By Maura Kak
Staff Writer

Four students from Purdue are participating in Earth Imaging, an educational exchange program which teaches earth imaging techniques to students attending European and American universities.

Students of the program learn via the Internet and by attending short courses hosted by participating universities in the United States, France and Greece.

The Purdue students involved in the program are Brian Tyrrell, a graduate student in RHIT, Dan Getman and Suresh Muthukrishnan, graduate students in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, and William King, a Ph.D. graduate in Forestry.

The most recent short course to be hosted by the program was held in Paris from March 9 to March 17 at the Institut National Agronomique de Paris-Grignon.

During their stay in Paris, the students learned about various analysis techniques and applications of satellite images of the earth's surface. The participants immersed themselves in the intensive short course for one week, working with students and professors of various cultural and academic backgrounds.

Muthukrishnan said the diversity of the students and teachers contributed new approaches and expertise to the class.

"One teacher was a professor of geobotany while another was in electrical engineering," said Muthukrishnan. "The electrical engineer brought an advanced knowledge of signal processing into the classroom. The geobotanist could help identify different kinds of vegetation in the satellite images."

Through daily lab exercises, the students learned about contrast enhancement, color composition, and image manipulation using specialized software. In addition to many analysis exercises, the course involved the direct use of a spectrometer, which Getman says was an opportunity not encountered in his courses at Purdue.

In addition to out-of-class labs, the students visited two companies conducting research in remote sensing and global image processing. "The tours offered a very different perspective on the remote-sensing industry and an insight into the French culture," Getman said.

At the end of the week, the class was divided into groups of two to conduct the group project. "We selected a project on identification and delineation of different kinds of wetlands from (satellite) data," Muthukrishnan said.

Each group continues to interact through the Internet and is preparing a final report to be submitted on April 26.

The image analyses studied in the program can be applied in such diverse fields as urban planning and conservation of the environment. For example, a satellite image can be used to identify polluted water regions or diseased portions of a farmer's crop.

The Earth Imaging program is sponsored by a consortium of European and American universities and is seen as one of the first of many such programs to be introduced between the United States and the European Union.

The universities comprising the Earth Imaging consortium are Purdue University, West Virginia University, Ecole Nationale Superieure des Mines des Paris, Institut National Agronomique de Paris-Grignon and Demokritus University of Thrace in Greece.