Object Image Inquiry

This series is a vehicle for texts generated through the experiences of writers, scholars, and artists who have been residents at the Getty Research Institute or involved in its programs.

How computer graphics transformed the computer from a calculating machine into an interactive medium, as seen through the histories of five technical objects. Most of us think of computer graphics as a relatively recent invention, enabling the spectacular visual effects and lifelike simulations we see in current films, television shows, and digital games. In fact, computer graphics have been around as long as the modern computer itself, and played a fundamental role in the development of our contemporary culture of computing. In Image Objects, Jacob Gaboury offers a prehistory of computer graphics through an examination of five technical objects--an algorithm, an interface, an object standard, a programming paradigm, and a hardware platform--arguing that computer graphics transformed the computer from a calculating machine into an interactive medium. Gaboury explores early efforts to produce an algorithmic solution for the calculation of object visibility; considers the history of the computer screen and the random-access memory that first made interactive images possible; examines the standardization of graphical objects through the Utah teapot, the most famous graphical model in the history of the field; reviews the graphical origins of the object-oriented programming paradigm; and, finally, considers the development of the graphics processing unit as the catalyst that enabled an explosion in graphical computing at the end of the twentieth century. The development of computer graphics, Gaboury argues, signals a change not only in the way we make images but also in the way we mediate our world through the computer--and how we have come to reimagine that world as computational.

The book puts special stress on the contemporary techniques for reasoning-based image processing and analysis: learning based image representation and advanced video coding; intelligent image processing and analysis in medical vision systems; similarity learning models for image reconstruction; visual perception for mobile robot motion control, simulation of human brain activity in the analysis of video sequences; shape-based invariant features extraction; essential of paraconsistent neural networks, creativity and intelligent representation in computational systems. The book comprises 14 chapters. Each chapter is a small monograph, representing resent investigations of authors in the area. The topics of the chapters cover wide scientific and application areas and complement each-other very well. The chapters’ content is based on fundamental theoretical presentations, followed by experimental results and comparison with similar techniques. The size of the chapters is well-ballanced which permits a thorough presentation of the investigated problems. The authors are from universities and R&D institutions all over the world; some of the chapters are prepared by international teams. The book will be of use for university and PhD students, researchers and software developers working in the area of digital image and video processing and analysis.

Bridge the gap between research and practice with Introduction to Research: Understanding and Applying Multiple Strategies, 5th Edition. This easy-to-read edition covers all the major research design strategies: qualitative, quantitative, naturalistic, experimental-type, and mixed method. And with the text’s up-to-date research information and references, you will have a solid foundation from which to critique and understand research designs and their applications to healthcare and human service settings. Case examples provide real-life snapshots of what it is like to participate in different types of research processes, identify research dilemmas relevant to chapter subjects, and alert you to problems you might encounter. Authors make the topics more accessible, so research becomes more relevant - and topics come to life. Covers experimental-type, naturalistic, and mixed method design strategies to improve your ability to compare, contrast, and integrate different methods. Presents complex information clearly in a highly readable, and easy-to-understand, manner. Includes detailed discussions of qualitative and quantitative methodologies, a unique and balanced focus that makes this text more comprehensive than others in its field. NEW! Up-to-date research methods, strategies, and references, like digital sources, visual methods, and geographical analysis, give you the latest information on research in diverse areas of health and human services.

During the last few years, parallel object-relational database management systems have emerged as the leading data management technology on the market. These systems are extensible by user-defined data types and user-defined functionality for the data. This work focuses on the efficient parallel execution of user-defined functionality. The main contributions describe techniques to support data parallelism for user-defined scalar and aggregate functions and intra-function parallelism for the execution of a scalar function on a large object, and a new technology to provide extensibility with regard to new set-oriented database operations that can efficiently implement user-defined functionality in parallel object-relational database management systems.

Have you ever had your car keys or television remote control inexplicably vanish from under your nose, only to reappear months later in another part of the house for no evident reason? Most would dismiss it as absent-mindedness, with perhaps a joking remark about paranormal activity. Yet remarkable circumstances surrounding many such accounts suggest that the mysterious disappearance of objects could be more than "just one of those things." Examining a large selection of fascinating narratives, this book reviews the "disappearing object phenomenon" (DOP) from a scientific standpoint. Both skeptical and supportive perspectives on DOP are considered, leading to the conclusion that disappearing, appearing and reappearing objects are indicators of a controversial take on the nature of reality.

In contrast to classical image analysis methods that employ "crisp" mathematics, fuzzy set techniques provide an elegant foundation and a set of rich methodologies for diverse image-processing tasks. However, a solid understanding of fuzzy processing requires a firm grasp of essential principles and background knowledge. Fuzzy Image Processing and Applications with MATLAB® presents the integral science and essential mathematics behind this exciting and dynamic branch of image processing, which is becoming increasingly important to applications in areas such as remote sensing, medical imaging, and video surveillance, to name a few. Many texts cover the use of crisp sets, but this book stands apart by exploring the explosion of interest and significant growth in fuzzy set image processing. The distinguished authors clearly lay out theoretical concepts and applications of fuzzy set theory and their impact on areas such as enhancement, segmentation, filtering, edge detection, content-based image retrieval, pattern recognition, and clustering. They describe all components of fuzzy, detailing preprocessing, threshold detection, and match-based segmentation. Minimize Processing Errors Using Dynamic Fuzzy Set Theory This book serves as a primer on MATLAB and demonstrates how to implement it in fuzzy image processing methods. It illustrates how the code can be used to improve calculations that help prevent or deal with imprecision—whether it is in the grey level of the image, geometry of an object, definition of an object’s edges or boundaries, or in knowledge representation, object recognition, or image interpretation. The text addresses these considerations by applying fuzzy set theory to image thresholding, segmentation, edge detection, enhancement, clustering, color retrieval, clustering in pattern recognition, and other image processing operations. Highlighting key ideas, the authors present the experimental results of their own new fuzzy approaches and those suggested by different authors, offering data and insights that will be useful to teachers, scientists, and engineers, among others.