Features: March 18, 2002

Freedman Receives NSF CAREER Award:
Research Will Improve Surveillance, MRI Technology

Daniel Freedman, assistant professor of computer science, has been awarded a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation. He is the fifth Rensselaer faculty member this year and the 17th in the past three years to receive the award. The CAREER Award is the NSF's most prestigious honor for faculty members who are at the beginning of their academic careers. Freedman, 30, has been a Rensselaer faculty member since 2000.

Freedman's $350,000 five-year grant will enable him to develop a new automated visual tracking system that could improve surveillance and MRI technology.

Current tracking systems are task-specific, which means that for each new application, an entirely new tracker must be designed from scratch. Freedman will develop general-purpose algorithms that can be used to track objects with varied properties. These algorithms would be able to track people for surveillance purposes using conventional cameras as they move through buildings. The algorithms also could track the slight movements of human organs, due to regular functions such as breathing and even eating, through a stream of MRIs or CT scans.

Freedman's work will help solve current problems, such as when a tracked object is momentarily blocked from view by another object and appears to break into two separate pieces. In addition, properties such as curves and color will be treated simultaneously, giving a more accurate and complete trace.