Avinash Kak

Avinash Kak (also known as Avi Kak to his friends around the world) is a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University who has done pioneering research in image processing, tomography, computer vision, and computer languages.

His research on machine vision and robotics is based on the credo that sensory intelligence for machines must be demonstrated using real data, since practically anything can be shown to work with synthetic data. His laboratory has performed research on sensory intelligence for the machines of the future by considering 3D object recognition, vision-guided navigation for indoor mobile robots, and task and assembly planning.

Significant Contributions to Robotics and Computer Vision

With regard to the groundbreaking contributions made by Kak and his collaborators: In 1989, Chen and Kak published 3D-POLY that is still the fastest algorithm for recognizing 3D objects in depth maps. In 1992, Kosaka and Kak published FINALE, which is considered to be a computationally efficient and highly robust approach to vision-based navigation by indoor mobile robots. In 2003, a group of researchers that included Kak developed a tool for content-based image retrieval that was demonstrated by clinical trials to markedly improve the performance of radiologists. This remains the only clinically evaluated system for content-based image retrieval for radiologists.

Significant Contributions to Image Reconstruction Algorithms

The SART algorithm (Simultaneous Algebraic Reconstruction Technique) proposed by Andersen and Kak in 1984 has had a major impact in CT imagingapplications where the projection data is limited. As a measure of its popularity, researchers have proposed various extensions to SART: OS-SART, FA-SART, VW-OS-SART, SARTF, etc. Researchers have also studied how SART can best be implemented ondifferent parallel processing architectures. SART and its proposed extensions are used in emission CT in nuclear medicine, for dynamic CT, for holographic tomography, etc. Convergenceof the SART algorithm was theoretically established in 2004 by Ming Jiang and Ge Wang in their paper "Convergence of the simultaneous algebraic reconstruction technique (SART)" published in the IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, Vol. 12, August 2003, pp. 957-961.

Books Authored

His book Principles of Computerized Tomographic Imaging, now re-published as a classic in Applied Mathematics by SIAM (Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics), is widely used in courses dealing with modern medical imaging. It is one of the most frequently cited books in the literature on image reconstruction. His other co-authored book Digital Picture Processing is also considered to be a classic and has been one of the most widely referenced sources in literature dealing with digital image processing and computer vision. (The citation counts at Google Scholar [http://scholar.google.com/scholar?num=100&hl=en&lr=&q=A.C.Kak] show how frequently these classics are cited in the technical literature.)

His more recent books are a part of his Object Trilogy Project [http://cobweb.ecn.purdue.edu/~kak/trilogy.html] The first book of the trilogy,Programming with Objects: A Comparable Presentation of Object-Oriented Programming with C++ and Java, presents a comparative approach to the teaching and learning of two large object-oriented languages, C++ and Java. The second book, Scripting with Objects: A Comparative Presentation of Object-Oriented Scripting with Perl and Python, does the same with Perl and Python. The last, Designing with Objects is presumably currently in the works.

Lost in Translation

The Chinese translation of Kak's Programming with Objects book left out the following opening paragraph from Chapter 1. This paragraph talks about freedom of societies. The title of this chapter is Chapter 1: Why OO Programming --- Some Parallels with Things at Large.

Although the answer to this question will reveal itself as you work your way through this book, at this juncture it might be useful to draw parallels between object-oriented programming (OO) and the world around us. You are unlikely to dispute the assertion that during the last half century the following facts about societies have become amply clear: soceities function best when centralized control is kept to a minimum; when the intelligence needed for the smooth functioning of a society is as distributed as possible; when each person is sufficiently smart to know for himself or herself how to make sense of the various norms and mores of the society for the common good; and when the higher-level organizational structures, often organized in the form of hierarchies facilitate the propagation of society-nurturing messages up and down the hierarchies.

Bibliography

*Azriel Rosenfeld and Avinash Kak, "Digital Picture Processing" Academic Press(1982)

*Avinash Kak and Malcolm Slaney, "Principles of Computerized Tomographic Imaging" SIAM (Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics) Press(1988)

*Avinash Kak, "Programming With Objects: A Comparative Presentation of Object Oriented Programming with C++ and Java" John Wiley and Sons(2003)

*C. H. Chen and A. C. Kak, "A Robot Vision System for Recognizing 3-D Objects in Low-Order Polynomial Time," IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, pp. 1535-1563, November/December 1989

*Akio Kosaka and Avinash Kak, "Fast Vision-Guided Mobile Robot Navigation using Model-Based Reasoning and Prediction of Uncertainties," Computer Vision, Graphics, and Image Processing -- Image Understanding, pp. 271-329, November 1992.

*Alex Aisen, Lynn Broderick, Helen Winter-Muram, Carla Brodley, Avinash Kak, Christina Pavlopoulou, Jennifer Dy, Chi-Ren Shyu, and Alan Marchiori, "Automated Storage and Retrieval of Thin-Section CT Images to Assist Diagnosis: System Description and Preliminary Assessment," Radiology, Vol. 228, No. 1, pp. 265-270, July 2003

*Anders Andersen and Avinash Kak, "Simultaneous Algebraic Reconstruction Technique (SART): A Superior Implementation of ART," Ultrasonic Imaging, 1984.