Within seconds, the resulting layout is transmitted back to the participants for their approval, and is then passed on to the publisher in Chicago, and from there to several printers around the country. Efficient compression of digital images and video is critical to the viability of most future applications of images and video on computer networks. However, uncompressed digital representation of images and video can produce overwhelmingly large amounts of data. The Image Lab was formed with a National Science Foundation award to Professor Orchard and several colleagues three years ago, supported by matching funds from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and other units in the College of Engineering. In the Image Lab, researchers are exploring efficient methods for the acquisition, management, and processing of digital images and video.
Digital imagery has many consumer applications.
Professor Orchard and his students are developing improvements to these standard techniques which produce higher quality images while requiring fewer bits of information. They are also studying flexible compression algorithms, allowing the user to continuously adjust the image quality by adjusting the amount of data used in the representation. For example, a young mother using the Kodak Photo-CD system might want to show recent baby pictures to her parents in another city. Making a data connection with her parents' Photo-CD system, she transmits the data representing her photographs. If she sends uncompressed representations, she might wait 20 minutes for each photo to be sent.