Computerized image analysis is used to extract information from images. It can be used in medical applications to determine the size of organs or to build 3-D models of organs before surgery. For example, a PhD candidate at Uppsala University, Sweden, has developed new technology to make easier to diagnose and plan the treatment of cancer. He used haptics technology to develop new interactive methods ‘where the mouse and keyboard are replaced by a pen-like three-dimensional mouse that enables the user to feel the virtual organs.’ His thesis, ‘Visualization and Haptics for Interactive Medical Image Analysis‘ (PDF format, 84 pages, 3.73 MB), is a pleasure to read, but is quite long. If you don’t have enough time, read my summary.

You can see above the Reachin desktop display with a PHANToM Desktop haptic device. A researcher is working with the haptic pen at the specially constructed workstation that can show stereo graphics. (Credit: Erik Vidholm, Uppsala University) Erik Vidholm is the PhD candidate mentioned above and working at the Centre for Image Analysis at Uppsala University. And as he presented his thesis on February 8, 2008, he’s a real PhD by now.

On the images above, you can see on the left a screenshot from the application. The user is seeding the vascular tree in a head and upper thorax data set guided by volume haptics and a hardware accelerated maximum intensityprojection (MIP). On the right is an image of the ‘final gray-scale connectedness segmentation result.’ (Credit: Erik Vidholm, Uppsala University) The images avove have respectively extracted from pages 45 and 52 of Vidholm’s dissertation, which contains dozens of other pictures.

For more details, you can read an Uppsala University news release, ‘Doctors will soon be able to feel organs via a display screen.’ But for more information, here is the introduction of Vidholm’s thesis.

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A major challenge in public health is that people do not take their medications, a phenomenon known as ‘medication non-adherence.’ In the U.S. alone, it is estimated that this accounts for 10% of all hospital visits and costs the U.S. healthcare system $100 billion per year and $60 billion to the pharmaceutical industry. Now, a MIT research team thinks it has a solution to this problem and that it also will save lives worldwide. They’ve developed the uBox, a convenient, palm-sized, intelligent pill dispenser, ‘which reminds a patient when it is time to take his medication, records when a patient has taken a dose, and prevents a patient from double-dosing.’ The first large scale trial with 100 uBoxes is scheduled to begin in May 2008 in Bihar, India. The uBox will be used in a 6-month long tuberculosis (TB) treatment program. But read more…

You can see on the left the various elements of one uBox (Credit: MIT) This diagram was extracted from uBox - The Global Standard in Rural Treatment Programs (PDF format, 2 pages, 541 KB). In this document, you’ll see that “the estimated cost for the basic version of the device is expected to be $7-8 in quantities of 1000 or more. The uBox is expected to last for 5 trials, thus costing under $2 per patient” — or about one-tenth the cost of the current solutions available today.

This smart pillbox has been developed by Manish Bhardwaj, a doctoral student at MIT and the team he assembled, Innovators In Health. Here is another link showing the members of the team.

In fact, the team developed what they called “a high-tech solution in a simple, inexpensive and easy-to-use-package” with two major components. “The first part of the two-component system is a kind of “smart” pillbox, called the uBox. It has 14 chambers that can each be loaded with several pills, which it dispenses from one chamber per day. To alert the patient that it’s time to take the medicine, the box flashes its lights and sounds a buzzer. When the compartment is opened, the uBox records the exact time and prevents double-dosing by refusing to open again until the next treatment is due. After two weeks, a health care worker reloads the box and digitally records and transmits the information stored in it. Doctors and public health services can then get complete data on compliance, patient by patient, in almost real time, instead of having to wait until the end of the six-month treatment.”

But there is a second component.

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A U.S. team of scientists wanted to determine what was the Earth’s temperature several billions years ago. But because most of the team was composed of biologists, the researchers took an unusual approach. Instead of analyzing rock formations or measuring isotopes in fossils, they’ve ‘resurrected’ a variety of genes and proteins that existed several billion years ago. And they found that ‘the Earth endured a massive cooling period between 500 million and 3.5 billion years ago,’ a result in full agreement with previous to geologic studies. They say that even if the Earth was very hot in the beginning, the environment cooled progressively by 30 °C during 3 billion years. But read more…

This scientific team was led by Eric Gaucher, president of scientific research at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution (FFAME). For this project, he worked with Omjoy Ganesh, a structural biologist at the University of Florida and with Sridhar Govindarajan, vice president of informatics at DNA2.0, a California-based company that constructed the genes.

[Note: Can you believe that this company chose a name like DNA2.0? Even if it’s a real company, with real products, and which can build genes for you, what do you think of that name?]

Anyway, here is a quote from Eric Gaucher about this project.

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You all know that most species of animals can fly — but not humans. There are more than a million species of flying insects, but do you know that among the 13,000 warm-blood vertebrate species (which include birds and mammals), about 10,000 of them are able to fly (9,000 birds and 1,000 bats)? Many of them have millions of years of experience, and aerospace engineers are trying to learn from birds, bats and insects to design very efficient micro flapping-wing aircraft for the U.S. Air Force to be used as surveillance tools. Natural flyers are much more efficient than man-made aircraft, states one aerospace engineer at the University of Michigan (U-M), who adds that ‘natural flyers obviously have some highly varied mechanical properties that we really have not incorporated in engineering.’ But read more…

You can see on the left three examples of birds flapping their wings. (Credit: University of Michigan) These pictures have been extracted from a short video, The Aerodynamics of Birds (1 minute and 12 seconds).

The pictures have been taken by Wei Shyy, chair of the Aerospace Engineering department at U-M and a photographer of birds. “He studies them to help engineers design small, flapping-wing aircraft.”

The U-M news release starts with giving some surprising facts about flying. “A Blackbird jet flying nearly 2,000 miles per hour covers 32 body lengths per second. But a common pigeon flying at 50 miles per hour covers 75. The roll rate of the aerobatic A-4 Skyhawk plane is about 720 degrees per second. The roll rate of a barn swallow exceeds 5,000 degrees per second. Select military aircraft can withstand gravitational forces of 8-10 G. Many birds routinely experience positive G-forces greater than 10 G and up to 14 G.”

So it’s not surprising that Wei Shyy and his lab are looking at birds for designing micro planes. After all, “Shyy and his colleagues have several grants from the Air Force totaling more than $1 million a year to research small flapping wing aircraft.” Read the rest of this entry »

U.S. engineers are collaborating with the Center for Research and Restoration at The Louvre Museum in France to use a terahertz device to find murals hidden behind plaster or paint for centuries. T-rays, or pulses of terahertz radiation, can ‘illuminate penciled sketches under paintings on canvas without harming the artwork,’ something which is not be possible with X-ray imaging technology. These researchers will have to work for many years. After all, there are 100,000 churches in France alone to investigate. And they all can contain art treasures. But read more…

You can see on the left an example of how this terahertz device is used to examine a mural recently discovered in a 12th century church in France and which was hidden behind five layers of plaster. (Credit: University of Michigan Photo Services) Here is a link to a larger version of this picture.

The team of researchers at the University of Michigan (U-M) includes Jae Bianca Jackson, a doctoral student in applied physics, and two professors of the Center for Ultrafast Optical Science (CUOS), Gerard Mourou and John Whitaker.

They’ve collaborated with engineers from Picometrix, LLC, who build and sell a variety of terahertz systems. The company states that “terahertz radiation can be used to image through materials yielding high spatial resolution and has the ability to resolve both time and amplitude information. It is safe for humans and can provide spectroscopic information, as well as produce images.”

They’ve also worked with the Centre de recherche et de restauration des musées de France (C2RMF, site in French). Read the rest of this entry »

In a short news release, the Institute of Physics reports that smart holograms, which use materials called hydrogels that shrink or swell in response to local environmental conditions, can be used to monitor many physical conditions than three years ago. These smart holograms could soon be used ‘by diabetics to check their blood-sugar levels, by patients with kidney disorders to check on adrenaline levels or by security forces to detect chemicals like anthrax after a terrorist attack.’ And today, moisture sensitive sensor holograms are used to verify the presence (or absence) of free water in aviation fuel. But read more…

You can see above an example of how these smart holograms can be used. “Smart holograms are recorded in polymers specifically designed to change in response to physical, chemical or biological stimuli thanks to the incorporation of functional or reactive groups. Thus, the hologram itself provides both the polymer matrix that responds to a particular stimulus or substance one is trying to measure, and also the means to visualize the response. For example, a green smart hologram sprayed with ethanol to simulate a Breathalyser test for alcohol on expired breath turns blue when the polymer contracts. The frames were obtained at 20 ms intervals.” (Credit: Smart Holograms Ltd, via Physics World) Here is a link to a larger version of this picture.

The Institute of Physics reports that “Smart Holograms, a spin-out company from the Institute of Biotechnology at Cambridge University, has already developed a hand-held syringe to measure water content in aviation fuel tanks — necessary because aeroplane engines are liable to freeze mid-air if there is more than 30 parts water to million fuel.”

The company uses the research results of Professor Chris Lowe, Director of the Institute of Biotechnology and Professor of Biotechnology at Cambridge University in the UK, who is one co-founder of this start-up.

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On February 9, 2008, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will give its ten Scientific and Technical Academy Awards for the year. One of them will go to a professor of computer science at Stanford University who worked with scientists from Industrial Light & Magic. They’ll receive this ‘Oscar’ for their work about cyber-fluids. They’ve started to work several years ago for the development of the female liquid terminator in Terminator 3. This technology also was used to model the sinking ship in Poseidon and in the two latest Pirates of the Caribbean movies. But read more…

You can see above several computer-generated scenes showing off the fluid simulation technology which will receive a scientific Academy Award this week at The Beverly Wilshire. (Credit: Ron Fedkiw and his team, Stanford University) But don’t miss this short movie (16 seconds) showing the waves trying to invade the lighthouse shown above.

This research has been led by Ron Fedkiw, Associate Professor of Computer Science, and Stanford researchers Jerry Talton and Nipun Kwatra. But Fedkiw, who has also worked for Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) before, collaborated on this project with ILM scientists Nick Rasmussen and Frank Losasso Petterson, who will share the award with him.

But why these scientists have been honored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences? Let’s read the Stanford Report.

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Particle swarm optimization (PSO) is a computer algorithm based on a mathematical model of the social interactions of swarms which was first described in 1995. Now, researchers in the UK and Jordan have carried this swarm approach to photography to ‘intelligently boost contrast and detail in an image without distorting the underlying features.’ This looks like a clever concept even if I haven’t seen any results. The researchers have developed an iterative process where a swarm of images is created by a computer. These images are ‘graded relative to each other, the fittest end up at the front of the swarm until a single individual that is the most effectively enhanced.’ But read more…

This research has been conducted in Jordan at the Department of Information Technology at Al-Balqa Applied University by Associate Professor Alaa Sheta and Malik Braik.

They’ve worked with Aladdin Ayesh, of the Centre for Computational Intelligence (CCI) at
De Montfort University in Leicester,UK. For more information about Ayesh’s works, here is a link to his personal website.

Now, let’s see how PSO can be applied to photo processing. “PSO is based on a mathematical model of the social interactions of swarms. The algorithm treats each version of an image as an individual member of the swarm and makes a single, small adjustment to contrast levels, edge sharpness, and other image parameters. The algorithm then determines whether the new members of the swarm are better or worse than the original according to an objective fitness criterion.”

And here are more explanations. “‘The objective of the algorithm is to maximize the total number of pixels in the edges, thus being able to visualize more details in the images,’ explain the researchers. Such enhancement might be useful in improving snapshots of CCTV quality for identification of individuals or vehicle number plates, it might also have application in improving images produced with lower quality cameras, such as camera phones, that are required for use in publishing or TV where image quality standards are usually higher. The process of enhancing step by step is repeated to create a swarm of images in computer memory which have been graded relative to each other, the fittest end up at the front of the swarm until a single individual that is the most effectively enhanced.”

This research work has been included in a recent issue of Inderscience’s International Journal of Innovative Computing and Applications (IJICA) under the title “Particle swarm optimisation enhancement approach for improving image quality” (Volume 1, Issue 2, Pages 138-145, 2007).

Here is an excerpt from the abstract describing how the pictures are optimized. “The enhancement process is a non-linear optimisation problem with several constraints. Based upon a mathematical model of the social interactions of swarms, the algorithm has been shown to be effective at finding good solutions of the enhancement problem by adapting the parameters of a novel extension to a local enhancement technique similar to statistical scaling. This enhances the contrast and detail in the image according to an objective fitness criterion. The proposed algorithm has been compared with Genetic Algorithms (GAs) to a number of tested images. The obtained results using grey scale images indicate that PSO is better than GAs in terms of the computational time and both the objective evaluation and maximisation of the number of pixels in the edges of the tested images.”

For more information about PSO, here is a link to this Wikipedia page.

Is this idea worth it? Maybe yes. But first, I haven’t found on the Web any pictures enhanced by this algorithm. And second, even the researchers don’t say if this project will hace future commercial applications.

Sources: Inderscience Publishers news release, February 1, 2008; and various websites

You’ll find related stories by following the links below.

• Artificial Intelligence
• Nature
• Photography
• Security
• Software

According to a short article in The Engineer Online, a two-meter high robotic snake will be shown in April 2008 at the London Science Museum. This vertical snake has been designed as an interactive sculpture. It uses sensors to react to what are doing its viewers and ‘dances’ with them. The manufacturer says the robot has 28 ‘muscles’ and 27 degrees of freedom. It also claims two technology breakthroughs: ‘the muscle actuation mechanism includes built-in air valves which enable far greater control and scope for movement; and its linear sensors are unique in the world of robotics as they are bus addressable and less susceptible to magnetic interference.’ But read more…

You can see above the oscillating robotic snake (Credit: Merlin Robotics).

And here is a close-up of the articulations of the snake (Credit: Merlin Robotics). The two above images have been extracted from a short movie put on YouTube by Merlin Robotics (3 minutes and 13 seconds).

Here is the opening paragraph of The Engineer Online article. “A unique robotic snake developed by Plymouth-based Merlin Robotics working alongside Nottingham Trent University is to go on display at the London Science Museum’s DANA Centre. in April 2008. The vertical snake, designed to function as an interactive artwork, includes two technologies which Merlin claims are a world first.”

Here are more details picked from a Merlin Robotics news release, Two world firsts for British ‘Robosnake’ (January 18, 2008).

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On February 8, 2008, about 100 UC Berkeley students will participate in the Mobile Century experiment, using GPS mobile phones as traffic sensors. During the whole day, these students carrying the GPS-equipped Nokia N95 will drive along a 10-mile stretch of I-880 between Hayward and Fremont, California. ‘The phones will store the vehicles’ speed and position information every 3 seconds. These measurements will be sent wirelessly to a server for real-time processing.’ As more and more cellphones are GPS-equipped, the traffic engineering community, which currently monitors traffic using mostly fixed sensors such as cameras and loop detectors, is tempted to use our phones to get real-time information about traffic. But read more…

You can see above a map of the location where this traffic monitoring study will be done (Credit: Lagrangian Sensor Systems Laboratory (LSSL) at the University of California, Berkeley). “The main portion of the cellphone traffic monitoring study will be conducted on highway I880, between Winton Ave. to the North and Stevenson Blvd. to the South near Union City, CA. A ‘base station’ will be located at the parking lot of the Union Landing Retail Entertainment Center, which is next to I880, between Whipple rd. and Alvarado-Niles Ave.This base station will serve as the main experiment headquarters during the day.”

But let’s go back to the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) news release to discover why this study is been done. “The convergence of communication and multi-media platforms has enabled a key capability: mobility tracking via GPS. Business plans of most major cellular phone manufacturers such as Nokia include embedding GPS in all manufactured cell phones within less than 18 months. Thus, a high penetration rate of GPS-equipped travelers on freeways is expected in the near future. This has major implications for the traffic engineering community.”

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