Guidelines for the interim report
Most MEng projects span two semesters starting in th Fall. Furthermore, most students also take ECE 5470 during the Fall semester with a view to gain the experience in image analysis to complete the project. For these cases an interim project report is required at the end of the first semester of the project. This report is reviewed with the instructor to determine the best option for proceeding for the second semester.
For students who do not have previous experience in image analysis, the focus of the first semester will typically be to plan the project including background reading and evaluation, a proposed method for addressing the project topic, and the experiment design. This report should be in the form of a project proposal and should include a plan with a time line for the completion of the project. This report should be written in the style of the final project report and may be considered to be a first draft for several sections of that final report.
The interim report should contain the following sections: Abstract, Introduction, Methods and Materials, and a Project time-line. If time permits initial investigation on the image data with some preliminary outcomes then the report should include a preliminary studies section.
- Abstract
A one paragraph abstract outlining what the project is and what was achieved. It is important that this summarizes the objective, the method, and the main issues to be addressed. - Introduction
This section that should outline the problem studied, the main issues in solving the problem, a review of related work and an outline of the remainder of the report. The problem description and proposed solution should include the clinical significance and the technical issues. A review of previous work done should be included that outlines the contributions of the papers that you have listed in the reference section at the end of your report and refers directly to them. - Methods and Materials
This section should include a description of the algorithms you plan to develop and use (with the rational for their design), the experiments that you plan (with clearly stated objectives and predicted outcomes), and the data sets you plan to use (possibly including relevant descriptive statistics and/or examples). It is important to indicate how the images will be documented and how the outcome of the computer algorithm developed in the project will be statistically evaluated. - Preliminary Studies
If time permits you to develop some initial algorithms and to test them on some data then this work should be described including a discussion of your findings. - Project time line
In this section you should list the main work components of the project and the start and end dates for this work in the following semester. Further you should give consideration to milestones when you will evaluate your progress and what actions you will take if they are not met. - References
A list of references that you used in your project using full reference information as in journal papers.