Imagery Data Mining: The IDEC Experiment

The IDEC Project

AISTI awarded funding for the IDEC Project, which began as the SEM (Scanning Electron Micrograph) Project, in April 2006. The project was re-branded as the IDEC project in late 2008 as "The Image Data Extraction Collaborative: Exploring two little known worlds: subterranean and extraterrestrial"

This funding allowed the creation of an exciting new venture among several AISTI partners (LANL, UNM, and NMT). This collaboration of librarians and scientists is developing an open-source image repository with commenting and a collaborative workspace to further the goal of promoting multidisciplinary studies and knowledge discovery among scientists.

Scientific fields of study such as nanotechnology, astrobiology, and cave and karst science contain large collections of images and their associated biological, physiochemical, and geological datasets. This project began with developing a database of Karst SEM images. This is a collaborative project with UNM, NMT and LANL. AISTI has provided two rounds of seed funding for this project. The IDEC project was recently accepted as a poster for the 4th IEEE International Conference on e-Science.

In December 2008 the IDEC project was selected as a poster for the 4th IEEE International Conference. Johann van Reenen, Chairman of AISTI, and project participant presented the poster. (link to Grants-SEM-Poster.doc)

Aside from fulfilling the projects objective there were some unanticipated positive outcomes. The collaboration and brainstorming between the teams created an environment of creativity and sparked insight for the team members, that would not have occurred had they not been brought together.

An interim white paper (.doc) describes the accomplishments and outcomes of the paper.