Category Archives: Image Analysis

IDENTIFYING and Counting Cancer Cells with my Theory => Code rather than Volunteers

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English: A diagram illustrating the distinctio...

English: A diagram illustrating the distinction between cancer stem cell targeted and conventional cancer therapies (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The magic of networking was working again: it took the invitation to  celebrate 50 years of computing @ CERN to discover this Cancer Research UK project: computer volunteers are invited to identify and count cancer cells.

My Technical Expert Nelson Wootton jumped on this opportunity to ‘prove my theory’.

After 3 funding applications have just been turned down, we now trust ‘under employed professional woman’ Ann Witbrock to turn my latest specifications into code.

Meanwhile, Grandma Got STEM is honouring women like me: always in the minority in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

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MOBILE Image Explorer – for the Crowd to Fund and become First Time Users

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The SME Innovation Alliance (SMEIA) knows full well that neither funding SMEs nor protecting their IP works. But who cares when people are ‘just doing their job’, while waiting for their pension and the finance industry is ‘self-regulating’?

Well, internet entrepreneurs who know the crowd clearly do care. Otherwise, crowdfunding would not have become a new force for the financial establishment to reckon with. Blessed be the web with its social media, once again!

So I’ve finalised my submission, asking for £12,500 to match potential funding by a software development entrepreneur. The product is a “Mobile Image Explorer” – for mobile phones or browsers – and as a general user portal, to demonstrate to companies what the potential is.

Am I speaking the right language for end users? Only their pledges will tell. Will you want to be the first by any chance?

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Into the light, I command thee

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“Into the light, I command thee” is a quote from the movie Constantine (2005).

Bulrushes in water

Input: Bulrushes in and reflected by water

This photo was taken of bulrushes in water. The water surface breaks the light and thus changes the angle of the stems for our eye.

Our software uses the information of the intensities that the imaging technology produces and re-visualizes it in its unique way.

Bulrushes in water re-visualized

Output: Bulrushes in water re-visualized

The uniqueness is due to proprietary transformations that are not available in any maths software. Why not? Because they are all based on the mathematics as it developed from writing.

My thinking developed through programming. As a mature system analyst I revisited science and questioned everything there is to question, not only in mathematics.

That’s how the prototype got written, based on 25 Word documents. It “sees” the light that is embedded in the intensities produced by the microscope, camera or telescope. That’s how medical scales can be processed in the same way as astronomical ones.

The interpretation of what they eye sees and the brain thinks is due to “client domain expertise”. The software does what it is better at than most humans: “number acrobatics”.

The next level of “number acrobatics” is due when

  • either investors ask “how much do you need?”
  • or customers specify the length scale of their images, the number of images they’d like to see processed and the interpretation times they are hoping for.

The rest is verbal for measuring units, interpretation and decision support: client domain expertise gets embedded into vocabularies for menu options and user choices.

Towards the Fourth Paradigm

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A Deluge of Data Shapes a New Era in Computing

This is the title of an article in the New York Times. It describes admirably the ‘problem’ that my software methods can help to ‘solve’. The article is actually the review of a book called The Fourth Paradigm.

The late Microsoft researcher Dr. Jim Gray said in a speech in January 2007 that the only way to cope with an “exaflood” of observational data was “to manage, visualize and analyse the data flood”. Well, my approach to visualizing multi-dimensional data offers exactly that!

Similarly, Dr. Eric Horvitz, an artificial intelligence researcher for Microsoft says: “My goal now is to develop a new kind of telescope or microscope.” Well, my “software lenses” are exactly that!

Offering a new instrument of observation means increasing our intelligence. Let’s hope that 2010 will be the year in which my three software methods will see the “online light” of a web service.

Competing for funding innovation

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Is it getting more exciting or more boring as I fill in yet a few more forms thinking along other people’s templates?

I’ve submitted my application to

  • the MoD’s call on Automated Imagery Exploitation: An Innovative Approach to Automating Image / Video Processing – the Visualisation of Data and Re-Visualisation of Images as Proof of Concepts and Principles

I’ve registered two intentions to submit to the Technology Strategy Board:

  • Testing the feasibility of online image analysis as a new research method and non-destructive testing procedure
  • Using a Web Service for a Generic Approach to Multi-Dimensional Data Visualization as the Basis for Digital Image Re-Visualization and Analysis

I’m applying to the Start-Up Challenge of Amazon Web Services.

I’m applyting to FutureLab’s call for meaningful games.

I’m working on a German funding scheme with the Zukunftsagentur.

Don’t tell me capitalism is working for inventors or innovators! But who said that life would be rose garden???

English and German Galleries of re-visualizations

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Progress of my work always takes place either via my own insights into the use of my prototype software, or via turning more of my software concepts into functional code.

www.3dm-images.net contains some 120 original images with their “3dm re-visualizations” to illustrate the step that is necessary before quantifications can be made.

www.3dm-bilder.net is the German equivalent, but with completely different content.

Both sites require user registration. Please send an email to sabine at 3d-metrics.com if you want to contribute or have any questions.

The new banner

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The 3D Metrics logo expresses dynamic and harmonic movement in 3D space. The new site 3d-metrics.com links to my web presence across my ‘professional life with zest’, ‘social life with meaning’ and personal accounts.

Software for Seeing What You Want to Know is, so far, still only on my laptop, and, for the purpose of forecasting financial data, on the demo site www.3dmetrics.net.

Complex data and digital images appear in a ‘new light’ thanks to my prototype software that ‘layers’ complex data and ‘re-visualizes’ digital images.

3D Realities are re-presented either by measurements and time series or by images. The software shows more visual detail and quantifies hitherto unquantifiable qualities on 2D screens:

  • complex data can reveal more in ‘layers’ and be used for decision support in expert systems
  • digital images show more visual depth and perspective, while this ‘software vision’ can process hundreds and thousands of images for comparison and selections
  • new qualitative measures can be derived when interpreting what we are looking for using ‘software vision’ and ‘image metrics’.

The Terahertz image of a hand is input into my prototype software as an illustration of the “re-visualization” that the software achieves.

Terahertz image of hand, re-visualized with my prototype software

Terahertz image of hand, re-visualized with my prototype software

The wavy re-visualization was produced from this reference image that was given to me by the National Physical Laboratories (NPL), responsible for measuring in the UK. As a ‘reference image’ it can be used for calibrating microscopes.

Greyscale reference image

Greyscale reference image

Grey reference image re-visualized

Grey reference image re-visualized

The third re-visualization also stems from an NPL image: a sprayed surface that gives rise to much more visual depth and metric detail than the original.

Sprayed surface

Sprayed surface

Revisualization of sprayed surface

Revisualization of sprayed surface

The image serves as a sample for the capabilities resulting from the software:

  • ‘seeing more detail’ with human eyes
  • ‘processing more images’ with ‘software vision’
  • ‘interpreting more’ with expert portals that rely on the decision support provided by ‘image metrics’.

Out of the box and on the head

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The Electronics KTN is organising an event on Terahertz Systems and Industrial Applications at the Royal Society on Feb. 25th, and I am thinking about a poster for that.

Google brought me to this story from Thruvision who are going to give a presentation.

The image shows a person “seen” through the clothes.

Terahertz camera sees through clothes

Terahertz camera sees through clothes

When “re-visualized” with my demonstrator software, the image is unfortunately on its head, and it is too tedious at this stage to change the bits of code I’m using.

The basis for comparisons via 'metric details'

The basis for comparisons via 'metric details'

The same image "viewed" from a different angle

Presentation at Genesis conference

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A mammograph re-visualized with more visual depth and metric detail

Genesis is an annual conference that took place over an evening reception, a joint conference day at the Queen Elizabeth Conference Centre and another conference day at the BERR conference centre.

I was invited to present my innovation as a “showcase” in the “Tech. Platform” stream. Here are the slides and a video will even follow!