Background Information

The Electronic Systems and Signals Research Laboratory (ESSRL) was formed during the 1986-87 academic year. This laboratory brings together researchers within the Department of Electrical Engineering who have common research interests, and common resource needs. The laboratory has evolved from occupying a single room on the third floor of Bryan Hall to occupying the entire fourth floor of Jolley Hall.

ESSRL is an academic research laboratory pursuing complementary educational and research activities. The primary role of ESSRL has been to provide an environment within which faculty, students, and staff can pursue their research, and an infrastructure for assisting them in achieving their goals. Many of the projects within ESSRL involve connections with real problems, development of statistical models that characterize data available, development of analytical tools and algorithms for these problems, and implementation of the algorithms. The director of the Imaging Science and Engineering academic program is in ESSRL.

The faculty within ESSRL have participated in collaborative research projects since its inception. Within the university, many of these collaborations have been with the School of Medicine; others have been with departments in Arts and Sciences, and with faculty throughout the School of Engineering and Applied Science. There are many existing collaborations with researchers outside Washington University, from universities, industry, and government.

Imaging science plays a central role in the research within ESSRL, with six of the faculty pursuing imaging research. ESSRL is a leader in quantitative image processing, dynamic vision, and statistical image and signal processing. Applications range from medical imaging (including CT, ultrasonic, and optical) to commercial and military.

In addition to the imaging and vision research, there are active projects in information theory and its applications, array processing, electrocardiography, and VLSI system design.

Please take a few moments and look over our web pages where more detail is given on individuals and their research. If you would like any further information, please do not hesitate to contact me or any of the researchers directly.

More Information

Research in ESSRL is pursued in collaboration with many parts of Washington University, other universities, and with industry. Strong ties in biomedical research exist with the Departments of Radiology, Anatomy and Neurobiology, Otolaryngology, Cardiology, Surgery, and Physical Therapy of the School of Medicine and with the Institute for Biomedical Computing. Intra-university collaborations exist with the Department of Mathematics of the University of Chicago, the Department of Mathematics of Brown University, the Electro-optics Division of the Georgia Tech Research Institute, the Mobile Communications Center at the University of South Australia, and the Space Telescope Science Institute of the Johns Hopkins University.

Research Topics

Current research in ESSRL emphasizes both theory and application. Topics include: model based digital and analog signal and image processing; stochastic process theory, modeling, and applications; shape theory, modeling, and applications; communication and information theory; coding theory; bandwidth and energy efficient modulation schemes; multiaccess communications; estimation and decision theory; radar and infrared systems and their use in imaging and automatic target recognition; low light level optical imaging; restoration of optical images degraded by aberrations and atmospheric turbulence; tomographic imaging; ultrasonic imaging and tissue characterization; anatomical mapping; statistical signal processing for sensor arrays; and computational linguistics.

Resources

Extensive resources are available to pursue research in ESSRL. This laboratory occupies 8000 sq. ft., which houses faculty and student offices, rooms for computer terminals and graphics workstations, a computer equipment room, an electronics shop, and a conference room. General computing resources include several SUN workstations, a DEC 3100 workstation, two DEC 5000 series workstations, and Silicon Graphics workstations. In addition, ESSRL is a center for parallel computation in image processing with its DEC MPP-12000 parallel processor having 8192 processing elements. ESSRL is connected to the rest of the University campus via a wideband computer-communication network. Research grants and contracts exist with the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, Office of Naval Research, Army Research Office, and the Air Force Rome Laboratory.

Please send comments about this site to webmaster@essrl.wustl.edu.