Annual Report 2017–2018 COVER PHOTO: Members of the Digital Imaging and Remote Sensing (DIRS) Laboratory pose outside the Carlson Building with some of the calibration targets, sensors, and aerial platforms they use in their research. (Photo courtesy of Professor Frank Cost) RIT Imaging Science 2017-2018 Annual Report contents 3 5 Foreword 7 Academics 7 Imaging Science Graduate Program 15 Imaging Science Undergraduate Program 21 Research 21 Digital Imaging and Remote Sensing Lab 27 Historical Manuscript Restoration Lab 31 Laboratory for Advanced Instrumentation Research 37 Multidisciplinary Vision Research Laboratory 41 Perception for Motion (PerForM) Lab 45 Computer Vision and Robotics Lab 47 Machine and Neuromorphic Perception Laboratory 51 Laboratory for Advanced Optical Fabrication, Instrumentation and Metrology (AOFIM) 55 Optics 59 Magnetic Resonance Imaging Lab 63 Laboratory for Multi-Wavelength Astrophysics 71 Nanoimaging Research Lab 75 CIS Remembers Catherine Carlson 4 FOREWORD By David W. Messinger, Ph.D. On behalf of the faculty, staff, and Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society (GRSS) Outstand- students in the Chester F. Carlson ing Service Award (OSA), recognizing his long term com- Center for Imaging Science at RIT mitment to the international remote sensing community. I am pleased to present the 2017- We are also increasing our international footprint in other 18 Academic Year Annual Report ways. Dr. Tony Vodacek is an external collaborator and ad- of the Center. It has been another visor to an Academic Center of Excellence at the University exciting year and I hope you enjoy of Rwanda and the University of Kibungo, promoting that reading about all of our recent nation’s development by helping to build graduate pro- activities and accomplishments! grams and a culture of scholarship in a country healing from Our students, at both the un- civil war and genocide. Additionally, Dr. Emmett Ientilucci, dergraduate and graduate level who after years as a research professor in the Center joined continue to excel and lead their our tenure track faculty as an assistant professor, was an fields. Sanghui Han, an imaging invited speaker for the Remotely Sensed Big Data Analy- science Ph.D. student, received the inaugural K. Stuart sis and Mining conference in Kolkata, India, at the Indian Shea Endowed Scholarship from the United States Geo- Statistical Institute. We were also joined by Dr. Guoyu Lu as spatial Intelligence Foundation during the GEOINT 2018 a new faculty member in the Center who is working on novel Symposium. Mandy Nevins, another of our Ph.D. students, approaches to computer vision. was awarded a Microscopy & Microanalysis 2018 Student We hosted an exciting event merging photography and Scholar award for her conference paper on visualizing science, hosting a visit and exhibition by Dr. Don Pettit, astigmatism in the scanning electron microscope beam. NASA Astronaut in the spring. Dr. Pettit is world renown And Sara Leary who graduated with a BS this past spring, for his photography from the International Space Station, along with her adviser, Michael Murdoch (Color Science), and the Center worked closely with alumnus Peter won the Best Poster Award at the ACM Symposium on Blacksberg to exhibit some of Dr. Pettit’s photography Applied Perception. Sara’s poster, “Manipulating Object in the University Gallery, as well as hosting him for a Lightness in Augmented Reality,” summarized her senior public lecture about conducting science in space. It was capstone project research on the optical and perceptual an exciting event with over 200 attendees at the exhibit effects of augmented reality overlays on real objects. opening, with many more seeing the exhibit that was on Dr. Aly Artusio-Glimpse won the RIT Outstanding Ph.D. display through the Imagine RIT festival. Dissertation award, and Dr. Ron Kemker was selected as It was another exciting year in the Center, and we are the College of Science outstanding Graduate Delegate this looking forward to another one! I hope you enjoy reading year and was invited to speak at the College Commence- through this annual report to learn about all that is going ment ceremony. As you can see by these few examples, our on in the Center. We look forward to another exciting year students continue to be at the cutting edge of research in coming up, and please do keep in touch or stop by the Imaging Science. Center to see all the excitement in Imaging Science! We hosted several alumni events this past year, engaging with alumni in both the Rochester community, the Wash- ington DC area, and Silicon Valley. Next year will be very exciting as in October 2019 we will be celebrating the 30th anniversary of the opening of the Chester F. Carlson Center building! We hope you can join us for this occasion. David W. Messinger, PhD Director Our faculty continue to be recognized for their leadership in their fields. Professor John Kerekes received the 2017 IEEE RIT Imaging Science 2017–2018 Annual Report 5 CIS Staff Assistants Cheryl Merrell (left) and Melanie Warren (right) represented the Center at this year's Presidential Awards for Outstanding Staff ceremony. Cheryl was a nominee for an individual excellence award for the support she provides to four of our research labs, and Mel was a recipient of a team excellence award as the co-chair of the College of Science Staff Advisory Council. Congratulations Cheryl and Mel! ACADEMICS ACADEMICS6 RIT Imaging Science 2017–2018 Annual Report ACADEMICS 7 IMAGING SCIENCE GRADUATE PROGRAM Program Coordinator’s Comments By Dr. Charles Bachmann Our Imaging Science graduate program remains a unique degree program in the US. Its interdisciplinary nature draws a remarkable cross-section of students from a wide variety of disciplines, and it is this interdisciplinary demographic which helps to foster the unique research atmosphere and diverse range of research undertaken within the Center for Imaging Science. As students graduate from ACADEMICSour program, they depart with both a solid foundation in core sub-disciplines and a set of research experiences that prepare them well for the types of interdisciplinary research environments they are likely to encounter in the workforce. Our graduates continue to be a source of great pride and are highly prized by recruiters from government and industrial laboratories, academic institutions, and not-for-profit organizations. Below are details of the many developments within the graduate program this past year. This includes highlights such as the arrival of new tenure-track faculty, new course offerings, and a wide variety of outstanding student achievements. Graduate Program Faculty As of the end of the 2017–18 academic year there were a total of 57 members of the CIS Graduate Program Faculty, including two new tenure track faculty. This year, CIS welcomed Dr. Guoyu Lu and Dr. Emmett Ientilluci as new ten- ure-track faculty members. With the addition of Dr. Lu and Dr. Ientilluci, CIS now has a total of 19 tenured or tenure-track faculty with the Center as their primary appointment. Another 25 CIS faculty have a primary appointment in one of thirteen other departments, centers, programs, or laboratories with which the Center is affiliated. Also, the Center is the home to 10 Research Fac- ulty. There are five Program Allied Faculty who hold positions at other organi- zations outside of RIT. Curriculum Development This year, new CIS faculty member Dr. Guoyu Lu, who is an expert in auton- omous vehicles and imaging systems, offered a new Special Topics course entitled Robot Vision. In addition, five courses, that had previously been offered as Special Topics courses, became permanent new offerings in our graduate curriculum. These courses reflect the broad diversity of research interests within CIS. New permanent courses include: Vision Sciences Seminar (IMGS-622, taught by Dr. James Ferwerda); Interactive Virtual Environments (IMGS-624, taught by Dr. Gabriel Diaz); Optical Component, Systems Design and Performance Evaluation (IMGS-635, taught by Dr. Jie Qiao), and Radiative Transfer I and II (IMGS-719 and IMGS-721, bouth taught by Dr. Charles Bach- mann. Finally, this year the CIS Faculty decided to revise the structure of our Graduate Laboratory course. In recent years, this course has been a two-semes- ter project-based course offered in the first year. The newly revised Graduate Laboratory course (IMGS-609) will be offered now as a single semester course in the first semester and is designed to provide a foundation for the core graduate curriculum by covering critical subjects thor or a co-author of the publication. of hybridized infrared arrays for and skills such as experimental design Below we highlight some of these ac- characterization of interpixel capacitive 8 and analysis, advanced mathematics complishments by providing a list of coupling, Optical Engineering, 56, 2, and numerical optimization, and articles published in refereed journals pp. —(February 07, 2017) scientific programming. as well as in proceedings of profes- Dorado-Munoz, Leidy; Messinger, Graduate Student Body sional conferences and symposia. David, Spatial-Spectral Schroedinger Embedding for Target Detection, Opti- At the beginning of the 2017-18 aca- Selected Journal Articles with Graduate Stu- cal Engineering, 56, 9, pp.—(2017) demic year, there were a total of 116 dent Authors (student author underlined) graduate students pursuing graduate Alharbi, N; Hailstone, Richard K.; Varela, Dorado-Munoz, Leidy; Messinger, Da- degrees in Imaging Science. Our CIS B, Multiple Phase Identification in vid; Bove, Damien, Integrating Spatial graduate student population included Alkali-Activated Slag by SEM-EDS, Key and Spectral Information for Enhanc- 88 upper-level graduate students and Engineering Materials, pp.—(July 2018) ing Spatial Features in the Gough Map 28 incoming students, of which 18 of Great Britain, Journal of Cultural Alharbi, N; Hailstone, Richard K.; Vare- were new Ph.D. students and 10 were Heritage, pp.—(April 2018) la, B, Multiple Phase Identification in new MS students.