Mar 26 2003
From The Space Library
NASA awarded its Commercial Invention of the Year to the Video Image Stabilization and Registration System (VISAR) and its Government Invention of the Year to the Computer Implemented Empirical Mode Decomposition Method, also known as the Hilbert-Huang Transformation (HHT) Method. David H. Hathaway, a solar physicist, and Paul Meyer, an atmospheric scientist, both of NASA's MSFC, had created the basis for the VISAR technology, which turns dark, jittery images into clearer stable images. NASA had developed VISAR in response to an FBI request for assistance. The FBI first used VISAR in 1996 to analyze video of the bombing at the Olympic Summer Games in Atlanta. At the time of the award, investigators were using VISAR to help isolate images collected during the launch of the ill-fated Space Shuttle Columbia, images that they were examining to locate possible damage to the orbiter. Norden E. Huang, Director of the Goddard Institute of Data Analysis at NASA's GSFC, had invented the HHT Method, which had applications in a variety of fields. Researchers could use the HHT Method in the study of topics as diverse as climate cycles, earthquake engineering, geophysical exploration, submarine design, turbulence flow, basic nonlinear mathematics, satellite data analysis, structural damage detection, nonlinear wave evolution, variations in solar neutrinos, blood pressure variations, and heart arrhythmias. NOAA had used the HHT Method to analyze sea-surface temperature data collected by Earth-orbiting spacecraft, successfully linking environmental changes with weather changes. (NASA, “NASA Selects Commercial and Government Inventions of the Year,” news release 03-120, 26 March 2003, http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2003/mar/HP_news_03120.html (accessed 25 August 2008); Brian Lawson, “ NASA Cites Two for Imaging Work: Invention Has Been Used To Help Law Enforcement Effort,” Huntsville Times (AL), 27 March 2003.
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