Big Picture

Funding obtained for a project to process huge image files of three-dimensional objects

© Fraunhofer IIS
3D data set of a vehicle with segmented components.

When seeking to digitalize three-dimensional objects with high precision, so-called “big pictures” are created. These are image data on completely unprecedented scales. These huge data volumes have to be saved, processed and converted into usable information. Our Development Center for X-ray Technology develops intelligent sensor systems that generate such data. The goal is to extract the relevant digital information from a wide variety of nondestructive measurement sensor systems – information that permits control or regulation such as is required in process monitoring. Measuring systems are increasingly generating large and highly complex data volumes that can often no longer be processed using traditional digital image processing. For this reason in particular, a project was initiated to carry out research and development into image processing strategies and operators with new, intelligent approaches that draw on machine and deep learning.

The first fruits of this project are a new kind of compression technique that reduces the data volume to a fraction of what it was with no perceptible loss in quality, and a segmentation technique that learns from user interaction to isolate objects – such as the blue spring in the picture – and find them again in other images.

Funding of 4 million euros has been granted by the Bavarian Ministry of Economic Affairs to the research project being carried out at the Fraunhofer sites in Fürth, Deggendorf and Passau. The contents of the project were designed particularly with the requirements of Bavarian industrial partners in mind.