Computers and Photographs 1) Image Processing 2) Computer Vision Henry Schneiderman

Outline Digital Cameras Emerging Technology Research in Image Processing and Computer Vision Automatically Finding Faces and Cars in Photographs

Digital Cameras = Convenience Easy to capture photos Easy to store and organize photos Easy to duplicate photos Easy to edit photos

Digital Camera Usage Lyra research report, 1999 Exposures in billions

State of the Art: Digital Cameras Film is currently better in resolution and color. –Professional photographers Digital for low quality newspaper adds Film for portrait photos Computer storage limitations: 1 high resolution digital image = 25 MegaBytes Printing –home printers not comparable to commercial printers

Future of Digital Cameras Improved resolution and color “Smart” cameras More programmable features –Auto-focus on object of interest –“Everything in focus” photo –Capture photo when event X occurs

Photographs: Migration to Digital Format Others means of digitizing imagery –Scanners (photo and film) –Frame-grabber for video

Existing and Emerging Technology 1. Document scanning 2. Biometrics 3. Management of images on computers 4. Other: manufacturing, military, games,...

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) First patent in OCR in 19 th century First applications in post-office and banks State of the art not perfect. Examples of errors:

Handwriting Recognition Works if constraints on writer, e.g. palm pilot

Other document processing Not just for text... Examples: –Engineering document to CAD file –Maps to GIS format –Music score to MIDI representation

Biometrics Technology for identification –Finger/palm print –Iris –Face

Fingerprints Minutae – spits and merges of ridges

Face Identification Not quite reliable yet. –Performance degrades rapidly with uncontrolled lighting, facial expression, and size of database Several companies exist: –Visionics (Rockfeller Univesity spin-off) –EyeMatic (USC spin-off) –Miros (MIT spin-off) –Banque-Tec Intl (Australia) –C-VIS Computer Vision (Germany) –LAU Technologies Commercial systems installed in London and Brazil to catch criminals

Management of images on computers Compression – reducing storage size needed for images Watermarking – Protecting copyright Microsoft, Bell Labs, NEC, etc. Visible watermark

Photo-manipulation Adobe Photoshop, Corel PhotoPaint, Pixami, PhotoIQ, etc. –More automatic features

Searching Digital Image Collections Large collections of images exist –Corbis 67 million images –Getty 70 million stock photography images –AP collects 1000s of digitized images per day Search methods are inadequate –Rely on captions and colors IBM’s Query by Image Content (QBIC) system

Inspection for Manufacturing Occum – inspection of printed circuit boards ($100M / year) Cognex – Do-it-yourself toolkits for inspection (400 employees)

Automatic Target Recognition (ATR) Finding mines, tanks, etc. Billion dollar a year industry –Martin-Lockheed, TSR, Northrup-Grumman, other aerospace contractors. Various types of imagery: –Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), Sonar, hyper- spectral imagery (more than 3 colors)

Aerial Photo Interpretation / Automated Cartography Classification of land-use: forest, vegetation, water Identification of man-made objects: buildings, roads, etc

Better Security Cameras Cameras that are responsive to the environment –Track and zoom on moving objects –Automatic adjustment of contrast

Human-Computer Interaction Computer games that involve interaction with user Intelligent teleconferencing

Medical imagery Medical image libraries for study and diagnosis Image overlay to guide surgeons

History 1980’s ~100 companies – manufacturing applications mostly Early 1990’s less than 10 companies Late 1990’s ~100 companies – face recognition, intelligent teleconferencing, inspection, digital libraries