Update of the Three Dimensional Version of RHSeg and HSeg

Currently, HSEG software is being used by Bartron Medical Imaging as a diagnostic tool to enhance medical imagery. Bartron Medical Imaging licensed the HSEG Technology from NASA Goddard adding color enhancement and developing MED-SEG, an FDA approved tool to help specialists interpret medical images. HSEG is available for licensing outside of the medical field (specifically for soft-tissue analysis).

NASA's GONASA technology is a mathematical formula / algorithm built around creating a grid composed of equal-area cells that span the entire visible hemisphere of a spherical object. Traditional longitude and latitude grids produce cells that diminish in size toward the poles due to convergence of longitudinal lines. GONASA circumvents this problem by carefully adjusting the latitude increments, resulting in a network of truly equal-area cells. This adjustment ensures that any feature observed on the spherical surface is accurately represented, regardless of its location. To implement GONASA, the spherical surface is first segmented into discrete latitude bands or rings, each chosen to encompass an identical surface area. Within each ring, longitude divisions maintain equal cell areas, creating a uniform Cartesian grid. The result is a consistent, distortion-corrected matrix suitable for automatic computation, enabling simplified, efficient, and accurate measurements of spatial characteristics such as feature area, centroid location, perimeter, compactness, orientation, and aspect ratio. GONASA grids are computationally efficient and readily adaptable to a range of data processing workflows, from spreadsheets to sophisticated data analysis frameworks like Pandas data frames in Python. Due to their consistent cell sizing and straightforward indexing, GONASA grids facilitate automation, enabling rapid, high-volume data processing and analysis, essential for modern remote sensing and planetary missions that require immediate, reliable data analysis in limited-bandwidth communications environments. At NASA, GONASA has already been successfully implemented to study images of Titan (e.g., mapping its clouds) taken by the Cassini space probe.

This suite of technologies includes a method, algorithms, and computer processing techniques to provide for image photometric correction and resolution enhancement at video rates (30 frames per second). This 3D (2D spatial and range) resolution enhancement uses the spatial and range information contained in each image frame, in conjunction with a sequence of overlapping or persistent images, to simultaneously enhance the spatial resolution and range and photometric accuracies. In other words, the technologies allows for generating an elevation (3D) map of a targeted area (e.g., terrain) with much enhanced resolution by blending consecutive camera image frames. The degree of image resolution enhancement increases with the number of acquired frames.

The innovation improves upon the performance of passive automatic enhancement of digital images. Specifically, the image enhancement process is improved in terms of resulting contrast, lightness, and sharpness over the prior art of automatic processing methods. The innovation brings the technique of active measurement and control to bear upon the basic problem of enhancing the digital image by defining absolute measures of visual contrast, lightness, and sharpness. This is accomplished by automatically applying the type and degree of enhancement needed based on automated image analysis. The foundation of the processing scheme is the flow of digital images through a feedback loop whose stages include visual measurement computation and servo-controlled enhancement effect. The cycle is repeated until the servo achieves acceptable scores for the visual measures or reaches a decision that it has enhanced as much as is possible or advantageous. The servo-control will bypass images that it determines need no enhancement. The system determines experimentally how much absolute degrees of sharpening can be applied before encountering detrimental sharpening artifacts. The latter decisions are stop decisions that are controlled by further contrast or light enhancement, producing unacceptable levels of saturation, signal clipping, and sharpness. The invention was developed to provide completely new capabilities for exceeding pilot visual performance by clarifying turbid, low-light level, and extremely hazy images automatically for pilot view on heads-up or heads-down display during critical flight maneuvers.

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's has developed a non-scanning, 3D imaging laser system that uses a simple lens system to simultaneously generate a one-dimensional or two-dimensional array of optical (light) spots to illuminate an object, surface or image to generate a topographic profile. The system includes a microlens array configured in combination with a spherical lens to generate a uniform array for a two dimensional detector, an optical receiver, and a pulsed laser as the transmitter light source. The pulsed laser travels to and from the light source and the object. A fraction of the light is imaged using the optical detector, and a threshold detector is used to determine the time of day when the pulse arrived at the detector (using picosecond to nanosecond precision). Distance information can be determined for each pixel in the array, which can then be displayed to form a three-dimensional image. Real-time three-dimensional images are produced with the system at television frame rates (30 frames per second) or higher. Alternate embodiments of this innovation include the use of a light emitting diode in place of a pulsed laser, and/or a macrolens array in place of a microlens.