Professor Homer H. Chen and his students from the Department of Electrical Engineering have received the 2008 IEEE Circuit and System Society Transactions Best Paper Award. He is the first Taiwanese scholar to have won this distinguished honor!!

NTU College of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Professor Homer H. Chen and his research team have gloriously received the 2008 IEEE Circuits and Systems Society's Best Paper Award, marking the first time that Taiwanese scholars have won this distinguished honor!!

Professor Chen's award-winning paper was the research results on digital image stabilizers which was published in the July issue of IEEE's "Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology". As this paper received considerable attention, Professor Chen was publicly commended for his scholastic eminence during IEEE's 2008 International Circuits and Systems Conference.

Professor Chen points out that, digital video cameras are becoming more and more popular, but not everyone is a professional photographer. Factors such as inadvertent handshaking or platform movement often introduces jerky image motion that is annoying to the human eyes. Although traditional mechanical and optical stabilizing systems have been in use for a long time, components for such systems often cost an arm and a leg.

In order to provide a more economical solution, Professor Chen's research team proposed a method to integrate the digital stabilizer with the video codec. The digital stabilizer is a technical device which uses image processing to remove unintentional image displacements to achieve stability, whereas the video codec is a technology which can save image storage space. Both are indispensable components for a digital video camera. In traditional methods, however, these two functions are separately designed for operation. Professor Chen's research team discovered that, although the purposes of these two technical devices are quite different, there are many similar algorithms between them, and considerable amount of image movement data that can be shared.

Based on this discovery, Professor Chen and his research team proposed many innovative ways of integration which greatly reduce the necessary algorithms for digital stabilizers and video codecs without affecting the anti-shake effect and the quality of image compression. Their solutions are suitable for system on chips production, which is a great contribution to the digital camcorder and camera industry, and the first design in the world that has such integrating functions.

Professor Chen's personal website: http://www.ee.ntu.edu.tw/profile?id=60