Research Projects

Tools will be developed for the reconstruction of a currently excavated archaeological site for different periods throughout the time of its occupation. This includes the development of 3D acquisition systems that can measure a range of objects of different dimensions to produce accurate and realistic looking 3D models and of tools for virtual reconstruction, documentation and classification of objects ranging from pottery sherds to entire urban building complexes. The project will provide archaeologists with the tools to support the analysis and restoration of their finds. The virtual artefacts and buildings together with the related information will be stored in a multimedia database with appropriate searching and querying functionality. 3D visualisation technologies will be developed for the interactive presentation of archaeological results in museums and via the internet, to the broad public as well as to experts. To provide Europe with an archaeological lead.

Partner:

Departement Elektrotechniek ESAT-PSI, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

Electrical impulse discharges in nature are visible as lightning. Their impact point can be electro magnetically located up to a precision of several hundred meters. In some restricted areas such as industrial plants, airports etc. it desirable to know the the impact region and path of the lightning up to a precision of a few meters. If visibility is not too restricted by weather conditions, a multi-camera setup would be a viable option to locate path and impact area of the discharge.

In this project impulse discharges of a few meters are synthetically generated under laboratory conditions and reconstructed using a multi camera setup.

Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) is an incurable disease leading to severe disabling mutilations of synovial joints. RA affects predominantly the peripheral joints of the appendicular skeleton. RA is with 17% one of the leading causes of disability among persons aged 15 years or older. The prevalence is 1-2%. A recent study estimated the total cost to the North American economy caused by arthritis and its related effects to be 64 billion.

The accurate quantification of the progression of the disease is a decisive factor during its treatment. Until now mainly manual quantification procedures are utilized. They are time consuming and lack reproducibility as well as accuracy. Among others these restrictions have severe adverse effects to clinical trials and to continuous therapy of patients.

We propose a computer based method that performs the quantification by means of automated image analysis and pattern recognition. The goal is to fully automatically identify the bones of the hand/wrist and extract exact quantitative information about the extent of the erosions caused by rheumatoid arthritis based on a radiograph.

The following lines will be investigated during the project:

• A fully automatic method for quantification of RA based on hand radiographs.
• A more accurate, detailed scoring system for RA assessment.
• Novel concepts of Active Appearance Models (AAMs).
• Applicability of the developed methods to other similar diseases.

In the steel-producing industry it is very important to control the quality of steels. At the moment the estimation is mainly done by human inspection of specially prepared steel surfaces with the help of light-microscopes. Each particular steel specimen is classified by assigning it to a reference chart, corresponding to the micro-structure of interest. For example, in the case of carbide distribution the reference chart consists of 28 classes arranged in 4 rows of 7 columns according to the 4 types and 7 degrees of the carbide distributions.

The purpose of this project is to automate the assessment of the micro-structure of steel specimens (e.g. the carbide distribution) by means of an active inspection system consisting of a computer-controlled light microscope and a workstation with classification and control software. The system yields a quantitative evaluation of the micro-structures, in contrast to the qualitative estimation of human inspection and consequently, more reproducible results. Moreover, an improved objective redefinition of the standard chart can be achieved.

Using an endoscope for the optical access to the combustion chamber of an engine makes it possible to study injection and combustion phenomena without compromising engine operation conditions.

Based on the endoscope technique the company AVL developed a new digital image capturing system, where a CCD camera instead of a high speed movie camera is used to observe combustion processes. This has great advantages in the area of image management and with regard to the possibility of online image processing. The disadvantage of using a CCD camera is that only one image per combustion cycle can be obtained. Stochastic cycle-to-cycle variations of the combustion process make it necessary to capture and analyze a statistically significant multitude of images of each crank angle.

With the confined number of images per crank angle a maximum of information of the combustion process should be gained with the help of image processing. One major goal of this project is to synthesize a movie sequence of the combustion process from images of different cycles. This image sequence should show a representative combustion process and the image to image transitions should be as smooth as possible.
For the analysis of images of a specific crank angle, methods are investigated to visualize cycle-to-cycle variations and to calculate or to select the most representative image.
From combustion images of Diesel engines the flame temperature can be determined by the two color method. For this purpose, the color CCD camera is calibrated using a tungsten striplamp to measure light density in two spectral ranges.

The purpose of the project is to develop a powerful tool for the investigation of the deformation and fracture behaviour of materials. It is an interdisciplinary project combining the fields of materials science and computer science. The aim of the project related to computer science, more precisely to computer vision is: To develop a system for the automatic reconstruction of surfaces from scanning electron stereophotograms, integrating various reconstruction techniques (shape from stereo, photometric stereo etc.). The system shall be especially appropriate for analyzing fracture surfaces and for recording the local deformation fields during in-situ loading experiments in the scanning electron microscope.

**Partnerlist:**

"Erich-Schmid-Institute for Solid State Physics, Austria":http://www.oeaw.ac.at/esi/

ARIS*ER is a Marie Curie Research Training Network addressing a cross-disciplinary area, critically in need of developing researchers with the understanding of the cross-cutting issues involved in developing tools for Minimally Invasive Therapy. The multidisciplinary consortium, aims at providing training for young researchers through a structured training and knowledge transfer program – that will provide Europe with human resources with knowledge that will lead to better healthcare to citizens in Europe. The particular focus of the research training and joint project will be software that is user-friendly, fast and reliable for the practitioners of minimal invasive therapy (MIT). MIT is a compound of minimally invasive surgery, image guided surgery and interventional radiology. MIT makes use of numerous sources of information including multi-modal images and patient information systems. Intelligent processing of this information comprises a vast pool of knowledge that can aid the operator in his decisions. The ultimate goal of the joint project, which will give the recruited researcher training-by-doing, is to create an Augmented Reality system for interactive image guided therapy providing the clinical user with a new generation of decision support tools. This system will integrate intra-operative and pre-operative image-information and enable the user to see beyond the organ surface to inner structures and pathology. An intuitive human computer interface consisting of 3D display systems, haptics and robotics will hide the underpinning complexity of the decision support tools. Demonstrators will be made aiming at providing a seamless workflow for the clinical user conducting image-guided therapy.

In a CyberCity buildings are the most important part. In this case, they are fully phototextured and include parts such as roofs with chimneys and skylights, facades with balconies and bay- windows, etc. In the past roofs were modelled interactively on photogrammetric workstations or special programs were used with intervention of the human operator. The current research is oriented towards the automation of the data collection process so that large numbers of buildings of a city can efficiently be collected and regularly updated.

The roofs are being reconstructed from aerial images, the initial body of a building (building box) derives from known building footprints from a multi-purpose digital map, this is being extended in the vertical direction up to the roof. Roofs will be phototextured from aerial images, the building box (facades) will be phototextured after improvements with automated measurements of facades-detail from street level photography.

As an input dataset for the roof reconstruction we use aerial images with known orientation parameters, digital elevation models (DEM) and GIS-data (building footprints at the ground level and approximate elevation of the roofline from the multi-purpose digital map).

During the last fifty years the occurrence of melanoma has increased dramatically. Whereas in the thirties of this century one out of 100 000 people living in the United States or Europe suffered from melanoma, this number has risen to 15 out of 100 000 nowadays and is still increasing.

Because of the curability of melanoma by surgical excision in the early stages of tumor development, early tumor recognition is of utmost importance. During the last few years a significant improvement in early tumor recognition has been achieved by using the so-called epiluminescence microscopy (ELM). This technique uses oil immersion to render the epidermis translucent, thus giving insight into sub-surface structures of the skin which are not visible otherwise.

This project deals with the computerized analysis of digitized ELM-images of pigmented skin lesions, the final goal being the automatic classification of the lesions as benign or malignant (i.e. melanoma).

The analysis is carried out in several steps: The first step is the segmentation process, in which the skin lesion is extracted from the background in the ELM-image.

In the next step, a set of parameters which contain information about the malignity of the skin lesion are determined. The choice of the appropriate parameters is based on information found in medical literature, as well as on personal discussions with experienced dermatologists.

Finally, a classification based on the previously extracted parameters is carried out. The evaluated results show that the initial efforts already provide the correct result in 86% of all cases examined thus far.