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Cambridge University PhD student Qi Pan has designed software that creates textured 3D models in slightly more than a minute using a stationary camera, such as a webcam. Conventional off-line model reconstruction relies on a number of phases - there’s an image collection phase that can be quite quick, followed by a very slow reconstruction phase, which requires a long time to verify a model obtained from an image sequence is acceptable. This new software creates a 3D model on-line as the input sequence is being collected. As the user rotates the object in front of a camera, a partial model is reconstructed and displayed to the user.  Read More

Turning your old pre-digital memories into pixel-rich images usually involves buying a scanner, loading the prints into a computer and then transferring them to a USB or SD Flash card for viewing in your digital photo frame. JOBO has greatly simplified this process by including a scanner built into its latest photo frame - the appropriately named ScanViewer.  Read More

Combining sophisticated sensors in orbit with sensors on the ground and in the air has led researchers at Tel Aviv University (TAU) to create a “Hyperspectral Remote Sensor” (HRS) that can give advance warnings about water contamination after a forest fire, alert authorities of a pollution spill long before a red flag is raised on Earth, or inform the population where a monsoon will strike.  Read More

Swedish researchers have developed an interactive touchscreen 3D autopsy table that allows pathologists to examine virtual representations of real bodies in minute detail and from numerous viewing angles. Using data provided by scans of an actual body, the table allows the user to remove layers such as skin and muscle, add or remove tissue and circulatory systems, zoom in and out and cut through sections with a virtual knife. The video below is a "must watch".  Read More

Recent developments in the fight against cancer have promised better ways to both identify and treat the disease. Adding to the ever growing list of advancements is Dave Wilson, a Professor of biomedical engineering at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. Frustrated by blurry low resolution optical images of diseased tissues, he has developed a cryo-imaging system which can identify and pinpoint the exact location and number of cancer cells in a particular area while displaying the findings as a detailed three dimensional color cyber model.  Read More

If you’re not a graphic designer, you may have struggled in the past to get your personal photos looking their best when relying on your printer’s color adjustment settings. Complex color wheels, sliders, brightness and contrast editors, and highlight tools all look handy – until you try to use them. Xerox has devised Natural Language Color Editing technology that allows you to adjust the colors in your printed documents by accessing plain English phrases. A drop-down Color By Words menu on your computer offers phrases like: ‘Make the blues a lot more vibrant’, which will then do just that across the entire document or image. Combining words can form thousands of different phrases to deliver the results you want. You can watch the demo video below or test drive the technology for yourself via the link at the end of this story.  Read More

With Hollywood set to give us over a dozen 3D feature films in the next twelve months, demand for 3D technology is at an all-time high. As the roll out of digital cinema has taken the industry longer to implement than expected, Thomson’s Technicolor Business Group has announced what it says is an affordable alternative 3D process that works with existing 35mm cinema projectors. While the introduction of such technology will expand the current reach of 3D, not everyone, it seems, is singing Technicolor’s praises.  Read More

In a galaxy far, far away … about 2.5 million light years, in fact, lie approximately 20,000 hot, young stars and dense clusters that comprise the Andromeda Galaxy. The galaxy, known as M31 in the constellation Andromeda, was recently captured by an ultraviolet optical telescope aboard NASA’s Swift satellite, and delivers the highest-resolution view of a neighboring spiral galaxy ever attained in the ultraviolet.  Read More

It's often said that we know more about the depths of the Universe than the ocean floors of our own planet, but this might soon change with OceanoCam, a newly-developed cheap underwater camera for capturing high-definition video at great depths, aimed at both research community and the entertainment industry.  Read More