Dr. Thirimachos Bourlai Profile

Dr. Thirimachos Bourlai

Assistant Professor/Director MILab

SPIE Involvement:

Author

Area of Expertise:

Biometrics , Image Processing , Hyper-Spectral Imaging , Pattern Recognition , Medical Imaging , Biometrics

Websites:

Company Website | Personal Website

Assistant Professor, Lane Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at West Virginia University

Thirimachos Bourlai received a Diploma (M.Eng. equivalent) in Electrical and Computer Engineering with Honors from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece (1999). He received a M.Sc. in Medical Imaging with Distinction from the University of Surrey (UniS), U.K. (2002) under the directions of Prof. Maria Petrou. There he was awarded a full scholarship to continue his studies as a doctorate candidate. Under the directions of Prof. Josef Kittler he completed his Ph.D. in the field of face recognition and smart cards (2006) and his Post-Doc in multi-modal biometrics (Aug. 2007). Then he worked for 1.5 years as a Post-Doc researcher in a joint project between the University of Houston (UH) and the Methodist Hospital (Department of Surgery) at Houston (TX), in the fields of thermal imaging and video processing. From February to December 2009 he worked as a Visiting Research Assistant Professor at the LDCSEE of West Virginia University (WVU). In January 2010 he became a Research Assistant Professor, and in August 2012 an Assistant Professor. In 2010, he founded and since then he has been directing "Multi-spectral Imagery Lab" at WVU. Dr. Bourlai has been involved in various projects in the fields of biometrics and image processing, and authored several book chapters, journals and conference papers. His areas of expertise are image processing, pattern recognition and biometrics.

SPIE Journal Paper | 19 August 2016

Composite multilobe descriptors for cross-spectral recognition of full and partial face

Zhicheng Cao, Natalia Schmid, Thirimachos Bourlai

OE, Vol. 55, Issue 08, 083107, (August 2016) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.10.1117/1.OE.55.8.083107

KEYWORDS: Visible radiation, Short wave infrared radiation, Composites, Near infrared, Infrared imaging, Eye, Facial recognition systems, Mid-IR, Long wavelength infrared, Computer programming

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Proceedings Article | 21 May 2015 Paper

Imaging white blood cells using a snapshot hyperspectral imaging system

Christopher Robison, Christopher Kolanko, Thirimachos Bourlai, Jeremy Dawson

Proceedings Volume 9472, 94721L (2015) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2177218

KEYWORDS: Blood, Imaging systems, In vivo imaging, Cameras, Image segmentation, Hyperspectral imaging, Hyperspectral systems, Photonics, Sensors, Microscopes

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Proceedings Article | 21 May 2015 Paper

Can we match ultraviolet face images against their visible counterparts?

Neeru Narang, Thirimachos Bourlai, Lawrence Hornak

Proceedings Volume 9472, 94721Q (2015) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2177135

KEYWORDS: Ultraviolet radiation, Skin, Visible radiation, Cameras, Principal component analysis, Facial recognition systems, Databases, Imaging systems, Sensors, Eye

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Proceedings Article | 20 June 2014 Paper

Can the usage of human growth hormones affect facial appearance and the accuracy of face recognition systems?

Jake Rose, Michael Martin, Thirimachos Bourlai

Proceedings Volume 9091, 909111 (2014) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2053312

KEYWORDS: Databases, Facial recognition systems, Super resolution, Detection and tracking algorithms, Image quality, Eye, Internet, Cameras, Image resolution, Algorithm development

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Proceedings Article | 31 May 2012 Paper

On designing a SWIR multi-wavelength facial-based acquisition system

Thirimachos Bourlai, Neeru Narang, Bojan Cukic, Lawrence Hornak

Proceedings Volume 8353, 83530R (2012) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.919392

KEYWORDS: Cameras, Short wave infrared radiation, Light sources, Image quality, Sensors, Tungsten, Imaging systems, Quality measurement, Visible radiation, Infrared imaging

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In harsh environmental conditions characterized by unfavorable lighting and pronounced shadows, human recognition based on Short-Wave Infrared (0.9-1.7 microns) images may be advantageous. SWIR imagery (i) is more tolerant to low levels of obscurants like fog and smoke; (ii) the active illumination source can be eye-safe and (iii) the active illumination source is invisible to the human eye making it suitable for surveillance applications. The key drawback of current SWIR-based acquisition systems is that they lack the capability of real-time simultaneous acquisition of multiple SWIR wavelengths. The contributions of our work are four-fold. First, we constructed a SWIR multi-wavelength acquisition system (MWAS) that can capture face images at 5 different wavelengths (1150, 1250, 1350, 1450, 1550 nm) in rapid succession using a 5-filter rotating filter wheel. Each filter has a band pass of 100 nm and all 5 images are acquired within 260 milliseconds. The acquisition system utilizes a reflective optical sensor to generate a timing signal corresponding to the filter wheel position that is used to trigger each camera image acquisition when the appropriate filter is in front of the camera. The timing signal from the reflective sensor transmits to a display panel to confirm the synchronization of the camera with the wheel. Second, we performed an empirical optimization on the adjustment of the exposure time of the camera and speed of the wheel when different light sources (fluorescent, tungsten, both) were used. This improved the quality of the images acquired. Third, a SWIR spectrometer was used to measure the response from the different light sources and was used to evaluate which one provides better images as a function of wavelength. Finally, the selection of the band pass filter, to focus the camera to acquire the good quality SWIR images was done by using a number of image quality and distortion metrics (e.g. universal quality index and Structural index method).

Proceedings Article | 31 May 2012 Paper

SWIR imaging for facial image capture through tinted materials

Jason Ice, Neeru Narang, Cameron Whitelam, Nathan Kalka, Larry Hornak, Jeremy Dawson, Thirimachos Bourlai

Proceedings Volume 8353, 83530S (2012) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.919105

KEYWORDS: Glasses, Short wave infrared radiation, Light sources and illumination, Facial recognition systems, Image quality, Visible radiation, Eye, Reflection, Tungsten, Infrared imaging

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Proceedings Article | 18 May 2012 Paper

Evaluating the efficiency of a night-time, middle-range infrared sensor for applications in human detection and recognition

Thirimachos Bourlai, John Von Dollen, Nikolaos Mavridis, Christopher Kolanko

Proceedings Volume 8355, 83551B (2012) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.917831

KEYWORDS: Near infrared, Cameras, Facial recognition systems, Imaging systems, Databases, Video, Detection and tracking algorithms, Eye, Sensors, Visible radiation

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Proceedings Article | 18 May 2012 Paper

Human ear detection in the thermal infrared spectrum

Ayman Abaza, Thirimachos Bourlai

Proceedings Volume 8354, 83540X (2012) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.919285

KEYWORDS: Ear, Mid-IR, Thermography, Cameras, Image segmentation, Databases, Infrared radiation, Image resolution, Spatial resolution, Environmental sensing

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In this paper the problem of human ear detection in the thermal infrared (IR) spectrum is studied in order to illustrate the advantages and limitations of the most important steps of ear-based biometrics that can operate in day and night time environments. The main contributions of this work are two-fold: First, a dual-band database is assembled that consists of visible and thermal profile face images. The thermal data was collected using a high definition middle-wave infrared (3-5 microns) camera that is capable of acquiring thermal imprints of human skin. Second, a fully automated, thermal imaging based ear detection method is developed for real-time segmentation of human ears in either day or night time environments. The proposed method is based on Haar features forming a cascaded AdaBoost classifier (our modified version of the original Viola-Jones approach¹ that was designed to be applied mainly in visible band images). The main advantage of the proposed method, applied on our profile face image data set collected in the thermal-band, is that it is designed to reduce the learning time required by the original Viola-Jones method from several weeks to several hours. Unlike other approaches reported in the literature, which have been tested but not designed to operate in the thermal band, our method yields a high detection accuracy that reaches ~ 91.5%. Further analysis on our data set yielded that: (a) photometric normalization techniques do not directly improve ear detection performance. However, when using a certain photometric normalization technique (CLAHE) on falsely detected images, the detection rate improved by ~ 4%; (b) the high detection accuracy of our method did not degrade when we lowered down the original spatial resolution of thermal ear images. For example, even after using one third of the original spatial resolution (i.e. ~ 20% of the original computational time) of the thermal profile face images, the high ear detection accuracy of our method remained unaffected. This resulted also in speeding up the detection time of an ear image from 265 to 17 milliseconds per image. To the best of our knowledge this is the first time that the problem of human ear detection in the thermal band is being investigated in the open literature.

Proceedings Article | 5 May 2012 Paper

A study on using mid-wave infrared images for face recognition

Thirimachos Bourlai, Arun Ross, Cunjian Chen, Lawrence Hornak

Proceedings Volume 8371, 83711K (2012) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.918899

KEYWORDS: Mid-IR, Visible radiation, Image fusion, Facial recognition systems, Cameras, Databases, Long wavelength infrared, Infrared imaging, Thermography, Feature extraction

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Showing 5 of 9 publications

Conference Committee Involvement (5)

Biometric and Surveillance Technology for Human and Activity Identification XII

22 April 2015 | Baltimore, MD, United States

BTAS 2012 - 2012 IEEE Fifth International Conference On Biometrics: Theory, Applications And Systems (BTAS)

23 September 2012 |

Biometric Technology for Human Identification IX

23 April 2012 | Baltimore, Maryland, United States

International Conference in Biometrics, ICB 2012

30 March 2012 |

Biometric Technology for Human Identification VIII

25 April 2011 | Orlando, Florida, United States

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