Dr.Tapan Mishra Sr. Advisor at ISRO. 13th. September, 2020. I reached a point in scientific career, where feathers on our hats, do not mean much. However, I am delighted to share my recent patent which makes me feel proud. All my other patents concern microwave and sensor system technology and related signal processing methods and algorithms. But this patent is on hyperspectral data compression and representation, quite alien to my expertise.
Of late, I realised the biggest bottleneck in utilising hyperspectral imaging data is the data cube representation in X, Y and wavelength axes. For common users, the very sight of cube is enough to kill any interest. Our algorithm has two variants. The first one concerns significant data compression which can be implemented on board with little loss in data. This make high resolution, wide swath imaging quite feasible, from data transmission point of view. Other variant is more attractive to me, which allows single pixel classification, enabling realisation of the potential of hyperspectral data in 2D format, a more understandable representation. My co inventor Litu did lot of analysis of performance of the algorithm over large datasets, enabling refinement with maturity of our understanding.
This algorithm can be tweaked for various applications with data series, like stock market variation over time, time series of weather data and many more things.
What mattered was that this work I indulged in at a particular low point of my career where management decisions were at variance with my technical contributions and merit.
Still, being seasoned administrator, I knew that emotional pain of any unfortunate decision is immediate, but merit of decision can only be understood with passage of time.
When many youngsters used to confront me about undesirability of the said situation, I used to console them that my experience says that technical contributions should not be held prisoner to certain unfortunate decisions or happenings.
Unfortunately in our scientific institutions, mortality of brain hits quite early, in late forties or early fifties. In the same period, gravitational attraction to chairs, cushioned or not, increases in inverse proportion. The only way out of this vicious circle, to be alive mentally, is to keep contributing, as exemplified in the great aphorism of Aitareya Brahmana :
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