INL TECHNOLOGIES

National Security

R&D 100 Award

Winner for

2003 !

This award-winning

technology enables

experts to quickly

make accurate decisions by

capturing and highlighting

changes in digital images that

are not immediately

discernable to the human eye.

Changes that are subtle, such

as blood vessel damage

during eye surgery, may not

show up in a side-by-side

comparison of two images.

The new Change Detection

System (CDS) exposes

inconspicuous differences

from two photos taken

minutes or even weeks apart,

Change Detection System

Commercial applications for national security technologies

detecting changes that might

otherwise go overlooked. This

system could help medical

workers, security personnel,

waste management personnel

and quality control managers

recognize important events.

Differences Emerge

A 2003 winner of R&D

magazine’s top 100 technologies competition, CDS aligns

any two digital images similar

in size and perspective. Using

identical reference points in

each view, CDS maximizes

the similarities between them.

Then, by flipping back and

forth between the two like an

animation, previously unnoticeable differences emerge

from the background.

CDS can be operated from any

standard desktop or portable

Continued on back

Detecting Change in a New Light

The Change Detection System

shows two significant changes

between these two images of

China’s Pearl River taken in 1988

and 1995: the erosion or

submersion of a peninsula and

the farmers’ extension of their

rice paddies out into the river.

(Credit: NASA Goddard

Space Flight Center)
INL TECHNOLOGIES

computer, plus it works from

almost any digitized image

format. Initially developed for

a variety of national security

users, the system could

potentially be used whenever

small yet important changes

occur. Changes in bone or

blood vessels can be easily

culled from x-ray or MRI

images. Ophthalmologists

could compare the health of a

patient’s retina before and after

surgery. In manufacturing

industries, mass-produced

circuit boards could be

compared right off the line for

quality control. The developers

of the system are seeking

collaborators in medical

diagnostics, industry and

security to tailor their system

for specific uses. Similarly,

limited availability of disposal

facilities for radioactive waste

and materials may require

long term storage containers.

The Change Detection

System can be used to

perform remote inspections of

stored inventories to provide

early indication of container

corrosion.

Change is in the Eye of

the Beholder

Changes are detected by the

tendency of the eye to focus

on movement. Instead of a

large and complex computer

program to align and compare

two images, their system

aligns the images and lets the

far more advanced human eye

and brain find the details. In

addition, the resolution of

what can be detected is

limited mainly by the resolution of the electronic images.

No Tripod Necessary

The CDS software is compact

and powerful. At about 350

KB, it weighs in at a tenth the

size of standard web browsers

and word processing programs and works on a

standard Windows NT

desktop or portable computer.

CDS can analyze either

scanned photos or images

CDS can be useful to ophthalmic

surgeons. The change in the

position of the pointer in these

two images indicates the

patient’s perceived center of

vision before and after surgery.

CDS can be useful in the

quality control of industrial

processes. These two different

circuit boards, made one right

after the other on a production

line, show significant

differences in chip markings,

resistor position and soldering.

Continued from front

05-GA50095

The two apparently identical

photos at top were actually taken a

few minutes apart with a hand-held

camera. When aligned and

compared with CDS, footprints

become visible, revealing that a

person has walked in the gravel

between shots.

Greg Lancaster

208-526-3633

Gregory.Lancaster@inl.gov

Ethan Huffman

208-526-0660

Ethan.Huffman@inl.gov

For more information:

taken directly with a digital

camera taken over any time

period. While the images

need to be similar in perspective and size, no camera

tripod is necessary.