SBIR-STTR Award

Newly available technology makes it possible to construct video-based devices for preparing and presenting video images that incorporate functions of many different types of image presentation systems currently in use in learning, behavior, and vision research, The image editor would include the capacity to take selected portions of video images and rearrange them as desired to create a stimulus image as well as a complete and powerful subsystem for generating computer graphics. Complete images would be stored on a writeable video disk for later display on a low-cost presentation system.National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)

New technology developed under Phase I of this project makes possible an inexpensive image preparation system to allow a researcher who is not an experienced video editor to produce a wide variety of images for use as stimuli in many areas of psychobiology. The system would allow researchers to compose images by combining stored images of the real world with elements created by computer graphics. A sophisticated video mixer would permit the user to determine on a pixel-by-pixel basis which image fractions should overlay the background or to specify that overlaid and background pixels should be mixed to achieve complex transparency and blending effects. The system would let a researcher build a library of images from live camera scenes, photographs, and computer graphics, and compose stimuli by excising parts of images, moving them around in real time, and overlaying or blending them with a background as necessary.National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)