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This is the on-line electronic version of P.B.L. Meijer, ``An Experimental System for Auditory
Image Representations,''
IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, Vol. 39, No. 2,
pp. 112-121, Feb 1992. Reprinted in the
1993 IMIA Yearbook of Medical Informatics, pp. 291-300.
Also available for download as a
PDF file (5 MB).
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Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
10.1109/10.121642.
An Experimental System for
Auditory Image Representations
Philips Research Laboratories, Eindhoven, The Netherlands*
[*Update: currently no longer working at Philips.]
Abstract -
This paper presents an experimental system for the conversion
of images into sound patterns. The system was designed to provide
auditory image representations within some of the known limitations
of the human hearing system, possibly as a step towards the development
of a vision substitution device for the blind. The application of an
invertible (1-to-1) image-to-sound mapping ensures the
preservation of visual information.
The system implementation involves a pipelined special purpose computer
connected to a standard television camera. The time-multiplexed
sound representations, resulting from a real-time image-to-sound
conversion, represent images up to a
resolution of 64 × 64 pixels with 16 grey-tones per pixel.
A novel design and the use of standard components have made for a
low-cost portable prototype conversion system having a power dissipation
suitable for battery operation.
Computerized sampling of the system output and subsequent calculation
of the approximate inverse (sound-to-image) mapping
provided the first convincing experimental evidence for the preservation
of visual information in the sound representations of complicated images.
However, the actual resolution obtainable with human perception of
these sound representations remains to be evaluated.
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