Search results

Imaging is rapidly gaining usage across businesses and institutions because of its special technology which allows huge numbers of words, pictures and other illustrations to be reduced to a tiny fraction of the space needed to store originals. The emergence of imaging is being seen in numerous and varied applications around the world. Some of them chronicled in the article are: — Images on billions of pieces of paper are being transformed to image systems at the US National Archives. There, documents are stored in less than 0.5% of the space required on paper. — Businesses in the United States have an estimated 324 billion paper documents stored — 95% of business information is stored on paper. Corporations are seeking ways to apply imaging systems to this problem. The Association for Information and Image Management (AIIM) estimates that the market for imaging systems will be $6.8 billion by 1993. — Imaging technology is established to enable users to use a kind of electronic shorthand to reduce such illustrations as engineering drawings from 8 Mb to 300 kb — thus enhancing ability to transmit and share such drawings at remote sites. — Banks have a massive need to use imaging systems to process checks, now a time‐consuming and expensive task. Since all of this work is now done by humans, use of imaging eliminates the repetitive and boring aspect of the work. — Electronic filing systems can retrieve file folders in a matter of seconds. Ordinary file folders require manual handling and misfiling is a problem. Insurance claims processing requires massive amounts of paperwork and storage. With imaging systems, these claims can be electronically processed and available to remote users. — Companies such as American Express, American Airlines and American Hospital Corporation all are using imaging systems to gain competitive advantage in dealing with their enormous loads of paperwork.

Electron beam additive manufacturing (EBAM) is a popular additive manufacturing (AM) technique used by many industrial sectors. In EBAM process monitoring, data analysis is focused on information extraction directly from the raw data collected in-process, i.e. thermal/optical/electronic images, and the comparison between the collected data and the computed tomography/microscopy images generated after the EBAM process. This paper aims to postulate that a stack of bitmaps could be generated from the computer-aided design (CAD) at a range of Z heights and user-defined region of interest during file preparation of the EBAM process, and serve as a reference image set.

Comparison between that and the workpiece images collected during the EBAM process could then be used for quality assessment purposes. In spite of the extensive literature on CAD slicing and contour generation for AM process preparation, the method of bitmap generation from the CAD model at different field of views (FOVs) has not been disseminated in detail. This article presents a piece of custom CAD-bitmap generation software and an experiment demonstrating the application of the software alongside an electronic imaging system prototype.

Results show that the software is capable of generating binary bitmaps with user-defined Z heights, image dimensions and image FOVs from the CAD model; and can generate reference bitmaps to work with workpiece electronic images for potential pixel-to-pixel image comparison.

It is envisaged that this CAD-bitmap image generation ability opens up new opportunities in quality assessment for the in-process monitoring of the EBAM process.

The Information Centre at De Montfort University Milton Keynes is carrying out a three year research project known as the ELINOR Electronic Library project, which will work towards the creation of a large, indexed collection of electronic texts and images accessible to the students and staff via desktop workstations. The pilot phase will build on the existing information network and use the latest document image processing (DIP) and text retrieval technologies to set up a central and secure location for the data. At this stage of the project, the recommended course texts are not available in electronic formats, so the priority was to assess the suitability of a DIP system for converting printed works into machine‐readable text and image files. Each electronic document will contain a searchable table of contents, abstract, back‐of‐the‐book index data, and, appended to this information will be a folder of image pages. This paper outlines the investigative stages in evaluating and selecting a DIP system, and finally, covers the shortcomings of using a commercial DIP system for electronic libraries.

With the financial support of a donor gift and a grant from the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS), Temple University Libraries embarked on a major digital imaging enterprise. The first year’s pilot projects, their costs, and lessons learned are discussed. Plans are outlined for continued expansion of their image database and related programs, which will be funded by a second IMLS grant and other sources.

Reviews some of the improvements in image sensor technology that are yielding applications in the medical field.

Discusses the characteristics and gives examples of cameras and imaging sensors used in endoscopy, microscopy, pharmaceutical label inspection and X‐radiography. Reviews some innovative camera‐based products for endoscopy, skin imaging and health monitoring.

Improvements in camera resolution, miniaturisation and interfacing are widening the applications in medical imaging and enabling the development of some exciting new products addressing the needs of patients and medical staff.

Identifies some suppliers of medical imaging devices and their applications.

“Library,” as a place, will give way to “library” as a transparent knowledge network providing “intelligent” services to business and education through both specialized librarians and emerging information technologies. Libraries will rely heavily on computers and peripherals to facilitate electronic document imaging, publishing, telecommunications, and information delivery in addition to networked collection management and reference services.

This paper surveys theoretical and practical issues associated with a particular type of information retrieval problem, namely that where the information need is pictorial. The paper is contextualised by the notion of a visually stimulated society, in which the ease of record creation and transmission in the visual medium is contrasted with the difficulty of gaining effective subject access to the world's stores of such records. The technological developments which, in casting the visual image in electronic form, have contributed so significantly to its availability are reviewed briefly, as a prelude to the main thrust of the paper. Concentrating on still and moving pictorial forms of the visual image, the paper dwells on issues related to the subject indexing of pictorial material and discusses four models of pictorial information retrieval corresponding with permutations of the verbal and visual modes for the representation of picture content and of information need.

Reviews a conference held in Orlando, USA in October 1991 with the same title as the article. Looks at the topics covered by various speakers at the conference, including papers on the Internet; networked services for education; optical imaging; STM publishing; campus‐wide information systems and access to educational resources on the Internet. Also reports on Electronic Data Interchange, Image Transmission and electronic publishing.

Electronic data and image publishing will add to the media a new and separately identifiable information communications channel. The cast of industry giants who are committed to making this happen are detailed showing evidence for a time scale so short that the reader is left with a sense of shock. Intel, IBM, Microsoft, RCA, General Electric and Stanford Research Institute have joined to create this image publishing revolution which will become a £1 billion industry.

This paper describes the main objectives of the ELISE project and the methods by which a prototype imagebank of 3,000 items was created, with particular emphasis on the processing of images and the reactions of users. Existing colour transparencies and 35mm photographs were converted to PhotoCD before transferring images to magnetic storage. A prototype user interface was written in VisualBasic and the reactions of users in the Victoria and Albert Museum and De Montfort University were obtained through small controlled tests and by questionnaire. Although funded as a feasibility project, the partners are considering the next stages in moving towards a fully operational service.