This award is aiding in the establishment, enhancement and operation of a modern laboratory facility to support experimental work in two major areas, viz. image processing and development of computing environments for mathematical applications. The project in image processing includes work in image coding, image restoration and enhancement, digital filtering, texture modeling and discrimination, image interpretation, computer vision and applications of neural networks to image understanding. The goal of the second project is the development of a software environment in which natural scientists and engineers can solve problems in an efficient and convenient manner. It involves bringing together state-of-the-art computational tools including high- level graphical programming environments, languages and compilers that automatically detect vector and parallel structures, software for the automatic solution of differential equations, parallel linear algebra packages, integrated computer algebra systems, an environment for performing graph theoretic operations, and programming laboratories and libraries of frequently-used procedures and notions. The project is based on ongoing work at Rensselaer in each of the above areas and will utilize a large-scale scientific computer, several high-performance graphics workstations, some Lisp environment/symbolic computation machines, AI workstations and necessary peripheral equipment.
