Imaging Company to Assist in Shuttle Analysis

CHATSWORTH, Calif., May 15 -- Advanced Digital Imaging Research LLC has been awarded a contract from Lockheed Martin to assist in the analysis of images and video of the last journey of the Space Shuttle Columbia. The project involves using image analysis techniques to decipher the disintegration of the shuttle during reentry into the earth's atmosphere.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has convened a panel of image processing experts to use digital imaging technology on images of the shuttle launch and reentry.

ADIR, based near Houston, Texas, develops algorithms and software for image analysis and pattern recognition, image enhancement and restoration, image compression, wavelet applications, automated instruments, biometrics and forensic services. A subsidiary of International Remote Imaging Systems Inc., of Chatsworth, Calif., ADIR was founded as Perceptive Systems Inc. in 1984 by Kenneth Castleman, a NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) digital-imaging expert, and Donald Winkler, a Johnson Space Center image-processing expert. The company licensed a patent from JPL for an automated system for chromosome analysis and supplied advanced microscope-imaging systems used in the diagnosis of inherited diseases.

Castleman, president of ADIR, was inducted into the US Space Foundation's Space Technology Hall of Fame in 1994, has written two textbooks and numerous scientific papers on digital image processing, assisted NASA in the analysis of films of the Challenger accident, and worked on image analysis in the John F. Kennedy assassination case. He serves on an FBI scientific advisory group on imaging technology.

For more information, visit: www.adires.com