Digital Image Processing Laboratory

Contact:	Mariusz Jankowski
Address:	Department of Electrical Engineering John Mitchell Center, Room 108F University of Southern Maine Gorham, ME 04038

The laboratory is a recent addition to the Electrical Engineering department's research and project infrastructure. The laboratory was established in 1999 with state of Maine and the University of Maine System research and development funds and in part with existing Department of Electrical Engineering resources.

Projects:

"MovieReader - A Java-based movie reader for Mathematica," Joshua Martell and Mariusz Jankowski

The ever increasing availability of digital video cameras is having a profound impact on experimental data gathering in many areas of research, in particular in the biological and medical sciences. The analysis (possibly automated) of experimental data encoded in the form of a video stream posses many diverse problems, but at the most basic level it is necessary to access the video on a frame-by-frame basis. In this project we propose to extend Mathematica, a modern general purpose environment for scientific computing, by adding the functionality necessary to decode individual frames of a digital video stream and to advance a frame pointer to any desired position in a video sequence.

A prototype, using Java Media Framework, is currently under development. The Java Media Framework API (JMF) enables audio, video and other time-based media to be added to Java applications and applets. This optional package, which can capture, playback, stream and transcode multiple media formats, extends the multimedia capabilities on the JSE platform, and gives multimedia developers a powerful toolkit to develop scalable, cross-platform technology.

"RIVA - Real-Time Image Viewing and Acquisition," Susan Jarmuz and Mariusz Jankowski (2001)

RIVA presents a seamless approach to the problem of image acquisition and processing with Mathematica. Real-time image capture is made possible by linking Mathematica with PCVision, a popular line of frame grabbers from Coreco Imaging. RIVA connects the Mathematica FrontEnd to the PCVision frame grabber using J/Link, Java Native Interface, Java and ITEX, a set of high-level APIs that encapsulates the knowledge about Coreco Imaging's hardware. From within a Mathematica notebook the user can grab the entire image or a user selected sub-region for immediate processing with Mathematica and the Digital Image Processing application package. View the User's Guide for additional details.

"FGLink - a Mathlink connection to the PCVision ITI frame grabber", Richard Mason and Mariusz Jankowski (2000)

The goal of this project is to establish connectivity between Mathematica, a general purpose scientific computing system, and PC-based imaging hardware. FGLink will enhance the Mathematica environment with image acquisition capabilities giving the image processing professional an integrated image processing and acquisition system. We are presently developing for Mathematica 4.0 using PCVision from Imaging Technology, a widely used, Windows and Linux compatible frame grabber, on a Windows NT platform.

"J-Image - a new image processing front-end for Mathematica," Andrew Belousov and Mariusz Jankowski (1999)

The goal of the "J-Image" project is to develop a multi-platform, custom image processing user interface to Mathematica and the Digital Image Processing application package. J-image is a J/Link-based product that gives the user point-and-click access to all of Mathematica's image processing functionality.

"Digital Image Analysis and Physical Microscopy", Ming Wu Rawstron, Clark A. Rundell, Leonard M. Keilson and Mariusz Jankowski (1998)

This project addresses the need to develop a comprehensive digital image analysis tool to quantify lipid-rich lesions in the ascending aorta. Accurate, repeatable quantification of lipid rich lesions in the ascending aorta is expected to serve as an important predictive tool of cerebral events in coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) patients. (Supported by MSTF, Grant No. 96-11N.)

"Development of a microscopic image analysis system for cell-field anatomy in genetic research," Ken Weber (Department of Biology, USM) and Mariusz Jankowski

Facilities:

Workstations: Compaq Deskpro (2x), Compaq 5100 Professional (1x), and Dell Precision 410 (1x)
Operating Systems: Windows, Linux
Applications: Mathematica (Wolfram Research), Matlab (Mathworks), PVWave (Visual Numerics), Sherlock (Imaging Technology), ImagePro (Media Cybernetics)
Imaging Hardware: reflected light microscope (Nikon), PCVision frame grabber (Imaging Technology), CM-V1 mega resolution CCD camera (JAI)