George Mason, Adobe Collaborate on Imaging Research

The department of computer science at George Mason University is working with Adobe Systems Inc. on preliminary research for imaging and video streaming.

"Truly for us it has been an excellent industrial-academic partnership not just because of how interesting the students' jobs are during the summer, but because the Adobe researchers follow up and maintain a relationship with our students throughout the year,” said Robert Simon, professor at George Mason.

One of Simon's Ph.D. students, Haoliang Wang, worked on a project involving storing streaming videos in the cloud during his internship with the company last summer. Wang's job was to help improve an algorithm the company developed.

Associate professor Jyh-Ming Lien’s team is collaborating with Adobe researchers to develop a new photo-editing technique that allows people to modify their pictures to reflect different materials. For instance, the process makes it easier to turn a photo of a leather sofa into one covered in a plain or floral fabric.

"We are using machine-learning algorithms that allow you to take an image and apply a different material to it for a new look,” Lien said.

This technique could be useful to online stores and graphic artists who want to generate new images with different finishes or materials.

Meanwhile, computer science professor Songqing Chen's research team is investigating ways to improve streaming video on mobile phones.

"We tried to make the media playback on the phone smoother while consuming less power," Chen said.

Most internet content, including streaming video, is transmitted over HTTP/1.1, but HTTP/2 is gradually replacing HTTP 1.1 to improve user experience. His team looked into ways to utilize the new features offered by HTTP/2 for video streaming to mobile devices. "We have been trying to set up protocols and implement the new prototypes. Adobe plays a very active role in the standardization of some of the video streaming techniques."

Adobe is a computer software company.