Signal Processing

 

 

 

 

Home      About Snape Signals      Signal Processing      Pattern Recognition      Data Mining      Research Papers             Mindfulness

 

 

 

·        Enhancement of ultrasound images of stainless steel components

 

Ultrasound is routinely used to check for the presence of defects in welded steel components. B-scan and C-scan images are built up from a raster of A-scans. Defects are seen as regions of high backscatter in the image. This approach is effective for ferritic steels but can be difficult in stainless steel because the metal grain size is comparable with defect size. Moreover, austenitic steel grain structure is not homogenous. Snape Signals has developed linear and non-linear image filtering methods that make defects stand out from random grain scatter. The most successful methods are based around Gaussian decomposition, rank order, and pixel connectivity filters. For more information see slides: Enhancement of ultrasound images (303kB), Ultrasound Papers (14kB)

 

 

·        Adaptive Non-linear Filters

 

Signal and image processing systems often use adaptive linear filters for system identification or inverse filtering. Practical examples are echo cancellation and channel equalisation. Many systems are non-linear and ideally require an adaptive non-linear filter for system identification or inverse modelling. The ubiquitous neural net – the MLP – is sometimes used in this role, but learning is generally long and un-reliable. An alternative robust non-linear filter is based on n-tuple sampling and a single layer “perceptron-like” structure.  The system, called the Single Layer Look-Up Perceptron, has strong connections to the WISARD system developed by Igor Aleksander et al for face recognition. It has been used in applications as diverse as non-linear Wiener filtering, to formant extraction for automatic speaker recognition. For more information about Single Layer Look-Up Perceptrons see:  Single Layer Look- Up Perceptron (202kB), Non Linear Filtering Papers (21kB)

 

 

·        Noise Robust In-Car Speech Recognition

 

Speech recognition systems have many potential applications for secondary control in cars. Robust recognition in the high noise environment of a car is still difficult.  One of the sources of noise is in-car entertainment. Unlike other noise sources, the recognition system can have direct electrical access to this noise as it is generated.  Snape Signals has worked with a speech recognition company to develop algorithms that make the recognition process less sensitive to in-car entertainment noise. The method is based on spectral subtraction within the pattern-matching core of the recogniser. For more detail see: In-car noise cancellation paper (148kB),  Speech  Recognition Papers (26kB)

 

 

 

 

Home      About Snape Signals      Signal Processing      Pattern Recognition      Data Mining      Research Papers