Scientists Reveal 'Invisible Motion': Watch
He was like, "The invisible within the visible," and I was all, "Dude, like whoa."
Wrap your brain around Eulerian Video Magnification, a program from a team of scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. It could change the way we see, well, everything.
“Once we amplify these small motions, there’s like a whole new world you can look at,” said Prof. William T. Freeman, a leader on the team at MIT. The applications for the program are limitless, from medical diagnostic testing to catching a cheater in a game of poker or blackjack. The team has been inundated with e-mails inquiring about possible uses ranging from health care to lie detection in law enforcement. Some even inquired about how the program might be used in conjunction with Google Glass.
The New York Times explains:
The system works by homing in on specific pixels in a video over the course of time. Frame-by-frame, the program identifies minute changes in color and then amplifies them up to 100 times, turning, say, a subtle shift toward pink to a bright crimson. The scientists who developed it believe it could also have applications in industries like manufacturing and oil exploration. For example, a factory technician could film a machine to check for small movements in bolts that might indicate an impending breakdown. In one video presented by the scientists, a stationary crane sits on a construction site, so still it could be a photograph. But once run through the program, the crane appears to sway precariously in the wind, perhaps tipping workers off to a potential hazard.
Want to try it for yourself? Quanta Research Cambridge, a company that helped finance the project, provided a way for people to upload their own video clip and run it through the program.
Science!
