Grant will aid vision research

With the help of a $3 million grant from the U.S. Navy, a team of researchers led by Penn Bioengineering Professor Leif Finkel will try to create technology to see obscured objects such as tumors and military targets. Researchers from Penn, Columbia University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology will work together over the next five years to develop artificial vision systems that will model the brain's visual cortex. The Office of Naval Research "has traditionally supported basic scientific research, with the knowledge that such research leads to new technology over the long term," Finkel said. "What we hope to do is to transition technology and algorithms developed for defense use to the biomedical domain," he added. According to Finkel, the technology could be applied to detect tumors 30 percent more effectively, find land mines or detect evidence of environmental transgressions. "Somehow the brain figures out how to optimally represent information," team member and Columbia researcher Paul Sajda said. "We will try to exploit that to build intelligent systems of the hyperspectral world," Sajda added. The human eye can only see in three of what Finkel calls "channels" -- red, green and blue. Hyperspectral imaging can detect over 100 channels, allowing it to find what the human eye cannot. The challenge, according to Finkel, is integrating this information. To overcome this problem, the team will work to combine current knowledge of brain anatomy with complex mathematical models for analyzing the data. The system, also called "active vision," would allow models of the human brain not only to see but to recognize and predict patterns, just as the human brain learns from experience. Sajda, who was a student of Finkel's while getting his Ph.D. at Penn, said that the new technology will improve upon past models by studying illusory contours, which are assumptions the brain makes when trying to figure out what or where an object is. Over 450 research teams applied for grants from the Office of Naval Research in 40 topics. The topics specified by the office stress research which may be applied both for defense purposes and commercial purposes. Harold Hawkins from the ONR said that the team was chosen for the grant based on "technical quality, potential to produce products for military application... and prior productivity and reputation of the research team." According to Sajda, the military applications of the technology would include detecting minefields and automatic target recognition. But he said that one of his favorite applications is in the field of medicine. Using hyperspectral imagery, the technology would allow mammograms and magnetic resonance imaging tests to detect the wavelength "signatures" for cancer, Sajda said. According to Finkel, Sadja's past research has improved tumor detection 25 to 30 percent. "We hope to do better than that," he added.