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A team of researchers at The University of Western Australia has been recognised for its work to develop the most innovative use of a geophysical technique.

Research Professor Peter Kovesi, Associate Professor Eun-Jung Holden and Assistant Professor Jason Wong, won the Laric Hawkins Memorial Innovation Award at the International Geophysics Conference and Exhibition 2013 in Melbourne for their paper "Interactive multi-image blending for data visualisation and interpretation".

The award is given for the most innovative use of a geophysical technique from a paper presented at the conference. The paper was delivered by Peter Kovesi.

Geoscientific data interpretation aims to understand complex geology in Earth's subsurface by using a range of information including different types of geophysical, geological and geochemical data.

The ability to integrate a range of different sets of data is often a crucial requirement for successful interpretation, but this is a challenging task which often results in interpretations that are subjective and unreliable.

Nevertheless, these interpretations form the basis of significant economic, social and environmental decisions by resource industry and government agencies.

A team of researchers within the Centre for Exploration Targeting (CET) at UWA, bridging the area of computer science and geosciences, developed interactive, multi-image blending tools for improving the interpretation of complex information from multiple data sources.

Traditionally, image blending has been considered only for results between two images.  However, it is common for there to be more than just two images of interest in a geoscientific interpretation task.

"We have developed a family of different multi-image blending tools to support a number of different interpretation tasks and image types.  These blending tools harness the power of interactivity between user and data to identify the association between feature characteristics and individual sets of data," Professor Kovesi said.

"Blending can also be usefully employed to interactively explore parameter variations for data enhancement techniques.  Often the best parameter values to use cannot be known beforehand, and it is common for different regions of an image to require different parameter values for best enhancement.  By preparing a set of images processed over a sequence of scales and parameter values, and then interactively blending between these images, the interpretation of a data set can be greatly facilitated."

Media references

Associate Professor Eun-Jung Holden (UWA Centre for Exploration Targeting)  (+61 8)  6488 5806
Michael Sinclair-Jones (UWA Public Affairs)  (+61 8)  6488 3229  /  (+61 4) 00 700 783