Research

Imaging technologies are one of the most important cross-cutting technologies for national and international research activities, high-tech industries and information societies. This is especially true forcivil security applications. Here, the primary challenge is the development of highly automated systems, which take the result of the ongoing ethical and legal discussions regarding this topic into account.

The field of research within the Research Training Group 1564 is structured according to application scenarios and fundamental techniques. There are close methodological interconnections and significant synergies between the individual projects which obey this structure.

Civil Security Applications

New civil security applications require enhanced imaging functionalities, which, as a consequence, require more powerful and efficient concepts regarding both sensor concepts and sensor data processing methodologies. The focal idea of the Research Training Group is to seize recent developments in imaging for different modalities in order to facilitate innovative approaches to the field of civil security applications. The focused civil security scenarios include person detection and biometry, material detection and analysis, as well as scene observation. The targeted enhancements of civil security systems addresses further functionalities and increased robustness which can be achieved due to the particular orthogonality and redundancy of the information delivered by the individual sensor modalities.

Fundamental Methods

Sensor data processing is the focal point for the Research Training Group, bringing together the potentials of the new sensor technologies and the specific needs of the targeted civil security application. Within this scope, different data processing and information extraction concepts will be comprehensively investigated. Sensor models, as part of the sensor development, deliver essential sensor characteristics as a basis for developing efficient sensor data processing techniques.

Sensor Deployment and Sensor Systems

The Research Training Group addresses new sensor concepts, especially distance range sensors based on Photonic Mixing Device (PMD) technology, enhanced THz-sensors and multi-spectral VIS-sensors (colorimetric arrays).

Mono- and Multimodal Methods

For efficient and robust information extraction for new sensor modalities, new mono-modal techniques will be developed. Multi-modal approaches, on the other hand, aim at the registration, merging and representation of data delivered by several diversified sensors modalities. This also covers cross-modal methods which are dealing with the relation of specific information between different modalities. For many of the research projects specific illumination setups and their influence on imaging are important issues. Furthermore, the addressed civil security applications often require fast processing of large amounts of data.

Publications

Besides the publication of our research in journals and conferences, all research results are presented once a year at the so called Annual Fall Presentations.