Contact:

Advanced Imaging Magazine Announces

Imaging Solutions of the Year Award Winners for 2004

Melville, NY (January 12, 2004)—Advanced Imaging magazine, a publication of Cygnus Business Media, has announced the results of its 2004 Imaging Solutions of the Year contest. The competition, held annually, asks developers, vendors, integrators, VARs, public relations firms and end-users to nominate sites whose solutions they feel merit special industry attention for their practical handling of digital imaging and image processing challenges. To that end, nominators sent in the imaging challenges they wished to submit, outlining the solutions to those challenges, the imaging tools used and the differences they made to the industry.

This year, four winners and four runners-up were chosen from the many impressive entries received, while a ninth nominee was chosen as the industry’s Imagers of the Year. Those chosen will be honored in the January 2004 edition of Advanced Imaging. Among the recipients is Quarktet of Silver Spring, Maryland, whose solution to the imaging challenge of Removal of Blur from Full-sky Image of Universe Background Radiation was chosen as a Winner in the Software Category. This award is well deserved, as the technology will benefit many throughout the electronic imaging industry.

Quarktet applied the newly discovered Self-Deconvolving Data Reconstruction Algorithm, or SeDDaRA to a recent image of the background radiation of the universe with great success. SeDDaRA is a blind deconvolution method that can identify and remove blur from images without explicit knowledge of the shape of the blur function. SeDDaRA is unique when compared to current blind deconvolution methods in that it is non-iterative, producing a result much faster than other methods. It is also not constrained to optical images, allowing application to medical, one-dimensional and space-based applications.

The key is to find a reasonable representation of the spatial frequency content of the desired result. Quarktet compared the NASA WMAP background radiation image to a collection of fractal images to estimate the blur function, and used a pseudo-inverse filter to remove the blur from the image. As shown in images, both the resolution and contrast are greatly enhanced. “The size of the image alone prohibits many types of image processing. We were able to restore the image in seconds” said Quarktet President James Caron.

Figure 1: Left: The Left side of the WMAP image in false color representation, unprocessed. Right: The result of the Blind Deconvolution of the image using SeDDaRA. Despite its complicated form, the blur function has been removed from the image. A significantly higher resolution appears. Image Courtesy of the NASA/WMAP Science Team.

“We at Advanced Imaging are extremely pleased to be handing out awards to such deserving solutions providers,” said Len Yencharis, AI’s Editor-in-Chief. “There were many excellent and elegant solutions this year, from all corners of the imaging industry—visualization, medical, commercial, machine vision and so on—and choosing just nine was no easy task.”

“This is always an exciting time for us,” Managing Editor Rich Handley said. “Some of the most interesting submissions we receive all year are for the Solutions of the Year, and I look forward to seeing what those in the industry have achieved in their search for imaging solutions. It’s amazing what human intuition, combined with new and existing technology, can accomplish.”

Hank Russell, the magazine’s Associate Editor, mirrored these sentiments, adding, “The competition was intense—so much important work is being done in this era of technological advancement. There were several, however, who stood out from the rest, and it’s our pleasure to be able to recognize such talent and effort.”

Quarktet invents, develops, and markets innovative technologies to companies and corporations for mutual benefit. Created in January of 2002, the company markets and licenses technologies developed by Founder Dr. James N. Caron. The company website www.Quarktet.com contains many examples of the SeDDaRA algorithm applied to a broad spectrum of imaging technologies.

Advanced Imaging magazine is dedicated to the technology of electronic imaging and its influence on a wide variety of markets, including—but not limited to—industrial, scientific, medical, security, military and commercial. Each month, the publication delivers the latest information on imaging hardware, software and peripherals to qualified professionals working in many areas of imaging. Visit Advanced Imaging online at www.advancedimagingmag.com.

Cygnus Business Media is a diversified business-to-business media company with a portfolio of over 200 media products reaching five million professionals annually within 15 major markets. Its four distinct divisions—Cygnus Publishing, Cygnus Expositions, Cygnus Interactive and Cygnus Custom Marketing—provide comprehensive, integrated advertising and marketing programs for Cygnus’s valued customers and clients. The company's business publications, trade shows, conferences, Websites, online products and custom marketing capabilities enhance brand identity, generate sales leads and build product awareness as they strengthen customer/client relationships. For more information on how Cygnus Business Media can help you achieve your advertising and marketing objectives, visit www.cygnusb2b.com.

# # #