Astronomy is a subject that holds a general interest for the public, but is often criticised for having no practical applications. In fact, this is far from true, with numerous modern technologies owing their genesis to `blue skies' research of a most fundamental nature. Nevertheless, I was very excited by the idea of making seemingly esoteric research provide real practical benefits in the everyday world. At that point, I decided to pursue the notion of creating a general image enhancement method built on the ideas of a generation of astronomers around the world.

I began working on the problem the very next day. Despite having considerable existing research and teaching committments, I managed to to find a couple of hours a day to work on adapting my astronomical software to enhance everyday images. To make the process more entertaining, I downloaded a picture of Marilyn Monroe's face to use as my test image! I first put the image through a distortion algorithm to simulate the effect of a cheap CCTV camera such as those used in many shops. Then I attempted to recover her features. As is often the case in research, my first few attempts were terrible and resulted in images that resembled Quasimodo more than Marilyn. The problem of reconstructing an everyday image such as a face presented me with a multitude of new challenges that do not occur in astronomical images. On the other hand, some aspects of everyday images are easier to deal with than telescope data. After a few weeks of producing rather monstrous visages, the reconstructions started to take shape and Marilyn's features began to emerge on my computer screen. This improvement continued until, about two months after seeing Crimewatch, I had a mathematical algorithm that would have been able to put Marilyn Monroe in the dock if she had ever robbed a Post Office!

At this point, however, the teaching term began in Cambridge and I had no time to pursue these ideas further. Fortunately, it was also around this time that I was made aware of the Fellowship programme offered by the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA for short). NESTA is a Government agency set up using National Lottery money, with the aim of promoting innovation in a wide variety of areas. In particular, NESTA aims to encourage interaction between different areas in the Arts and Sciences. Given the interdisciplinary nature of the work I had begun, I decided to apply for a Fellowship and was fortunate enough to be awarded one. The Fellowship runs for 3 years and has provided me with sufficient funds to take on an excellent young researcher and programmer, called Charlie McLachlan, and to buy the necessary computing equipment to develop the image enhancement algorithms further.

Having just completed the first year of my NESTA Fellowship, and with Charlie's help, the algorithms have improved enormously. We have also begun a series of collaborations with others in the field of image enhancement, in order to share ideas and take advantage of the latest developments around the world. One of the most exciting aspects of our work has been the wide range of problems we are now able to tackle. Aside from the original application in CCTV images, we have found that the same basic principles can be applied to the enhancement of images such as those taken by medical scanners, police cameras, satellite photographs and many others. There are even applications to the speeding up of computer generated animation and the real-time clean up of video footage.

Although the development work still continues, we now have a range of techniques that we feel should prove useful in many areas. Indeed, we have recently begun the process of meeting with representatives of police forces, health authorities and other interested parties, with a view to supplying them with our new technology. So, next time you visit the Post Office, look up into the CCTV camera and smile. At least now we should be able to tell it's you!"

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Content last updated: 03/07/2006

About our expert

Michael Hobson is a Staff Fellow and Director of Studies in Natural Sciences (Physical) at Trinity Hall, Cambridge University. He graduated from the university with a First Class Honours in Natural Sciences and was awarded a Ph.D. from the Astrophysics Group of the Department of Physics. While working as a post-doctoral researcher at Cambridge, he became interested in cosmology and, in particular, making observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background - the `afterglow' of the big bang. There, he also began working on astronomical image reconstruction techniques, and was involved in producing the most detailed map of the CMB up to that date. Following his Research Fellowship, he was elected to a full Staff Fellowship at Trinity Hall, where he teaches Physics and Mathematics to undergraduates, and was also awarded a 5-year Advanced Fellowship by the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council to continue his reseach in cosmology at the Astrophysics Group in Cambridge. Michael began working on the CCTV images in 1999 and was awarded a 3-year NESTA Fellowship to pursue this work in October 2000.

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