News & Events (Archive)

The ISMV group participates in sponsor-funded research and development and supports a number of conferences in scientific and technical areas. This area of our site contains archived information regarding our research, publications, proposals, awards, technical directions, conferences, staffing, and student and faculty visitors.

Highlights for 2007
Highlights for 2006
Highlights for 2005
Highlights for 2004

To see our current events, please visit our ISMV Current News and Events page.

September - November Highlights 2007

Battelle Memorial Institute Maturation Funds Award
Dr. Jim Goddard received a funding award from Battelle Memorial Institute (BMI) in November for the a maturation proposal titled "Traffic Signal Intersection Monitoring System." The ISMV group has developed a portfolio of inventions that correct or compensate for motion and artifacts in imaging systems that would otherwise result in poor or unusable data. Much of this historical work in the group was developed for anatomical and functional imaging of small animals. Through this funded activity, new areas beyond biomedical applications will be evaluated.  The primary purpose of this funding will be to investigate image processing and vehicle tracking concepts for characterizing motor vehicles in traffic control situations.

EU Masters in Vision and Robotics Program
Dr. Jeffery Price recently visited the University of Burgundy in Le Creusot, France, to complete a short teaching and research sabbatical from October 29 - November 10. Dr. Price served as a visiting scholar under the European Commission's Erasmus Mundus Masters Program. During his stay, he taught a course in statistical pattern recognition to graduate students of the Masters in Vision and Robotics (VIBOT) Program. Dr. Price’s participation in this exchange program is part of ORNL’s new role as a partnering laboratory in the European Union (EU) Erasmus Mundus program and to help lay the foundation for EU students to visit and work with ORNL in the coming years.

Venous Imaging
Vincent Paquit and Dr. Jeffery Price, currently performing ORNL Seed Money research on quantitative imaging of subcutaneous veins, had two separate papers accepted for presentation during the month of November:

Vincent PAQUIT, Jeffery PRICE, Fabrice MERIAUDEAU, Kenneth TOBIN, “3D multispectral light propagation model for subcutaneous vein imaging,” SPIE Medical Imaging 2008: Physics of Medical Imaging, 16-21 February 2008, San Diego, California, January 2008.

Vincent PAQUIT, Fabrice MERIAUDEAU, Jeffery PRICE, Kenneth TOBIN, Optical Sensing and Artificial Vision, “Multispectral imaging optimization for the location of subcutaneous structures,” Saint Petersburg, Russia, 12-15 May 2008.

ORNL / Y-12 Research Reported in Materials Evaluation
Dr. Philip Bingham has been working with colleagues at Y-12 and the University of Tennessee to develop computed tomographic reconstruction capabilities for industrial applications. Two research papers prepared by the team have been published in Materials Evaluation, Volume 65 / Number 11, November 2007. The featured papers and authors are as follows:

P. Bingham, L. Arrowood (Y-12), and J. Gregor (UTK), “Calibration Performance Testing for Reconfigurable Computed Tomography Systems;

L. Arrowood, J. Gregor, and P. Bingham, “Iterative Reconstruction Techniques for Industrial Computed Tomography: Application and Performance.”

Presentation at Tennessee Tech
Dr. Kenneth Tobin was invited to present a seminar to the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Tennessee Tech University, Cookeville, Tennessee, on November 6. The title of the seminar was “A Probabilistic Framework for Content-Based Diagnosis of Retinal Disease.” This project, originally funded through the ORNL LDRD program is in the third year of an NIH National Eye Institute R01 grant. In august, the team led by Dr. Chaum at the Hamilton Eye Institute in Memphis, TN, was notified of funding awards from two additional independent grants to support a broader clinical study of diabetic populations in the Memphis area (Plough Foundation Telemedicine Grant) and Mississippi Delta region (Health Resources and Services Administration, Delta State Rural Development Network Grant Program).

August Highlights 2007

Biological Microscopy Seed Money Project Awarded
The team of Drs. Christopher Mann, Philip Bingham, Jeffery Price, Yisong Wang (Systems Genetics Group, Biosciences Division), John Biggerstaff (Center for Biomarker Analysis, University of Tennessee), and Michael Zemel (Nutrition Institute, University of Tennessee) where awarded an ORNL Seed Money project for “Combined Real-Time Quantitative Phase and Fluorescence Biological Microscopy by Digital Holography.” Biological processes and structures in transparent objects that produce refractive index changes or variations of the shape are of particular interest in the field of life sciences. For most existing phase contrast techniques, such as Zernike phase contrast microscopy (PCM) or Nomarski differential interference contrast microscopy (DIC), the phase-to-amplitude conversion of the light is non-linear and the phase information is not quantitative. Digital holography offers an excellent approach to quantitative phase imaging. Numerical calculation of the propagation and diffraction from a holographic interference pattern recorded by a CCD camera yields the optical field of the object, comprised of both the phase and amplitude information. The phase image reflects the optical thickness of the sample with nanometer resolution along the optical axis, potentially revealing minute variations and subtle structures. While digital holography provides high-precision, morphological information about a sample, the application of fluorescence imaging reveals functional details. Currently, instrumentation for generating fluorescence and quantitative phase information simultaneously is lacking. To address this deficiency, we propose to construct and develop a combined quantitative phase and fluorescence instrument with real-time performance, which uses an optical-based method of extending the phase range.

Venous Imaging Seed Money Project Awarded
The Team of Dr. Jeffery Price and Mr. Vincent Paquit where awarded an ORNL Seed Money project for “Quantitative Imaging of Subcutaneous Veins with Multispectral Imaging and 3D Modeling.” The aim of the effort is to demonstrate that it is feasible to perform optical imaging of subcutaneous veins, including estimation of the relative vein depth and diameter. They will approach the problem using multispectral imaging; laboratory experiments on phantoms and human subjects; three-dimensional Monte Carlo photon transport modeling; and inverse imaging with parametric and pattern recognition techniques. If successful, the team expects this project will enable the near-term development of devices to assist humans with venipuncture and catheterization procedures. In the longer-term, they envision this technology as one component of a fully-automated, robotic venipuncture device.

ISMV Staff Member Awarded European Commission Erasmus Mundus Scholars Appointment
Dr. Jeff Price has been awarded a Scholar's appointment with the European Commission's Erasmus Mundus Masters Program. Dr. Price will spend approximately one month this fall collaborating with and teaching at the University of Burgundy, Le Creusot, France as a part of their Masters in Vision and Robotics Program. Dr. Price will be teaching a course on Pattern Recognition and collaborating in the area of Venous Imaging.

ISMV Wins Southeast Federal Laboratory Consortium (FLC) Award
The team of Dr. Kenneth Tobin, Thomas Karnowski, Dr. Philip Bingham, Larry Dickens, and Tom Verburgt (previously with Rudolph Technologies, Inc.) were one of six ORNL teams that won awards from the federal laboratory group for transferring technologies to the private sector. The team was awarded the FLC for successfully transferring a semiconductor yield management technology to Rudolph Technologies, Inc. in 2006. In the semiconductor manufacturing environment, defect imagery is used to diagnose problems in the manufacturing line, train yield management engineers, and examine historical data for trends. The ISMV researcher team developed a semiconductor-specific content-based image retrieval (CBIR) technology and system to improve yield management in complex wafer manufacturing processes. The system uses an image-based, query-by-example method to locate and retrieve similar imagery from a database of digital imagery using visual image characteristics. The system improves the manufacturing process by allowing rapid access to historical records of similar events so that errant process equipment can be isolated and corrective actions can be quickly taken to improve yield. The ORNL team won an R&D 100 award for this CBIR technology in 2002.

New Research Grants Awarded in Support of Retinal Diagnostics
The ORNL team of Dr. Kenneth Tobin, Thomas Karnowski, and Priya Govindasamy, have been working with Dr. Edward Chaum of the Hamilton Eye Institute in Memphis, TN, on the development of an informatics technology for diagnosing diabetic retinopathy. This project, originally funded through the ORNL LDRD program is currently entering its third year of an NIH National Eye Institute R01 grant. In august, the team led by Dr. Chaum was notified that they will be receiving funding from two additional independent grants to support a broader clinical study of diabetic populations in the Memphis area (Plough Foundation Telemedicine Grant) and Mississippi Delta region (Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), Delta State Rural Development Network Grant Program). ORNL will continue working with Dr. Chaum and the Hamilton Eye Institute, and will begin working with Dr. Karen Fox of the Delta Health Alliance, Inc., Mississippi, over the coming year.

IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Conference
Dr. Kenneth Tobin presented a paper titled “A Probabilistic Framework for Content-Based Diagnosis of Retinal Disease,” at the 29th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, Lyon, France, in August. Co-authors on this paper include Prof. Mohamed Abdelrahman (Tenn. Tech), Dr. Ed Chaum (Hamilton Eye Institute) Priya Govindasamy, and Thomas Karnowski. Through this paper Dr. Tobin presented diagnostic performance results of the team’s research on a population of 395 fundus images representing the normal retina and 14 stratified states of disease that include diabetic retinopathy and age-related macular degeneration.

June-July Highlights 2007

Karnowski Wins R&D 100 Award
ISMV group member Thomas Karnowski was a team member on the R&D 100 award-winning Large Area Imager project. This project, led by Klaus Ziock of NSTD and Lorenzo Fabris of ESTD, developed a radiation imager capable of detecting and locating radiation sources within a 100-meter field of view while traveling in a vehicle at 25 miles per hour. Mr. Karnowski’s specific contribution was the development of display software which projected detector response images onto superimposed 2-dimensional street maps and aerial images. This project was co-developed with Space Sciences Laboratory in Berkeley, CA and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

DHS Milestone Met
The Target Acquisition and Tracking (TAT) project, under the direction of PI Klaus Ziock of NSTD, achieved a major milestone in July by presenting and demonstrating the system to the project sponsor from the DHS Domestic Nuclear Detection Office. The TAT system uses video cameras and high-speed processing to identify vehicles as they pass by the Larger Area Imager (LAI), an R&D 100 award winning radiation imaging device. The vehicles’ locations are measured in real-time and sent to the LAI so it can measure the radiation signature of each individual vehicle, providing better specificity and sensitivity at large stand-off distances than conventional portal monitors. The TAT project team members are Tom Karnowski, Tim Gee, and Jim Goddard from ISMV Group.

Awake Animal Imaging
A new design of the optical tracking system has been successfully installed and tested on the Siemens micro/CT SPECT scanner at Johns Hopkins University. This new version consists of three synchronized cameras with pulsed IR LED ring illumination mounted on the scanner gantry looking towards the front of the scanner. The cameras and optics are much smaller than the previous version and have been designed to fit within the shielding enclosure permitting both CT and SPECT modes of operation. The camera arrangement provides more accurate measurements as well as a significant reduction of missed measurements due to detector occlusion and mouse movement. The cameras have been calibrated and tested with the tracking software.

Traffic Intersection Monitoring System
A DOE Work-for-Others (WFO) agreement has been executed with the Aldis Group, Knoxville, TN, to develop an image processing system for image-based traffic intersection monitoring and control. The original ORNL team includes PI Jim Goddard, Tim Gee, Tom Karnowski, and Jeff Price. The Guardian Eye™ is a vision-based traffic monitoring and control system. This system will replace loop systems and obsolete capital intensive central control systems by using patent-pending algorithms at the local intersection level creating an automated, proactive real-time traffic management system. The Guardian Eye™ communicates with existing controllers which will retain the responsibility for intersection fail-safe operation (for more information see Aldis Guardian-Eye). The initial agreement is for $100K over three months. Follow-on funding is expected.

Summer Students Completing Their Stay
The ISMV group has been host to two students this summer who have been supporting our retinal diagnostics and homeland security research efforts.

Jessica Weaver
Jessica Weaver is a native of Harriman, TN and will be a senior at Belmont University in Nashville and will begin clinical rotations in the Department of Radiology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center this fall. She is majoring in Medical Imaging Technology with a minor in physics. She will graduate in August 2008 with a B.S. degree in Medical Imaging Technology and will receive a certificate from the School of Allied Health at Vanderbilt University. She is working with the Image Science and Machine Vision Group through the ORISE HERE program on the NIH National Eye Institute grant for diagnosing retinopathy in digital fundus imagery. This is her second year working at ORNL.

William B. Hensley (Brad)
Brad Hensley is a native of Oak Ridge. His mother, Virginia Dale, works in the Environmental Sciences Division. He is working with the Image Science and Machine Vision Group on techniques for automatic detection of Diabetic Retinopathy and other eye diseases using retinal images. He will be a senior at Oak Ridge High School this fall and plans on going to college somewhere in the Eastern to Midwestern U.S. He is planning on studying either Physics or Biomedical Engineering.

 

Bioinformatics Papers Accepted for Publication
The ISMV group working with our biomedical collaborators from the University of Tennessee, UT Medical College, and the Hamilton Eye Institute has had a series of papers accepted for publication. These papers describe progress made to date on bioinformatics research related to retinal diagnostics and small animal imaging:

Tobin, K.W., Chaum, E., Gregor, J., Price, J.R., Wall, J., Karnowski, T.P., (G. Schaefer, Editor) “Image Informatics for Clinical and Preclinical Biomedical Analysis,” Computational Intelligence in Medical Imaging: Techniques and Applications, CRC Press, (Accepted, June 2007).

Chaum, E., Abdelrahman, M., Karnowski T.P., Govindasamy, P.G., Tobin, K.W., “Automated Diagnosis of Retinopathy by Content-Based Image Retrieval,” Retina, (Accepted, May 2007).

Tobin, K.W., Chaum, E., Govindasamy, V.P., Karnowski, T.P., “Detection of Anatomic Structures in Human Retinal Imagery,” IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, (In Press, May 2007).

Tobin, K.W., Abdelrahman, M., Chaum, E., Govindasamy, P., and Karnowski, T.P., “A Probabilistic Framework for Content-Based Diagnosis of Retinal Disease,” 29th Annual International Conf. of the IEEE EMBS, Lyon, France, August 2007.

March-May Highlights 2007

Integrated Gamma / Video Imager Test Successful
As part of a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) project led by Klaus Ziock of NSTD, gamma radiation measurements were performed on moving vehicles in the first tests of an integrated vehicle tracking and gamma imaging system. The system combines optical imaging and gamma imaging to measure radiation sources in individual vehicles. For the first time, the system was demonstrated to work together as one unit in real-time to measure test sources transported in a vehicle on an ORNL road. Research and development is continuing to improve the system’s robustness to different scenarios. The optical video tracking system is being developed by ISMV members Tom Karnowski, Jim Goddard, and Tim Gee. The gamma imaging system is being developed by NSTD members Klaus Ziock, Mark Cunningham, Frezghi Habte, and ESTD member Lorenzo Fabris.

Non-Contact Fingerprint Acquisition
A white paper titled "Rapid Non-Contact Fingerprint Acquisition" has been submitted by Philip Bingham, Jim Goddard, and Tim Gee to DHSARPA in response to the "HSARPA BAA07-08 Biometric Detector" broad agency announcement. The proposed technology builds on our previous research in interferometric microscopy.

Digital Imaging X
In support of our ongoing industrial computed tomography research with the Y-12 National Security Complex, we have submitted two papers to Digital Imaging X (http://www.asnt.org/events/conferences/dix/dix.htm) which is a topical conference sponsored by the American Society for Nondestructive Testing (ASNT) which will be held in late July. The papers and authors are as follows:

Philip Bingham, Lloyd Arrowood, and Jens Gregor, "Calibration and performance testing for reconfigurable computed tomography systems."

Lloyd Arrowood, Jens Gregor, and Philip Bingham, "Iterative reconstruction techniques for industrial CT: application and performance."

Semiconductor Defect Classification Study Completed
The Image Science and Machine Vision (ISMV) Group has been working with the semiconductor industry on the development of image-based yield learning technologies since 1991. These technologies have been used by the industry for defect and signature classification, image archive indexing and retrieval, image-based metrology in SEM review, and new microscopy methods for wafer and photolithographic mask inspection and metrology. RVSI Inspection, LLC, of Hauppauge, NY, and ORNL entered into a feasibility study this past December to evaluate the potential applicability of ISMV’s Automated Defect Classification (ADC) technology to address defect classification of a customer’s image data. The results of this feasibility study indicate reasonable classification response indicating that ORNL’s ADC technology can effectively address inspection automation needs of RVSI customers.

Price to Present Iris Research at IEEE Workshop on Biometrics
Jeff Price has been selected to present our research for on improving biometric iris recognition at the IEEE Computer Society Workshop on Biometrics. The workshop will be held on June 18 in Mineapolis, MN. The paper to be presented is titled “On the Efficacy of Correcting for Refractive Effects in Iris Recognition” with authors J. Price, T. Gee, V. Paquit, and K. Tobin. This research is an outgrowth of an ORNL Seed Money project completed in 2006.

Wigner Fellowship Begins
Dr. Christopher Mann, who was awarded a prestigious two year Wigner Fellowship with the Image Science and Machine Vision Group this past January, has begun work at ORNL this May. He will be continuing his research in the development of digital holographic microscopy with a primary goal of developing new methods and applications in biological imaging. His skills in optics and microscopy will also be applied to other relevant areas of research in the ISMV Group such as MEMS device characterization and ocular imaging for biomedical applications.

Presentation of Vision Research at the ARVO and ATA Annual Meetings
Ken Tobin of the ISMV Group and Dr. Ed Chaum of the Hamilton Eye Institute participated in two important meetings in May to present progress made on our NIH National Eye Institute research in content-based diagnosis of diabetic retinopathy. These meetings were the 2007 Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) Annual Meeting held in Ft. Lauderdale, FL, May 6-10, and the 12th Annual International Meeting of the American Telemedicine Association (ATA) held in Nashville, TN, May 13-15. The ARVO presentation was titled “Preliminary Results for the Statistical Diagnosis of Retinal Pathology by Image Content,” Kenneth W. Tobin, Ph.D., Edward Chaum, M.D., Ph.D., Mohamed Abdelrahman, Ph.D.,
V. Priya Govindasamy, Thomas P. Karnowski. The ATA presentation was titled “Image Processing and Software Architecture for Retinal Image Search and Analysis,” Thomas P. Karnowski, Mohammed Abdelrahman, Ph.D., V. Priya Govindasamy, Kenneth W. Tobin, Ph.D., Edward Chaum, M.D., Ph.D.

IEEE Transactions Paper Accepted for Publication
The research team of Kenneth W. Tobin, Edward Chaum, Priya Govindasamy, and Thomas P. Karnowski, have had their paper titled Detection of Anatomic Structures in Human Retinal Imagery” accepted for publication in the IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging. This paper describes a robust method for the automatic detection of the optic nerve and localization of the macula using digital red-free fundus photography. The paper reports 90.4% detection performance for the optic nerve and 92.5% localization performance for the macula for red-free fundus images representing a population of 345 images corresponding to 269 patients with 18 different pathologies associated with diabetic retinopathy and other common retinal diseases such as age-related macular degeneration.

Invited Speakers at QCAV 2007
Jeffery Price and Ken Tobin presented invited presentations at the 8th International Conference on Quality Control by Artificial Vision, Le Creusot, France, May 23-25. The objective of the conference is to provide a forum for researchers, industry, and users of vision systems to present and discuss the state-of-the-art in machine vision and image processing techniques, with an emphasis on industrial applications for quality control of manufactured products. ISMV has been participating in this biannual event since 2001. Ken Tobin currently serves as the Co-Chair of the International Scientific Committee. The following topics were presented:

J.R. Price, “Image-Based Inspection of Coated Particle Nuclear Fuel for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Gas Reactor Program,” (Invited Plenary).

K.W. Tobin, P.R. Binghan, J.R. Price, “Optical Spatial Heterodyned Interferometry for Inspection of Micro-Electro Mechanical Systems, “(Invited).

February Highlights 2007

Neutron Radiography System Demonstration
During the week of Feb. 20-23rd, Philip Bingham participated in training visitors from Britain on the use of the neutron radiography portion of the NMIS. NMIS is a nuclear materials identification system that has been recently modified to perform neutron radiography. Philip has worked with NSTD to incorporated CT reconstruction capabilities into the NMIS system to allow reconstruction of slices through imaged objects. During this training Philip helped present this traditional CT reconstruction as well as fit based reconstruction of objects when few projections are available.

Iterative CT Reconstruction
ORNL has been working with Y-12 and UTK to develop iterative computed tomographic reconstruction capabilities. Iterative reconstruction produces a higher quality reconstruction than the filtered back projection algorithms typically used in CT, but the quality comes at a high computation cost. In this work, we have been testing parallel implementations of the iterative reconstruction code to address this computational load. This past month, a new task was added to this work to assist in porting, optimizing, and testing the iterative computed tomography reconstruction code on new dual core cluster system architectures.

SPIE Electronic Imaging 2007
Jeff Price attended the IS&T/SPIE Electronic Imaging West Symposium in San Jose, CA (Jan 28 - Feb 1). He chaired one session and also presented a paper (oral session) entitled "Automatic Characterization of Cross-section Coated Particle Nuclear Fuel using Greedy Coupled Bayesian Snakes" (co-authors Deniz Aykac, John Hunn, and Andrew Kercher). Jeff is continuing to serve as a Program Committee Member for the conference on Machine Vision Applications in Industrial Inspection XV. The ISMV Group has been supporting this conference since 1996.

SPIE Medical Imaging 2007
Jeff Price and Vincent Paquit attended SPIE Medical Imaging 2007 in San Diego, CA (Feb 17-22). Jeff presented a paper (poster session) titled "Improvements in Level Set Segmentation of 3D Small Animal Imagery" (co-authors Deniz Aykac and Jonathan Wall). Vincent Paquit presented a paper (oral) titled “Combining near-infrared illuminants to optimize venous imaging” (co-authors Jeff Price, R. Seulin, Fabrice Meriaudeau, Ken Tobin, and Tom Ferrell).

January Highlights 2007

Large Area Gamma Imager 2007 Funding Secured
Group members Thomas P. Karnowski and Timothy F. Gee were informed that the Department of Homeland Security video / gamma ray image fusion project, led by Dr. Klaus Ziock of the Nuclear Science and Technology Division, will be fully funded for 2007 beginning in February. This challenging project uses video image processing to improve the gamma ray signatures of highway vehicles produced by Dr. Ziock’s Large Area Imager instrument, an extremely sensitive coded aperture imaging device.

OTTED Maturation Funds Award
Drs. Ken Tobin and Philip Bingham received a funding award from the ORNL Office of Technology Transfer and Economic Development in January for their Maturation Funds proposal titled “Application of ORNL’s Spatial Heterodyne Interferometry to Advanced MEMS Inspection and Metrology.” ESTD has developed a unique patent portfolio representing an imaging microscopy method based on Spatial Heterodyne Interferometry (SHI). This technology instantaneously captures both the intensity and phase of an optical wavefront reflected from or transmitted through a surface. Although this is an optical technique, it is highly sensitive in resolving topological features on the nanometer scale. Through this Maturation Funds proposal, the ISMV Group will demonstrate the application of SHI to inspection and metrology of moving MEMS elements at high rates of speed. A general purpose inspection and metrology system that provides surface topology and motion information will be an invaluable tool for the commercial production of MEMS products, and therefore will be of significant interest to potential end users of the SHI technology.

Biomedical Research Presentation Given at Vanderbilt
Drs. Ken Tobin and Jeff Price were invited to visit the Vanderbilt University Institute for Image Science (VUIIS) in January to present an overview of the group’s biomedical research. The seminar, titled “Biomedical Imaging and Computer Vision at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory,” reviewed our specific research and general objective to expand capabilities and enable new research, through close collaboration with scientists and physicians, by improving the quantification, automation, and visualization of biomedical imagery. The one day visit included a tour of this impressive institute which aims to integrate advances in physics, engineering, chemistry, computing, and other basic sciences for the development of new imaging techniques in biology and medicine.

30 Year Service Award
Raymond Tucker with the ISMV Group was presented his 30 year service award in January at the group’s regular monthly program development meeting. The certificate was presented by Division Director Ted Fox. Raymond Tucker has 30 years of experience in instrumentation and measurement systems development at ORNL. His past project experience includes: the development of the signal processing algorithms for an ultrasonic pipeline inspection system; the development of high-speed, parallel signal processing algorithms for the passive sonar system used to qualify the U.S. Navy's latest underwater attack vessels; overseeing the development of a prototype automated currency inspection system for the U. S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing; and the development of a prototype fingerprint card imaging system for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He also has extensive experience in developing process control and data acquisition systems for experimental facilities. He is proficient in both hardware and software design and development. Congratulations Raymond!

Raymond Tucker (left) receiving certificate for 30 years of service to ORNL from Division Director Ted Fox (right), January 2007.

International Symposium on Visual Computing
Dr. Ken Tobin was invited by the Steering Committee of the 3rd International Symposium on Visual Computing (ISVC) to participate on the International Program Committee (IPC) for 2007. ISVC provides a common umbrella for the central areas of visual computing including computer vision, computer graphics, visualization, and virtual reality. This is the third in the series of symposia following two very successful meetings in Lake Tahoe, Nevada/California in 2005 (http://www.isvc.net/05) and 2006 (http://www.isvc.net/06) respectively. ISVC07 will take place in Lake Tahoe, Nevada/California, November 26-28, 2007. The official ISVC07 website is http://www.isvc.net. Dr. Tobin has served on the IPC for the past two years.

Wigner Applicant Awarded Fellowship with ISMV
In January, Dr. Christopher Mann was awarded a prestigious two year Wigner Fellowship with the Image Science and Machine Vision Group to continue his research in the development of digital holographic microscopy with applications in biological imaging. This research compliments the group’s history in the development of a closely related technology for semiconductor wafer inspection and photolithographic mask metrology. Dr. Mann received a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics with Astrophysics from the University of Birmingham, England, in 2001 and a Master of Science degree in Physics with Astrophysics from the University of Birmingham in 2002. His Masters thesis was titled "searching for high transverse momentum lambda particles at the solenoidal tracker at RHIC detector" and this work was part of a larger worldwide effort to find signatures of the existence of the quark-gluon plasma from nuclear collisions. He graduated with a Ph.D in Applied Physics at the University of South Florida in Fall 2006. Dr. Mann has four journal publications and has presented at numerous technical conferences including CLEO, SPIE and OSA topical meetings. He was recently announced as the winner of the outstanding dissertation award for 2006 at the University of South Florida. We anticipate his start date at ORNL to be in mid-March.

Iris Recognition Research Wins Best Poster Award
(From ORNL Today, 11/13/06) Winning posters in last week's Lab Directed R&D and Seed Money posters session were, LDRD winners (tie), "Real-Time Interconnection-wide Power System Analysis and Visualization," by a team led by Engineering S&T Division's John Stovall, and "Petascale Computation in Condensed Matter Physics," by a team led by UT-ORNL Distinguished Scientist Elbio Dagotto. The winning Seed Money poster was "Participation in NIST Iris Challenge Evaluation: Algorithms for Improving Iris Recognition," by the team of Dr. Ken Tobin, Dr. Jeff Price, and Tim Gee. The winners had lunch with Lab Director Jeff Wadsworth and Deputy Director for S&T Jim Roberto, who conceived the show. The Office of the Laboratory Director sponsored the three-day session.

Research Presented in Iterative Computed Tomographic Reconstruction
Lloyd Arrowood of the Y-12 National Security Complex delivered a presentation in the ASC (Advanced Simulation and Computing) conference at Supercomputing 2006 (November 11-17, 2006). This presentation was based on the work of and jointly developed by Philip Bingham (ORNL), Lloyd Arrowood (Y-12), and Jens Gregor (UTK) and presented results in the application of iterative computed tomographic reconstruction for industrial components from work performed by this team.

Large Area Gamma Imager Tested at Lawrence Livermore
Tom Karnowski of ISMV traveled to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in November 2006 with PI Dr. Klaus Ziock of NSTD for additional integration work on the Large Area Imager, a mobile gamma ray imaging instrument designed to image radiation sources in suburban areas. Tom’s contribution was software to warp one-dimensional radiation signatures onto a two-dimensional map of the imager’s path using Geographic Information System (GIS) software (i.e., combining street map and aerial imagery). The software was recently converted to a multi-threaded architecture to accelerate its performance. During this trip the software was completely integrated with the instrument and several test runs were made around the laboratory to image test sources in the field. The software performed as expected, marking the first time the complete system was operated in real-time.

September / October Highlights 2006

ISMV Relocates to New Facilities
During the month of September, the ISMV Group relocated to the Engineering Technology Facility (Bldg. 5800) on the new East end of the ORNL campus. The move encompassed 14 offices and two laboratories, including a new clean room facility for our holographic microscopy research. Our office phones are the same, our new group fax number is 865-576-8993, and our postal address is,

FY 2007 LDRD Successes
Dr. Jeff Price was a co-PI on two LDRD projects that were awarded funding for FY2007. The first of these projects is entitled "Three-dimensional aberration corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy for studying microbiological systems" by Niels de Jonge (MSTD), S. Pennycook (MSTD), J. Morrell-Falvey (LSD), M. Doktycz (LSD), D. Peckys (MSTD), and J. Price (ESTD). The second project is entitled "Advanced Nuclear Fuel Development and Qualification" by Gary Bell (MSTD), E. Specht (MSTD), R. Dinwiddie (MSTD), R. Jaramillo (MSTD), R. Morris (MSTD), C. Baldwin (MSTD), E. Lara-Curzio (MSTD), J. Price (ESTD), and J. Binder (NTPO).

54th Defense Working Group on Nondestructive Testing
The presentation titled “Working Towards X-Ray Computed Tomography of Manufactured Objects: Reconstruction, Calibration, and Performance Testing” has been accepted for the 54th Defense Working Group on Nondestructive Testing (Oct 30-Nov2). This presentation is based on our research efforts in conjunction Y-12 and UT to provide robust, calibrated computed tomography measurements in industrial environments. The presentation will be delivered by Dr. Philip Bingham. Authors are Dr. Philip Bingham, Lloyd Arrowood (Y-12), and Prof. Jens Gregor (UTK).

Unrestrained Small Animal Imaging
The Awake Animal Imaging project achieved a significant milestone in October at Johns Hopkins. For the first time, a full Single-Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT) scan with motion tracking was made on an unrestrained, awake mouse injected with a technetium tracer. The motion tracking subsystem developed by ORNL (Drs. Justin Baba and Jim Goddard) monitors the real-time motion of the mouse’s head for changes in both position and orientation. This motion data is used to correct the 3D SPECT data that was acquired using a gamma detector developed by Jefferson Lab. Unrestrained animal imaging is important, particularly in brain imaging, to observe activity unaffected by anesthetics or the trauma from being immobilized.

American Centrifuge Exceeds Performance Target Levels in Testing
Raymond Tucker and Kathy Hylton are continuing to support the USEC uranium enrichment program in Oak Ridge. This program to optimize the performance of individual centrifuge machines destined for use by USEC (NYSE:USU) in its American Centrifuge Plant has demonstrated performance levels above the Company’s target level of 320 separative work units (SWU) per machine per year. USEC announced in early August that it had achieved performance essentially at the target level in tests during the spring under sub-optimal operating conditions. In recent weeks, scientists and engineers at the Company’s facilities at Oak Ridge, Tenn. have tested a centrifuge machine under more optimal conditions that demonstrated higher than the target level of 320 SWU. Information regarding specific performance beyond the target level is currently classified by the U.S. government. Contacts for additional information regarding this news release are: Investors, Steven Wingfield (301) 564-3354; Media, Elizabeth Stuckle (301) 564-3399.

Papers Accepted for SPIE Medical Imaging Conference
The ISMV Group has had three papers accepted for presentation at SPIE Medical Imaging, held at the Town & Country Resort, San Diego, CA, from February 17-22, 2007. The Medical Imaging meeting is the internationally recognized premier forum for reporting state-of-the-art research and development in medical imaging,

http://spie.org/conferences/calls/07/mi/

Jeff Price, Deniz Aykac, and Jon Wall (UT Graduate School of Medicine) authored a paper entitled "Improvements in level-set segmentation of 3D small animal imagery" that was accepted to the Image Processing conference of the SPIE Medical Imaging Symposium (San Diego, CA, February 2007).

Vincent Paquit, Jeff Price, R. Seulin (Univ. of Burgundy), F. Meriaudeau (Univ. of Burgundy), Ken Tobin, and Tom Ferrell (UTK) authored a paper entitled "Combining near-infrared illuminants to optimize venous imaging" that was accepted to the Visualization and Image-guided Procedures conference of the SPIE Medical Imaging Symposium (San Diego, CA, February 2007).

V. Priya Govindasamy, Kenneth W. Tobin, Thomas P Karnowski, Edward Chaum, “A Study of the Variability of Fundus Cameras on Automatic Retinal Image Analysis,” that was accepted to the Image Processing conference of the SPIE Medical Imaging Symposium (San Diego, CA, February 2007).

Tennessee Tech ECE Visits ORNL
Dr. Stephen Parke, Professor and Chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Tennessee Tech, Cookeville, TN, visited with the ISMV Group and the Engineering Science and Technology Division on October 27. Dr. Parke was invited to ORNL to review the research performed in the division and to make introductions to the staff and groups working in potentially collaborative technology areas. Dr. Parke is Chair of Dr. Mohamed Abdelrahman’s department at the university. Dr. Abdelrahman is currently working with the ISMV Group on sabbatical, supporting our research in the diagnosis of diabetic retinopathy. This research is being performed in collaboration with the University of Tennessee Health Science Center and is funded by the National Eye Institute.

August Highlights 2006

Tennessee Tech Professor Spending Sabbatical with ISMV
Prof. Mohammed Abdelrahman arrived at ORNL this August to spend a sabbatical semester with the Image Science and Machine Vision Group supporting research in biomedical imaging. Prof. Abdelrahman is with the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Tennessee Tech University (TTU) in Cookeville, TN. He has been pursuing research in sensor fusion, wireless sensors, intelligent control, integration of sensing and control, and instrumentation, with application of these topics primarily to the industrial field through the TTU Center for Manufacturing Research. While at ORNL, he will be focusing on image analysis and pattern recognition methods that support our research to detect and diagnose diabetic retinopathy in digital retinal imagery.

DHS Summer Interns Present Seminar on Iris Recognition
John Kelly from NC State and Cody Schoener from Texas A&M completed their Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Internship with the ISMV Group this August. This summer, John and Cody participated in the ongoing research of Ken Tobin, Jeff Price, and Tim Gee to support the implementation and testing of novel approaches to biometric iris recognition that address shortcomings in the current technology related to degraded iris image quality. The development, evaluation, and integration of biometrics are of particular importance to DHS in areas of Transportation Security R&D, particularly addressing areas of infrastructure protection such as automated access control of entry points. They concluded their summer visit with a technical seminar on August 3 titled “Iris Recognition Improvements and Expansion.”

Retinopathy Image Search and Analysis Website Goes Public
In support of our ongoing NIH research program (R01-EY017065) to develop methods for the early detection of diabetic retinopathy, we have published a public website to post research progress, publications, data resources, and demonstration software (http://www.ornl.gov/sci/risa/ ). Retinopathy Image Search and Analysis (RISA) uses a content-based image retrieval (CBIR) method to perform rapid analysis and diagnosis of digital retinal imagery through a telemedicine model. Our long-term goal is to improve eye health on a societal scale through lower cost and more efficient and timely diagnosis and referrals, access to expert diagnosis in underserved populations, and high-throughput methods to meet the growing need for screening in rapidly expanding at-risk populations worldwide. This ongoing research is a partnership between the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Memphis, TN, and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

New Chapter of the East Tennessee IEEE EMBS
Dr. Mohammed Ferdjallah with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Tennessee, and Dr. Ken Tobin with ORNL have agreed to act as Chairman and Vice-Chairman respectively for the newly formed East Tennessee Chapter of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society. Founding Officers at this time include, Drs. Ferdjallah and Tobin, Dr. Nance Ericson from ORNL, and Dr. Hairong Qi from the University of Tennessee. Our goals and objectives for the new chapter are to:

(1) Provide a forum for those who are working in the biomedical and medical research field in East Tennessee to network,
(2) Provide a mechanism for local companies to collaborate with to East Tennessee academic and laboratory institutions,
(3) Establish stronger ties between engineering research and the biological and medical community,
(4) Establish clinical-based research with East Tennessee medical institutions and local hospitals, and
(5) Organize a regional workshop and technical conference to promote collaboration and identify research strengths and strategies across the region.

The new EMBS will have it’s first opening celebration and organizational meeting on Wednesday September 20, 2006, at 3:00 PM. The meeting will be held in SERF 307, at the University of Tennessee Knoxville campus. All are welcome. If you would like to attend, please visit http://easttnembs.ece.utk.edu for details and directions, and please RSVP to Dr. Ferdjallah at ferdjallah@ece.utk.edu .

ISMV Publications for August
We have had a very prolific month this August in terms of papers submitted and/or selected for presentation and publication at conferences and in peer-reviewed journals:

J. Price, P. Bingham, C. Thomas Jr. “Improving resolution in microscopic holography by computationally fusing multiple, obliquely-illuminated object waves in the Fourier domain.” Submitted (August 2006) to Applied Optics.

V.P. Govindasamy, K.W. Tobin, T.P Karnowski, E. Chaum, “A Study of the Variability of Fundus Cameras on Automatic Retinal Image Analysis,” Submitted (August 2006) to the SPIE Medical Imaging Symposium, Image Processing Conference, February 2007.

V. Paquit, J. Price, R. Seulin, F. Meriaudeau, K. Tobin, R. Ferrell. “Combining near-infrared illuminants to optimize venous imaging.” Submitted (August 2006) to the SPIE Medical Imaging Symposium, Visualization and Image-guided Procedures Conference, February 2007.

J. Price, D. Aykac, J. Wall. “Improvements in Level Set Segmentation of 3D Small Animal Imagery.” Submitted (August 2006) to the SPIE Medical Imaging Symposium, Image Processing Conference, February 2007.

J. Price, D. Aykac, J. Hunn, A. Kercher. “Fully Automatic Image-based Characterization of Coated Particle Nuclear Fuel using Texture Segmentation.” Submitted (July 2006) to SPIE Electronic Imaging West Symposium, Machine Vision Applications in Industrial Inspection XV, January 2007.

K.W. Tobin, E. Chaum, “Computer-Aided Diagnosis of Diabetic Retinopathy,” SPIE Newsroom, Article 1824, 2006.

K.W. Tobin, D. Aykac, V.P. Govindasamy, S.S. Gleason, J. Gregor, T.P. Karnowski, J.R. Price, and J. Wall, “Image-based Informatics for Preclinical Biomedical Research,” 2nd International Symposium on Visual Computing, Lake Tahoe, Nevada, November 6-8, 2006 (Proc. To be published by Springer-Verlag).

J.S. Goddard, T.F. Gee, Hengliang Wang, and Alexander M. Gorbach, “Segmentation-Based Registration of Organs in Intraoperative Video Sequences,” 2nd International Symposium on Visual Computing, Lake Tahoe, Nevada, November 6-8, 2006 (Proc. To be published by Springer-Verlag).

T.F. Gee, “On Asymmetric Classifier Training for Detector Cascades,” 2nd International Symposium on Visual Computing, Lake Tahoe, Nevada, November 6-8, 2006 (Proc. To be published by Springer-Verlag).

June / July Highlights 2006

Large Area Gamma Imager Milestone Met
Thomas P. Karnowski traveled to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory with Principle Investigator Klaus Ziock of the Nuclear Science and Technology Division to integrate their developed software with the Large Area Imager at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL).  This represents a major milestone in this project which is developing a highly sensitive gamma imaging device capability for rapidly monitoring and surveying large spatial areas.  The software overlays the linear imaging data with aerial images and geographical information systems data to locate suspicious sources of gamma radiation.  

Y-12 PDRD Project Selected for Funding
For the past 3 years, Philip Bingham, Shaun Gleason, and Tom Karnowski have been working with Y-12 and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, on a Y-12 Plant Directed Research and Development (PDRD) program to apply iterative computed tomography (CT) reconstruction to inspection of industrial components.  In conjunction with this team, Philip has written a follow on proposal titled “Advanced Registration/Segmentation of CT Data” that was selected for PDRD funding beginning this next fiscal year.

Price Published in Journal of Microbiological Methods
"A novel fluorescence imaging technique combining deconvolution microscopy and spectral analysis for quantitative detection of opportunistic pathogens" has been published this month (August 2006) in the Journal of Microbiological Methods. The authors for this publication are M. Le Puil, J.P. Biggerstaff, B.L. Weidow, J.R. Price, S.A. Naser, D.C. White and R.S. Alberte. The abstract is:

A novel fluorescence imaging technique based on deconvolution microscopy and spectral analysis is presented here as an alternative to confocal laser scanning microscopy. It allowed rapid, specific and simultaneous identification of five major opportunistic pathogens, relevant for public health, in suspension and provided quantitative results.

ISMV Papers Accepted to IEEE EMBC 2006
Two papers from the ISMV Group have been accepted for presentation at the upcoming IEEE 2006 28th International Conference of the Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, to be held in New York, NY, this coming August.  These presentations and papers represent our latest research results in biomedical imaging:

J. Price, D. Aykac, J. Wall. “A 3D level sets method for segmenting the mouse spleen and follicles in volumetric microCT images.” Proceedings of the 2006 IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Conference (EMBC), September 2006 (to appear).

Thomas P. Karnowski, Priya Govindasamy, Kenneth W. Tobin Jr., and Ed Chaum, “Locating the Optic Nerve in Retinal Images: Comparing Model-Based and Bayesian Decision Methods,” Proceedings of the 2006 IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Conference (EMBC), September 2006 (to appear).

Paper Submitted to IEEE TMI
Deniz Aykac has submitted a full manuscript for review to the IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging describing the current status of research in small animal organ segmentation from anatomic CT.  Authors, co-authors, and the title include:

Deniz Aykac, Jeffery R. Price, Jonathan S. Wall, “Investigation of 3D Segmentation of Mouse Spleen in microCT using level set approach,” IEEE Trans. on Medical Imaging, August 2006 (submitted for review).

Albright Gives Presentation at Annual Meeting of the Acoustical Society
Austin Albright of the ISMV Group along with Venugopal Varma (NTSD) recently attended the 151st Annual Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in Providence, Rhode Island, one of the largest sound and acoustics conferences in the country.  Austin gave a presentation of his work on a prototype sensor system for detecting stress corrosion cracks (SCCs) in natural gas pipelines.  The title of the presentation was “Guided Waves for Stress Corrosion Crack Detection in Pipelines – Feature Selection and Classification.”  The presentation compared several of the feature selection techniques and their results when applied to the data collected using electromagnetic acoustic transducers (EMATs) to perform the non-contact, non-destructive, ultrasonic inspection.  The full reference for the conference proceedings is:

Albright, A. P., Varma, V. K., Tucker, R. W., and Bingham, P. R., “Guided Waves for Stress Corrosion Crack Detection in Pipelines – Feature Selection and Classification”, 151st Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Providence, RI, June 2006.

April / May Highlights 2006

Austin Albright Awarded a 2006 DHS Fellowship
Austin Albright has been working with Raymond Tucker and others in the ISMV group since June 2004 on a research effort funded by NETL to develop an in-line sensor system for detecting stress corrosion cracks in natural gas pipelines. He has had a number of unique opportunities during this time such as participating in two DOE\NETL demonstrations with the natural gas pipeline inspection system project headed up by Dr. Venugopal K. Varma (NTSD). While working with ORNL, Austin was encouraged to continue his education by pursuing a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering through the University of Tennessee. Based on his experience and the encouragement of his colleagues at ORNL, Austin applied for a competitive Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Fellowship which was awarded this May. DHS fellows receive full tuition and fees for two semesters plus a monthly stipend. The fellowship is renewable for up to two additional years. The ISMV group is proud to have played a part in seeing one of our “summer” students receive this impressive fellowship and we are looking forward to working with Austin as he progresses through his graduate program.

U.S. Patent Issued for ORNL Digital Holography Technology
Dr. Jeffery Price was granted U.S. Patent 7,038,787 for "Content-based Fused Off-axis Illumination Direct-to-Digital Holography." The invention comprises a method and apparatus for improving both the spatial and height resolution of a direct-to-digital holography (DDH) imaging system, using off-axis illumination, in a manner dependent upon the content of the observed object. Improved resolution is achieved through digital processing of multiple holograms of the given object captured under varying illumination angles. The invention will improve holographic imaging capabilities by allowing off-axis illumination to adapt to the characteristics of the observed object. This patent represents one of several patents in ORNL’s portfolio of technology for DDH. The primary application to date has been in the semiconductor industry for inspecting high-aspect ratio structures on patterned wafers. Other application areas under investigation include photolithographic mask inspection and metrology and the characterization of MEMS devices.

SEMATECH Lithography Forum 2006
Tom Karnowski attended the 2006 SEMATECH Litho Forum in Vancouver British Columbia the week of May 25th to present his work from an ORNL Seed Money project related to new technologies for maskless lithography. The title of the presentation was "Constant Data Rate Compression for Maskless Lithography Data Path". The work proposes an innovative means of compressing print control data to enable future maskless lithography devices to perform at rapid speeds rivaling that of conventional mask-based lithography. The three-day gathering of global lithography experts provided extensive readiness assessments of candidate lithography technologies for the 32 nm half-pitch and beyond technology generations. SEMATECH organized the first Litho Forum in 2004 to focus industry attention on rapidly proliferating technology choices.

ISMV / UTHSC Attend Conferences on Retina Research
Drs. Ken Tobin and Ed Chaum and Mr. Tom Karnowski attended two important conferences in April and May related to vision research and telemedicine. The first meeting was the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) in Ft. Lauderdale, FL, from April 30-May 4 where Ken Tobin and Ed Chaum presented a program overview of the National Eye Institute R01 grant awarded to the University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC) and ORNL in September 2005. The second meeting was the American Telemedicine Association (ATA) Annual meeting in San Diego, CA, from May 7-10. The ATA meeting focused on clinical and business issues related to telemedicine. Ken Tobin and Tom Karnowski gave presentations at the ATA on new methods for the detection of important anatomic structures in retinal imagery and the overall goal of providing a telemedicine capability to improve remote, low-cost, high-throughput detection of diabetic retinopathy in susceptible patients.

Price Attends Analytical and Quantitative Light Microscopy Course
Dr. Jeffery Price attended the annual Analytical and Quantitative Light Microscopy (AQLM) Course at the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, MA from May 4-12. AQLM is "a comprehensive and intensive course in light microscopy" that "emphasizes the quantitative issues that are critical to the proper interpretation of images obtained with modern wide-field and confocal microscopes." It is expected that the information from this course will contribute significantly to the ISMV Group's goal of increasing collaboration with biological scientists who employ microscopic imaging in their work.

Department of Homeland Security Summer Interns Arrive
John Kelly from North Carolina State University and Cody Schoener from Texas A&M began their internship with the ISMV Group in May. Both of these interns are receiving funding from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) through a summer grant program to work with the ISMV group in the area of iris recognition technologies. Through this grant they will support the implementation and testing of novel approaches to biometric recognition that address shortcomings in the current technology related to degraded iris image quality. The development, evaluation, and integration of biometrics are of particular importance to DHS in areas of Transportation Security R&D, particularly addressing areas of infrastructure protection such as automated access control of entry points.

John Kelly

Cody Schoener

March Highlights 2006

Gamma-Video Portal Monitoring Project Funded

Dr. Klaus Ziock of the Nuclear Material Detection and Characterization Group in the Nuclear Science and Technology Division is the Principle Investigator on an exciting new project funded by the DHS/DNDO. In this work, gamma-ray imaging will be used to significantly improve the performance of passive portal monitors by automatically detecting and tracking vehicles in video images. The vehicle location will be passed to a gamma-ray imager that will use it to integrate the radiation signature from individual vehicles as they track from pixel-to-pixel in the gamma- ray image. The project leverages previous DHS funding on the Large Area Imager scientific proto-type that is now nearing completion and previous video target acquisition and tracking work performed by Tim Gee of ISMV under the ORNL LDRD program. Tim Gee and Tom Karnowski of ISMV contributed to the proposal effort and will serve as key team members handling the video tracking aspect of this development effort.

ISMV Participates in NIST Iris Challenge Evaluation Workshop

Ken Tobin attended the NIST-sponsored Iris Challenge Evaluation (ICE) workshop held in Arlington, VA, on March 22-23. ICE is an iris recognition technology development program being conducted by NIST and sponsored by six other U.S. Government agencies. The goal of the ICE is to facilitate technology development (Phase I), conduct an assessment of the current state-of-the-art for iris recognition and establish a baseline for future assessments (Phase II). The goal of workshop was to give ICE participants an opportunity to present their results from the first challenge problem (ICE v1.0). and to provide the ICE Project Manager an opportunity to present a summary of the ICE v1.0 results and provide information on the ICE Phase II. Ken Tobin, Jeff Price, and Tim Gee have been participating in ICE through an ORNL Seed Money project to perform iris segmentation and recognition research and development.

Biomedical Imaging Papers Submitted to the IEEE EMBS Conference

Two ISMV group members have submitted papers to the 28th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS), to be held from August 30 to September 3, 2006 in New York City. The general theme of the conference this year will be "Engineering Revolutions in BioMedicine" covering the broad spectrum of the medical physics, biological and biomedical sciences, and biomedical and clinical engineering. Jeff Price, with co-author Deniz Aykac and Jon Wall (UT Graduate School of Medicine), has submitted a paper titled “A 3D Level Sets Method for Segmenting the Mouse Spleen and Follicles in Volumetric MicroCT Imagery.” Tom Karnowski, with co-authors Priya Govindasamy, Ken Tobin, and Ed Chaum (UT Health Science Center), has submitted a paper titled “Locating the Optic Nerve in Fundus Images: Comparing Model-based and Bayesian Methods.” Both of these topics support the group’s Biomedical Imaging program.

Video Support Work Begun for Spallation Neutron Source Target

Tom Karnowski, with the assistance of Jeff Price, has been analyzing video imagery of Helium flow in mercury for Mark Wendel of the SNS Experimental Facilities Division Group. The high-energy proton beam of the SNS creates cavitation bubbles in the mercury target, which may cause pitting and damage to the stainless steel containment vessel. Bubbling helium on the beam side of the vessel serves as a sheath to protect the vessel surface. Tom has been using digital image processing techniques to analyze videos taken of a mercury test target. The objective is to characterize the helium bubble behavior to help determine the best bubbling conditions to prolong the life of the containment vessel, reducing maintenance costs and the overall expense of running the SNS.

Abstract Selected for Acoustical Society of America Meeting

Austin Albright, an ORISE HERE student with the ISMV Group has had his paper titled “Using Electromagnetic Acoustic Transducer Signals to Detect Stress Corrosion Cracks in Natural Gas Pipelines” selected for presentation at the 151st Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America to be held in Providence, Rhode Island on June 7. This paper represents research performed in support of the DOE/NETL Gas Delivery Reliability Program at ORNL.

January / February Highlights 2006

DOE/NETL Gas Delivery Reliability Program

During the week of January 9th 2006, Austin Albright, Philip Bingham of the ISMV Group, and Venu Varma (NSTD) participated in a blind-test demonstration of pipeline inspection technologies in Columbus, Ohio, sponsored by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration R&D Program and the DOE/NETL Gas Delivery Reliability Program. The data collected during the demonstration by the ORNL system was subsequently analyzed and the results were submitted on February 17. The measurements showed excellent correlation in the detection of known surface corrosion cracks, a key flaw in pipeline systems. A follow-up visit is planned in early March to compare the analytical results with known pipe conditions.

SPIE Medical Imaging Poster / Paper Wins Award

Vincent Paquit, a graduate student from the University of Burgundy, France, working with the ISMV Group, was awarded the best poster award at SPIE Medical Imaging in San Diego, CA, on February 13. Vincent’s poster and paper were titled “Near-infrared imaging and structured light ranging for automatic catheter insertion,” with co-authors Jeffery R. Price, Ralph Seulin, Fabrice Meriaudeau, Ruby H. Farahi, Kenneth W. Tobin and Thomas L. Ferrell. Priya Govindasamy and Ken Tobin also presented a poster at the meeting titled “Characterization of the optic disc in retinal imagery using a probabilistic approach,” with co-authors Ed Chaum, Tom Karnowski, and Omer Sezer.

Vincent Paquit with his award-winning poster at SPIE Medical Imaging

Priya Govindasamy and Ken Tobin also presented a poster at SPIE Medical Imaging

Price Admitted to Marine Biological Laboratory Microscopy Course

Jeff Price of the ISMV Group was granted admission to the Marine Biological Laboratory’s “Analytical and Quantitative Light Microscopy” special topics course for May 4-12, 2006. This course, limited to only 30 students, is a comprehensive and intensive course in light microscopy that emphasizes the quantitative issues that are critical to the proper interpretation of images obtained with modern wide-field and confocal microscopes. The course is taught by a series of world-renowned scientists and engineers. Jeff¹s attendance should prove especially beneficial to the ISMV group in developing new collaborations with biological users of light microscopy.

U.S. Patent Issued on SHI Technology

A patent related to the spatial heterodyne interferometry (SHI) imaging technology developed by ORNL was issued in February by the U.S. Patent Office. This technology was initially developed and applied to reflective surface imaging of high-aspect-ratio features on semiconductor wafers. It was later extended to the measurement of the phase shifting properties of phase-shift photolithographic masks in both reflection and transmission modes. The patent is titled: “Spatial-Heterodyne Interferometry for Reflection and Transmission (SHIRT) Measurements,” by G.R. Hanson, P.R. Bingham, and K.W. Tobin, UT-Battelle, LLC, Invention Disclosure No. 1225, DOE S-101,813, U.S. Patent No. 6,999,178 B2, February 14, 2006.

ISMV Asked to Submit Full Proposal to NIJ Solicitation

Philip Bingham, Jim Goddard, and Tim Gee of the ISMV Group were asked to submit a full proposal to the National Institute of Justice’s (NIJ’s) Biometrics Technologies solicitation (2006-NIJ-1213). The concept paper titled “A Rapid Non-Contact Method for Fingerprint Acquisition” was reviewed and a full proposal was requested by NIJ for submission by March 17, 2006. If selected for funding, the proposed method will use structured lighting techniques to rapidly acquire 3-dimensional topology of the fingerprint by non-contact means.

Invention Disclosures Selected for Filing

In February, two invention disclosures were elected by UT-Battelle, LLC, for filing with the U.S. Patent Office. ID No. 1596 is titled “A Method for the Diagnosis of Blinding Eye Disease using Image Content and an Archive of Diagnosed Human Patient Data,” with inventors K.W. Tobin, T.P. Karnowski, an E. Chaum. ID No. 1485 is “A Method for the Reduction of Image Content Redundancy in Large Image Libraries,” with inventors K.W. Tobin, T.P. Karnowski, and F. Lakhani. These technologies are being applied to a retinal diagnostics research program supported by the National Eye Institute of the National Institutes of Health (1 R01 EY017065-01) in collaboration with the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Memphis, TN.

Visit by Oklahoma State University Faculty to Discuss Retinal Research

Professors Guoliang Fan Gary Yen, with the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of Oklahoma State University visited ORNL and the ISMV Group on February 7 to discuss research related to retinal image analysis. Fan and Yen presented a seminar titled “Advanced Retinal Imaging for Diabetic Retinopathy,” which reviewed their work in facilitate and promote non-invasive evaluation of diabetic retinopathy by applying advanced retinal imaging approaches. Research topics of mutual interest where discussed with the goal of identifying potential future collaborations and opportunities for working with Oklahoma students.

Karnowski Abstract Accepted for Presentation at ATA

Tom Karnowski had his abstract titled “Automated Image Analysis to Characterize Prevalent Structures in Digital Retinal Imagery,” accepted for presentation at the 11th Annual Meeting and Exposition of the American Telemedicine Association (ATA), scheduled for May 7-10 in San Diego, CA. Co-authors on this paper are Ed Chaum, Priya Govindasamy, and Ken Tobin. This is one of two papers now accepted for presentation at the ATA by the ISMV Group. The second is titled “Automatically Diagnosing Retinopathy using Digital Fundus Imagery,” to be presented by Ken Tobin, with co-authors Ed Chaum, Priya Govindasamy, and Tom Karnowski.

Karnowski Gives Invited Seminar at UTK

On February 17 Tom Karnowski gave an invited presentation titled “The Past and Present of Content-Based Image Retrieval (CBIR) at ORNL” to the Electrical Engineering Department at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. The ISMV Group at ORNL has worked in CBIR since 1998. His seminar reviewed past work in the semiconductor defect arena and discussed current research in applying CBIR technology to retinal imagery. The eventual goal of our retinal research is to provide a computer-assisted diagnostic tool to assist in broad-based screening for diabetic retinopathy and other vision-threatening diseases.

Tobin Invited to Join ACIVS 2006 Program Committee

Ken Tobin was invited by to be a member of the Program Committee for the 8th Annual Symposium on Advanced Concepts for Intelligent Vision Systems (ACIVS) to be held at the University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium, September 18-21, 2006. ACIVS 2006 is a conference focusing on techniques for building adaptive, intelligent, safe and secure imaging systems and will include topics such as vision systems, image and video processing, pattern analysis, remote sensing, video coding, and system architecture and performance evaluation. The symposium is being sponsored by IEEE Signal Processing Society and EURASIP, with proceedings published by the Springer-Verlag Lecture Notes in Computer Science Series. Symposium details can be found at http://acivs.org/acivs2006/ .

December Highlights 2005

International Symposium on Visual Computing

Dr. Ken Tobin presented “Large-Scale Geospatial Indexing for Image-Based Retrieval and Analysis,” at the International Symposium on Visual Computing (ISVC) on December 5-7, in Lake Tahoe, Nevada. Co-authors on this paper, published by Springer-Verlag Lecture Notes in Computer Science, are Budhendra L. Bhaduri, Eddie A. Bright, Anil Cheriyadat, Thomas P. Karnowski, Paul J. Palathingal, Thomas E. Potok, and Jeffery R. Price. The goal of ISVC was to provide a common forum for researchers, scientists, engineers and practitioners throughout the world to present their latest research findings, ideas, developments and applications in the broader area of visual computing. Dr. Tobin served on the International Program Committee for the symposium and also chaired a half-day session on Visualization.

Retina Research Paper Accepted for 11th Annual ATA Meeting

Dr. Ken Tobin, Tom Karnowski, Priya Govindasamy, and Dr. Ed Chaum (UT Memphis), have been notified that their paper titled “Automatically Diagnosing Retinopathy using Digital Fundus Imagery” was accepted for oral presentation at the 11th Annual American Telemedicine Association (ATA) Meeting and Exposition, to be held in San Diego, CA, in May 2006. The meeting highlights presentations documenting the effects of telemedicine on the quality, access and efficiency of healthcare, based on scientific research. The research to be published reflects progress made on our NIH National Eye Institute Grant titled “Automated Screening for Diabetic Retinopathy by Content” (1 R01 EY017065-01), a collaboration between the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis, and the Image Science and Machine Vision Group at ORNL.

Preparation Complete for NGI Demonstration

During December, Austin Albright and Raymond Tucker have made significant advances in the reliability and consistency response of the ORNL-developed in-line sensor system for detecting stress corrosion cracks (SCCs) in natural gas pipelines, a program funded by NETL. ORNL will be participating in a blind test and comparison of multiple systems at the Battelle Pipeline Testing Facility in Ohio from January 9-13, 2006. This demonstration provides the last opportunity under the NETL program to prove the ORNL techniques are working for SCCs. After this demonstration, Albright and Tucker will be switching focus to determine how best to distinguish SCCs from other corrosion defects using extended feature analysis and pattern recognition methods.

New Administrative Assistant for the ISMV Group

Desiree Watson-Parker has joined the Image Science and Machine Vision Group as our temporary Administrative Assistant. Desiree is taking the place of Janet Miller who is currently away on medical leave. She has a BS in Electrical Engineering Technology from Southern University in New Orleans and a Certificate of Paralegal Studies from the Institute of Legal Studies, Metairie, Louisiana. Please join us in welcome Desiree to the group!

October / November Highlights 2005

Seed Money Award Granted for Medical Image Registration

Dr. Jim Goddard and Tim Gee Seed Money funding in November titled “Preliminary Investigation of Medical Image Registration Using Deformable Models.” The goal of this project is to support NIH research for infrared image registration of organs during exploratory and transplant surgery for both humans and animals. A major problem for analysis is that movement occurs during surgery due to respiration, blood profusion, and external effects causing unacceptable alignment through the image temporal sequence. Alignment is difficult to achieve since motion is not global but generally local in nature. The soft organs and tissues are not rigid bodies but have deformable surfaces. While medical image registration has been well researched, the application of deformable registration to two-dimensional time image sequences with non-rigid 3D structures has not been extensively studied. The focus of this research is to develop and analyze deformable model alignment methods to this image registration problem.

DHS Selects Thrust Area Coordinators for the Office of Research and Development

The Office of Research and Development (ORD) announced its Fiscal Year 2006 Thrust Area Coordinators (TACs) and Deputy Thrust Area Coordinators (dTACs) selections on November 4. Dr. Ken Tobin has been selected as the TAC for the Border and Transportation Security (BTS) Thrust Area. The BTS thrust area addresses multimodal biometrics, latent fingerprints, rapid biometric evaluations, and biometric image and feature quality and also explores and evaluates ergonomics, human factors, and usability issues of biometric sensors, software, and systems.

Visit by Prof. Mohamed Abdelrahman, Tennessee Tech University

Prof. Mohamed Abdelrahman, an Associate Professor with the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Tennessee Tech, visited with the Image Science and Machine Vision Group in November. He presented a seminar describing the results of an ongoing research collaboration with the High Temperature Materials Lab at ORNL. The main objectives of the project was the development of a robust sensing technology for the characterization of foam patterns used in Lost Foam (LF) casting and green sand molds. The project also focused on the development of a robust sensing technology for the monitoring of metal fills in LF casting and the integration of research and education in a manner that positively enhances the image of the casting industry as it supports the previous research objectives.

Seminars on ORNL Retinal Diagnostics Research

Dr. Ken Tobin was invited to give two seminars on computer-aided retinal diagnostics research currently funded by the National Eye Institute of the NIH. A presentation was made to the Technical Society of Knoxville on October 24, and an Engineering Colloquium Lecture was made to the Department of Electrical Engineering at Norfolk State University, Norfolk, Virginia, on October 27. The title of the seminar was “An Image-Based Method for Rapid Screening of Diabetic Retinopathy,” and described the development of a retinopathy image search and analysis technology that uses a content-based image retrieval method to perform rapid analysis and diagnosis of digital retinal imagery in a telemedicine environment. This research is a collaboration between ORNL and the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Memphis, Tennessee.

New Technology Transfer Representative for the ISMV Group

Mark Reeves, Commercialization Manager with the Office of Technology Transfer and Economic Development, is now representing the Image Science and Machine Vision Group. For inquiries related to licensing or partnering with respect to specific intellectual properties developed by the ISMV Group, please contact Mark.

September Highlights 2005

Seed Money Award Granted for Iris Recognition Research

Dr. Ken Tobin, Dr. Jeff Price, and Tim Gee were awarded $125K of Seed Money funding to perform iris segmentation and recognition research and development and to participate in the NIST Iris Challenge Evaluation (ICE). ICE is the first large-scale, open, independent technology evaluation effort for iris recognition. The primary goal of ICE is to promote the development and advancement of iris recognition technology and assess the state-of-the-art capability. Through this research we will implement and test a novel approach for biometric recognition that addresses shortcomings in the current technology relating to degraded iris image quality.

NIH Grant Award Officially Announced

The National Eye Institute (NEI), at its June 9th Council meeting, fully funded our collaborative R-01 grant application entitled “Automated Screening for Diabetic Retinopathy by Content” (1 R01 EY017065-01). This award results directly from the “content-based image retrieval” pilot research project funded through the ORNL Seed Money program in FY 2004-2005. The NEI award leverages the original seed money investment into a 3-year $1.62 Million NIH research program and a long-term collaboration between ORNL and the University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC), including the UT Center for Health Innovation and Community Outreach. Dr. Ken Tobin, Tom Karnowski, and Priya Govindasamy of the ISMV Group have been collaborating with Dr. Ed Chaum of UTHSC on this research.

SEA Award For Gas Centrifuge Support

Kathy Hylton has received a Significant Event Award from the Energy and Engineering Sciences Directorate of ORNL for her work supporting the implementation of gas centrifuge technology. United States Enrichment Corp. (USEC) is demonstrating and plans to deploy what it expects will be the most efficient uranium enrichment technology in the world. Since 1999, USEC and ORNL have conducted centrifuge development work, primarily under a DOE-approved Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA). This work has enabled USEC to take advantage of recent commercial advances in construction materials and automated manufacturing methods to develop a centrifuge machine that achieves world-class performance.

Abstracts Submitted to the American Telemedicine Association Annual Meeting

Dr. Ken Tobin, Tom Karnowski, and Priya Govindasamy, along with Collaborator Dr. Ed Chaum from the UT Health Science Center, Memphis, have submitted two abstracts to the 11th Annual Meeting of the American Telemedicine Association, scheduled for May 2006 in San Diego, CA. The two presentations are “Automatically Diagnosing Retinopathy using Digital Fundus Imagery,” and “Automated Image Analysis to Characterize Prevalent Structures in Digital Retinal Imagery.”

Paper Accepted for 2006 SPIE Electronic Imaging Symposium

A paper by Dr. Jeff Price entitled "New developments in image-based characterization of coated particle nuclear fuel" was accepted for oral presentation at the 2006 Machine Vision Applications in Industrial Inspection Conference in San Jose, CA, part of SPIE’s Electronic Imaging Symposium. Co-authors on the paper were Deniz Aykac, John Hunn (M&C), Andy Kercher (M&C), and Bob Morris (M&C).

Presentation at the Hamilton Eye Institute

Dr. Ken Tobin gave an invited presentation titled “Small Animal Image Analysis and Data Management for CT and SPECT” at the Nanotechnology Applications in Medicine Symposium, held at the Hamilton Eye Institute, in Memphis on September 28. The symposium was developed to present and discuss current multidisciplinary research in the area of nanotechnology and its potential applications in biomedical research and medicine. Dr. Tobin’s presentation reviewed ORNL’s recent research activities in the development of new small animal imaging instrumentation, image reconstruction algorithms for unrestrained animal imaging, image processing for automated organ segmentation, and concepts for image-based data management and datamining. This research encompasses collaborations across multiple organizations and institutions including ORNL’s Mammalian Genetics Program (the Mouse House), the Engineering Science and Technology Division, UT’s Computer Science Department, and UT’s Graduate School of Medicine.

August Highlights 2005

August Technology, Inc. Announces New Product Based on ORNL Technology

August Technology, Inc., of Bloomington, MN, showcased a new automatic defect classification (ADC) technology at Semicon West in July. The product, called True ADC, is built upon the content-based image-mining technology developed by the ISMV group (UT-Battelle Inventions 0668, 0759, 0883, and Copyrights 40000031,32,54, and 53). The company states "TrueADC harnesses the power of an actual database of your defect images to overcome the limitations and frustrations of traditional ADC. TrueADC ensures database lookup and classification. Response to the tool occurs in less than 1 second. TrueADC allows recipe sharing and engineering control of operator classifications before entering the database, enabling consistent performance." August is a leading supplier of macro defect inspection and analysis tools (NASDAQ exchange symbol AUGT) and worked with ORNL under contract beginning in the fall of 2004 to transfer and integrate the technology.

Micro Computed Tomography Paper Selected as “Outstanding”

Deniz Aykac, Dr. Jeffery Price, and Dr. Jon Wall (UT Graduate School of Medicine) have had their paper titled “3D Segmentation of the Mouse Spleen in microCT via Active Contours” selected as “outstanding” for the upcoming 2005 IEEE Medical Imaging Conference to be held in Puerto Rico, October 23-29. The 2005 MIC accepted approximately 330 submissions for poster presentation. Of these, 20 were selected as outstanding and were awarded premium poster status.

Associate Editor for the Journal of Electronic Imaging

Dr. Kenneth Tobin has been invited to be an Associate Editor for the SPIE Journal of Electronic Imaging. He will be responsible for the area of Vision Systems, i.e., papers that deal with hardware and architectural aspects of novel imaging systems.

Iris Recognition Research Initiated

Dr. Kenneth Tobin, Dr. Jeff Price, and Mr. Tim Gee have registered to participate in the NIST Iris Challenge Evaluation (ICE). Dr. Tobin also attended the kick-off ICE workshop held in Arlington, VA, on August 17. This is the first large-scale, open, independent technology evaluation for iris recognition. The primary goal of ICE is to promote the development and advancement of iris recognition technology and assess the state-of-the-art capability. ICE is open to academia, industry, and research institutes. In support of this effort a proposal has been submitted to the ORNL Seed Money Committee titled “Participation in the NIST Iris Challenge Evaluation: Algorithms for Improving Iris Recognition.” The proposal will be defended at the September Seed Money meeting.

Venous Imaging Paper Submitted to SPIE Medical Imaging

Vincent Paquit, a graduate research assistant working with the ISMV Group from the University of Burgundy, Le Creusot, France, submitted the following paper to SPIE’s Medical Imaging 2006: Paquit, J. Price, R. Seulin, F. Meriadeau, K. Tobin. "Near-infrared imaging and structured light ranging for automatic catheter insertion." This research supports a DARPA program for automated vein catheterization.

NIH Grant Funding Continuation Approved

Full funding was granted for the fourth (and final) year of a UT and ORNL collaborative NIH project entitled "High Resolution SPECT/CT Imaging of Systemic AA-Amyloidosis in Mice" (Lead PI is Jon Wall, UT Graduate School of Medicine). Dr. Jeffery Price is the ORNL Co-PI. ISMV has been developing automated image segmentation methods to locate organ boundaries. Final year total funding is ~$950K, of which $330K will come to ORNL.

Maritime Security Research Proceeds

The U.S. faces a severe national terrorist threat to its maritime infrastructure and ORNL is addressing some of these concerns through an LDRD program called "ORION" led by Dr. Robert Patton of the Computer Science and Engineering Division, in collaboration with Timothy Gee and Dr. Ken Tobin of the ISMV Group. As a critical part of this effort, ORNL is collaborating with U.S. ports on both the east and west coasts to develop risk-based threat scenario applications that represents real-world situations using and fusing real world data. This ORNL LDRD program is entering it's third year.

ISMV Patent Issued for ESDS

The Enclosed Space Detection System (ESDS) developed by Raymond Tucker was issued by the U.S. Patent Office (Patent No. 6,873,921 B1, issued March 29, 2005). The ESDS is a device that can detect the presence of a human being hiding in a vehicle. It is intended for use at any portal where it is desirable to search vehicular traffic to assure that no one enters or leaves a secure area by concealing themselves in a vehicle. The device works by detecting the motion of the vehicle caused by the shock wave produced by a beating heart. The device was originally developed under the sponsorship of the DOE Office of Safeguards and Security to augment portal security at sensitive DOE sites.

June/July Highlights 2005

Pattern Recognition and Complexity Modeling Workshop

Dr. Jeffery Jeff Price was an invited panel member at the Pattern Recognition and Complexity Modeling Workshop hosted by the MITRE Corporation in McLean, VA on July 26, 2005. This workshop was a part of MITRE’s Science and Technology Expert Partnership (STEP) program and was attended by experts in pattern recognition as well as defense and intelligence analysts.

Navy RFID Pilot Project Successful

Kathy Hylton was the technical lead from ORNL for the Navy RFID pilot in Norfolk, VA (DDNV). This project had a very aggressive schedule that was successfully met. The project started on June 1, 2005. The portal equipment for two conveyors was designed, procured, tested, and installed at DDNV the week of June 20th. The ORNL portion of the pilot ran from July 12 – July 22 with very successful results. ORNL continues to be a trusted resource for the DoD in the RFID arena.

Mitotic Spindle Research Published

The following paper was recently made available at the Journal of Biomedical Optics web site and will be in the upcoming print edition: J. Price, D. Aykac, S. Gleason, K. Chourey, Y. Liu. “Quantitative Comparison of Mitotic Spindles by Confocal Image Analysis,” Journal of Biomedical Optics, Vol. 10, No. 4, July/August 2005. The mitotic spindle is a sub-cellular protein structure that facilitates chromosome segregation and is crucial to cell division. This paper describes an image processing approach to quantitatively characterize and compare mitotic spindles that have been imaged three-dimensionally using confocal microscopy with fixed-cell preparations. The goal of this research was to aid biologists in detecting differences between spindles that may not be apparent under subjective visual inspection, and furthermore, to eventually automate such analysis in high-throughput scenarios (thousands of images) where manual inspection would be unreasonable. Experimental results on positive- and negative-control data indicate that the proposed approach is indeed effective; differences are detected when it is known they do exist (positive-control) and no differences are detected when there are none (negative-control). In two other experimental comparisons, results indicate structural spindle differences that biologists had not observed previously. This research was supported by ORNL Seed Money program.

Small Animal Imaging Paper Accepted for IEEE Medical Imaging

Deniz Aykac, Dr. Jeffery Price, and Dr. Jon Wall (UT Graduate School of Medicine) have had their paper titled “3D Segmentation of the Mouse Spleen in microCT via Active Contours” accepted for presentation at the IEEE Medical Imaging Conference, Puerto Rico, October 23-29, 2005. This research has been performed in support of an NIH grant to investigate the impact of amyloid deposits on organ function using mouse models. Amyloid plaques (which are misfolded proteins) are the hallmark of human disease such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. In this paper a novel method for 3D segmentation of the mouse spleen in X-ray CT (microCT) data is presented. Our approach is based upon the method of active contours for smooth edges. We introduce a simple statistical weighting scheme that improves region contrast and segmentation performance. We extend the 2D approach to 3D by slice-to-slice processing, including the 3D flow of image statistics. The technique requires no training and operates semi-automatically, requiring only the entry of a single point within the spleen.

May Highlights 2005

Face Recognition Paper in High Demand

Dr. Jeffery Price's and Mr. Tim Gee's paper titled "Face recognition using direct, weighted linear discriminant analysis and modular subspaces" was the second most downloaded article from the Journal of Pattern Recognition for the period January-December 2004. The article appeared in the February 2005 print edition (vol. 38, no.2., pp. 209-219) and was available online beginning in November 2004.

Digital Holography Presented at ICONO / LAT 2005, St. Petersburg, Russia

Dr. Kenneth Tobin gave an invited presentation at the International Conference on Lasers Applications, and Technologies in St. Petersburg, Russia the week of May 11-15. This conference was organized by the Russian Academy of Sciences and the St. Petersburg State University of Information Technologies, Mechanics, and Optics. Dr. Tobin presented the paper "Optical Spatial Heterodyned Interferometry for Applications in Semiconductor Inspection and Metrology,” and served as chairman for the conference on Laser Sensing, Imaging, and Information Technologies VII.

University of Tennessee Student Begins Work with ISMV

In May, Thomas Benson, a Ph.D. student with the Computer Science Department at the University of Tennessee, began working with Dr. Philip Bingham and the ISMV Group in the area of industrial computed tomography (CT), focusing on iterative reconstruction techniques. He will be comparing different modeling approaches and exploring techniques for CT reconstruction of objects with opaque (highly attenuating) components. Thomas is a student of Prof. Jens Gregor who has been collaborating with the ISMV Group for several years now in areas of small animal CT / SPECT imaging and iterative reconstruction techniques.

New RFID Work for the U.S. Navy

ORNL received funding in May from the Navy for the design and development of two RFID conveyor portal systems to be installed at Norfolk, VA. This work follows on to the highly successful RFID development effort that has been ongoing with the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), which has involved developing working system designs, test plans, and deployment of RFID enabling hardware and systems throughout DLA’s main distribution warehouses. Kathy Hylton from ISMV will be working with Ken Weaver from the Analog and Digital Systems Group to support this new Navy effort for ORNL.

UT-Battelle Invention Disclosure on Unrestrained Animal Imaging

Dr. Jim Goddard has submitted the UT-Battelle Invention Disclosure, a “Method for motion tracking during tomographic scanning.” This invention disclosure includes both Dr. Goddard and Dr. Shaun Gleason (currently on entrepreneurial leave from ORNL) and is based on research in small animal SPECT and CT imaging being performed for the U.S. DOE Office of Biological and Environmental Research.

April Highlights 2005

ISMV Hosts NIST Advanced Technology Program Review

Dr. Philip Bingham, Janet Miller, and Dr. Ken Tobin hosted this quarter’s NIST-ATP program review meeting on April 20. ORNL developed and licensed a patented holographic microscopy technology to start-up company nLine Corp. of Austin, TX, in 1999. nLine and ORNL then applied for and were awarded a NIST-ATP grant to develop a highly sensitive, high-speed semiconductor wafer inspection tool for characterizing high-aspect ratio features such as contacts, vias, and deep trenches. The ORNL Program Review meeting was attended by representatives of NIST, nLine Corp., Sarnoff Corp. of Camden, NJ, Light Age Inc. of Somerset, NJ, and InterScience Inc. of Troy NY.

ISMV Participates in Neutron Radiography and Tomography Workshop

Dr. Cam Hubbard of the Metals and Ceramics Division organized a workshop on April 11 to explore the “need, applications, and technical parameters for a new Neutron Tomography and Radiography instrument (or instruments) in the United States.” Dr. Hubbard invited Dr. Tobin to give a presentation describing the status of image-based processing and analysis as it could relate to neutron imaging at facilities such as HFIR and SNS. Dr. Tobin described the group’s small animal imaging programs for X-ray CT and SPECT nuclear imaging, applications of image-based metrology with examples of the group’s work in semiconductor and TRISO fuel metrology, and applications of image mining and data management to assist researchers in the use of historical data for research and diagnosis.

Knights Technology Updates ORNL SSA Technology for Semiconductor Yield Management

Tom Karnowski hosted an assignee in April from Knights Technology, Inc. through an MSOF agreement. The goal was to support an upgrade of the ORNL-developed technology for spatial signature analysis (SSA) that is currently used in Knight’s SPaR™ product. The SSA technology was developed by Tom Karnowski, Dr. Ken Tobin, and Dr. Shaun Gleason at ORNL through a WFO program with SEMATECH of Austin, TX, around 1996. The technology underwent several years of field testing in the semiconductor industry and was licensed to several IC fabricators and industry suppliers. SSA detects process-specific patterns of defects produced during the patterning of silicon wafers. These recognized patterns, or “signatures,” can quickly lead a yield engineer to the resolution of yield-impacting events resulting in higher quality products, reduced waste production, less rework, and reduced energy consumption. Knights licensed the SSA technology from ORNL and SEMATECH in the mid 90's and has recently witnessed a resurgence of interest that has led them to the current effort to revamp the product for today’s market.

University of Tennessee Student Begins Work with ISMV

In April, Omer Sezer, a Ph.D. student with the Electrical Engineering Department at the University of Tennessee, began working with the ISMV Group in the area of biomedical imaging. Omer is performing research on vascular segmentation to support early screening of the human retina for disease. Omer is a student of Prof. Mohammed Ferdjallah at UT in Knoxville.

February / March Highlights 2005

Ferrell and Hylton win UT-Battelle Significant Event Award (SEA)

Regina Ferrell and Kathy Hylton are part of the ORNL Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) team working to develop and evaluate radio frequency identification (RFID) technologies for organizations such as the DoD Defense Logistics Agency (DLA). The team was presented with an SEA in March for meeting the stringent requirements and milestones established by the DLA. In particular, they were able to quickly develop a working system design, develop a test plan, and deploy RFID enabling hardware and systems throughput the DLA’s main distribution warehouses. Kathy Hylton worked on the deployment and testing of RFID hardware at the DDJC depot in Tracy, CA. She designed and tested the conveyor hardware setup in the lab and at the DDSP facility. She also oversaw the expeditious delivery of portal framework materials to the PA facility and the electronics hardware to both sites. Regina Ferrell worked on the deployment and testing of RFID hardware at the DDSP depot in New Cumberland, PA. She designed and tested the conveyor hardware setup in the lab and at the DDSP facility. She also oversaw the expeditious delivery of portal framework materials to the CA facility and the conveyor equipment for DDSP.

Press Release: Diagnosing Blinding Eye Disease

Dr. Ken Tobin, Tom Karnowski, and Priya Govindasamy are working in conjunction with Dr. Ed Chaum at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC), Memphis, to develop a novel image-based technology for rapid, inexpensive diagnoses of blinding eye disease such as Macular Degeneration. In March ORNL produced a press release on the technology partnership with UTHSC. The article was picked up and re-released by several papers including the Washington Post, Knoxville News Sentinel, the Oak Ridger, Biophotonics International, Medical News, and Medical Device and Diagnostics International. Tobin et al. are using digital retinal photography to image and automatically quantify specific disease-based changes in the retina. ORNL and UTHSC have developed an extensive image database of retinal disease states for content-based image retrieval analysis. The clinical application of this technology is scheduled to begin this summer and will be validated through UTHSC Internal Review Board approved clinical studies.

Press Release: Securing our Nation’s Harbors with ORION

Dr. Robert Patton of the Applied Software Engineering Research Group is working with Tim Gee to develop a software technology “that will let authorities better monitor worldwide ship traffic and, ideally, reduce the risks of disease outbreaks, terrorist attacks and other problems.” [CNET News] This ORNL press release was reported in CNET News in March. The software technology is being developed to demonstrate an information analysis and fusion system for port security applications. This system will allow the U.S. to meet the challenge of organizing, analyzing, and fusing vast volumes of information of different formats from different sources to effectively synthesize the critical information required to support homeland security needs.

Price and Gee in Journal of Pattern Recognition

Dr. Jeffery Price and Tim Gee had their paper published in the Journal of Pattern Recognition. The citation is: J. Price, T. Gee. Face Recognition using Direct, Weighted Linear Discriminant Analysis and Modular Subspaces, Pattern Recognition, vol. 38, no. 2, pp. 209-219, February 2005. This paper describes a modular linear discriminant analysis (LDA) approach for face recognition. A set of observers is trained independently on different regions of frontal faces and each observer projects face images to a lower-dimensional subspace. These lower-dimensional subspaces are computed using LDA methods, including a new algorithm that we refer to as direct, weighted LDA or DW-LDA. DW-LDA combines the advantages of two recent LDA enhancements, namely direct LDA (DLDA) and weighted pairwise Fisher criteria. Each observer performs recognition independently and the results are combined using a simple sum-rule. Experiments compare the proposed approach to other face recognition methods that employ linear dimensionality reduction. These experiments demonstrate that the modular LDA method performs significantly better than other linear subspace methods. The results also show that D-LDA does not necessarily perform better than the well-known principal component analysis followed by LDA approach. This is an important and significant counterpoint to previously published experiments that used smaller databases. Our experiments also indicate that the new DW-LDA algorithm is an improvement over D-LDA.

Goddard and Gee Submit NIJ Proposal

Tim Gee and Jim Goddard submitted a proposal to the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) this March in response to the call for FY 2005 NIJ Quantitative Research on Friction Ridge Patterns. This proposal requests two years of funding and is titled, "A Statistical Study of Fingerprint Discriminatory Information Relative to Print Size and Location" and is an extension of our current FBI project in fingerprint statistics. This proposed project compares and evaluates fingerprint image subsets of various sizes and locations on the print with a number of large fingerprint databases for the purposes of statistical estimation. The image subsets simulate latent prints in terms of area and location. Statistical analysis on similarity scores provides estimates of probability distributions.

Chaum and Tobin Submit NIH Proposal NEI

Dr. Ed Chaum with the University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC), Memphis, and Dr. Ken Tobin have submitted a collaborative proposal to the NIH National Eye Institute (NEI). The goal is to investigate the feasibility of a content-based image retrieval (CBIR) method to accurately describe and index human retinal images of diabetic retinopathy collected from low-cost, non-dilated retinal photographic examinations. Our goal is to demonstrate the feature-based indexing and retrieval process of CBIR and verify our hypothesis that retinal pathology can be identified and quantified from visually similar retinal images assembled from a large database comprising images of diabetic retinopathy. If awarded, Dr. Chaum will be the Principle Investigator, while Dr. Tobin will be co-PI.

Tobin Submits NIH Proposal to NIBIB

Dr. Ken Tobin and the ORNL team has submitted a revised proposal to the NIH National Institute for Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB). The proposal titled “A MicroCT-SPECT System with Intelligent Data Management,” encompasses three main goals to develop (1) multi-modality imaging technologies on a common platform, (2) animal handling protocols for diagnostic imaging within a large animal colony, and (3) accessible tools for managing and interpreting large amounts of data generated by diagnostic imaging instrumentation. Small animal imaging (SAI) technology has improved in recent years due to federal and private agencies recognizing the potential of the technology to improve human health. The number of research universities, pharmaceutical companies, and biotechnology companies that have SAI instrumentation is growing rapidly. Although SAI instrumentation is becoming more commonplace, there is still a shortage of technologies in the areas addressed by this proposal. This is a collaboration between ORNL (Life Sciences and Engineering Sciences), the University of Tennessee Computer Science Department, the University of Tennessee Graduate School of Medicine, and CTI / Concord Microsystems of Knoxville. Dr. Tobin will be the Principle Investigator for the program if awarded.

Tobin and Karnowski Attend DHS Passive Detection Committee Meeting

Dr. Ken Tobin and Tom Karnowski, along with Dr. Michael Wright of the Nuclear Materials Detection and Characterization Group, participated in a meeting of the Passive Imaging Needs Committee at PNNL in March. Tobin and Karnowski are involved in a project to develop an Evaluation Framework for Search Instruments. These are gamma detection instruments that will be used to localize radioactive dispersive devices and other special nuclear materials in a variety of large area environments. The role of the ISMV group is to develop and test robust methods for the detection of characterization of suspect sources in the field of view of these devices.

January Highlights 2005

ISMV Chairs Machine Vision for Industrial Inspection XIII at SPIE Electronic Imaging Symposium 2005

Dr. Jeff Price traveled to San Jose, CA as General Chair of the conference on Machine Vision Applications in Industrial Inspection XIII, a part of the SPIE/IS&T Electronic Imaging West Symposium. He also chaired two of the conference's five oral presentation sessions - Industrial Applications 1 and Range, Stereo and 3D Applications and also arranged a successful panel discussion entitled Machine Vision in Industry: Barriers and Pitfalls.

Paper Presented at SPIE Electronic Imaging 2005

Tom Karnowski delivered his paper titled “A Simple TRISO Particle Counting And Sizing Tool (TP-CAST)” at SPIE Machine Vision Applications in Industrial Inspection XIII. This paper represents his work supporting metrology needs for the manufacturing and characterization of fuel pellets for use in advanced nuclear reactors. In this paper he presented a simple TRISO particle counting tool that performs dual measurements of counting and size estimation for particles at rates up to 200 per second. The TP-CAST is based on a laser with line-generation optics and a PC-based data acquisition and analysis system. The instrument can measure 1000 micron pellets with a standard deviation of approximately 11 microns and with counting errors less than 0.075%. The paper reviewed signal modeling, algorithms for size estimation, system design, and experimental results of the prototype system assembled at ORNL.

NIST-ATP Review of Digital Holography Program

Dr. Philip Bingham participated in the January program review of our NIST Advanced Technology Program in Austin, Texas. nLine Corp. licensed ORNL’s digital holography technology in 2000 to develop a semiconductor wafer inspection tool for high aspect features. In January, the nLine Fathom™ product was approved for reinstallation at Advanced Micro Devices Fab 25 in Austin. This represents a significant milestone accomplishment for nLine and Oak Ridge. ORNL will be hosting the next NIST-ATP review meeting in April 2005 in the new ORNL conference facilities.

Retina Diagnosis Seed Money – Priya Govindasamy

Priya Govindasamy started her work in January in support of Ken Tobin’s Seed Money project titled “An Image-Based Method for Screening and Diagnosis of Blinding Eye Disease.” Priya is working with the ISMV Group through the ORISE Postmasters Program. She holds a Masters Degree from the University of Tennessee’s Electrical Engineering Department. Her field of specialization is image processing and computer vision, and has experience in working with thermal image acquisition, segmentation of thermal images, simulation of thermal images and image restoration.

Natural Gas Pipeline Initiative - Austin Albright

In January the ISMV Group extended Austin Albright’s position through the ORISE HERE program. Austin has been working with the group on a post-bachelors Higher Education Research Experience (HERE) program appointment since the Spring of 2004. His appointment was recently extended through June 2005. Austin received his bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering from Tennessee Technological University (TTU) in May 2004. He has been working with his mentor, Raymond W. Tucker, on a NETL project developing an in-line sensor system for detecting stress corrosion cracks (SCCs) in natural gas pipelines. Austin was a member of the team from TTU who built the robot that won first place in the prestigious student hardware competition at the 2004 IEEE Southeast Conference. Austin is currently a part-time graduate student at the University of Tennessee, and continues to work full-time in the ISMV group on the natural gas pipeline inspection project.

ICOS Vision Systems Corp.

ICOS Vision Systems of Belgium has entered into a feasibility study with ORNL and the ISMV Group. Ken Tobin and Tom Karnowski are leading the effort to test the applicability of the group’s wafer inspection technologies for rapid vision-based yield learning in semiconductor fabrication processes. ICOS has been providing innovative solutions for vision and inspection of semiconductor devices since its conception in 1982.

Knights Technology, Inc.

The ISMV Group has entered into a technology support agreement with Knights Technology, Inc. of Sunnyvale, California. Knights licensed the groups Spatial Signature Analysis (SSA) technology in 1997 (developed under a cooperative agreement with International SEMATECH of Austin, Texas) for analyzing patterns of defects on semiconductor wafers. Under the current effort, Ken Tobin and Tom Karnowski will support the transfer of the latest version of the SSA technology into the Knights SPaR™ product. Knights Technology™ software enables chip makers to collect, share, analyze and act on essential data - saving significant time, increasing yields and improving profitability.

December Highlights 2004

International SEMATECH Milestone Met

Philip Bingham, Tom Karnowski, and Ken Tobin completed a December milestone for the Photolithographic Mask Metrology and Inspection program with International SEMATECH, Austin, Texas. This report describes research performed by the ISMV Group for photolithographic mask inspection and metrology needs beyond the 130 nm node through the application optical holographic microscopy technologies, also referred to as Spatial Heterodyned Interferometry (SHI). A key component of this phase of the research was the implementation of optical wavefront modeling capabilities that enable the study of a variety of optical metrology modes without the expense of building a new tool for each study. Using this capability for SHI we have investigated resolution limits for metrology at a particular wavelength, shown examples of the variations in reflective response for a line on a binary mask with changes in wavelength, introduced simulation work to study assist feature metrology, and described engineering issues for developing shorter wavelength systems.

New Hire Deniz Aykac

CORRECTION: Due to paperwork issues, Deniz Aykac did not become an official ORNL staff member until January 2005.

Deniz Aykac will be joining the ISMV Group in December as a new staff member. Deniz has been working with the group since 2002 as an ORISE Postmasters student. She has been supporting our NIH research in small animal imaging, particularly in the area of segmentation of soft tissue regions in x-ray computed tomography data. Deniz has her Bachelor of Science degree in Physics from Bogazici University in Turkey. She has a Master of Science Degree in both Physics and Biomedical Engineering from the University of Iowa, Iowa City.

Conference Paper Accepted for Natural Gas Technologies 2005

Raymond Tucker of the ISMV Group and our ORISE HERE student, Austin Albright, in conjunction with Venu Varma of the Nuclear Science and Technology Division have had their paper titled “EMAT-Based Inspection of Natural Gas Pipeline for Stress Corrosion Cracks,” accepted for presentation at the Natural Gas Technologies 2005 What's New & What's Next conference, sponsored by the Gas Technology Institute. The conference and exhibition will be held in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, January 30-February 2, 2005.

Invention Disclosure Submitted

Ken Tobin and Tom Karnowski submitted an invention disclosure titled “A Method for the Reduction of Image Content Redundancy in Large Image Libraries” to the Office of Technology Transfer and Economic Development. With the availability of low-cost, high-performance computers, memory, and disk storage media, image libraries and content-based image retrieval (CBIR) technologies are becoming more prevalent. CBIR refers to technologies and systems that index large digital image libraries using image content derived from visual characteristics of the image such as those based on color, texture and structure. Although large repositories can be readily assembled, the efficiency of these systems to retrieve the most relevant imagery is still a function of capacity and long-term storage. Due to the rapid growth in the size of image libraries and the high potential for data redundancy, the proposed method has been developed to achieve a reduction in redundancy that facilitates either: (1) the long-term storage of the most information-rich image content (i.e., maintaining the same database capacity but keeping data for a longer period of time), or (2) a reduction in the size of the repository capacity which results in improved performance (i.e., storage and retrieval efficiency) and reduced time for indexing.

Video Forensics Work Highlighted on Japanese Television Show “That’s Incredible”

In 1997 the ORNL and the ISMV Group helped the Chattanooga District Attorney’s Office solve a murder case based on the analysis of a surveillance video that was captured at the scene of the crime. This early work led to a multi-year effort with DOE to develop video forensics methods to assist federal and local law enforcement analysts with poor quality surveillance video. This research was performed by Tim Gee, Tom Karnowski, Jeff Price, and Ken Tobin. On June 11, 2002, the Chattanooga murder case, also known as the Jason Rhodes case, was highlighted during an episode of “True Detectives” on the Discovery Channel. This month a Japanese show titled “Unbelievable,” visited ORNL to interview Ken Tobin and Tim Gee for an episode to be aired in January 2005. "Unbelievable" is a weekly prime time TV show that features different topics from around the world via news clips and in-studio discussion. The subject matter varies from show to show and is diverse, including science and technology, the arts, human interest and current affairs. The show is in its eighth season and airs exclusively on Saturdays on Fuji Television.

November Highlights 2004

New ORNL Seed Money Project Awarded for Cellular Imaging Application

Dr. Jeff Price was awarded a Seed Money project that he presented to the Seed Money Proposal Review Committee in October. The project, funded for $100K, is entitled "Three-dimensional Imaging of Multiple Fluorophores" and will be performed in collaboration with Co-PI Dr. John Biggerstaff of the University of Tennessee's Center for Biomarker Analysis. Jeff and John submitted a related invention disclosure "Apparatus and Methods for Three-dimensional Spectroscopic Microscopy" back in June.

Image-Based Metrology Support for the TRISO Fuel Program

Some of Dr. Price's image processing work on the DOE Advanced Gas Reactor program was presented by John Hunn (Metals and Ceramics Division) at the American Nuclear Society's Winter Meeting in Washington, D.C. The paper was titled “New Characterization Techniques for Coated Particle Nuclear Fuel” by J. Hunn, G. Jellison, and J. Price.

Proposal for a Rapid Non-Contact Method for the Acquisition of Full-Hand Friction Ridge Detail

In response to a National Institute of Justice (NIJ) Solicitation for Fast Capture Fingerprint/Palm Print technology, Dr. Jim Goddard, Dr. Philip Bingham, and Tim Gee submitted a full proposal in November for a system to acquire both full rolled fingerprints and palm prints. The problems addressed in this proposal include the fast and reliable acquisition of high-quality rolled fingerprints and palm prints without operator assistance. Our proposed system is novel in that it is an optical technique that would not require physical contact with the subject, while acquiring images of all print areas of fingers and palms. The images include the finger tips, lower fingers and joints, and palm surfaces of the hand. Images would have a resolution of 1,000 pixels per inch. Acquisition using our system is again unique in that it would be performed all at once, eliminating the need for rolling of fingers or multiple finger placements. Also, the possibility of acquiring out-of-sequence fingerprints is eliminated through the hand geometry. Positioning of the hand will not be critical as automatic segmentation software will extract the desired prints from the images. The novel aspects of this proposal are being submitted through ORNL’s invention disclosure process.

United States Enrichment Corporation Centrifuge Program Milestone Met

The first United States Enrichment Corporation (USEC) centrifuge rotor was successfully balanced on October 30. The balancing process uses a data acquisition system and balancing software developed by ESTD staff members. The team of rotor balancing experts is being led Dr. Brian Damiano of the ISMV Group. The successful balancing represents a major milestone in the ORNL/USEC CRADA to develop and deploy gas centrifuge technology for uranium enrichment.

New ORISE Post Masters Position Filled

In November, the ISMV Group selected Priya Govindasamy to fill a position in support of Dr. Ken Tobin’s Seed Money project titled “An Image-Based Method for Screening and Diagnosis of Blinding Eye Disease.” Ms. Govindasamy just received her Masters Degree from the University of Tennessee’s Electrical Engineering Department is will begin working with the ISMV Group in January. The objective of the research is to develop, test, and validate a unique image-based retinal screening and diagnostic method that leverages content-based image retrieval (CBIR) technology. In collaboration with the University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC) Department of Ophthalmology, we are using digital retinal photography and optical coherence tomography to image and automatically quantify specific disease-based changes in the retina.

Job Opportunities

Computer Vision Postdoctoral Research Position
May 2004

NOTE: This position has recently been filled (as of November 2004). Please check back for other opportunities with the ISMV Group and ORNL

Through this post doctoral position, the candidate will perform directed research in a biomedical application of content-based image retrieval (CBIR) technology for predicting eye pathologies. Early detection and treatment of prevalent blinding eye disease can have a significant impact on reducing vision loss and blindness worldwide. The candidate will participate in the development, testing, and validation of a unique image-based retinal screening and diagnostic method that leverages CBIR technology for automated diagnosis with applications to telemedicine. In collaboration with the University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC) Department of Ophthalmology, we are using digital retinal photography and optical coherence tomography to image and automatically quantify specific disease-based changes in the retina. Through this research an extensive image database of retinal disease states for CBIR analysis will be developed, and its clinical application will be validated through UTHSC Internal Review Board approved clinical studies.

For additional information and instructions, please see our Job Posting

Archived Events

Summer Faculty and Students Have Arrived
June 2004

We have four new faculty and students who arrived at ORNL to do research with us this summer. Dr. Luo and his two students, Mashama Osborne and Tige Brown, are visiting from Southern University and A&M College, while Dr. Basappa is visiting from Norfolk State University. All are working at ORNL through programs administered by the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE). and will be supporting our LDRD program titled "Intelligent Agent Based Large-scale Spatial Data Management and Analysis". Some details on our new summer staff include:

Dr. Jiecai Luo is a summer researcher through the ORISE FaST Program. He is with the Electrical Engineering Department of Southern University and A & M College, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and will be performing basic R&D in the areas of image segmentation of natural scenes in support of a content-based image retrieval system.

Dr. Prathap Basappa is a summer researcher through the ORISE MEI Program. He is an Associate Professor of Electronics Engineering at Norfolk State University, Norfolk, Virginia. His research interests are image processing, instrumentation and computational electromagnetics. This summer he will be focusing on feature analysis and content-based image indexing and retrieval.

Tige Brown is in his senior year of Electrical Engineering at Southern University and A&M College, Baton Rouge, Louisiana and is at ORNL through the ORISE FaST Program. He will be assisting Dr. Luo in the area of image segmentation.

Mashama Osborne is a recent graduate of the EE program at Southern University and A&M College, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and will be entering the Masters program this fall. He is at ORNL through the ORISE FaST Program and will be assisting Dr. Luo in the area of image segmentation.

For additional information on summer faculty and student programs for working with ORNL please contact Kenneth W. Tobin

X-Ray CT and SPECT Imaging of Unrestrained Animals
November 2003

Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Jefferson Lab (Newport News, VA), and Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, MD) are currently collaborating on a multi-year program funded by the Department of Energy’s Office of Biological and Environmental Research (OBER). The overall goal of the program is to perform x-ray CT and SPECT imaging of non-anesthetized mice. This is accomplished using an optical tracking system development by the ORNL ISMV group to automatically determine the pose of the animal to better than 0.1 mm accuracy. During this second year of the program, the team is working towards reconstructing SPECT data sets of test phantoms and real animals while the subjects are moving within the field-of-view. Click here to see links to related ISMV work.

For additional information on this topic contact Shaun S. Gleason

An Image-Based Method for Screening and Diagnosis of Blinding Eye Disease
May 2004

Early detection and treatment of prevalent blinding eye disease can have a significant impact on reducing vision loss and blindness worldwide. The Image Science & Machine Vision Group has been awarded a Laboratory Directed R&D project to develop, test, and validate a unique image-based retinal screening and diagnostic method that leverages content-based image retrieval (CBIR) technology. In collaboration with the University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC) Department of Ophthalmology, (Memphis, TN) researchers are using digital retinal photography to image and automatically quantify specific disease-based changes in the retina. ORNL and UTHSC will develop an extensive image database of retinal disease states for CBIR analysis, and its clinical application will be validated through UTHSC Internal Review Board approved clinical studies.

For additional information on this topic contact Kenneth W. Tobin