological sperm analysis

MsC in Computer Science

Universidad Nacional de Trujillo
Trujillo, Peru

Thesis: Development of a nonlinear method for fingerprint image enhancement

Computer Engineer

Universidad Nacional de Trujillo
Trujillo, Peru

Thesis: Alternative methods for automatic image contrast enhancement

Br. in Computer Science

Universidad Nacional de Trujillo
Trujillo, Peru

Academic Experience

2019--now

Assistant professor

Departamento de Ingeniería Informática
Universidad de Santiago de Chile, Chile

Research lines: Image processing and analysis, machine and deep learning

2009--2011

Teaching assistant

Departamento de Ciencias de la Computación
Universidad de Chile, Chile

Asignatures: Databases, Databases and knowledge

2001--2008

Assistant professor

Departamento de Ingeniería Informática
Universidad Nacional de Trujillo, Peru

Asignatures: Algorithms, Data structures, Computer graphics, Databases, Special topics on image processing, Special topis on databases

2015--2019

Postdoctoral researcher

Laboratory for Scientific Image Analysis (SCIAN-Lab)
Universidad de Chile, Chile

Research lines: Generation of biomedical gold-standards, machine and deep learning

2006--2008

Assistant professor

Escuela de Postgrado
Universidad Nacional de Trujillo, Peru

Asignatures: Digital image processing, Distributed databases, Multimedia databases

RESEARCH

FONDECYT Exploración (13250156)

2025--2028
Dynamic AI foundation models for interpreting medical images through self-supervision, multimodality, clinical-context prompting and adaptable explainability.
Principal Director.

FONDEF IDeA I+D (ID25I10026)

2025--2026
FAIR - Identificación de comportamientos anómalos para la fiscalización eficiente de descarte pesquero a través de modelos multimodales de inteligencia artificial.
Principal Director.

FONDEF IDeA I+D (ID24I10053)

2024--2025
Reconstrucción de tomografías computarizadas con baja dosis de radiación a través de modelos generativos acelerados basados en técnicas de difusión.
Deputy Director.

STIC-AMSUD (23-STIC-03)

2024--2025
Context-Guided Future Liver Remnant VolumeEstimation using Artificial Intelligence Models.
Principal Researcher.

FONDEF IDeA I+D (ID23I10198)

2023--2024
Herramienta de apoyo a la toma de decisiones en patología digital de cáncer de próstata basada en inteligencia artificial.
Deputy Director.

STIC-AMSUD (22-STIC-04)

2022--2023
Domain adaptation for cell segmentation and classification using weakly supervised machine learning.
Principal Director.

FONDECYT Iniciación (11190851)

2020--2023
Deep learning models for breast digital pathology.
Principal Researcher.

PAI (77180012)

2019--2022
Fortalecimiento del área de aprendizaje de máquinas en pre y postgrado e investigación del Departamento de Ingeniería Informática.
Principal Researcher.

STIC-AMSUD (19-STIC-04)

2019--2021
Optimized deep learning based representations for computer vision problems.
Researcher.

FONDECYT Postdoctorado (3160559)

2015--2019
Generation of biomedical gold-standards using supervised learning based on multiple experts.
Principal Researcher.

STIC-AMSUD (14-STIC-01)

2014--2015
Dynamic selection of classifiers with application in real environments.
PhD student.

Publications

AST-n: A Fast Sampling Approach for Low-Dose CT Reconstruction using Diffusion Models.

Tomás de la Sotta, Jose M. Saavedra, Héctor Henríquez, Violeta Chang & Aline Xavier
Accepted for MIRASOL Workshop at MICCAI 2025
Full-text

Presentation Attack Detection using iris periocular visual spectrum images.

Andrés Valenzuela, Juan Tapia, Violeta Chang & Christoph Busch
Frontiers in Imaging, 3:1478783, 2024.
Full-text

Impact of attention mechanisms for organ segmentation in chest x-ray images over UNet model.

Tomás de la Sotta, Violeta Chang, Benjamín Pizarro, Héctor Henríquez, Nicolás Alvear & Jose M. Saavedra
Multimedia Tools and Applications, 83: 49261--49283, 2023.
Full-text

Impact of transfer learning for human sperm segmentation using deep learning.

Ruth Marín & Violeta Chang
Computers in Biology and Medicine (CBM), 136: 104687, 2021.
Full-text

Generation of a HER2 breast cancer gold-standard using supervised learning from multiple experts

Violeta Chang
CVII-STENT 2018/LABELS 2018, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 11043, 45-54, 2018.
Full-text

Automatic classification of human sperm head morphology

Violeta Chang, Laurent Heutte, Caroline Petitjean, Steffen Härtel & Nancy Hitschfeld
Computers in Biology and Medicine (CBM), 84: 205-216, 2017.
Full-text

Gold-standard for computer-assisted morphological sperm analysis

Violeta Chang, Alejandra García, Nancy Hitschfeld & Steffen Härtel
Computers in Biology and Medicine (CBM), 83: 143-150, 2017.
Full-text

Gold-standard and improved framework for sperm head segmentation

Violeta Chang, José Saavedra, Víctor Castañeda, Luis Sarabia, Nancy Hitschfeld & Steffen Härtel
Computer Mehods and Programs in Biomedicine (CMPB), 117(2): 225-237, 2014.
Full-text

An accurate hand segmentation approach using a structure based shape localization technique

José Saavedra, Benjamín Bustos & Violeta Chang
Proceedings of VISSAP 2013, 321-326, 2013.
Full-text

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