"Playgirl" Rena: the eternal smile in the computer image processing field

She is the object of research that has made countless experts obsessed with and suffering. She is the most eye-catching light in the papers filled with boring mathematical formulas. She opened any textbook on computer image processing, you can see her smile. She is Lena, her photo is the most widely used standard test image in the image processing field. Is she a real person? Where did she come from?

1. The cause of the event became famous in the computer industry

In the summer of 1973, young assistant Professor Alexander Sawchuk and researcher William Pratt were busy with an academic paper at the Institute of signal and image processing at the University of Southern California, try to find an image suitable for testing the compression algorithm from a stack of commonly used test images: preferably a face, smooth surface, multi-level content. However, these monotonous old pictures, like early TV pictures, soon disappointed them. Here is a little joke about history. It happened that someone came to the lab with a Playboy magazine (published in November 1972). Lena Söderberg) immediately attracted everyone's attention. Alexander found that the picture with smooth faces and complicated ornaments exactly met the requirements, so they tore down the color picture and scanned the upper half into a 512x512 pixel image, "renaptu" was born.

Reina tu (black/white version)

Alexander did not find anything inappropriate. He used this image to test his own compression algorithm and completed the paper with satisfaction. Renna, who is far away in Chicago, knows nothing about all this. After her model was born, she returned to her hometown in Sweden to get married and have children, you cannot know that you will become a legend in the academic circle. After Alexander's paper was published, his colleagues repeatedly asked him for original scanned copies to compare the results with their own image compression algorithms. Over time, this image has become a standard test image in the field of image processing. You only need to pay a small fee to get the original scanned copy from the University of Southern California, most researchers have only one goal: How to Increase the compression rate while ensuring the image quality.

With the popularity of this standard chart in the academic circle, many people began to become interested in this charming girl. In October 1988, a Swedish computer publishing house contacted and interviewed renna. This was the first time she had learned that her photos were used in the computer industry in the past 15 years. She was excited and surprised. In March 1997, with the help of Playboy magazine, the image Science and Technology Conference (IS & T) was organized to officially invite Rena to attend the May Anniversary Conference held in Boston in that year. The birth of renattu has passed about 1/4 centuries. The original young professor has become a well-known scholar in the industry, and the young girl's face has finally seen white hair. "They must have been bored with me. They have been watching the same photo for so many years ." Rena received a warm welcome at the meeting. She saw a lot of research work based on Rena, and was busy signing on one or more of her photos.

Renna and the Chairman who invited her to the IST MEETING

Nana at the IST MEETING

2. The competition for copyright "theft" brings popularity to a piece of paper

In 1991, the academic journal Optical Engineering used Rena diagram as the cover of its July publication. So far, Playboy has learned that this image has been "stolen" in academia for 18 years (from this we can also learn how hard it is to communicate with the entertainment industry ). The unintentional act finally brought the copyright issue of the photo to the surface. Playboy officially sent a letter to the International Institute of Optical Engineering (SPIE), the publisher of Optical Engineering, requesting that prior authorization be granted to any part of any post-publication that uses the Reina diagram. As the most popular standard test chart in the industry, fully following this requirement will undoubtedly bring great inconvenience to researchers all over the world. As a last resort, SPIE explained the use of renaptu in academia and pointed out that she is a non-profit scientific association. Publications are only for education and research purposes. In the face of the fact, Hua Gong Zi is also generous, saying that he will not pursue Reina Tu's Infringement Problems in the academic field.

After this small dispute, academia pays more attention to the copyright of the paper images. (It is worth mentioning that renaptu was not the first image of Playboy in the field of image processing. As early as 1961, A student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Used a previously authorized playboy image in his master's thesis .) For the majority of researchers who use Reina tu, they can then get Reina tu free of charge from the University of Southern California. The generous magazine has not suffered any losses. The issue of Playboy published by Rena is the best in its history, A total of more than 7 million copies were sold (the purchasing power of Geek is amazing !).
The Copyright storm has passed, but the Reina diagram dispute continues.

3. Reina Tu is not perfect

Reina diagram (profile)

Why is renatu so popular? David Munson, editor-in-chief of the IEEE journal of image processing, believes that there are two reasons: "First, this image contains details, flat areas, shadows, and textures, it is helpful to test various image processing algorithms. Secondly, this is a very charming female photo, and it is not surprising that the image processing field (most male) is willing to use an image that they think is attractive ." This picture contains a wide range of frequencies, including smooth skin at low frequencies and feathers at high frequencies, and is suitable for testing images. The differences between human eyes and human faces are far more obvious than general scenes. However, this does not mean that Rena is perfect.

Scanning larna pictures used today's seemingly lagging scanners and computers. Due to software errors, Alexander only had 511 rows (expected to be 512 rows) of data. The data in the top row of the image was copied, which caused slight flaws in the edge. Due to the timer problem of the digital-to-analog converter on the scanner, the scanned copy is slightly longer and deformed than the original one. If Alexander knows that this will be a standard image, it will definitely be a little more attentive. Most importantly, as a standard chart, Rena lacks a lot of key information, such as the film used, the light environment, the printing environment, and the scanner model. Since the 1970s S, image technology has been greatly improved and can be used to produce a standard image that is more "standard" than Rena. However, the fans of Reina Tu are confident: "researchers are very familiar with Reina Tu and can easily determine the compression algorithm ." Many people agree to use today's technology to re-scan the original images and get the new standard Rena chart.

4. Gender competition. Is this picture suspected of gender discrimination?

Renaptu (deformation Edition)

The scanner used for scanning the Reina diagram can generate 100 lines of scanning lines per inch in length. Therefore, a total of 512 lines of the Reina diagram only show the range of 5.12 inch above the source image, it shows Rena's beautiful shoulders. This does not cover up the fact that the source image is a bare image. As more and more female researchers enter the field of image processing, gender discrimination is undoubtedly the biggest problem renaptu faces.

In 1997, Sunny Bains, the editor of Electronic Engineering Times, decided to block Rena within his work scope after discussing with the publishing house. "It is easy for a female to work in a male-dominated field to feel isolated," she explained, seeing such controversial images on academic journals will aggravate this sense of rejection." It is said that she received many thanks from women and no one complained that this affected her work. Coincidentally, Theo pavé is, a professor at the New York State University's Rock Creek branch, converted Rena into other pictures during the compilation of computer graphics textbooks due to the persistence of editing.

As the journal editor who cited renatu the most, David also received a lot of complaints: "Many people want me to block renatu. People are not opposed to the image itself, instead, the author thinks it comes from a magazine 'exploitation 'of female." The solution he provided is even more compromise: instead of blocking renaptu, he encouraged the author to use other images.

Today, Reina Tu is still the most popular testing image in the image processing field. However, in recent years, its overwhelming advantages have been relaxed. The multiple disputes over copyright, technology, and discrimination overwhelmed renap.com, and the emerging new tests also provided more choices for researchers. However, in any case, Rena, the "companion girl" who inadvertently broke into the academic circle, and the development of image compression technology that she witnessed for decades, will remain in our memory forever.

Other nonsense:

As a female, I am often asked if I have any dissatisfaction or special difficulties in my work in male-dominated fields. I personally have not encountered any complaints. However, it is more meaningful to actively attract and encourage more women to enter the industry than to strongly oppose a picture with potential discrimination. In this regard, there are many foreign experiences worth learning from. Many schools and institutions in the United States have special scholarship and research funding for women to enter the field of application science and engineering. My doctoral advisor was a very outstanding female. During her summer vacation, she repeatedly guided undergraduate girls sponsored by various institutions to come to our lab for a short term (about two months) research work. I often find such a statement in the recruitment advertisements of universities or research institutes when I am looking for a job after graduation: "We strongly encourage qualified women to apply for this position (qualified female candidates are strongly encouraged to apply for this position .) ". I am currently working in schools that are attracting girls to take a major in Engineering. One Day each year is the Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day, which organizes high school girls to visit the laboratories of various Engineering departments. He hopes that the so-called "Monk class" in China and the "only male recruitment" signboard at the job fair will be fewer and fewer.

The supplementary poem "Zhi Reina"

This is a poem from an unknown author to Rena, which has been widely circulated in the circle. The original role is written in English and uses a large number of Image Processing Terms to express the love of image processing workers for this magical companion girl.

Oh, dear Rena, your beauty is so vast and hard to be quickly depicted

If I can compress your images, I think I can shake the whole world.

Alas, when I used vector quantization for the first time, I found that your face only belongs to you.

How can you use discrete cosine transform to match your long hair?

And your sexy lips won't find the right fragment to describe even if 13 super computers are exhausted.

Although these setbacks are so huge, I may be able to overcome them one by one.

But when the filter takes away the glory in your eyes, I can only say: "Forget it, digitalization is good ."

This article has been published in this issue xinzhi weekly

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