Research Topics Natural Language Processing Image Processing

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Research TopicsNatural Language ProcessingImage
Processing

• CSC 3990

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Natural Language Processing

• CSC 3990

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What is NLP?

• Natural Language Processing (NLP)
• Computers use (analyze, understand, generate)
  natural language
• A somewhat applied field
• Computational Linguistics (CL)
• Computational aspects of the human language
  faculty
• More theoretical

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Why Study NLP?

• Human language interesting challenging
• NLP offers insights into language
• Language is the medium of the web
• Interdisciplinary Ling, CS, psych, math
• Help in communication
• With computers (ASR, TTS)
• With other humans (MT)
• Ambitious yet practical

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Goals of NLP

• Scientific Goal
• Identify the computational machinery needed for
  an agent to exhibit various forms of linguistic
  behavior
• Engineering Goal
• Design, implement, and test systems that process
  natural languages for practical applications

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Applications

• speech processing get flight information or book
  a hotel over the phone
• information extraction discover names of people
  and events they participate in, from a document
• machine translation translate a document from
  one human language into another
• question answering find answers to natural
  language questions in a text collection or
  database
• summarization generate a short biography of Noam
  Chomsky from one or more news articles

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General Themes

• Ambiguity of Language
• Language as a formal system
• Computation with human language
• Rule-based vs. Statistical Methods
• The need for efficiency

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Topic Ideas

1. Text to Speech artificial voices
2. Speech Recognition - understanding
3. Textual Analysis readability
4. Plagiarism Detection candidate selection
5. Intelligent Agents machine interaction

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Text to Speech artificial voice

• Text Input
• Break text into phonemes
• Match phonemes to voice elements
• Concatenate voice elements
• Manipulate pitch and spacing
• Output results
• Research question How can a human voice be used
  to produce an artificial voice?
• Model Talker - opportunities for active, hands-on
  research (http//www.modeltalker.com)

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Speech Recognition

• Spoken Input
• Identify words and phonemes in speech
• Generate text for recognized word parts
• Concatenate text elements
• Perform spelling, grammar and context checking
• Output results
• Research question How can speech recognition
  assist a deaf student taking notes in class?
• VUST Villanova University Speech Transcriber
  (http//www.csc.villanova.edu/tway/publications/w
  ayAT08.pdf)

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Textual Analysis - Readability

• Text Input
• Analyze text estimate readability
• Grade level of writing
• Consistency of writing
• Appropriateness for certain educ. level
• Output results
• Research question How can computer analyze text
  and measure readability?
• Opportunities for hands-on research

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Plagiarism Detection

• Text Input
• Analyze text locate candidates
• Find one or more passages that might be
  plagiarized
• Algorithm tries to do what a teacher does
• Search on Internet for candidate matches
• Output results
• Research question What algorithms work like
  humans when finding plagiarism?
• Experimental CS research

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Intelligent Agents

• Example ELIZA
• AIML Artificial Intelligence Modeling Lang.
• Human types something
• Computer parses, understands, and generates
  response
• Response is viewed by human
• Research question How can computers understand
  and generate human writing?
• Also good area for experimentation

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Image Processing

• CSC 3990
• Some slides from Xin Li lecture notes, West
  Virginia Univ.

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What is Image Processing?

• Digital Image Processing
• Analog transmission in 1920
• Early improvements in 1920s
• Required digital computer (1948)
• Rapid advancement since

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Historical Background
Newspaper industry used Bartlane cable picture
transmission system to send pictures by submarine
cable between London and New York in 1920s
The number of distinct gray levels coded by
Bartlane system was improved from 5 to 15 by the
end of 1920s
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Digital Image Processing

• The images in previous slides are digital (now),
  but they are NOT the result of DIP
• Digital Image Processing is
• Processing digital images by a digital computer
• DIP requires a digital computer and other
  supporting technologies (e.g., data storage,
  display and transmission)

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Cool Applications
The first picture of moon by US spacecraft Ranger
7 on July 31, 1964 at 909AM EDT
Sir Godfrey N. Housefield and Prof. Allan M.
Cormack shared 1979 Nobel Prize in Medicine for
the invention of CT

• Digitization
• Compression
• Error Recovery

• Enhancement
• Edges, Contrast, Brightness, etc.

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Past 20 Years

• Acquisition
• Digital cameras, scanners
• MRI and Ultrasound imaging
• Infrared and microwave imaging
• Transmission
• Internet, wireless communication
• Display
• Printers, LCD monitor, digital TV

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Photography
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Motion Pictures
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Law Enhancement and Biometrics
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Remote Sensing
America at night (Nov. 27, 2000)
Hurricane Andrew taken by NOAA GEOS
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Thermal Images
Operate in infrared frequency
Human body disperses heat (red pixels)
Different colors indicate varying temperatures
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Medical Diagnostics
Operate in X-ray frequency
chest
head
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PET and Astronomy
Operate in gamma-ray frequency
Cygnus Loop in the constellation of Cygnus
Positron Emission Tomography
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Cartoon Pictures (Non-photorealistic)
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Synthetic Images in Gaming
Age of Empire III by Ensemble Studios
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Virtual Reality (Photorealistic)
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General Themes

• Human vision is limited
• Digital images contain more information that
  humans perceive
• Computers can use algorithms to extract more
  information from digital images
• Computers can acquire, manipulate, compress,
  transmit and modify images

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Topic Ideas

1. Biometrics identifying faces retinas
2. Target Acquisition see a tank from space
3. Computer Vision detect microscopic flaws in
   manufacturing
4. Assistive Technology convert visual images into
   tactile or textual form
5. Entertainment remove red eye, morph faces,
   digital filmmaking, movie magic
6. Image Description use 3D dictionary to describe
   contents of 2D image