I have always been intrigued by fun and interesting research and M.I.T. often has something for me to talk about. As you know from my Videos in Research post, I really like to see videos used in research when presenting a topic. M.I.T. has an excellent video that was in the news a few months ago that I thought I would share.
Revealing Invisible Motion
M.I.T. has recently been doing research on video enhancement using regular video feeds. The basics behind their research is to take a standard video and look at pixel to pixel variations in movement and color. From these variations they artificially enhance the changes in color and/or motion and display the new result to a user. This new and enhanced video provides information that was hidden in the video from a human and displays it in a way an human can easily interpret it; this in turn makes the video much more useful. By using the M.I.T. video enhancement software it is possible to extract heart rate, breathing, and other information from a regular video camera.
Their video explain this much better than I am able to with words. Take a look!
Invisible Motion Video
Where will this go
I think there are a ton of uses for this from medical diagnostic (as mentioned in the video) to government and security applications (lie detectors?). Even on an advertising front when you look at something and like it you breath harder or your heart rate increase. With this software an advertiser could know if you were on the verge of buying something and help tempt you into a buying decision.