The centre for Mathematical Studies hosted a number of exhibitions as part of the Cambridge Science Fair on March 25th. CMIH were involved in two summer projects which showcased as part of the event.

One project looked at ‘face fusion’; A photo booth was set up, taking photos of volunteer’s faces, which were then fused with an image of another persons face.  There were many choices of people to ‘fuse’ with, including celebrities and well known figures!  The mathematics behind this, described here, analysed the two images to find particular ‘landmarks’ which were then used to re-map one image onto another, giving a fused image.  Plus magazine have also covered this story, read more here.

The second project was a simplified demonstration of tomography.  Volunteers posed on a rotating turntable between a light source and a screen, projecting a series of 2-d shadows onto the screen as they were rotated.  On the other side of the screen the 2-d images were captured at a set frequency, and from these a 3-d reconstruction was produced, using similar mathematics to that used in hospitals for CT reconstruction!