Asari Awarded New Patent

The U.S. Patent office has awarded a patent to Vijayan Asari, Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Director of Vision Lab at Old Dominion University for his development of a new image characterizing method.

The patented technology, titled "Color Image Characterization, Enhancement and Balancing," is the outcome of an outstanding research work done at the Old Dominion University Vision Lab by Asari, and Ming-Jung Seow who was a graduate student in Vision Lab when the application was filed in 2005. Seow, of Williamsburg, graduated in 2006 with a Ph.D in Electrical and Computer Engineering and currently works as a senior scientist at Behavioral Recognition Systems (BRS) Labs in Houston. The patent was awarded on April 22.

Using this unique image enhancement technique, one can produce clear visibility and natural color in images captured in extremely dark and non-uniform lighting environments. Asari said it could be extremely useful for defense and homeland security applications such as night-time surveillance and object recognition in low lighting conditions.

"The granting of this patent recognizes the pioneering research work being done at Vision Lab," said Asari. "This places us at the forefront in a group of internationally recognized scientists and researchers."