Visual Information Processing

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Phone number: (617) 353-0847
Location: PHO 446
Associated faculty: Konrad

The VIP Laboratory provides computational and visualization infrastructure for research in the area of visual information processing. The topics of interest are: retrieval, analysis, compression, and transmission of visual information, whether in the form of still images, video sequences, or multimedia data. Two research thrusts are currently pursued. Videopsy (video autopsy) is concerned with the analysis of streaming video data from networked cameras. Some of its goals are: segmentation and tracking of moving objects, detection of normal and abnormal events, characterization of object flow patterns. The second thrust is concerned with the analysis, compression and visualization of stereoscopic and multiscopic (3-D) imagery. One application of this research is in the next-generation 3-D multimedia communications, while another is in biomedical visualization. Some of the problems studied are: disparity estimation (correspondence) under occlusions, wavelet-based compression in space-time, data pre-filtering for automultiscopic rendering. The VIP Laboratory is equipped with a network of state-of-the-art workstations to serve computational needs, while its visualization infrastructure includes 2-D and 3-D digital cameras and capture systems, as well as 3-D displays (shuttered and 9-view automultiscopic “Synthagram”).