TIGHAR
Amelia Earhart Search Forum => General discussion => Topic started by: Randy Jacobson on May 09, 2021, 07:52:06 AM
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It's been a while since we got an update of Jeff Glickman's efforts using the Lae video to determine the rivet pattern and/or deformation of the fuselage. Any thing that can be shared at this time?
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Here's where things stand. Getting sufficient resolution from the digitized 16mm film to see the full rivet and deformation pattern on the patch is "pushing the envelope." Nothing like this has ever been done. Not surprisingly, problems arise. By combining sequential frames with super-resolution technology, Jeff was able get a much clearer image but, in a film taken with a wide-angle lens in excellent lighting where everything should be in focus, he could see individual lines of rivets on the vertical tail but not on the fuselage. He eventually determined that, for some reason, possibly a flaw in the camera's aperture gate, the tail was in focus but the fuselage was not. Using Artificial Intelligence he was able to shift the focus of the frames to the fuselage. Once that was accomplished he had a much clearer picture of the patch. By combining just 2 frames he could see the lines of large rivets along the bottom and aft edges of the patch. By combining more frames with super-resolution augmented with AI he was able to see much more detail - but still not enough to make out the lines of small rivets on the fuselage and patch. Something else was wrong and it took a long to time figure out what. It turned out that the assumption that the best results could be obtained by combining sequential frames was incorrect. Some frames are good. Some are not so good. It now appears that the best results are obtained by using AI to select the best frames in the entire group and then combining those frames with super-resolution. Jeff has done a proof-of-concept experiment with a limited number of selected frames. The next step is to try that technique with a much larger number of frames. Ideally, he'll get to the point of being able to see the lines of small rivets on both the fuselage and the patch. Once we're sure we're able to see all there is to see we'll be able to tell whether the rivet pattern on the patch matches the rivet pattern on 2-2-V-1.
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Thanks for the update.
I was involved some time ago in something similar, but in underwater acoustics: synthetic aperture sonar. While it is very powerful technique for super-resolution imagery, it required large amounts of computing with very sophisticated mathematics, and even then, AI and genetic algorithms were needed to clean things up even more, often with tweaking by the individual. It became somewhat of an "art" to produce good imagery that was up to expectations. Synthetic aperture radar is also similar, but has a much longer history and much better results.
Good luck to you, Jeff!
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Any more progress on the super-resolution of the panel rivets from Jeff? Just curious...
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From the latest TIGHAR Tracks, it looks as if that piece has been pretty well ruled out as being from the Electra. I still think the cast piece that's still embedded in the coral is probably the most likely to be the "smoking gun" piece. I should point out that what I like about TIGHAR is they'll do exhaustive research and testing, and then announce the results, whatever they may be. It would have been awesome if it had been the patch, but things don't always turn out the way we want.
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Thank you for that information. I apparently did not get notified of the latest Track (Sept. 2022) and it is mislaid somewhere on the TIGHAR website. I've asked the home office to provide me that TIGHAR Track.
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Thank you for that information. I apparently did not get notified of the latest Track (Sept. 2022) and it is mislaid somewhere on the TIGHAR website. I've asked the home office to provide me that TIGHAR Track.
I think you can download it from the index of TIGHAR Tracks (https://tighar.org/Publications/TTracks/contents36_40.html).
Here is the direct link (https://tighar.org/Publications/TTracks/2022Vol_38/TIGHARTracks38_03_Sep_2022.pdf), if you prefer.
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Thanks for that link Marty. I don't remember seeing that particular Tighar Tracks either. And I was keeping an eye out for the news from the Penn State scans of 2-2-V-1 because I'd done a high school science project at Breazeale.