Yan Lu received his Ph. D degree in computer application from Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT), China, in 2003. From 1999 to 2000, he was a Research Assistant with the Department of Computer Science, City University of Hong Kong. From 2001 to 2004, he was a Team Lead with the Joint R&D Lab (JDL), Chinese Academy of Sciences. Since April 2004, he has been with Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA), where he is currently a Researcher. His technical contributions at Microsoft include advanced compression technologies for Xbox360 XDK, Live Meeting, Office Communications, etc. His current research interests include image and video coding, hypermedia format and platform, and rich media system. Dr. Lu won the IS&T/SPIE VCIP Best Paper Award in 2007.

Research Projects

Titanium Remote Platform

• A low-cost yet efficient end-to-end solution that supports real-time screen sharing and remote computing applications

Titanium Screen Codec

• An efficient screen compression technology that enables broad applications such as screen recording and sharing (http://videos.visitmix.com/MIX09/T19F, seek to 50:01)

Graphics Compression

• MCT texture compression – A new method of lossless and lossy compression for DXTn-, DXN-, and CTX1-formatted textures
• HDR texture compression – An effective DXTC-based high dynamic range texture compression scheme

Previous projects in MSRA include multi-view video coding, distributed video coding, scalable video streaming, multiple description coding, error-resilience coding, etc. Previous projects in JDL and CityU include optimized visual tools for MPEG-4, near CD quality audio compression, rate control and error control for H.264/AVC, technical contributions for China AVS, etc.

Publications

* - The work was done during his/her internship at Microsoft Research Asia.

Selected Journal papers

1. Li Su*, Yan Lu, Feng Wu, Shipeng Li, Wen Gao, “Complexity-constrained H.264 video encoding,” IEEE Trans. on Circuits Systems for Video Technology, 2009. (to appear)
2. Xun Guo*, Yan Lu, Feng Wu, Debin Zhao, Wen Gao, “Wyner-Ziv-based multi-view video coding,” IEEE Trans. on Circuits Systems for Video Technology, Vol. 18, No. 6, pp. 713-724, June 2008.
3. Nan Zhang*, Yan Lu, Feng Wu, Xiaolin Wu, Baocai Yin, “Efficient multiple-description image coding using directional lifting-based transform,” IEEE Trans. on Circuits Systems for Video Technology, Vol. 18, No. 5, pp. 646-656, May 2008.
4. Mei Guo*, Yan Lu, Feng Wu, Debin Zhao, Wen Gao, “Wyner-Ziv switching scheme for multiple bit-rate video streaming,” IEEE Trans. on Circuits Systems for Video Technology, Vol. 18, No. 5, pp. 569-581, May 2008.
5. Yuan Zhang, Wen Gao, Yan Lu, Qingming Huang, Debin Zhao, “Joint source-channel rate-distortion optimization for H.264 video coding over error-prone networks” IEEE Trans. on Multimedia, Vol. 9, No. 3, pp. 445-454, April 2007.
6. Xun Guo*, Yan Lu, Feng Wu, Wen Gao, “Inter-view direct mode in multi-view video coding,” IEEE Trans. on Circuits Systems for Video Technology, Vol. 16, No. 12, pp. 1527-1532, Dec. 2006.
7. Wenxian Yang*, Yan Lu, Feng Wu, Jianfei Cai, King Ngi Ngan, Shipeng Li, “4D wavelet-based multi-view video coding,” IEEE Trans. on Circuits Systems for Video Technology, Vol. 16, No. 11, pp. 1385-1396, Nov. 2006.
8. Siwei Ma, Wen Gao, Yan Lu, “Rate-Distortion Analysis for H.264/AVC Video Coding and Its Application to Rate Control,” IEEE Trans. on Circuits Systems for Video Technology, Vol. 15, No. 12, pp. 1533-1544, Dec. 2005.
9. Yan Lu, Wen Gao, Feng Wu, “Efficient background video coding with static sprite generation and arbitrary-shape spatial prediction techniques,” IEEE Trans. on Circuits Systems for Video Technology, Vol. 13, No. 5, pp. 394-405, May 2003.

Recent Conference papers

1. Huifeng Shen*, Yan Lu, Feng Wu, Shipeng Li, “A High-performance remote computing platform,” IEEE PerWare 2009 in conjunction with IEEE PerCom 2009, Galveston, Texas, USA, Mar. 2009.
2. Wen Sun*, Yan Lu, Feng Wu, Shipeng Li, “DHTC: an effective DXTC-based high dynamic range texture compression scheme,” Graphics Hardware 2008, Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Jun. 2008.
3. Mei Guo*, Yan Lu, Feng Wu, Debin Zhao, Wen Gao, “Scalable Wyner-Ziv video coding with adaptive bit-plane representation,” SPIE Visual Communications and Image Processing, VCIP 2008 (6822-88), San Jose, CA, USA, Jan. 2008. (invited paper)
4. Wenpeng Ding*, Yan Lu, Feng Wu, “Compound image compression based on H.264/AVC intra coding,” IEEE International Conference on Image Processing 2007, vol. II, pp. 337-340, San Antonio, Texas, USA, Sept. 2007.
5. Mei Guo*, Yan Lu, Feng Wu, Shipeng Li, Wen Gao, “Distributed video coding with spatial correlation exploited only at the decoder,” IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems, ISCAS 2007, New Orleans, US, May, 2007.
6. Li Su*, Yan Lu, Feng Wu, Shipeng Li, Wen Gao, “Real-time video coding under power constraint based on H.264 codec,” SPIE Visual Communications and Image Processing, VCIP 2007 (6508-1), San Jose, CA, USA, Feb. 2007. (Best Paper Award)
7. Wenpeng Ding*, Yan Lu, Feng Wu, Shipeng Li, “Rate-distortion optimized color quantization for compound image compression,” SPIE Visual Communications and Image Processing, VCIP 2007 (6508-98), San Jose, CA, USA, Feb. 2007.
8. Xun Guo*, Yan Lu, Feng Wu, Wen Gao, Shipeng Li, “Wyner-Ziv video coding based on set partitioning in hierarchical tree,” IEEE International Conference on Image Processing, ICIP 2006, pp. 601-604, Atlanta, GA, USA, Oct. 2006.
9. Wei Pu*, Yan Lu, Feng Wu, “Joint power-distortion optimization on devices with MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 codec,” IEEE International Conference on Communications, ICC 2006, Istanbul, Turkey, Jun. 2006.