Summary of Ph.D. Work :

Interface Level Detection: Controlling the interface level between Bitumen (Oil) and Middlings (Mixture of Sand, Clay and some Oil) was an important problem in the Oil Sands industry in Fort McMurray primarily due to the lack of reliable sensors for interface level estimation. Take a look at the following images:

Phanindra Jampana Phanindra Jampana
The challenge was to detect the interface level as seen in the images. The following show the results of our "intelligent" algorithms (you would need a decent video player to play these): The methods are described in detail in the corresponding publications (please follow the publications link on the left). The "Image based" control systems based on these methods can be found at Suncor Energy Inc.

Interface Detection in X-ray View Cell Images: Finding the interfaces and boundaries in particular type of images generated for obtaining Theomodynamic properties of Bitumen. A typical image is given below on the left. Using existing segmentation algorithms (see the paper by Nock et. al. titled "Statistical Region Merging") we can obtain a nice segmentation such as:

Phanindra Jampana Phanindra Jampana
Using other neat edge detection tools (see the paper by Elder et. al.) and some simple heuristics, the interfaces and boundaries can be detected (click on the image for a bigger picture):
Phanindra Jampana