Our Vision

Visual Information Environment -- An integrated framework for visual information acquisition, processing, presentation, understanding, communication, archiving and user interaction.

This concept embraces the sciences and arts of many technological fields:

Digital signal processing, image processing
Statistics and pattern recognition
Artificial intelligence
Data networking, communications
Information assurance
Computer vision, visualization
Graphics, animation
Visual arts

The realization of this concept will empower the future information technology in many applications:

Media and entertainment
Internet services
Information assisted living
Financial operations
Healthcare
Pharmaceutics
Architecture
Manufacture
Defense and security

Our Focus

Currently at VIEL, our research efforts are orchestrated along two major directions:

data networking: our objective is to effectively solve the two major challenges of today's Internet -- quality of service and security. We are investigating the approach with joint (or cross-layer) designs of various networking components, including source coding, channel coding, encryption, routing, queuing, and media access control.
data analysis: our goal is to effectively extract useful information from rich media content. We are applying signal processing, statistics and pattern recognition techniques on various visual information to perform detection, classification, segmentation, archiving, as well as distributed decision based on data networks.

Our Projects

Image and video compression:
we have successfully developed a series of subband (wavelet) based image and video coding algorithm. The image coder was proposed to JPEG2000 committee in 1997, and it was ranked higher than several popular coders such as, SPIHT and EBCOT. Our 3-D subband video coder has several attractive features, such as high efficiency, error resilient and computational simplicity.

Multimedia streaming over mobile ad hoc networks:
-- we have developed an Enhanced Interlayer Communication Mechanism (ENIC) to improve the reliability of end-to-end data transport over ad hoc networks.
-- we have developed a joint source coding and networking scheme for video streaming over ad hoc networks, based on service differentiation through layered video coding, load-aware multi-path routing, class-based scheduling and queuing.

Information assurance and network security:
-- we have investigated SAML distributed authentication and WS-Security architecture, along with SOAP, WSDL, XML Digital Signatures and Encryption, and SSL/TLS technologies for web services.
-- we have been developing a distributed authentication mechanism with a joint design of networking and encryption to improve the scalability of secure data transactions over wireless networks.
-- we successfully coordinated the SoE efforts in the application of NSA Center of Academic Excellence for Information Assurance.

Image analysis:
-- we developed an end-to-end automatic target recognition system including FOA pre-screening, preferential compression, and VQ/NN classification for SAR images.
-- we have developed an effective face recognition algorithm based on Linear Discriminate Analysis (LDA) of Fisher Scores obtained through Hidden Markov Model (HMM).
-- we have been investigating a new texture classification method based on a unique directional filter bank and HMM for image and video indexing and retrieval.

Medical imaging and bioinformatics:
-- we have developed a telemedicine platform with audio/video compression, image enhancement and analysis tools for remote diagnosis and treatment.
-- we have been investigating texture classification and modeling tools for early cancer detection.
-- we have been investigating the application of signal processing and statistical modeling techniques on microarray processing and associated bioinformatics analysis.

Education:
-- we are offering a series of regular and on-line courses on the topics of data networking, image processing and multimedia systems.
-- our lab is also supporting many student projects under various programs, including undergraduate honor program, senior design, undergraduate research, summer scholar program, Stevens Technogenesis program, and New York Academy of Science SRTP program.

About us

Prof. Hong Man joined Stevens Institute of Technology in 2000. He received his Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology in 1999. He is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, the director of the Visual Information Environment Laboratory at Stevens, and School of Engineering coordinator for NSA Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance.

He is a member of the IEEE and ACM. He served as member of organizing committee and finance chair for IEEE International Workshop on Multimedia and Signal Processing (MMSP) 2002, member of technical program committee for IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC) Fall 2003, and multimedia session chair for IEEE Int. Conf. on Information Technology: Research and Education (ITRE) 2003. He is a committee member on IEEE SPS TC for Education. He was an active contributor to the ISO/ITU JPEG 2000 image coding standard.

Our collaborators

Prof. Mark J. T. Smith, Purdue University -- image and video compression
Dr. Dong Sun, Bell Labs, Lucent Technology -- networking
Prof. Yu-dong Yao, Stevens Inst. Tech. -- networking
Prof. Sumit Ghosh, Stevens Inst. Tech. -- network security
Dr. Quoc H. Pham, Lockheed Martine -- image analysis
Dr. Ara V. Nefina, Intel -- image analysis
Prof. H. Quynh Dinh, Stevens Inst. Tech. -- image analysis
Dr. Belle L. Tseng, IBM -- image/video indexing
Prof. Wei Qian, Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute/USF -- medical imaging
Prof. Tearina Chu, Mount Sinai School of Medicine -- microarray