Alchemedia Works Magic on Aerial Photographs - Boundless Image Streaming Web Service

Tokyo, Japan, July 22, 2005 - Alchemedia Inc, today announced the release of new technology that showcases high resolution image content created from aerial photographs taken with a professional off-the-shelf digital camera and streamed using the JetStream-3D Platform.  The target customer base for this service is aerial photography companies and spatial data content providers who want an inexpensive way to acquire and create high resolution, large aerial data sets and to serve that data to their client’s browsers without having to invest in their own server infrastructure.  This technology can be thought of as a “do it yourself Google Earth.”

The advent of higher resolution camera models has allowed professional digital cameras to be used for corridor survey work, such as along a river, road or the route of a proposed power line.  Although well suited for collection over complex and extremely long distance features, such as the complete shoreline of Japan, Alchemedia’s technology has demonstrated that off-the-shelf digital camera technology, from manufacturers such as Canon and Kodak, can also be used for much broader areas, in excess of 1000+ square kilometers, following a more traditional acquisition pattern. 

By using the JetStream-3D Platform, previously announced on June 22, a pilot or aerial survey company can photograph large project areas using standard hardware, have the images processed by Alchemedia at a modest fee, and then serve those images to end users using the JS3D platform as an image streaming service.

The demonstration site, http://www.js3d.com, which shows data collected over the city of Hachinohe in northern Japan, was acquired using only off-the-shelf equipment.  The camera used was Canon’s top of the line 16.7 Megapixel Canon EOS 1Ds Mark II. Other equipment included a Garmin GPS and a notebook computer, all equipment easily affordable by pilot operators and small aerial survey companies.  The camera’s shutter is automatically triggered by the notebook computer.  The GPS system was not connected to the notebook but logged GPS data was used to provide approximate positional information, during the post-processing step, for each photograph.  The images of the Hachinohe area (600 sq. km) were acquired with a flight time of about 3.5 hours. The ground resolution is approximately 60cm.  Using the same camera setup greater resolutions are possible.  The 903 images for Hachinohe were mosaicked using proprietary grid computing technology utilizing idle processor time on Alchemedia’s in-house network. 

Typically, traditional analog aerial photos or even the newer all digital sensors require a significant amount of time and money to acquire and process the data into terrain corrected (orthorectified) images.  Alchemedia has created a process where aerial high-resolution images, taken with a professional digital camera, can be quickly mosaicked, warped into geo-rectified images, with accuracy levels suitable for most location based service (LBS) applications.

While not survey accurate, this new method in conjunction with viewing technology, such as Alchemedia’s Jetstream-3D platform, offers an inexpensive method to acquire, quickly process and view wide areas of coverage in a timely fashion. The lower costs provided by this method will allow the acquisition of aerial photos on a more frequent basis than in the past.

"The real power of this imagery is that it gives many smaller aerial survey companies out there the capability to compete with the larger players. We have created a content acquisition and platform delivery strategy that allows our customers to more inexpensively and easily on-sell secure access to brand new spatial data," said Mark Korver, Alchemedia CEO. "All of a sudden, even individual pilot operators can create and on-sell large aerial maps on not much more than gas money.  We think this might start a race for faster acquisition of aerial image content.”

More information about the JetStream-3D platform and to see JS3D in action please go to http://www.js3d.com

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About Alchemedia:
Founded in 1996, Alchemedia Inc. is a solutions provider, located in Tokyo Japan. Alchemedia specializes in custom web based business solutions for the real estate, financial and construction industries, with a technical emphasis on LBS and related spatial technologies. Alchemedia's multi-national staff is engaged in projects with a number of Japanese and international corporations.

Alchemedia Inc
Kimbun Bldg. 5F, 6-14-3 Akasaka, Minato-ku, Tokyo 107-0052 JAPAN
TEL +81 (0)3 3560-5678 FAX +81 (0)3 3560-5679
Email: js3dinfo@alchemedia.jp
Company url: http://www.alchemedia.jp
JetStream-3D url: http://www.js3d.com

(c) 2005 Alchemedia Inc. All rights reserved