Statement of Research Intent
Advances in digital imaging have made it possible to put cameras almost everywh ere, from cellular phones to satellites. These cameras enable us to generate large numbers of pictures of almost anything in the world. Harnessing this imaging capability in applications, such as computer g raphics, monitoring, or computer vision, will require flexible models of images and the scenes that gen erat them. My goal is to develop machine learning techniques for building tractable models of images fo r applications in graphics, image processing, data mining, and image understanding. Machine learning is an exciting tool for solving computer vision problems beca use it provides a means for building more accurate models of images and the scenes pictured in those ima ges. My work in recovering the intrinsic characteristics of a scene, described below, is a good e xample of how applying learning techniques can lead to significantly improved results on a classic vision proble m.