New imaging technology can sense tanks, as well as cancer.(Brief Article)

2002 OCT 3 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- What does remote sensing for camouflaged enemy ground vehicles have to do with breast cancer diagnosis? By next year, perhaps plenty. Both find threats hidden in innocent clutter.

The Office of Naval Research's (ONR) newly developed 200 channel hyperspectral remote sensing capability - modeled on the human visual/brain "unsupervised" learning system that can distinguish between what's important and what's not - is now being tested both on the LANDSAT satellite and the F-18 fighter jet as a passive electro-optical, infrared surveillance system. A range of sensors surveys the scene in question, and incoming data are compared and contrasted using algorithms based on learning neural network processing.

This algorithm, invented by ONR scientists Dr. Harold Szu and James Buss to increase the effectiveness of military surveillance systems, can dig out the nuggets of information needed even if they're buried in "noise" and clutter. Hyperspectral sensors sweep up enormous quantities of data, but their usefulness has been limited by our ability to pull the important information out of that clutter. The algorithm that processes the data is the important factor.

Systems that do this sort of analysis are called ATR systems - automatic target recognition. Last year the Under Secretary of Defense for Science and Technology asked ONR to look at the potential usage of ATR sensing to improve breast cancer diagnosis. The results of an initial test have been astounding. By demanding greater nutrition ...