Boosting Economic Growth Through Advanced Machine Vision

In this chapter, we overview the potential of machine vision and related technologies in various application domains of critical importance for economic growth and prospect. Considered domains include healthcare, energy and environment, finance, and industrial innovation. Visibility technologies considered encompass augmented and virtual reality, 3D technologies, and media content authoring tools and technologies. We overview the main challenges facing the application domains and discuss the potential of machine vision technologies to address these challenges. In healthcare, rising cases for chronic diseases among patients and the urgent need for preventive healthcare is accelerating the deployment of telemedicine. Telemedicine as defined in the EU commission staff working paper on "Telemedicine for the benefit of patients, healthcare systems and society" (COM-SEC, 2009) is the delivery of healthcare services at a distance using information and communication technologies. There are two main groups of telemedicine applications: (1) applications linking a patient with a health professional; and (2) applications linking two health professionals (such as tele-second opinion, teleradiology). Machine vision technologies, coupled with reliable networking infrastructure, are key for accelerating the penetration of telemedicine applications. Several examples will be drawn illustrating the use of machine vision technologies in telemedicine. Sustainable energy and environment are key pillars for a sustainable economy. Technology is playing an increasing vital role in energy and environment including water resources management. This would foster greater control of the demand and supply side of energy and water. On the demand side, technologies including machine vision, could help indeveloping advanced visual metering technologies. On the supply side, machine vision technologies could help in exploring alternative sources for the generation of energy and water supply. In the finance domain, financial crises and the failure of banking systems are major challenges facing the coming decade. Recovery is still far from reach entailing a major economic slowdown. Machine vision technologies offer the potential for greater risk visibility, prediction of downturns and stress test of the soundness of the financial system. Examples are drawn from 3D/AR/VR applications in finance. Innovation could be seen as the process of deploying breakthrough outcome of research in industry. The innovation process could be conceived as a feedback loop starting from channelling the outcome of basic research into industrial production. Marketing strategies and novel approaches for customer relationship management draw a feedback loop that continuously update the feed of breakthrough research in industrial production. In this respect, machine vision technologies are key along this feedback process, particularly in the visualisation of the potential market and the potential route to market. CYBER II technology (Hasenfratz et al, 2003 and 2004) is described in section 6 as a machine vision technology that has a potential use in the various application domains considered in this chapter. CYBER II technology is based on multi-camera image acquisition, from different view points, of real moving bodies. Section 6 describes CYBER II technology and its potential application in the considered domains. The chapter concludes with a comparative analysis of the penetration of machine vision in various application domains and reflects on the horizon of machine vision in boosting economic growth.