Mathias, Harry

San Francisco State University, Radio, Television, Film, BA, 1968 San Francisco State University, Creative Arts Interdisciplinary Studies with emphasis Film Production, Broadcast TV Production, Broadcast Engineering, Drama, and Computer Graphic Video Imaging Systems Design, MA,1974,https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/erfa_bios/1359/thumbnail.jp

Air Force Institute of Technology Research Report 2017

This Research Report presents the FY18 research statistics and contributions of the Graduate School of Engineering and Management (EN) at AFIT. AFIT research interests and faculty expertise cover a broad spectrum of technical areas related to USAF needs, as reflected by the range of topics addressed in the faculty and student publications listed in this report. In most cases, the research work reported herein is directly sponsored by one or more USAF or DOD agencies. AFIT welcomes the opportunity to conduct research on additional topics of interest to the USAF, DOD, and other federal organizations when adequate manpower and financial resources are available and/or provided by a sponsor. In addition, AFIT provides research collaboration and technology transfer benefits to the public through Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs)

Relevance-Based Compression of Cataract Surgery Videos

In the last decade, the need for storing videos from cataract surgery has increased significantly. Hospitals continue to improve their imaging and recording devices (e.g., microscopes and cameras used in microscopic surgery, such as ophthalmology) to enhance their post-surgical processing efficiency. The video recordings enable a lot of user-cases after the actual surgery, for example, teaching, documentation, and forensics. However, videos recorded from operations are typically stored in the internal archive without any domain-specific compression, leading to a massive storage space consumption. In this work, we propose a relevance-based compression scheme for videos from cataract surgery, which is based on content specifics of particular cataract surgery phases. We evaluate our compression scheme with three state-of-the-art video codecs, namely H.264/AVC, H.265/HEVC, and AV1, and ask medical experts to evaluate the visual quality of encoded videos. Our results show significant savings, in particular up to 95.94% when using H.264/AVC, up to 98.71% when using H.265/HEVC, and up to 98.82% when using AV1.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures, 3 table

Air Force Institute of Technology Research Report 2018

This Research Report presents the FY18 research statistics and contributions of the Graduate School of Engineering and Management (EN) at AFIT. AFIT research interests and faculty expertise cover a broad spectrum of technical areas related to USAF needs, as reflected by the range of topics addressed in the faculty and student publications listed in this report. In most cases, the research work reported herein is directly sponsored by one or more USAF or DOD agencies. AFIT welcomes the opportunity to conduct research on additional topics of interest to the USAF, DOD, and other federal organizations when adequate manpower and financial resources are available and/or provided by a sponsor. In addition, AFIT provides research collaboration and technology transfer benefits to the public through Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs). Interested individuals may discuss ideas for new research collaborations, potential CRADAs, or research proposals with individual faculty using the contact information in this document

Visualizing the irradiated body and radioactive landscape in American art, 1945-1976

Looking beyond mushroom-cloud imagery, this dissertation investigates the greater effect that radiation science had on intellectually and imaginatively stimulating the visual artists László Moholy-Nagy, Ralston Crawford, Ben Shahn, and Bruce Conner, who sought knowledge of the long-range consequences of nuclear testing. Primarily concerned with the specter of the tests' aftermath rather than the spectacle of the explosions themselves, these artists explored the toxicity of radiation and ultimately discovered, I argue, that they lived in perpetual and uneasy co-existence with their subject. This study chronologically follows the course of scientific inquiry into radiological effects, from the Second World War to the height of the Cold War, beginning in the first chapter with a discussion of the role of nuclear medicine in the work of Moholy-Nagy. In postwar Chicago, he developed his earlier engagement with x-ray photographs into a deeper knowledge of atomic processes, which culminated in two paintings that suggest the healing and hazardous effects of nuclear energy. The second chapter considers Crawford's commission by Fortune magazine in 1946 to illustrate an atom-bomb test in the Pacific, for which he made several renderings based on post-blast meteorological and radiological data. The critical response to these works exposed not only the public's lack of understanding about the invisible phenomena of the bomb, but also Crawford's own loose grasp of the pertinent science. Continuing the focus on newsworthy nuclear events, the third chapter examines Shahn's portraits of J. Robert Oppenheimer, following the latter's official censure by the Atomic Energy Commission in 1954, and Shahn's paintings and drawings about a contemporaneous fallout disaster leading to the death of a Japanese fisherman. Both series link the heedless actions of scientists and their government employers to the rise of universal radiation sickness, precipitated by what Shahn perceived as mass dehumanization. The fourth and final chapter addresses Conner's long-held view that San Francisco, the city in which he lived, was radioactively contaminated and a potential target of nuclear attack. Through the representation of self-destruction in his assemblages and films, Conner mimed a cultural malaise that struck him as particularly rampant in the local environment of nuclear experimentation

Virtual Nature: A practice-led enquiry into the relationship between painting and vernacular photography through the process of the painted monotype

My practice-led research explores the relationship between painting and vernacular photography through the process of painted monotypes. This project has developed from an ongoing fascination with the visual qualities of photography and what happens when you translate photographs into other material forms, such as painting. The aim of this project is to develop images that interrogate how painted monotypes provide a distinctive interpretation of embodied experience through their visual, material and sensory qualities. Today, like no other time in history, photography is embedded in our daily lives through hand-held devices and the interface of the digital screen. My research examines how this embedded experience of the photographic relates to the processes and visual qualities of the painted monotype. The project is focused on three primary locations as subject matter: the aquarium, the botanical glasshouse and the habitat diorama. Through my research I explore how these sites function in optically and conceptually similar ways to the world of images, through shared notions of virtuality and indexicality. This research is informed by the work of Édouard Vuillard, Mamma Andersson, Peter Doig, David Hockney and the landscapes of Gustav Klimt. These painters interrogate the territory between painting and lens-based images in very specific ways, relating to visual perception, embodied vision, figure and ground relationships, and visual textures. In a theoretical context, my examination of the relationship between painting and photography has been motivated by the writings of Elizabeth Wynne Easton, Aaron Scharf, John Berger and Russell Ferguson; while Anne Friedberg, Rob Shields, Nicholas Mirzoeff, Geoffrey Batchen, Kris Paulsen and Johanna Love have been instrumental in determining a connection to the virtual and the index in my research

Imaging Biomarkers of Pulmonary Structure and Function

Asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are characterized by airflow limitations resulting from airway obstruction and/or tissue destruction. The diagnosis and monitoring of these pulmonary diseases is primarily performed using spirometry, specifically the forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1), which measures global airflow obstruction and provides no regional information of the different underlying disease pathologies. The limitations of spirometry and current therapies for lung disease patients have motivated the development of pulmonary imaging approaches, such as computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Inhaled hyperpolarized noble gas MRI, specifically using helium-3 (3He) and xenon-129 (129Xe) gases, provides a way to quantify pulmonary ventilation by visualizing lung regions accessed by gas during a breath-hold, and alternatively, regions that are not accessed - coined “ventilation defects.” Despite the strong foundation and many advantages hyperpolarized 3He MRI has to offer research and patient care, clinical translation has been inhibited in part due to the cost and need for specialized equipment, including multinuclear-MR hardware and polarizers, and personnel. Accordingly, our objective was to develop and evaluate imaging biomarkers of pulmonary structure and function using MRI and CT without the use of exogenous contrast agents or specialized equipment. First, we developed and compared CT parametric response maps (PRM) with 3He MR ventilation images in measuring gas-trapping and emphysema in ex-smokers with and without COPD. We observed that in mild-moderate COPD, 3He MR ventilation abnormalities were related to PRM gas-trapping whereas in severe COPD, ventilation abnormalities correlated with both PRM gas-trapping and PRM emphysema. We then developed and compared pulmonary ventilation abnormalities derived from Fourier decomposition of free-breathing proton (1H) MRI (FDMRI) with 3He MRI in subjects with COPD and bronchiectasis. This work demonstrated that FDMRI and 3He MRI ventilation defects were strongly related in COPD, but not in bronchiectasis subjects. In COPD only, FDMRI ventilation defects were spatially related with 3He MRI ventilation defects and emphysema. Based on the FDMRI biomarkers developed in patients with COPD and bronchiectasis, we then evaluated ventilation heterogeneity in patients with severe asthma, both pre- and post-salbutamol as well as post-methacholine challenge, using FDMRI and 3He MRI. FDMRI free-breathing ventilation abnormalities were correlated with but under-estimated 3He MRI static ventilation defects. Finally, based on the previously developed free-breathing MRI approach, we developed a whole-lung free-breathing pulmonary 1H MRI technique to measure regional specific-ventilation and evaluated both asthmatics and healthy volunteers. These measurements not only provided similar information as specific-ventilation measured using plethysmography, but also information about regional ventilation defects that were correlated with 3He MRI ventilation abnormalities. These results demonstrated that whole-lung free-breathing 1H MRI biomarker of specific-ventilation may reflect ventilation heterogeneity and/or gas-trapping in asthma. These important findings indicate that imaging biomarkers of pulmonary structure and function using MRI and CT have the potential to regionally reveal the different pathologies in COPD and asthma without the use of exogenous contrast agents. The development and validation of these clinically meaningful imaging biomarkers are critically required to accelerate pulmonary imaging translation from the research workbench to being a part of the clinical workflow, with the overall goal to improve patient outcomes