Engineer, M Sc., Electronics, Technical University-Sofia;
                          

Post Graduate:

• Ph.D., Institute of Telecommunications, St. Petersburg,  Russia.

          Thesis: “Digital Methods for Structure Analysis of the Objects in the Image”.

• Doctor of Science, Technical University of Sofia.

            Thesis: “Inverse Pyramidal Image Decomposition: Methods and Algorithms”.
                           

Academic Degrees:
           1976: Chief assistant in the TU of Sofia;
            1987: Associated professor, Technical  University of Sofia, Dept. of Radiocomm.;
             2003: Professor, Technical University of Sofia, Dept. of  Radiocommunications;

French, Russian, English

• 1970: Assistant professor in the TU, Sofia;
• 1976: Chief assistant in the TU, Sofia;
• 1987: Associated Professor in the TU, Sofia;
• 1990-1992:  Vice-Dean of Faculty on Telecommunications in the TU-Sofia,
•  From 1993: Head of  Laboratory  for Image Processing in the TU-Sofia,
• 1993-2003: Scientific Secretary of the States Scientific Councel of Radioelectronics and Telecommunications;
• 1999-2004: Vice-Dean of French Faculty in the TU- Sofia,
• 2002-2004: Member of the Technological Council of Bulgarian National TV,
• 2006-2007: Member of the Scientific Expert Commission of Bulgarian Ministry of Education  and Science
• From 2002: President of the Technological Council of Bulgarian National Radio,
• From 2004: Member of the Higher Attestation Commission of the Council of Ministers of   Bulgaria

• Institute of Telecommunications, Dept. of Television Technology, St. Petersbourg, 1983, 2 months;
• INSA de Rennes, 1996-1997, 3 months Invited in the "Laboratoire d'Architectures et Traitement des Images Spatio-Temporelles", Head of Laboratory :prof. J. Ronsin.
• INSA de Rennes, 2003 (1 month) invited in the "Laboratoire d'Architectures et Traitement des Images Spatio-Temporelles" - participation in research projects
• University of Arkansas at Little Rock, 2004, 1 month, Dept. Computer Science - participation in a twinning research project

• Grant of the National Scientific Council of USA, 2004.

National Research Project, funded by the Scientific Research Fund of Ministry of Education
                        and Science of Bulgaria:

1. “Multimedia Digital Watermarking in the Phase Domain”, 2003-2007.

2.“Transmission of video information via Internet for distance learning aimed at people who are deaf”, 2005-2008.
3. “Multi-modal biometrics analysis: methods and algorithms”, 2006-2008.
4. “Efficient archiving and protection of the authentic image contents of documents”,
      2007-2009.

   International Research Project:
   1. “Protection of Intelectual Property for Mutimedia  Resources in Distance Learning 
       Environments”, Twinning Program of NSF (USA) between TU-Sofia and University of
       Arkansas at Little Rock, 2004/2005.
   2. “New tools for information security based on efficient coding, analysis and hiding of  
        multimodal biometric information”, NATO Grant SfP 982617, 2007.
   3. „Forensic Image and Video Examination Support”, SIP 2008 TP 131801 FIVES, 7FP, 2009.
                             

Scholarships post-doctoral:

1. Institute of Telecommunications, Dept. of Television Techn., St. Petersbourg, 1983;

2. INSA de Rennes, 1996, 1997 and 2003 invited in the “Laboratoire d’Architectures et Traitement des Images Spatio-Temporelles”, participation in research project;

3. University of Arkansas at Little Rock, 2004, Dept. Computer Science, participation in a twinning research project.

• Digital signal processing;
• Image processing;
• Multimedia systems;
• Digital television;
• Image recognition with neural networks;
• Image and Audio Compression
• Audio and Video Communications via Internet

1. R. Kountchev, V. Todorov, R. Kountcheva. Lossless Image compression with IDP. 39-th Intern. Scientific Conf. on Information, Communication and Energy Systems and Technologies, (ICEST’04), Bitola, Macedonia, June 2004, pp. 127-130.
2.  R. Kountchev, R. Mironov. Audio Watermarking in the Phase Domain. Proc. of  39-th Intern. Scientific Conf. on Information, Communication and Energy Systems and Technologies (ICEST’04), Bitola, Macedonia, June 2004, pp. 123-126.
3. R. Kountchev, M. Milanova, C. Ford, S. Rubin, R Kountcheva. Lossless image compression with IDP and Adaptive RLC. Proc. of Intern. Conf. on Imaging Science, Systems and Technology (ISST’04), Las Vegas, USA, June 2004, pp. 608-612.
4. R. Kountchev, M. Milanova, C. Ford, S. Rubin, R Kountcheva. Audio Watermarking Based on Inverse Difference Decomposition. The 2004 IEEE Intern. Conference on Information Reuse and Integration (IRI’04), Las Vegas, USA, November 2004, pp. 180-185.
5. N. Hikal, R. Kountchev. Image Compression Based On Inverse Difference Pyramid with BPNN. Intern. Scientific Conf. on Information, Communication and Energy Systems and Technologies (ICEST’05), Nis, Serbia and Montenegro, June 2005, Proc. Vol. 1, pp. 15-18.
6.  R. Kountchev, A. Manolova. Fast algorithm for color space K-L image transform. Intern. Scientific Conf. on Information, Communication and Energy Systems and Technologies (ICEST’05), Nis, Serbia and Montenegro, Proc. Vol. 1, June 2005, pp. 322-325. 
7.  R. Kountchev, V. Mirchev. Digital Watermarking Using Complex Hadamard Transform and Phase Modulation. Intern. Scientific Conf. on Information, Communication and Energy Systems and Technologies (ICEST’05), Nis, Serbia and Montenegro, Proc. Vol. 1, June 2005, pp. 331-333. 
8.  R. Kountchev, V. Todorov, R. Kountcheva. Fingerprints compression with IDP. Intern. Scientific Conf. on Information, Communication and Energy Systems and Technologies (ICEST’05), Nis, Serbia and Montenegro, Proc. Vol. 2, June 2005, pp. 661-664.  
9.  R. Kountchev, M, Milanova, C. Ford, Vl. Todorov, R. Kountcheva. Detection and Lossless Compression of Texts and Graphics in Compound Images. Proc. of Intern. Symposium on Innovations in Intelligent Systems and Applications (INISTA’05), Istanbul, Turkey, June 2005, pp. 1-4.    
10.  R. Kountchev, Vl. Todorov, M. Milanova, C. Ford, R. Kountcheva. Method and System for Digital Watermarking of Multimedia Signals. USA Patent 20070014428, App., No. 11180334, July 2005, 78 pages. 
11.  N. Hikal, R Kountchev. 2D-SOFM Vector Quantization for Image Compression Based on Inverse Difference Pyramidal Decomposition. Proc. of 7th Intern. Conf. on Telecomm. in Modern Satellite, Cable and Broadcasting Services (TELSIKS’05), Vol. 2. Nis, Serbia and Montenegro, Sept. 2005, pp. 495-498.
12.  R. Kountchev, A. Manolova. Determination of Distances between Images Using Consecutive Approximations in the Linear Transforms Domain. Proc. of National Conf. with Foreign Participation (TELECOM’05), Varna, Bulgaria, October, 2005.
13.  R. Kountchev, V. Todorov, R. Kountcheva. Lossless Compression of Graphics and Contour Images, Based on WHT and ARLC. Proceedings of the Technical University-Sofia, vol. 55, 2005, pp. 87-94.
14.  R. Kountchev, V. Todorov, R. Kountcheva. Method for Audio Watermarking Based on Spectrum Pyramid. Proceedings of the Technical University-Sofia, Vol. 55, 2005, pp. 95-106.
15.  R. Kountchev, V. Georgieva. An Approach for Noise Reduction in Medical Ultrasound Images. Proceedings of the Technical University-Sofia, Vol. 55, 2005, pp. 159-166.
16.  R. Kountchev, A. Manolova. General Approach for Fast Image Retrieval from Image Database using Consecutive Iterations in the Transform Domain. Proceedings of the Technical University-Sofia, Vol. 55, 2005, pp. 167-176.
17.  N. Hikal, R Kountchev. A Method for Digital Image Compression with IDP Decomposition Based on 2D-SOFM VQ. Intern. Conference on Graphics, Vision and Image Processing (GVIP’05), Cairo, Egypt, December 2005.
18. R. Kountchev, Vl. Todorov, R. Kountcheva, M. Milanova. Lossless Compression of Biometric Image Data. 5-th WSEAS Intern. Conference on Signal Processing, Istanbul, Turkey, May 2006, pp.185-190.
19. R. Kountchev, Vl. Todorov, R. Kountcheva, M. Milanova. lossless Compression of Biometric Images and Digital Watermarking with IDP Decomposition. WSEAS Trans. on Signal Processing, Issue 5, Vol. 2, May 2006. pp. 684-691.
20. Vl. Todorov, R. Kountchev, M. Milanova, R. Kountcheva, C. Ford. Method and Apparatus for Lossless Run-Length Data Encoding. US Patent 20070279261 Appl. No: 11/447573, Filing Date: 06 June 2006, 71 p.
21. R. Kountchev, Vl. Todorov, R. Kountcheva. Image Pre-processing for IDP efficiency enhancement. XLI International Scientific Conference on Information, Communication and Energy Systems and Technologies (ICEST’06), July 2006, Sofia, Bulgaria, pp. 153-156.
22. R. Kountchev, Vl. Todorov, R. Kountcheva. Post-Processing for Quality Improvement of IDP-Compressed Images. XLI International Scientific Conference on Information, Communication and Energy Systems and Technologies (ICEST’06), July 2006, Sofia, Bulgaria, pp. 157-160.
23. N. Hikal, R. Kountchev, R. El-Awady, A. Shaalan. A Method for Digital Image Compression with IDP Based on Gaussian Radial Basis Function NNs. XLI International Scientific Conference on Information, Communication and Energy Systems and Technologies (ICEST’06), July 2006, Sofia, Bulgaria, pp. 161-164.
24. R. Mironov, R. Kountchev. Analysis of Complex Hadamard Transform Properties. XLI International Scientific Conference on Information, Communication and Energy Systems and Technologies (ICEST’06), July 2006, Sofia, Bulgaria, pp. 173-176.
25. V. Georgieva, R. Kountchev. An Influence of the Wavelet Packet Decomposition on the Noise Reduction in Ultrasound Images. XLI International Scientific Conference on Information, Communication and Energy Systems and Technologies (ICEST’06), July 2006, Sofia, Bulgaria, pp. 185-188.
26. R. Kountchev, Vl. Todorov, R. Kountcheva, M. Milanova. Adaptive Fuzzy Filter for Reduction of Blocking Artifacts in Images Compressed with IDP Decomposition. 10th WSEAS Int. Conf. on Computers (CSCC '06), Athens, Greece, July 2006, pp. 502-507.
27. R. Kountchev, M. Milanova, Vl. Todorov, R. Kountcheva. Adaptive Fuzzy Filter for the Reduction of Blocking Artifacts in Images Compressed with IDP Decomposition and JPEG. WSEAS Trans. on Signal Processing. Issue 7, Vol. 2, July 2006, pp. 941-948.
28. Vl. Todorov, R. Kountchev, M. Milanova, R. Kountcheva, C. Ford. Method and Apparatus for Lossless Run-Length Data Encoding. US Patent Appl. No: 11/447,573, Filing Date: 06 June 2006, 71 pages.
29. S. Rubin, R. Kountchev, Vl. Todorov, R. Kountcheva. Contrast Enhancement with Histogram-Adaptive Image Segmentation. The 2006 Intern. Conf. on Information Reuse and Integration (IRI’06), Hawaii, USA, Sept. 2006, pp. 602-607.
30. R. Kountchev, Vl. Todorov, M. Milanova, R. Kountcheva. Documents Image Compression with IDP and Adaptive RLE. The 32nd Annual Conf. on the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society (IECON’06), Paris, France, November 2006, pp. 3261-3266.
31. R. Kountchev, M. Milanova, Vl. Todorov, Roumiana Kountcheva. Multiple Audio Watermarking With Spectrum Pyramid. IJCSNS International Journal of Computer Science and Network Security, Vol. 7 No. 2, February 2007, pp. 191-200.
32.  R. Kountchev, Vl. Todorov, R. Kountcheva. Compression and Contents Protection of Images, Texts and Graphics for Distance Learning Applications. Proceedings of the 6th WSEAS International Conference on Signal Processing, Robotics and Automation, Corfu Island, Greece, February 16-19, 2007, pp. 83-90.
33. R. Kountchev, M. Milanova, V. Todorov, R. Kountcheva. Fingerprints Contrast Enhancement. Proc. of Intern. Symposium on Innovations in Intelligent Systems and Applications (INISTA’07), Istanbul, Turkey, June 20-23, 2007, pp. 303-307.    
34. R. Kountchev, M. Milanova, V. Todorov, R. Kountcheva. Adaptive Compression of Compound Images. Proc. of 2007 14th Intern. Workshop on Systems, Signal & Image Processing (IWSSIP) and 6th EURASIP Conference on Speech and Image Processing, Multimedia Communications & Services (EC-SIPMCS), Maribor, Slovenia, June 27-30, 2007, pp. 139-142.
35. R. Kountchev, V. Todorov, R. Kountcheva. Efficient Compression for Contour Images. XLII International Scientific Conference on Information, Communication and Energy Systems and Technologies (ICEST’07), Ohrid, Macedonia, 24-27 June 2007, pp. 351-354.
36. R. Kountchev, V. Todorov, R. Kountcheva. Processing of Sequences of Contour Images of Sing-Language Interpreter. XLII International Scientific Conference on Information, Communication and Energy Systems and Technologies (ICEST’07), Ohrid, Macedonia, 24-27 June 2007, pp. 365-368. 
37. R. Mironov, R. Kountchev, V. Mirchev. Ordered Complex Hadamard Transform of Images. XLII International Scientific Conference on Information, Communication and Energy Systems and Technologies (ICEST’07), Ohrid, Macedonia, 24-27 June 2007, pp. 369-372. 
38. R. Kountchev, S. Rubin, M. Milanova, V. Todorov, R. Kountcheva. Image Multi-Layer Search Based on Spectrum Pyramid. The 2007 IEEE International Conference on Information Reuse and Integration (IEEE IRI’07), Las Vegas, USA, August 13-15, 2007, pp. 436-440.
39. R. Kountchev, M. Milanova, V. Todorov, R. Kountcheva. Enhancement of the Visual Quality of Scanned Documents. The 2007 IEEE International Conference on Information Reuse and Integration (IEEE IRI’07), Las Vegas, USA, August 13-15, 2007, pp. 367-372.
40. M. Milanova, R. Kountchev, V. Todorov, R. Kountcheva. Data Hiding with Image Decomposition Based on General Spectrum Pyramid. The 7th IEEE International Symposium on Signal Processing and Information Technology (ISSPIT’07), Cairo, Egypt, December 15-18, 2007, pp. 924-927.
41. R. Kountchev, Vl. Todorov, R. Kountcheva. Adaptive Histogram Modification for Enhancement the Visual Quality of Latent Fingerprints. 10th WSEAS International Conference on Mathematical Methods and Computational Techniques in Electrical Engineering (MMACTEE’08), Sofia, May 2-4, 2008, pp. 28-33.
42. R. Kountchev, Vl. Todorov, R. Kountcheva. Contours Extraction in Grayscale Images of Sign Language Interpreter. 10th WSEAS International Conference on Mathematical Methods and Computational Techniques in Electrical Engineering (MMACTEE’08), Sofia, May 2-4, 2008, pp. 22-27.
43. R. Kountchev, Vl. Todorov, R. Kountcheva. Adaptive preprocessing of scanned documents. 10th WSEAS International Conference on Mathematical Methods and Computational Techniques in Electrical Engineering (MMACTEE’08), Sofia, May 2-4, 2008, pp. 34-39.
44. R. Kountchev, S. Rubin, M. Milanova, Vl. Todorov, R. Kountcheva. Cognitive Image Representation Based on Spectrum Pyramid Decomposition. WSEAS International Conference on Computational Intelligence, 10th WSEAS International Conference on Mathematical Methods and Computational Techniques in Electrical Engineering (MMACTEE’08), Sofia, May 2-4, 2008, pp. 230-235.
45. R. Kountchev, Vl. Todorov, R. Kountcheva. Flexible Archiving of Old Handwritten Documents. WSEAS International Conferences, Istanbul, Turkey, May 27-29, 2008, pp. 13-18.
46. R. Kountchev, Vl. Todorov, R. Kountcheva. Efficient Sign Language Video Representations. International Workshop on Systems, Signal and Image Processing (IWSSIP’2008), Bratislava, Slovakia, June 25-28, 2008, pp. 177-180.
47. R. Kountchev, Vl. Todorov, R. Kountcheva. Adaptive Processing of Latent Fingerprints. XLIII Intern. Scientific Conf. on Information, Communication and Energy Systems and Technologies ICEST’08, Serbia, Nish, June 25-27, 2008, pp. 101-104.
48. I. Draganov, R. Kountchev. Document Decomposition Based on Recursive Radon Transform, XLIII Intern. Scientific Conf. on Information, Communication and Energy Systems and Technologies ICEST’08, Serbia, Nish, June 25-27, 2008, pp. 83-86.
49. R. Mironov, R. Kountchev. Optimal Thresholds Selection for Adaptive Image Interpolation, XLIII Intern. Scientific Conf. on Information, Communication and Energy Systems and Technologies ICEST’08, Serbia, Nish, June 25-27, 2008, pp. 109-112.
50. R. Kountchev, S. Rubin, M. Milanova, Vl. Todorov, R. Kountcheva. Extraction of Objects Contours for Body Language Study. The 2008 IEEE Intern. Conference on Information Reuse and Integration (IEEE IRI’08), Las Vegas, USA, July 13-15, 2008, pp. 220-225.
51. M. Milanova, R. Kountchev, Vl. Todorov, R. Kountcheva, New tool for providing additional game information for hearing impaired people. 13th International Conference on Computer Games: AI, Animation, Mobile, Interactive Multimedia, Educational & Serious Games, Wolverhampton, UK, Nov. 3-5, 2008, pp. 121-125.
52. M. Milanova, S. Rubin, R. Kountchev, Vl. Todorov, R. Kountcheva. Combined Visual Attention Model for Video Sequences. International Conference on Pattern Recognition, (ICPR’08), Tampa, Florida, USA, December 8-11, 2008, ThBT3.2, 4 p.
53. V. Cherkashyn, R. Kountchev, D. Ch. He, R. Kountcheva, Adaptive Image Representation Based on Pyramidal Decomposition with BPNNs, IEEE Symposium on Signal Processing and Information Technology (ISSPIT’08), Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 18-19 December 2008, pp. 441-446.
54. R. Mironov, R. Kountchev, Adaptive Contour Image Interpolation of Sign Language Interpretation, IEEE Symposium on Signal Processing and Information Technology (ISSPIT’08), Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 18-19 December 2008 pp. 164-169.
55. M. Milanova, R. Kountchev, Vl. Todorov, R. Kountcheva, New Method for Lossless Compression of Medical Records, IEEE Symposium on Signal Processing and Information Technology (ISSPIT’08), Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 18-19 Dec. 2008, pp. 23-28.
56. V. Cherkashyn, R. Kountchev, D. Chen He, Image Decomposition on the basis of an Inverse Pyramid with Neural Networks,_CISSE, 18 December 2008.
57. R. Kountchev, R. Kountcheva. Image Color Space Transform with Enhanced KLT. Symposium KES-IDT, Japan, April 23-25, 2009 (in press).
58. R. Kountchev, Vl. Todorov, R. Kountcheva. Efficient archiving of documents with protection of their authentic contents. International Journal of Reasoning-Based Intelligent Systems. (IJRIS). 12 p. (in press).
59. R. Kountchev, S. Rubin, Vl. Todorov, R. Kountcheva. Automatic detection of welding defects. International Journal of Reasoning-Based Intelligent Systems (IJRIS), 17 p., (in press)

1. R. Kountchev et al. “Multi-layer Image Transmission with Inverse Pyramidal Decomposition”, Book Chapter in “Computational Intelligence for Modelling and Predictions”, S. Halgamuge, L. Wang (eds.), Vol. 2, “Springer”, 2005.

2. M. Milanova, R. Kountchev, V. Todorov, R. Kountcheva. “Pre-and Post Processing for Enhancement of Image Compression Based on Spectrum Pyramid”, Book Chapter in “Innovative Algorithms and Technoloques in Automation, Industrial Electronics and Telecommunications”, T. Sobh, Kh. Elleithy, A. Mahmood, M. Karim (eds.), “Springer”, 2007.

3. R. Kountchev, R. Kountcheva. Image Representation with Reduced Spectrum Pyramid. Book Chapter in “New Directions in Intelligent Interactive Multimedia”, Eds. G. Tsihrintzis, M. Virvou, R. Howlett, L. Jain, Springer Verlag, Berlin Heidelberg, 2008.

4. R. Kountchev, M. Milanova, Vl. Todorov, R. Kountcheva. “Image Watermarking and Data Hiding Based on Inverse Difference Pyramid Decomposition with Complex Hadamard Transform”. In: Book Chapter “Data Engineering: Mining, Information, and Intelligence”. Y. Chan (ed.), “Springer”, 2009 (in press).

5. R. Kountchev. Adaptive Approach to Quality Enhancement and Storage of Signature and Fingerprint Images. Book chapter in: Handbook on Reasoning-based Intelligent Systems. “World Scientific Publishers”. Eds. K. Nakamatsu and L. Jain, 34 p., 2009 (in press).