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Software Engineering and Programming Systems

Figure : an example Dynamic Distributed Graphical User Interface

The Software Engineering and Programming Systems domain gathers five faculty members and about twenty researchers around the federating goal of supporting the development and maintenance of advanced, complex and dependable software.

Principal Investigators : 

Sébastien Jodogne, Kim Mens, Charles Pecheur, Etienne Rivière, Peter Van Roy

Research Labs : 

  • The REsearch Laboratory on Software Evolution And Software Development Technology (RELEASeD) focuses on a variety of research topics related to programming technology, languages and tool support for software development. The main research themes of this research group are: mechanisms, languages, formalisms, methodologies and tools to support software engineers during maintenance and evolution of a software system; advancing the state-of-the art in software development technology from a language engineering angle; technology to support the evolution and development of aspect-oriented software; context-oriented programming for ambient software.

  • The activities of the Programming Languages and Distributed Computing (PLDC) Research Group have as general theme to increase the expressiveness of programming languages, with a special focus on support for distributed computing. The research is a combination of theory and practice: new concepts are suggested by development needs, which leads both to theoretical results and system building. Our research vehicle is often the Mozart Programming System, a full-featured development platform based on the Oz multiparadigm programming language.

  • The Louvain Verification Lab (LVL) team investigates principles, tools and applications of formal analysis and verification of computer systems. Fields of interest of LVL researchers include symbolic and bounded model-checking, verification of concurrent systems and partial-order Reduction, verification of human-computer interaction, structural coverage criteria for specifications, temporal and epistemic logics, analysis of observability and diagnosis, and verification of autonomous and intelligent systems.

  • Cloud and Large Scale computing group

Research Areas :

  • Requirements engineering (RE), which is widely recognized as the most critical phase of the software lifecycle. Goal-oriented RE refers to the use of goals for eliciting, elaborating, structuring, specifying, analysing, negotiating, documenting, and modifying requirements. Such use is based on a multi-view model showing how goals, objects, agents, scenarios, operations, and domain properties are inter-related in the system-as-is and the system-to-be. (By "system" we mean the target software together with its environment made of human agents, devices, legacy software, etc.). The KAOS methodology provides a multi-view graphical language for system modelling, a lightweight formalism for model specification, an optional real-time temporal logic for model analysis, a systematic method for model elaboration, and various dedicated techniques for goal refinement and operationalisation, conflict management, hazard analysis, agent responsibility assignment, goal mining from scenarios, etc. The methodology is supported by various tools (Objectiver, Faust) and has been used over more than 25 industrial projects.
  • Abstract interpretation, which is a mathematical methodology (introduced in 1977 by Patrick and Radhia Cousot) to develop static analyses of programs. Such analyses are performed at compile-time or independently of any program execution. They aim at automatically computing semantic properties of the program, which may then be used to optimize compilation or to highlight programming errors. We currently apply abstract interpretation to logic programs (Prolog) and to object-oriented programs (Java). We work on the definition and implementation of generic frameworks to analyze these languages. We have implemented a generic abstract interpretation framework has been developed for a subset of Java and an analyzer of operational properties of logic programs that combines in a single analysis almost all identified analyses from literature.

Most recent publications

Below are listed the 10 most recent journal articles and conference papers produced in this research area. You also can access all publications by following this link : see all publications.


Conference Papers


1. Semal, Patrick; Mathys, Aurore; Brecko, Jonathan; Chapman, Tara; Pollet, Yann; Herpers, Jean-Marc; Theeten, Franck; Van den Spiegel, Didier; Tilleux, Caroline; Angenon, Els; Jodogne, Sébastien. Serveur multimédia DICOM pour le partage des numérisations des collections anthropologiques. 2024 xxx. http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/292682

2. Chatzopoulos, Edouard; Jodogne, Sébastien. Integrated and Interoperable Platform for Detecting Masses on Mammograms. In: Studies in Health Technology and Informatics. Vol. 316, p. 1103-1107 (2024). IOS Press, 2024 xxx. doi:10.3233/SHTI240603. http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/289660

3. Jodogne, Sébastien. Plateforme libre, intégrée et interopérable pour la détection de masses en mammographie. 2024 xxx. http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/289658

4. Langlois, Quentin; Szelagowski, Nicolas; Vanderdonckt, Jean; Jodogne, Sébastien. Open Platform for the De-identification of Burned-in Texts in Medical Images using Deep Learning. In: Proc. of the 17th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies (BIOSTEC 2024). Vol. 1, p. 297-304 (2024). SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. 2024 xxx. doi:10.5220/0012430300003657. http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/282801

5. Jodogne, Sébastien. Setting a PACS on FHIR. In: Proc. of the 17th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies (BIOSTEC 2024). Vol. 2, p. 123-131 (2024). SCITEPRESS - Science and Technology Publications, Lda. 2024 xxx. doi:10.5220/0012384600003657. http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/281131

6. Fierens, Amaury; Jodogne, Sébastien. BERTinchamps: Cost-Effective Training of Large Language Models for Medical Tasks in French. In: CEUR Workshop Proceedings. Vol. 3551 (2023). CEUR Workshop Proceedings, 2023 xxx. http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/279237

7. Fierens, Amaury; Gregoir, Thibault; Jodogne, Sébastien. Interoperable Encoding and 3D Printing of Anatomical Structures. In: ICBRA '23: Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Bioinformatics Research and Applications. p. 20-26 (2023). Association for Computing Machinery (ACM): New York, NY, USA, 2023 xxx. doi:10.1145/3632047.3632051. http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/279236

8. Jodogne, Sébastien. On the Use of DICOM as a Storage Layer for IIIF. 2023 xxx. http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/279235

9. Jodogne, Sébastien. Simple, effective deployment of Web viewers for medical imaging in an open platform. 2023 xxx. doi:https://doi.org/10.26226/m.64ae6f4f56241620f72a77cd. http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/279234

10. Jodogne, Sébastien. Client-Side Application of Deep Learning Models Through Teleradiology. In: Studies in Health Technology and Informatics. Vol. 302, no.1, p. 997-1001 (2023). Maria Hägglund et al. 2023 xxx. doi:10.3233/shti230325. http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/275150


Journal Articles


1. Mathys, Aurore; Pollet, Yann; Gressin, Adrien; Muth, Xavier; Brecko, Jonathan; Dekoninck, Wouter; Vandenspiegel, Didier; Jodogne, Sébastien; Semal, Patrick. Sphaeroptica: A tool for pseudo-3D visualization and 3D measurements on arthropods. In: PLOS ONE, Vol. 19, no.10, p. 1-32 (2024). doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0311887. http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/292875

2. Kirkove, D; Ben Mustapha, S; Jodogne, Sébastien; Pétré, B. L'utilisation de l'imagerie médicale en tant qu'outil d'éducation thérapeutique du patient en radiothérapie : étude de faisabilité. In: Revue médicale de Liège, Vol. 79, no.S1, p. 100-106 (2024). http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/287399

3. Jodogne, Sébastien. Apport du logiciel libre en imagerie médicale. In: Revue médicale de Liège, Vol. 79, no.S1, p. 75-83 (2024). http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/287398

4. Vandaele, Rémy; Aceto, Jessica; Muller, Marc; Péronnet, Frédérique; Debat, Vincent; Wang, Ching-Wei; Huang, Cheng-Ta; Jodogne, Sébastien; Martinive, Philippe; Geurts, Pierre; Marée, Raphaël. Landmark detection in 2D bioimages for geometric morphometrics: a multi-resolution tree-based approach. In: Scientific Reports, Vol. 8, no.1, p. 13 (2018). doi:10.1038/s41598-017-18993-5. http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/268369

5. Jodogne, Sébastien. The Orthanc Ecosystem for Medical Imaging. In: Journal of Digital Imaging, Vol. 31, no.3, p. 341-352 (2018). doi:10.1007/s10278-018-0082-y. http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/257255

6. Aoga, John; Guns, Tias; Schaus, Pierre. Mining Time-constrained Sequential Patterns with Constraint Programming. In: Constraint Journal, Vol. 22, no.3, p. 1-23 (2017). doi:10.1007/s10601-017-9272-3. http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/186881

7. Busard, Simon; Pecheur, Charles; Qu, Hongyang; Raimondi, Franco. Reasoning about memoryless strategies under partial observability and unconditional fairness constraints. In: Information and Computation, Vol. 242, no.0, p. 128-156 (2015). doi:10.1016/j.ic.2015.03.014. http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/159600

8. Cardozo Alvarez, Nicolás; Gonzalez Montesinos, Sebastian Andres; Van Der Straeten, Ragnhild; Mens, Kim; Vallejos, Jorge; D’Hondt, Theo. Semantics for Consistent Activation in Context-Oriented Systems. In: Information and Software Technology, Vol. 58, p. 71-94 (February 2015). doi:10.1016/j.infsof.2014.10.002. http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/141451

9. Damas, Christophe; Lambeau, Bernard; van Lamsweerde, Axel. Analyzing critical decision-based processes. In: IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Vol. 99, p. 1-28 (2014). doi:10.1109/TSE.2014.2312954. http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/142148

10. Cordero Fuertes, Juan Antonio. A Probabilistic Study of the Delay caused by Jittering in Wireless Flooding. In: Wireless Personal Communications : an international journal, Vol. 73, no. 3, p. 415-439 (2013). doi:10.1007/s11277-013-1195-8. http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/143174