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Truong Nguyen

Image and video processing and signal processing for communications, including an emphasis on implementations or digital signal processing or DSP architectures.

Professor Nguyen's research applies the theory of wavelets and filter banks to image and video processing, with an emphasis on low-power low-cost systems useful in entertainment, surveillance, and defense. Wavelets refer to the tiny waves of video information into which video streams may be decomposed for further manipulation and processing. Among platforms that are target of Nguyen's algorithms are: cell phones, and pocket PCs. He has succeeded in using novel techniques to provide for smoother motion animations on wireless systems that normally lack sufficient bandwidth to sustain frame rates high enough to avoid herky-jerky movement. Using the original signal, extra frames are built via temporal interpolation. In one case, next-generation (2.5G) cell phones have been made to display 20 frames of video per second, twice what would be expected from wireless connection's native data rate. Nguyen's research also been applied to increase the frame rate of conventional NTSC television signals, transforming them for HDTV and to enhance signals from robotic underwater devices functioning as robotic mine sweepers.

Truong Nguyen came to the Jacobs School in 2001. He manages the Video Processing Group, and teaches courses associated with the Signal Image Processing Program (SIP). He is a 1995 recipient of an NSF career award and is co-author of a popular book: Wavelets and Filter Banks, and author of several matlab-based toolboxes on image compression, electrocardiagram compression, and filter bank design. He also holds a patent on an efficient design method for wavelets and filter banks and several patents on wavelet applications including compression and signal analysis. He received his Ph.D. from Caltech in 1989.