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Dr. Bhabesh Deka Associate Professor Dept.

of ECE Tezpur University

Imaging Science to Ubiquitous Imaging


An image of a bird sometime in the future may be more than just a picture. It could also carry date and models that can produce the birds song, display its feeding or mating behavior, and describe its habitat and food preferencesExcerpts from the keynote address titled The Ubiquitous imaging, delivered at the International Congress of Imaging Science, 2006.

Images have become ubiquitous part in our everyday life and culture. The application of images have become very much essential for the advancement of different fields ranging from science and technology, to biomedical research and clinical practice, to commerce and industry, to entertainment and advertising, and to communication and education and so forth. Imaging science is an interdisciplinary field which requires knowledge of the disciplines of physics, engineering, chemistry, biology, and medicine. The rapid advances in imaging technology and techniques have led to the ever increasing growth of this field of study. It mainly deals with the detection, spatiotemporal localization, recording, display, visual observation, and measurement of object properties from images that are obtained from various imaging modalities. Properties of various objects of interests are studied by means of computerbased imaging systems that provide information needed for an understanding of their structure and functions. The main goal of imaging science is to develop an imaging system to yield images that are: 1. more accurate representations of objects, by reducing blurring, distortions, and other artifacts. 2. more reproducible, by reducing random fluctuations or noise without increasing observation time. 3. complete, by producing three-dimensional images of three-dimensional objects, and by increasing the number of object properties that can be imaged. 4. intelligent, by rendering and displaying them in a manner that makes the extraction, interpretation, and assimilation of information more accurate and reproducible. Subfields within imaging science include: image processing, 3D computer graphics, animations, atmospheric optics, astronomical imaging, digital imaging, color science, digital photography, holography, magnetic resonance imaging, optics, remote sensing, radar imaging, radiometry, ultrasound imaging, thermal imaging, visual perception, and various printing technologies.

Various issues involved in imaging science


1. Image-data acquisition Detection and angular/spatial/temporal localization of radiation or other property associated with the objects. It reflects in the design of the frontend hardware of any imaging device (e.g., the optical components of a microscope) which, in turn, determines the sensitivity, resolution, and other quality characteristics of the imaging system. 2. Image recovery and enhancement It involves the mathematical concepts and algorithms for producing an image from the acquired data (e.g., image reconstruction from projections, e.g. MRI, CT, etc.). Image enhancement aims to improve the quality (e.g., to sharpen edges and to reduce distortion, interference, artifacts, and image noise) of an image by using linear and non-linear image processing algorithms. 3. Image recording and distribution It involves the mathematical algorithms for image compression, storage, retrieval and transmission. 4. Image display/visualization Monochrome/colour; 2-D and 3-D display of images of real objects or of hypothetical objects and processes obtained from computer simulations based on mathematical models. 5. Image observation and observer performance It involves the response characteristics of the eye-brain system and measures the ability of the observer to perform visual tasks, as well as strategies for the development of interactive, analytic, diagnostic, and adaptive software to facilitate observer performance, based on knowledge of human vision. 6. Image analysis Segmentation and measurement; morphological analysis; pattern recognition; feature extraction; artificial intelligence 7. Image evaluation Evaluation involves measures of image quality (maximum signal-tonoise-ratio, information content). Subjective evaluation of images by considering viewer performance. Social, cultural, aesthetic criteria, etc.

Various Imaging modalities


There are many techniques through which an image can be generated. These are governed by different physical principles and sources of energy depending on the target applications ranging from simple photography to imaging of the living cells in a biological system. A brief classification of various imaging modalities can be made as follows. a) Microscopy - Light; UV; X-Ray; fluorescence; electron- & ion-beam, etc.

b) X-Ray imaging -Direct, screen-film, CT, etc. c) Magnetic resonance imaging -Conventional and spectroscopic d) Radionuclide imaging -Positron Emission Tomography (PET), Single photon emission computerized (SPECT) tomography e) Ultrasound -Material testing, biomedical f) Holography & pseudo-holography -Light, X-ray, gamma ray g) Telescopic imaging -X-ray, UV, Optical, Infra red, radio h) Computer generated -Image simulation/animation from mathematical models i) Graphic arts & sciences Drawing, etching, painting, photography/video, printing, television j) Computer vision -CCD arrays/robotics

State-of-the-art applications of imaging science


Currently, imaging scientists around the globe are striving for the development of imaging systems that could interpret images acquired from different modalities: viz. images of natural scenes acquired by a camera, CT scans and other data obtained with biomedical imaging devices and aerial and satellite images acquired by remote sensing, etc. without any human intervention. Significant developments in the imaging technology have led to the development of high-tech cameras and other imaging devices. Also, a human observer can effortlessly make out the semantic understanding of various objects appearing in images, but, a machine cannot interpret the same via programming with meaning full accuracy. Therefore, it remains a major open challenge for the imaging scientists working in the related fields, including the automated medical diagnosis, the industrial automation, and the security and surveillance to bridge this semantic gap. A few state-of-the-art applications of the imaging science are briefly mentioned below. 1. Medical Image Analysis: Combining biomedical imaging science with computational modeling, it is possible to infer, noninvasively, the structural and functional properties of complex biological systems. For example, with the help of MRI it is possible to detect noninvasively the presence of tumors

and/or follow up the treatment after detection or studying the cardiac activity from a sequence of cardiac echo images. 2. Computer Vision: Humans are naturally able to recognize the objects in a scene much better than computers. We can effortlessly distinguish among a remarkable variety of objects, actions and interactions even in complex, cluttered scenes, e.g., recognizing a particular face in a crowd. In contrast, automatically interpreting such scenes using a computer is very difficult. The challenge here is to develop fully automatic computer vision algorithms for the interpretation of complex scenes. Examples: segmenting and tracking of moving objects in a video, recognizing dynamic textures (water, smoke, fire) in a video, recognizing human activities in a video, and modeling and recognizing skill in surgical motion and video data. 3. Computational Biology: A formidable challenge is the dissection of gene regulatory networks to show how eukaryotic cells coordinate and govern patterns of gene expression. Here the imaging scientist might develop graphical models to capture the statistical dependency structure among gene and protein expression values. The future of imaging science is very bright and challenging. We are already into the era of ubiquitous imaging, where imaging is everywhere yet unobtrusive. This is paralleled to the concept of ubiquitous computing where everything is intelligent and connected. There is a plenty of research scopes, in various domains including the machine vision, the biomedical imaging and analysis, and the digital imaging. Problems in machine vision, such as the automatic interpretation of shapes and other objects appearing in images, MR perfusion for assessing early solid tumor response to therapy, Diffusion Tensor Imaging with MR to delineate important nerve tracts in relation to brain tumors, etc. are some of the ongoing active research problems.
[ Some of the contents of this article are written based on the paper that was presented at a colloquium entitled "Images of Science: Science of Images," organized by Albert V. Crewe, held January 13 and 14, 1992, at the National Academy of Sciences, Washington, DC. ]

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