Eye of the beholder: New program
teaches digital image-making
BY DAVID F. SALISBURY
The old world of images: analog, black and white,
office-centered, stand-alone, passive.
The new world of images: digital, color,
home-centered, communicative, interactive.
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This sweeping change in the way that the world around
us is represented is the impetus behind Image Systems
Engineering, a multidisciplinary program established last
fall by professors from psychology, electrical
engineering and computer science. Their aim is to train
students for the growing number of industry jobs in the
new field of imaging science.
"The science and engineering of images has
matured to the point where it makes sense to combine them
into a single curriculum," says Brian Wandell, the
professor of psychology who was the prime mover behind
the program's formation.
The combination of the three fields makes perfect
sense, says psychologist David Heeger, who also has
courtesy appointments in both computer science and
electrical engineering. Imaging science is a peripheral
subject in all three traditional disciplines, Heeger
says. In psychology, it is the study of human vision. In
computer science, it is research into computer vision.
And in electrical engineering it is image processing.
"Together they form quite a coherent discipline, but
very few places approach these fields in such an
integrated fashion," he says.
Tangible evidence of industry interest in the area is
the $1 million equipment grant that the Hewlett-Packard
Corporation gave to the program last fall to equip a new
image processing laboratory in the basement of Margaret
Jacks Hall. The company provided 15 graphics workstations
with a full range of peripherals, including high-speed
color scanners, printers and digital cameras. The
start-up effort has also received financial support from
Xerox Corp.
Hewlett-Packard had circulated a request for proposals
on programs in image systems engineering. Out of 23
applications, the company funded five. In addition to
Stanford, the University of California-San Diego, the
Georgia Institute of Technology, the University of Iowa
and Purdue were selected. "We wanted to fund the
real thought leaders in the area, which is critical to
the future of our business," said Nancy Levitt, H-P
University Grants Program manager.
Rochester, N.Y., has long been the center of image
science in the country, due mainly to the influence of
Kodak and Xerox, says Joseph Goodman, professor of
electrical engineering and senior associate dean in the
School of Engineering, who has supported the new program.
Research in Rochester has focused primarily on print and
photography. As H-P's interest suggests, Silicon Valley
companies are becoming increasingly involved and
interested in digital image processing. So it is an
appropriate area for Stanford to develop, he said.
"We've got the number-one ranked EE department in
the country, the number-one ranked computer science
department, and the number-one ranked psychology
department. What a combination," Goodman says.
In the summer of 1985, after Wandell came to him with
the idea of forming the program, Goodman organized a
lunch for faculty members who are working in this general
area. Among those who attended were Ronald Bracewell, Tom
Cover, Robert Gray, Teresa Meng and Dwight Nishimura from
electrical engineering; Patrick Hanrahan, Mark Levoy and
Carlo Tomasi from computer science; Heeger from
psychology; and Richard Olshen from Biostatistics. Since
that initial meeting, Parvati Dev from the Medical
School, Abbas El-Gamal from electrical engineering and
James Gibbons, special counsel in the President's Office,
have also become involved.
"I was really surprised at the large number of
people we have who do something in imaging. I knew them
all, but had never seen them gathered in a single room
before," said Wandell. The group agreed to combine
their efforts and adapt the various imaging-related
classes that they teach to take advantage of the new
laboratory and to create an integrated curriculum.
The curriculum now includes 14 courses that fall into
three paths: medical imaging; image processing; and
Fourier and statistical optics. In the program's first
year about 90 students have taken courses that have
utilized the lab, Wandell said.
One of the unusual aspects of the new program is the
heavy involvement of the psychologists. This makes
perfect sense, said Wandell, when you consider the fact
that all color reproduction is an illusion. "If you
measure the light reflected from a painting and the light
emitted from an image of the painting displayed on the
CRT, the two look totally different. But to the human eye
they look nearly the same." So to make high quality
images it is imperative to understand how human vision
works, and that is a subject psychologists have been
studying for more than 125 years.
"It's a good thing to have engineering students
[who are] interested in imaging learn about human vision
early in their careers," said Xuemei Zhang, a
fifth-year graduate student in psychology who served as
an unofficial teaching assistant in Wandell's course.
After a number of years of academic study, Zhang was
attracted to image systems "because it allows me to
do something practical with what I have learned."
She is one of the new program's first success stories,
having accepted a job at H-P to develop vision models
that can predict the quality of printed and displayed
images.
The new program and lab have really improved the image
systems courses, Zhang said. "When I first took
Brian's course [Psych 221/EE 362] it was pretty much a
lecture and exercise course. It is much better now as a
laboratory, project-oriented course. Students can apply
what they learn to specific problems."
The well-equipped lab has made a new level of learning
possible, Zhang said. The equipment is good for getting
students involved. They can, for example, check out the
digital camera and learn about the problems of the
technology firsthand. Also, the powerful workstations
provide quick feedback that allows the students to get
more done.
Xin Tong is a doctoral student in electrical
engineering whose primary interest is in image
compression technology. She also maintains the program's
website. She was attracted to image processing because
"you can see how it is useful because of the
explosion of the Internet and multimedia. And, of course,
it's cool. It's much more pleasant to look at images,
rather than circuit diagrams: I look at the results of
what I do and I am pleased."
Before the program was set up, the information about
image systems was "sort of spread out around
campus," she said. "There were professors here
and there, and people didn't know about them. Now you can
look at the entire field and pick your
specialization."
Goodman would like to see Image Systems Engineering
evolve into a program comparable to the Center for
Telecommunications, which involves faculty from several
departments, provides extra visibility to the area, and
draws on industry to support research and to help
identify problems to work on. "With a modest
investment of billets for strategic appointments to fill
in a few gaps in faculty expertise, we could become a
real powerhouse in this area," he said. SR
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