Wassim Bouachir is a Professor of computer science and the Canada Research Chair in artificial intelligence for suicide prevention. He is a founding member of the Data Science Laboratory (DOT-Lab) and a researcher at the Centre for Research and Intervention on Suicide (CRISE). He holds a Ph.D. in computer engineering from Polytechnique Montréal and a Master’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Moncton, both specializing in Artificial Intelligence. His research focuses on machine learning and computer vision, addressing fundamental problems such as object tracking, activity recognition, and signal classification. In applied research, he is interested in implementing fundamental advancements across various fields, including suicide prevention, physical and mental health, and environmental applications.
Education
- Postdoc, École de Technologie Supérieure
- Ph.D., Polytechnique Montréal
- M. Sc., Université de Moncton
- B. Sc., Université de Tunis - El Manar
Research Interests
- Artificial intelligence
- AI for suicide prevention
- Intelligent video surveillance
- Medical decision support
Teaching
Program direction
Courses
Course not available in the current term
- INF 6070 - Technologies sémantiques pour la gestion des connaissances
Research
NSERC Discovery research program
We focus on the development of novel methods to improve decision making abilities of intelligent video surveillance systems. By intelligence, we mean to assist humans and reduce cognitive overload by automatically extracting relevant information and detecting suspicious events in security applications. Our long-term goal is thus to develop solutions to better understand monitored scenes, through the efficient exploitation of computer vision methods and visual acquisition technology.
Canada Research Chair in Artificial Intelligence for Suicide Prevention
We aim to develop new methods of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance our ability to predict suicide. We are working to put in place new AI-based intervention techniques and deepen our understanding of the complex phenomenon of suicide. Our findings could have applications in suicide prevention in a range of social and cultural contexts in Canada and globally. In addition, the AI methods and techniques we develop could be put to use in other fields of inquiry and to solve other problems.
Publications & Presentations
This section shows the documents (if any) that are available in R-libre, TELUQ's open access research publication repository.
Journal articles (refereed)
Naimi, Safwen; Bouachir, Wassim, & Bilodeau, Guillaume-Alexandre (2024). 1D-Convolutional transformer for Parkinson disease diagnosis from gait. Neural Computing and Applications. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00521-023-09193-6
Jemaa, Hela; Bouachir, Wassim; Leblon, Brigitte; LaRocque, Armand; Haddadi, Ata, & Bouguila, Nizar (2023). UAV-Based Computer Vision System for Orchard Apple Tree Detection and Health Assessment. Remote Sensing, 15. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs15143558
Zgaren, Ahmed; Bouachir, Wassim, & Bouguila, Nizar (2023). Automatic counting of planting microsites via local visual detection and global count estimation. IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computational Intelligence, 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1109/TETCI.2023.3272004
Li, Zhenxi; Bilodeau, Guillaume-Alexandre, & Bouachir, Wassim (2021). Multiple Convolutional Features in Siamese Networks for Object Tracking. Machine Vision and Applications, 32 (3), 59.
Ihou, Koffi Eddy; Bouguila, Nizar, & Bouachir, Wassim (2020). Efficient integration of generative topic models into discriminative classifiers using robust probabilistic kernels. Pattern Analysis and Applications. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10044-020-00917-1
El Maachi, Imanne; Bilodeau, Guillaume-Alexandre, & Bouachir, Wassim (2020). Deep 1D-Convnet for accurate Parkinson disease detection and severity prediction from gait. Expert Systems with Applications, 143. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2019.113075
Correia, David LP; Bouachir, Wassim; Gervais, David; Pureswaran, Deepa; Kneeshaw, Daniel D, & De Grandpré, Louis (2020). Leveraging Artificial Intelligence for Large-Scale Plant Phenology Studies From Noisy Time-Lapse Images. IEEE Access, 8, 13151 - 13160. https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2020.2965462
Bouachir, Wassim; Ihou, Koffi Eddy; Gueziri, Houssem-Eddine; Bouguila, Nizar, & Bélanger, Nicolas (2019). Computer Vision System for Automatic Counting of Planting Microsites Using UAV Imagery. IEEE Access, 7, 82491 - 82500. https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2923765
Ghazal, Sam; Sauthier, Michael; Brossier, David; Bouachir, Wassim; Jouvet, Philippe, & Noumeir, Rita (2019). Using machine learning models to predict oxygen saturation following ventilator support adjustment in critically ill children: A single center pilot study. PLoS ONE, 14 (2). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0198921
Rehouma, Haythem; Noumeir, Rita; Bouachir, Wassim; Jouvet, Philippe, & Essouri, Sandrine (2018). 3D imaging system for respiratory monitoring in pediatric intensive care environment. Computerized Medical Imaging and Graphics, 70, 17-28. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compmedimag.2018.09.006
Bouachir, Wassim; Gouiaa, Rafik; Li, Bo, & Noumeir, Rita (2018). Intelligent video surveillance for real-time detection of suicide attempts. Pattern Recognition Letters, 110. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.patrec.2018.03.018
Bouachir, Wassim, & Bilodeau, Guillaume-Alexandre (2015). Collaborative part-based tracking using salient local predictors. Computer Vision and Image Understanding, 137, 88-101. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cviu.2015.03.010
Bouachir, Wassim, & Bilodeau, Guillaume-Alexandre (2015). Exploiting structural constraints for visual object tracking. Image and Vision Computing, 43, 39-49. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.imavis.2015.09.002
Papers in conference proceedings (refereed)
Nfissi, Alaa; Bouachir, Wassim; Bouguila, Nizar, & Mishara, Brian (In Press). Unlocking the Emotional States of High-Risk Suicide Callers through Speech Analysis. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Semantic Computing (IEEE ICSC 2024). IEEE.
Anwar, Noreen; Philippe, Duplessis-Guindon; Bilodeau, Guillaume-Alexandre, & Bouachir, Wassim (2023). VisiTherS: Visible-Thermal Infrared Stereo Disparity Estimation of Human Silhouette. In Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) Workshops (p. 394-402).
Jemaa, Hela; Bouachir, Wassim; Leblon, Brigitte; LaRocque, Armand; Haddadi, Ata, & Bouguila, Nizar (2023). Tree health assessment from UAV images: Improving object detection and classification using hard negative mining and semi-supervised autoencoder. In 2023 20th Conference on Robots and Vision (CRV) (p. 312-319). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/CRV60082.2023.00047
Naimi, Safwen; Bouachir, Wassim, & Bilodeau, Guillaume-Alexandre (In Press). HCT: Hybrid Convnet-Transformer for Parkinson’s disease detection and severity prediction from gait. In Proceedings of the 22nd IEEE International Conference on Machine Learning and Applications (ICMLA 2023). IEEE.
Naimi, Safwen; Koubaa, Olfa; Bouachir, Wassim; Bilodeau, Guillaume-Alexandre; Jeddore, Gregory; Baines, Patricia; Correia, David LP, & Arsenault, André (In Press). Automating lichen monitoring in ecological studies using instance segmentation of time-lapse images. In Proceedings of the 22nd IEEE International Conference on Machine Learning and Applications (ICMLA 2023). IEEE.
Nfissi, Alaa; Bouachir, Wassim; Bouguila, Nizar, & Mishara, Brian (In Press). Iterative Feature Boosting for Explainable Speech Emotion Recognition. In Proceedings of the 22nd IEEE International Conference on Machine Learning and Applications (ICMLA 2023). IEEE.
Zgaren, Ahmed; Bouachir, Wassim; Bouguila, Nizar, & Hammoud, Riad I. (2023). MoundCount: A Detection-Based Approach for Automatic Counting of Planting Microsites on UAV Images. In Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) Workshops (p. 497-506).
Nfissi, Alaa; Bouachir, Wassim; Bouguila, Nizar, & Mishara, Brian (2022). CNN-n-GRU: end-to-end speech emotion recognition from raw waveform signal using CNNs and gated recurrent unit networks. In Proceedings of the 21st IEEE International Conference on Machine Learning and Applications (ICMLA 2022). IEEE.
Nikougoftar Nategh, Majid; Zgaren, Ahmed; Bouachir, Wassim, & Bouguila, Nizar (2022). Automatic counting of mounds on UAV images: combining instance segmentation and patch-level correction. In 2022 21st IEEE International Conference on Machine Learning and Applications (ICMLA) (p. 375-381). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICMLA55696.2022.00060
Jemaa, Hela; Bouachir, Wassim; Leblon, Brigitte, & Bouguila, Nizar (2022). Computer vision system for detecting orchard trees from UAV images. In The International Archives of Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences. Copernicus GmbH. https://doi.org/10.5194/isprs-archives-XLIII-B4-2022-661-2022
Dimitri Nguyen, Duc Minh; Miah, Mehdi; Bilodeau, Guillaume-Alexandre, & Bouachir, Wassim (In Press). Transformers for 1D signals in Parkinson’s disease detection from gait. In Proceedings of the 26th International Conference on Pattern Recognition (ICPR 2022). IEEE.
Li, Zhenxi; Bilodeau, Guillaume-Alexandre, & Bouachir, Wassim (In Press). MFST: Multi-Features Siamese Tracker. In Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Pattern Recognition (ICPR). IEEE.
Zgaren, Ahmed; Bouachir, Wassim, & Ksantini, Riadh (2020). Coarse-to-Fine Object Tracking Using Deep Features and Correlation filters. In Advances in Visual Computing : 15th International Symposium, ISVC 2020, San Diego, CA, USA, October 5-7, 2020, Proceedings. Cham, Suisse : Springer, coll. « Lecture Notes in Computer Science », vol. 12509. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64556-4_40
Elforaici, Mohamed El Amine; Chaaraoui, Ismail; Bouachir, Wassim; Ouakrim, Youssef, & Mezghani, Neila (2018). Posture recognition using an RGB-D camera : exploring 3D body modeling and deep learning approaches. In IEEE Life Sciences Conference (LSC) (p. 69-72). Montreal, Canada : IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/LSC.2018.8572079
Riahi, Dorra; Bouachir, Wassim; Ouakrim, Youssef, & Mezghani, Neila (2018). Depth imaging system for human posture recognition. In IEEE Middle East Conference on Biomedical Engineering (MECBME 2018) (p. 177-181). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/MECBME.2018.8402429
Li, Zhenxi; Bilodeau, Guillaume-Alexandre, & Bouachir, Wassim (2018). Multi-Branch Siamese Networks with Online Selection for Object Tracking. In Bebis, Georges; Boyle, Richard; Parvin, Bahram; Koracin, Darko; Turek, Matt; Ramalingam, Srikumar; Xu, Kai; Lin, Stephen; Alsallakh, Bilal; Yang, Jing; Cuervo, Eduardo, & Ventura, Jonathan (Ed.), Advances in Visual Computing : 13th International Symposium, ISVC 2018, Las Vegas, NV, USA, November 19-21, 2018, Proceedings. Cham, Suisse : Springer, coll. « Lecture Notes in Computer Science », vol. 11241. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03801-4_28
Li, Bo; Bouachir, Wassim; Gouiaa, Rafik, & Noumeir, Rita (2017). Real-time recognition of suicidal behavior using an RGB-D camera. In Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Image Processing Theory, Tools and Applications (IPTA 2017). Montréal, Canada : IEEE Xplore Digital Library.
Rehouma, Haythem; Noumeir, Rita; Jouvet, Philippe; Bouachir, Wassim, & Essouri, Sandrine (2017). A computer vision method for respiratory monitoring in intensive care environment using RGB-D cameras. In Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Image Processing Theory, Tools and Applications (IPTA 2017). Montréal, Canada : IEEE Xplore Digital Library.
Bouachir, Wassim, & Noumeir, Rita (2016). Automated video surveillance for preventing suicide attempts. In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Imaging for Crime Detection and Prevention (ICDP). Madrid, Espagne : IET Digital Library.
Bouachir, Wassim; Torabi, Atousa; Bilodeau, Guillaume-Alexandre, & Blais, Pascal (2016). A Bag of Words Approach for Semantic Segmentation of Monitored Scenes. In Proceedings of the International Symposium on Signal, Image, Video and Communications. Tunis, Tunisia : IEEE.
Chen, Gengjie; St-Charles, Pierre-Luc; Bouachir, Wassim; Bilodeau, Guillaume-Alexandre, & Bergevin, Robert (2015). Reproducible evaluation of Pan-Tilt-Zoom tracking. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP). IEEE.
Bouachir, Wassim, & Bilodeau, Guillaume-Alexandre (2015). Part-based tracking via salient collaborating features. In Proceedings of the IEEE Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision (WACV) (p. 78 - 85). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/WACV.2015.18
Bouachir, Wassim, & Bilodeau, Guillaume-Alexandre (2014). Structure-aware keypoint tracking for partial occlusion handling. In Proceedings of the IEEE Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision (WACV) (p. 877 - 884). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/WACV.2014.6836011
Bouachir, Wassim, & Bilodeau, Guillaume-Alexandre (2013). Visual face tracking: a coarse-to-fine target state estimation. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Computer and Robot Vision (CRV) (p. 45 - 51). IEEE. ISBN 9781467364096 https://doi.org/10.1109/CRV.2013.18
Bouachir, Wassim; Kardouchi, Mustapha, & Belacel, Nabil (2010). Fuzzy indexing for bag of features scene categorization. In Proceedings of the 5th International Symposium on I/V Communications and Mobile Network (ISVC). IEEE. ISBN 978-1-4244-5996-4 https://doi.org/10.1109/ISVC.2010.5656164
Bouachir, Wassim; Kardouchi, Mustapha, & Belacel, Nabil (2010). Improving bag of visual words image retrieval: a fuzzy weighing scheme for efficient indexation. In Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Signal-Image Technology and Internet-Based Systems (SITIS) (p. 215 - 220). IEEE. ISBN 978-1-4244-5740-3 https://doi.org/10.1109/SITIS.2009.43
Conference presentations (refereed)
Gueziri, Houssem-Eddine; Bouachir, Wassim; Gouiaa, Rafik; Djafri, Ikram, & Bélanger, Nicolas (Aug 2018). Estimating the number of planting microsites using UAV and computer vision. Paper presented at The Montreal Artificial Intelligence Symposium, Montréal, QC, Canada.
Li, Zhenxi; Bilodeau, Guillaume-Alexandre, & Bouachir, Wassim (Aug 2018). Multi-Branch Siamese Networks with Online Selection for Object Tracking. Paper presented at The Montreal Artificial intelligence Symposium, Montréal, QC, Canada.
Other non refereed contributions
Chen, Gengjie; St-Charles, Pierre-Luc; Bouachir, Wassim; Joeisseint, Thomas; Bilodeau, Guillaume-Alexandre, & Bergevin, Robert (2015). Reproducible evaluation of Pan-Tilt-Zoom tracking (extended version of the 2015 ICIP paper) (rapport de recherche présenté à IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP))..
Whiten, Chris; Bouachir, Wassim; Bilodeau, Guillaume-Alexandre, & Laganière, Robert (2012). The current state of face tracking for video surveillance (rapport de recherche). Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA).