NEW VISION LAB DIRECTOR EXCITED ABOUT OPPORTUNITIES
A shadowy blob is vaguely detectable on the infrared screen. With waves of green and blue coloring washing over the screen, the eye has to squint to make out the tiny figure at all. But then the image gets clearer. Though it's still an infrared image, the shadowy figure is soon clearly recognizable as some sort of vehicle. The landscape becomes more easily distinguishable as a desert valley. As the image becomes clearer still, it becomes apparent the vehicle is making its way up a roadway. Then it turns, and the image is unmistakable. The vehicle that has been tracked through infrared vision is a tank.
This demonstration isn't some Army surveillance video - it's an example of the work done at Old Dominion University's Computational Intelligence and Machine Vision Laboratory (Vision Lab).
New Vision Lab director Khan Iftekharuddin, professor in the Batten College of Engineering and Technology, came to ODU this fall, excited by the work done by the lab in the past and the opportunity for multidisciplinary collaboration in the future.
"There are a few excellent centers and unique programs at ODU that make collaboration exciting. As well, the proximity of ODU to major national labs, NASA Langley and Department of Defense research centers are all factors in my excitement," Iftekharuddin said.
Specifically, Iftekharuddin said he's enthused about the research being conducted at ODU's Virginia Modeling, Analysis and Simulation Center, the Frank Reidy Center for Bioelectrics and the National Centers for System of Systems Engineering.
Among the new projects being undertaken by Vision Lab researchers are an algorithm to aid in long-distance facial recognition, 3-D face modeling using static image frames, and an automatic image stabilizer that uses data points from moving images to create a more visible still image. Work is also going on in the area of brain tumor detection under another NIH-funded project.
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