Research

My research is in the area of image analysis for remote sensing. During my graduate studies in Systems Design Engineering at the University of Waterloo, I worked on ways to improve the effectiveness of using computers to analyze satellite images. This helps automate the process of getting useful information out of satellite imagery, which is essential now that there is so much satellite data that manual interpretation becomes very time consuming and labor intensive. Example application areas include sea ice monitoring for both scientists (to help understand global climate) and ship operators (for safer navigation) and also crop and agricultural monitoring.

During my work terms at the Hospital for Sick Children, I worked in the area of MRI imaging as a research student, where I had the opportunity to be thoroughly confused by K-space. I have since become enlightened enough to confuse other people about it.

Scroll down for a non-technical overview of my research work and my list of publications. The PDFs on this page are low resolution off-prints of the article based on the last-submitted revision.

I have also written some tutorials that should be useful for researchers and academics that use MATLAB and LaTeX.

Broadly speaking, my past research topics have been in image processing, image segmentation, data fusion, image synthesis, sea ice monitoring and polarimetric SAR processing, with some medical imaging and MRI during my work terms at the Hospital for Sick Children (Sick Kids). The goal of my image processing work has been how to find ways to get a computer to automatically extract useful information from images, while my work on MRI at Sick Kids focused on improving the accuracy of MRI scans.

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• [PDF] Peter Yu, A. K. Qin and D. A. Clausi. Unsupervised polarimetric SAR image segmentation and classification using region growing with edge penalty. IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, accepted July 2011.
• [PDF] A. Wong, Peter Yu, W. Zhang, and D. A. Clausi. IceSynth II: Synthesis of SAR sea-ice imagery using region-based posterior sampling. IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters, 7(2): 348 - 351, April 2010.
• [PDF] D. Clausi, A. K. Qin, M. Chowdhury, Peter Yu, and P. Malliard. MAGIC: MAp- Guided Ice Classification System. Canadian Journal of Remote Sensing, 36, Suppl. 1, Special Issue: International Polar Year, S13 - S25, 2010.
• [PDF] Peter Yu, D. A. Clausi, and S. E. L. Howell. Fusing AMSR-E and QuikSCAT imagery for improved sea ice recognition. IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, 47(7): 1980 - 1989, July 2009. My graphics appeared as the issue's front cover.

• Peter Yu, D. A. Clausi, R. De Abreu, and T. Agnew. Combining AMSR-E and QuikSCAT image data to improve sea ice classification. In 5th IAPR Workshop on Pattern Recognition in Remote Sensing, Tampa, FL, USA, Dec. 7, 2008.
• D. A. Clausi, A. K. Qin, M. S. Chowdhury, Peter Yu, and P. Maillard. MAGIC: MAp-Guided Ice Classification system for operational analysis. In 5th IAPR Workshop on Pattern Recognition in Remote Sensing, Tampa, FL, USA, Dec. 7, 2008.
• A. Euerby, M. Neiman, S. Swanson, C. Denis, B. Best, T. Gevaert, C. Wilson, Peter Yu, and J. Zelek. The MAGLET - A new electrical outlet for the elderly. In R. Merrell and R. Cooper, editors, Proc. Fourth IASTED International Conference on Telehealth and Assistive Technologies, Baltimore, Maryland, USA, Apr. 2008. This was the project of one of the undergraduate design teams that I supervised as a TA for SYDE 361.
• M. McLarty, E. Migicovsky, P. Srikantha, A. Gopal, P. Marchwica, C. Gawne, Peter Yu, and J. Zelek. A reminder system for memory loss. In R. Merrell and R. Cooper, editors, Proc. Fourth IASTED International Conference on Telehealth and Assistive Technologies, Baltimore, Maryland, USA, Apr. 2008. This was the project of one of the undergraduate design teams that I supervised as a TA for SYDE 361.

• [Link] Peter Yu. Segmentation of RADARSAT-2 Dual-Polarization Sea Ice Imagery, Master's Thesis, Systems Design Engineering, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.

• P. Yu, D. A. Clausi, A. K. Qin, M. S. Chowdhury and P. Maillard. “MAGIC 2.0 : MAp-Guided Ice Classification System”, IPY Canada Early Results Workshop, Ottawa, ON, Canada, Feb 16 - 18, 2010.
• P. Yu, D. A. Clausi, and T. Agnew. Combining Quikscat with AMSR-E for sea ice classification. In Workshop of Variability and Change in the CRYospheric SYStem in Canada (CRYSYS), Toronto, ON, Canada, Feb. 22 - 24, 2006.
• T. Agnew, J. Vandeweghe, and P. Yu. Estimating sea-ice transport using the Advanced Sensor Microwave Imager (AMSR). In 8th Conference on Polar Meteorology and Oceanography at the 85th AMS Annual Meeting, San Diego, CA, USA, Jan. 9 - 13, 2005.

• Systems Design Engineering, University of Waterloo. (Graduate School, Master of Applied Science, Advisor: Prof. David A. Clausi)
• Department of Diagnostic Imaging, Hospital for Sick Children. (Co-op work terms)
• Environment Canada. (Co-op work terms)

• Reviewer, Pattern Recognition Letters, 2010
• Organizing committee, Biomedical Imaging and Computer Vision Workshop (http://rousseau.uwaterloo.ca/~bicv/), University of Waterloo, 2007