COLLABORATION IN BASIC SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING (COBASE)

From January 30-February 13, 2000, T. Gregory Dewey hosted Zbigniew Grzywna at the Keck Graduate Institute of Applied Life Sciences. Dr. Grzywna is a full professor at the Silesian Technical University of Gliwice in Gliwice, Poland. Drs. Dewey and Grzywna collaborated to lay the groundwork for a future project on the analysis of complex morphology. While images providing microscopic structural information are of great utility, there is a real need to have methods to quantitate complex morphologies. To this end, fractal geometry has been used to analyze diverse morphologies. They initially hoped to combine multifractal analysis and an analysis of the lacunarity (or texture) of complex objects. Early on in the collaboration, however, they decided that this was too ambitious and focused entirely on the lacunarity analysis instead. The result was a simple algorithm that could be readily implemented with computer resources in Poland.

The professors plan to continue their work on this project, eventually hoping to apply to NSF for long-term funding. Dr. Dewey will resume his work on the foundational mathematical issues associated with a multifractal analysis of complex morphologies, while Dr. Grzywna will work with his graduate students to develop the computer programs to analyze a series of test images using the algorithm established earlier. Dr. Grzywna would eventually like to use this system to analyze the morphology of biological samples. The collaborators intend to produce a publication before applying to NSF. Dr. Dewey plans to travel to Poland in September 2000 for the Marian Smoluchowski Conference in Statistical Physics and use this opportunity for a more in-depth exploration of results and topics.