Invited Speakers

Gestalt Laws of Vision in Computational Forensics - Friend or Foe?

Mario Köppen, Kyushu Institute of Technology, mkoeppen@ ieee.org

Gestalt laws of vision are an apparent phenomenon of visual perception that still lack general understanding, despite more than 100 years after its first mentioning in psychological literature have passed. In this contribution, we want to promote Gestalt as challenge to computer science. We want to focus on the observation that Gestalt laws strongly affect the way, in which we organize and structure our living environment, and thus adapting to the needs, possibilities, but also limitations of human cognition. This also refers to forensic case studies, and the ambiguous role of Gestalt there: Gestalt can help to discover and gain evidence from visual examination, but it can also simply cause the overlooking of essential visual cues. An experimental study on information hiding by the method of modifying a logo image will demonstrate that attention for changes is not a linear function of the amount of change. In this sense, a number of (probably even simple) forensic techniques and "rules of thumb" can be also seen as employing Gestalt laws for revealing forensic evidence.

This gives some understanding for an interest in the computational handling of Gestalt. In a second part, the state of research on Gestalt in engineering sciences, esp. image processing and pattern analysis, will be critically reviewed, and their strong and weak points will be evaluated. But moreover, new emerging computational paradigms and models will be evaluated according to what they might provide for the understanding of Gestalt. Among these paradigms and models, we can find the Neural Darwinism, which relates evolutionary concepts to the processing of the brain, the recently proposed Cogency Confabulation, which relates learning with the maximization of a priori probability, and Jeff Hawkins hierarchical temporal memory model of the brain that comes most close to a brain processing model including Gestalt laws "for free," while maintaining a computational model at the same time.

Mario Köppen: http://science.mkoeppen.com/

Physical Security Technologies at Hitachi

Minoru Sakairi, Central Research Laboratory, Hitachi, Ltd.

Many important issues these days have become the focus of worldwide public concern and scientific research. For example, the environmental impact of incinerators has been under public scrutiny since the 1990s. Another important issue worldwide is physical security due to the spreading global use of explosives and illicit drugs. Under this social background, we started developing real-time monitoring techniques based on mass spectrometry for physical security applications. The original compact mass spectrometer was developed to detect explosives, illicit drugs, and other such compounds by efficiently ionizing and mass analyzing molecules that are detected. We can detect various compounds by analyzing the mass number of observed ions (or combinations of ions with different mass numbers).

This method can be applied in various fields. One example is PCB (Polychlorobiphenyl) monitoring in PCB treatment facilities. A continuous monitoring system is necessary for these facilities in Japan because citizens living nearby fear the possible threat of a leakage of untreated PCB. The PCB monitoring system is therefore used at all PCB treatment facilities. Another application field is in the detection of illicit drugs at customs checkpoints. This system is now used at every major customs station in Japan, and has become one of the primary tools of detection along with X-ray systems and detection dogs. This system was developed under a research contract with the Ministry of Finance.

Recently, we have focused on developing a system to reduce the threat of improvised explosive devices (IEDs). One type of IED has relatively high vapor pressure, and therefore, we designed a high-throughput walkthrough portal to carry out high-throughput detection of the high vapor pressure components of improvised explosives. This project was commissioned by MEXT’s Science and Technology Project for a Safe and Secure Society.

In my presentation, I’ll also describe other technologies such as DNA analysis.

Minoru Sakairi, received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in Chemistry from The University of Tokyo in 1979, 1981, and 1989. He is a senior chief researcher in bioinstrumentation and security systems at the Central Research Laboratory, Hitachi, Ltd. During 1989-1990, he was a guest researcher at the National Institutes of Health (U.S.). He has received numerous awards including the Okochi Memorial Technology Award (2000), the Ichimura Industrial Award (2007), and the Commendation for Science and Technology by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Development Category (2008).