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The Student Perspective: Imaging Science at RIT

By Amy Mednick

Chris Lapsznyski says his professors’ enthusiasm for tackling difficult problems is contagious. That’s why he has devoted countless hours to developing sophisticated mathematical algorithms to pull out important features from hyperspectral remote sensing imagery. This dedication has not gone unnoticed. The College of Science recognized Lapszynki as one of the John Wiley Jones Scholars this spring for outstanding senior project research with Professor David Messinger.

Traditionally, researchers in the field of remote sensing have mainly taken advantage of color differences when trying to classify objects in images. For his senior project, Lapszynski figured out mathematical algorithms that could add spatial information to tasks such as anomaly detection and image classification. “The algorithms and some of the codes handle hyperspectral imagery on the order of hundreds of bands,” he says.  “The highest I’ve used is 231 bands.”

By Amy Mednick

RIT Doctoral Candidate Teaches ‘Computers to Understand Images’

Abdul Haleem Syed’s wins best paper for automated image analysis

Abdul Haleem Syed

May 23, 2012
by Susan Gawlowicz

Image analysts can see the avalanche coming. A mountain of satellite imagery is growing faster than the rate at which they can turn data into useful pictures, such as a Google map.

Rochester Institute of Technology graduate student Abdul Haleem Syed ’08 (B.S., electrical engineering) is working to prevent imagery overload.

“Two hundred-eighty Earth observation satellites will be launched this decade compared to 135 launched in the previous decade,” says Syed, from Hyderabad, India. “That is a lot of images of Earth being collected but someone—usually an image analyst—has to manually work with these images to extract important information.”

by Amy Mednick

Just back from a conference in Rio de Janeiro where she presented her research and received an international award, CIS doctoral student Kelly Canham is gearing up to pack her toothbrush, phrase book, and a spectroradiometer for a trip to Oaxaca, Mexico in December. There Canham will collaborate with William Middleton, associate professor of sociology and anthropology, to take ground-based spectral measurements to fill in some of the gaps left after analyzing the satellite data of the Nochixtlan Valley.

“The project in Nochixtlan will be for ground truthing various landscape taxa that Kelly has identified, and taking on-the-ground spectral measurements to better identify and interpret the satellite data,” Middleton says.

RIT Imaging Science Doctoral Students Win National Awards

Canham, Pahlevan win use of novel imaging instrument

Kelly Canham and Nima Pahlevan

April 6, 2011
by Susan Gawlowicz

Access to a specialized imaging device that measures reflectance was awarded to two doctoral students at Rochester Institute of Technology in support of their thesis research.

Kelly Canham and Nima Pahlevan, students in the Digital Imaging and Remote Sensing Laboratory in the Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science, won temporary use of spectralradiometers. These instruments measure the amount of light reflected from a material at each wavelength along the electromagnetic spectrum. The awards were made through the Alexander Goetz Instrument Program, co-sponsored by Analytical Space Devices Inc. and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society. A total of seven 2011 award winners were named.