The Odyssée team is joint to INRIA, the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris and the CERTIS laboratory at Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées. It is located in Sophia-Antipolis, rue d'Ulm in Paris and in Champs-sur-Marne, close to Paris.

The scientific focus of the laboratory is the combined study of computer and biological vision. We think that a more detailed knowledge of the visual perception in humans and non-human primates can have a potential impact on algorithm design, performance evaluation and cues on such questions as how to interface an artificial vision system with people, possibly handicapped.

From a more general viewpoint and at another level, biological visual perception, in particular in non human primates and humans is poorly understood and modeled. Making progress in this understanding is a grand scientific and philosophic challenge that frames our work.

We conduct research in the following three main areas.

The capacity of visualising in vivo the cerebral structures that are involved in man during the performance of cognitive tasks are modifying human cognitive sciences in depth. For decades, study of human cognition was relying on the lesions method that investigates anatomical lesions and the corresponding neuropsychological symptoms. The development of functional imaging techniques, milestoned by increasing progress in space-time resolution, has led to the birth of a new field: cognitive neuroscience with imaging as the main tool. This field brings a new vision regarding relations between brain and mind as defined in psychology or in neuropsychology. Functional neuroimaging is a multidisciplinary research field, where signal and image processing is necessary to rebuild and interpret data that are collected by instruments. Availability of reliable and robust analysis methods and of tools of easy use is a considerable asset for all cerebral imaging users, allowing them to interpret and present their results.

The new Magnetic Resonance Imaging center in the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital is equipped with a 3T Siemens Trio TIM 32 channel system. The center is dedicated to research in cognitive and clinical neurosciences in healthy subjects and patients with neurological and psychiatric diseases. The personal of the NMR Center wishes to help construct a national facility with opportunities for clinical research activity of the highest quality and competitiveness. The scanning facilities and complementary expertise are guaranteed through extensive collaborations supporting the CENIR. The number of clinical research projects which take place at the University Pierre and Marie Curie - Paris 6 and the Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris makes this institution a leader in human research in Europe, with 354 active projects and 35.000 patients included.