About the people behind this server

PRTools started around 1993 in the Delft Pattern Recognition Group (in 2004 renamed to Quantitative Imaging) at the Faculty of Applied Physics (later Applied Sciences) of Delft University of Technology,. This research group had already been working in the field since 1963. Its field of interest covers many areas in pattern recogniton and image processing, as well as robotics. The subgroup concentrating on pattern recognition methodology designed PRTools for educational purposes, as well as a service to colleagues who need a basic software package for building applications or for comparative studies.

In January 2004, the research projects on pattern recognition methodology were moved to the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science. In 2010 they constituted the Pattern Recognition Laboratory. This research group is still responsible for the maintenance of PRTools.

Between 2002 and 2005 PRTools was entirely redesigned by the following team:

  • Robert P.W. Duin, initiator and responsible for the versions up to 3.1.7
  • Dick de Ridder, chairman of the PRTools4 design team, now with the Delft Bioinformatics Lab
  • Piotr Juszczak, left Delft University in 2006
  • Carmen Lai, since 2008 in PR Sys Design providing tools and consultancy for industry
  • Pavel Paclik, since 2006 in PR Sys Design providing tools and consultancy for industry
  • Elzbieta Pekalska, since 2005 with Manchester University.
  • David M.J. Tax

From 2005 until 2012 PRTools was primarily maintained by Robert P.W. Duin and David Tax. In 2012 the responsibility for the distribution of PRTools and add-ons was taken over by 37Steps, an initiative by Elzbieta Pekalska and Robert Duin.

Other contributions, evaluation and support:

Marina Skurichina, Alexander Ypma, Serguei Verzakov, Thomas Landgrebe, Ben Kröse, Ferdi van der Heijden, Laurens van der Maaten and the early users outside Delft (1994) Ludmila Kuncheva and Sarunas Raudys.