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The Student Perspective: Imaging Science at RIT

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

Biomedical researchers now have access to a more elegant method to digitally reconstruct microscopictissueslices, or histological sections, of tumor specimens into three-dimensional models thanks to the work of Shaohui Sun. Sun—a Center for Imaging Science graduate student—presented his findings in February at the SPIE Medical Imaging Conference on Image Processing in San Diego.

CIS Professor Nathan Cahill discovered the problem in a conversation with Nzola de Magalhaes, a RIT Biomedical Engineering professor who studies tumor vascularization. Magalhaes wanted to find a way to stack successive histological sections of tumors in chicken embryos to eliminate the usual distortion and registration problems associated with digital reconstruction of these images.

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.

By Amy Mednick

A disaster, such as the devastating magnitude 9.0 earthquake and resulting tsunami that struck Japan this spring, can happen at any time and assessing damage proves difficult even when using aerial photography. Given the need to respond quickly when natural or man-made disasters occur, Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science (CIS) graduate student Richard Labiak is developing a simple and quick tool that will supply emergency crews with rapid damage assessment within hours after a catastrophic event.

Reported by Amy Mednick

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.