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Math to Crack Deep Impact Blurry Vision Problem
starexplorer writes "NASA announced that they believe they have a solution for the Deep Impact mission's blurry vision problem: math. Although the craft will still snap blurry pictures of the Tempel-1 comet, mathmetical manipulation will help scientists clear up the images once they make their way back to Earth. A special report and viewing guide are also available at SPACE.com."
using the same words, i made a much better headline.
"blurry vision math to impact deep crack problem"
it's a process called deconvolution, right? I did this as a project for sophomore year astronomy... which i believe involved asking on slashdot about it.
The early Hubble pictures suffered from optical distortion due to a miscalculation on what the shape of the mirror would be in obit, and NASA also fixed that problem using digital image filtering techniques to reconstruct a clear image. The key was that they had a precise model of the distortion and that it was invertible.
Although the craft will still snap blurry pictures of the Tempel-1 comet, mathmetical manipulation will help scientists clear up the images once they make their way back to Earth.
Scientists will also use Photoshop to remove any zits, butt dimples, and eyebags the comet may be suffering from.
Math in space you say? What will they think of next?!
Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot. Dude.
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
Tilt your head to the side and Squint a bit!
liqbase
No, the parent is correct. Before the COSTAR correctional optics package was launched to fix Hubble's spherical aberation problem, NASA engineers were able to digitally de-convolve the aberations out of the image. The digitally-manipulated results weren't as good as the ones COSTAR optics eventually offered, but they did help some initial observing runs.
make world, not war
Why don't we have adaptive image processing "glasses"? Can't some human vision problems be corrected by preprocessing an image, to "antidistort" it? The inverse distortion from the vision defect would return the image to "normal". Such a device could be recalibrated with test targets, so a wearer wouldn't need to consume valuable optometrist time for revised prescriptions. With some work, they could become light enough that they'd rival lenses, or even surpass them in some real coke-bottle cases. And we'd have a huger market for info display goggles.
--
make install -not war
http://www.cs.brown.edu/exploratories/freeSoftware /repository/edu/brown/cs/exploratories/applets/con volution/convolution_guide.html
"The key operation we perform, both in the theoretical development and in the implementation of filtering, is convolution. This applet allows students to understand the process of convolution. First they create a signal and a filter function to convolve. Then, they place the filter function when they see the product function of the two original signals. In a final graph below, they build up the convolution, seeing the area under the product curve correspond to the value of the convolution at that point.
This applet is useful in understanding both how convolution works and what the effects are of specific signals being convolved together."
If NASA were smart and hired poets, they would just look at the blurry images and say, "Interesting".
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
All right, I know I shouldn't be replying to flamebait but here goes.
e w/motiondeblur.html/
It is in fact possible to at least partially reconstruct blurry images as long as you have some idea about what kind of distortion or motion is causing your problems. In some cases you can get useable information without even knowing exactly what your problem was! Don't take my word for it, look up "blind deconvolution" in your favorite image processing textbook or just use google.
If you're an IEEE member there is an interesting tutorial entitled "Image Deblurring: I Can See Clearly Now" by James Nagy and Dianne O'Leary. In addition to this a real world applications in motion deblurring can be seen here http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/CAVE/research/demos/n
The problem may not be identical to NASA's problem but the mathematical deconvolution techniques are the same.
I realize you just want some attention but a small sense of disbelief is in order since many new developments in the sciences are pretty indistinguishable from magic at first glance.
Years ago I tried to warn people that Tempel 1 was an alien monitoring post, and that it we needed to study it to discover their origins so we could be vigilant for their return. I was locked up for years. Now that I've escaped I find that they're smashing a rocket into it! While this at least proves I wasn't crazy, it's not going to help anything. Any civilization that has the technology to maintain a link to an outpost in a remote star system without it being detected by civilian scientists probably has the ability to defend itself against what it would probably perceive as aggression. While I'd like to believe that their advances have made them peaceful and even merciful, recent events on Earth suggest that the best we can hope for is millenia of enslavement.
There's no failure quite as dissatisfying as a complete and total solution to the wrong problem.
"The table-sized, 820-pound (372-kilogram) impactor is scheduled to smash into the comet's nucleus at 23,000 mph (37,000 kilometers) per hour"
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
"We will alter images to make them clear"
-NASA
My answer: no WAY! Really?
After spending the millions and waiting for years, isnt it a LITTLE apparent that work will be done on images to make them clear? Does it require a press conference to announce the very apparent?
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
They're always able to make blurry photographs sharp, and it only takes about 10 seconds...
-- Andyvan
Oh give it up. This is so OLD. I've seen this "picture enhancement" being used in the movies all the time. You know, when there's this blurry picture and then suddenly it's "enhanced" and is crystal-clear?
Or on that Alias documentary where the CIA didn't have an audio feed so they had this program that would decipher words by lip reading at this obscene angle from a camera on the ceiling?? This stuff is so easy these days...
You'd think NASA would have this down pat... Maybe it's the budget cuts...
If you couldn't tell, then it must not have worked very well.
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
PS: As others pointed out, deconvolution (which is the process used here) is not a new concept. Far from it, in fact.
I'm not sure if it was a photoshop plugin or a standalone filter, but the filter was able to derive sharp pictures from the bokeh of photographs. ...and it's really not all that breakthrough-ish. Nearly anyone who's taken a signal processing class will have done this. The simplest version is an unsharp mask.
:)
Here's the basic idea: you assume some "spreading" of the data happened, and you assume its shape. Then you try to undo what happened - perform the inverse.
There are two problems with this. First, the original convolution you assumed (that "spreading") is destructive to information. There exists no unique inverse mapping. You have to pick one, and hope that what it yields looks right.
Second, without making some major assumptions (that signal processing people aren't usually keen to make) there is no way to differentiate between true signal and noise. The noise, along with the blurry edges, also get sharpened. You can mitigate this somewhat with your choice of inverse mapping. Again, you pick something that looks right.
They do have some prior information going into this - they know the equipment that took the pictures - but pretty much nothing they do will exactly restore the information that was lost. Math isn't magical enough to do that.
For the hardcore:
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Deconvolution.html
and follow the links from there.
I got my Linux laptop at System76.
You know in films when they get a really burry satellite image, and some hero guy goes "can we enhaance thaaat?". So some geek clicks a button and it goes a lot sharper, and you're thinking, "if only that worked in real life". Well it does and you can try it yourself. Here is some free software that allows you to have a play and "enhance" all those blurry pics you have lying around.
I've tried this myself and it works quite well. I tried it on a picture I took of the moon with a 400mm lens and it made quite an impressive difference.