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Increasingly, sustained employment requires continuous skill expansion. To this end, it is helpful to become familiar with core technologies that are essential to numerous disciplines. Welcome to a premier such technology—digital image processing.
Digital image processing is a remarkable technology that spans numerous application arenas including desktop publishing, video conferencing, multimedia, and countless other emerging applications involving the WWW. Here are a few existing image processing applications that have existed for years:
Movies regularly use digital imaging—witness Titanic, Field of Dreams, Terminator 2, Free Willy, Rising Sun, rock videos, sensational advertisements, etc. Because it is now cost-prohibitive to create extravagant sets used in such movies as Cleopatra and Ben-Hur, directors will eventually construct digital film locations rather than construct elaborate real ones. And, expect artificial actors (Running Man) and actors, real and cartoon, inserted into authentic historic footage (e.g., Roger Rabbit and Forrest Gump). Finally, movie producers can now hire a few extra actors, film them in various sequences or poses, and compose crowd footage at a fraction of previous costs.
Biometric devices now routinely compare retinal blood vessel patterns to establish positive identity. California’s Department of Motor Vehicles local offices digitally capture driver color images. At the end of each week, the local offices mail small computer tapes to the DMV headquarters in Sacramento, which engraves the images on new licenses and uses them to help identify drivers caught by, you guessed it, robot-camera speed traps. Similarly, the Price Costco discount store prints black and white member images directly on membership cards while major credit cards routinely offer color cardholder images for improved user identification.
Jet Propulsion Lab’s Kevin Hussey obtained Los Angeles basin elevation data from the United States Geological Survey and satellite images from NASA. By combining the elevation and imaging data, he created L.A.—The Movie, a digital video that simulated the view seen flying over the Los Angeles area. He later used the same approach to construct a virtual reality Venus overflight from satellite telemetry data and images from Venus. The same technology has obvious utility for targeting cruise missiles and low-level aerial approach missions.
In April and September 1994, space shuttle pilots used a $366 million synthetic-aperture-radar imaging system to map sand-covered ancient stream beds, caravan routes, and Ubar, Oman’s 5,000-year-old, octagonal, eight-towered city. Using NASA’s Space Radar Laboratory during a single mission, the crew captured 14,000 images at more than 400 locations, mapping 5 percent of the earth’s surface. The system can measure elevation changes as well as ocean wave heights. It penetrates clouds, volcanic dust, vegetation, ice, and dry sand—allowing scientists to map dry Sahara stream beds covered for centuries by sand dunes. Meanwhile, researchers used United States Geological Survey data to create a digital earth surface model of North America. By digitally shining a pseudo sun on the surface from an unnatural angle, they located a large, previously undiscovered basin.
The Westlake, California, Design Imaging Group provides software that allows home owners to preview proposed landscaping and swimming pool appearances before construction. The company’s system simply overlays proposed vegetation and pool images on digitized house images.
Styles on Video digitizes customer faces and superimposes different hairstyles on the images. The equipment easily fits on a small push-cart, suitable for locating in mall walkways. Customers can purchase a videotape of several options from hundreds of possibilities.
Finally, amusement park vendors routinely provide attendees with pictures that superimpose their faces on other people’s bodies. A few years ago, folks had to settle for inserting their heads in clumsy, cartoon-painted, plywood cut-out face holes. Soon, Styles on Video may seem similarly stilted.
The March 1987 Byte magazine article titled “Digital Image Processing in Art Conservation” (pg. 140) discussed the digital imaging work John F. Asmus performed on a high-resolution, digital scan of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. After applying a yellow-green color correction to compensate for aging varnish discoloration, what some art critics thought were green background trees turned out to be blue mountains.
A Bill Gates enterprise is securing digital image distribution rights for artworks. During a television interview, he discussed his plans to provide the ability to customize large screen viewing by artist, style, era, color, type scene, display interval, etc. Naturally, the image selection will suit the people viewing them which will be determined by active badges that transmit the identity of the wearer to computer sensors.
Biomedical imaging uses digital image processing to enhance X-rays while MRI and CAT scans employ intensive digital image processing. The University of Colorado’s The Visible Human Project has created cross section images of razor-thin, head-to-toe slices of a deceased human male and female. These images are available over the Internet (http://www.ncar.ucar.edu/METASCI/VHP.html). After downloading the images, researchers can assemble three-dimensional images of any body organ or area for study. Hollywood producers have inquired if they can use the images as the basis of future movies.
Using digital image capture and elementary software analysis, counterfeiters routinely copy and counterfeit complex textile patterns. Improvements in commercial color copiers are forcing national governments to redesign their paper currencies. Today, store cash register operators routinely test paper money using chemically treated markers.
Clearly, digital image processing is pervasive. It will continue to be an extraordinarily powerful technology since, for better or worse, the visually intensive society we live in is forever immersed in its effects. Even now, some of what we experience is a reality amplification to assist inspection and discovery. In other instances, what we see is specious fiction—a counterfeit recombinant reality produced using a powerful reality solvent in hopes of mesmerizing, cajoling, or deceiving to some end. The determination will usually be left a viewer exercise.
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