The
goal of computer vision is to construct computer algorithms that can
automatically make inferences of and understand a scene from images. The human visual system is able to perform
the task of understanding the world though measurements of light collected on
the retina (images) seemingly effortlessly, but so far, computer algorithms
(even after 40 years of research) are not near matching human visual system
capabilities. Solving computer vision
will not only shed light on the most interesting visual processing system – the
human brain, but solving computer vision will also have an immediate impact in
societal problems, including internet image search, robotics, medicine,
surgical planning, geology, etc. The
focus of the lab is mathematical modeling and principled solutions to
engineering problems that involve extracting information from images. The lab
constructs and applies techniques from diverse mathematical areas (including
partial differential equations, differential geometry, optimization, estimation
and control, statistics) to problems in computer vision.