Brian A. Barsky

Research Areas

Research Centers

Biography

Brian A. Barsky is Professor of the Graduate School at the University of California, Berkeley with faculty affiliations in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS), Optometry, Vision Science, Bioengineering, Berkeley Institute of Design (BID), Berkeley Center for New Media (BCNM), Arts Research Center (ARC), and Berkeley Canadian Studies Program.

He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Optometry (F.A.A.O.), a UC Berkeley Presidential Chair Fellow, a Warren and Marjorie Minner Faculty Fellow in Engineering Ethics and Professional/Social Responsibility, and an ACM Distinguished Speaker. Dr. Barsky was a recipient of an IBM Faculty Development Award and a National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award.

He attended McGill University, Montréal, received a D.C.S. in engineering and a B.Sc. in mathematics and computer science. He studied computer graphics and computer science at Cornell University, Ithaca, where he earned an M.S. degree. His Ph.D. is in computer science from the University of Utah, Salt Lake City.

His research interests include computational aesthetics, computational photography, methods for the design and fabrication of contact lenses, computer methods for optometry and ophthalmology, image synthesis, spline curve/surface representations, computer aided geometric design and modeling, CAD/CAM/CIM, interactive and realistic three-dimensional computer graphics, visualization in scientific computing, computer aided cornea modeling and visualization, videokeratography techniques, corneal topographic mapping, medical imaging, virtual environments for surgical simulation, and display technology.

He developed Vision-Realistic Rendering using three-dimensional rendering techniques for the computer generation of synthetic images to simulate the vision of specific individuals based on measuring the wavefront aberrations of their eyes. This led to developing a vision-correcting display to enable specific viewer to see it in sharp focus directly without using any corrective eyewear such as eyeglasses or contact lenses. This was selected by Scientific American as one of 2014's ten "World Changing Ideas."

Education

  • 1981, Ph.D., Computer Science, University of Utah, Salt Lake City
  • 1978, M.S., Computer Graphics/Computer Science, Cornell University
  • 1976, B.Sc., Mathematics/Computer Science, McGill University
  • 1973, D.C.S., Engineering, McGill University

Selected Publications

  • Z. Cui, H. Ren, S. Wang, and B. A. Barsky, "Improved Pre- Filtering for Vision Correcting Display Using Wave Propagation Model," University of California, Berkeley, June 2019.
  • B. A. Barsky, "Simulating Human Vision and Vision Correcting Displays," presented at Third International Conference on Graphics and Signal Processing (ICGSP 2019), Hong Kong, June 2019.
  • B. A. Barsky, "Computational Models for Human Optics," presented at International Symposium on Electronic Imaging 2019, Jan. 2019.
  • B. A. Barsky, "From Vision-Realistic Rendering to Vision Correcting Displays," presented at ETAI 2018, Struga, Macedonia, Sep. 2018.
  • B. A. Barsky, "Computational Optometry and Ophthalmology," presented at Fifth International Conference on Signal Processing and Integrated Networks, Delhi, India, Feb. 2018.
  • B. A. Barsky, "Rendering Depth of Field," in Entertainment Technology (ET) Summit, 2017.
  • J. Kim, X. Zhang, L. Waller, B. A. Barsky, and R. Ng, "Free Your Eyes: Retinal Image Deblurring Display with Enlarged Viewing Zone," in International Conference on Computational Photography, May 2016.
  • B. A. Barsky, "Prescription Programmable Eyeglasses," presented at The Future in Focus 2015, Las Vegas, Sep. 2015.
  • B. A. Barsky, "An Overview of Vision Realistic Rendering and Vision Correcting Displays," in The Society for Information Display, Display Week, 2015.
  • B. A. Barsky, "Computational Photography: Going Forward from an Historical Perspective," presented at International Conference on Computational Photography 2015, Houston, April 2015.
  • B. A. Barsky, F. Huang, L. Douglas, G. Wetzstein, and R. Raskar, "Vision Correcting Displays Based on Inverse Blurring and Aberration Compensation," T. Tuytelaars, B. Schiel, T. Pajdla, and D. Fleet, Eds., 2014.
  • B. A. Barsky, "Vision Correcting Display with Aberration Compensation using Inverse Blurring and a Light Field Display," U.S. Patent 035,966. Aug. 2014.
  • F. Huang, G. Wetzstein, B. A. Barsky, and R. Raskar, "Eyeglasses-free Display: Towards Correcting Visual Aberrations with Computational Light Field Displays," ACM Trans. Graph. (Proc. SIGGRAPH), vol. 33, no. 4, pp. 1-12, July 2014.
  • F. Huang and B. A. Barsky, "Computational Approaches to Aberration Compensation for Vision Correcting Displays," in Display Week 2014, 2014.
  • C. Yeh, Y. Ho, B. A. Barsky, and M. Ouhyoung, "Personalized Photograph Ranking and Selection System Considering Positive and Negative User Feedback," ACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing, Communications and Applications, vol. 10, no. 4, June 2014.
  • F. Huang, G. Wetzstein, B. A. Barsky, and R. Raskar, "Computational Light Field Display for Correcting Visual Aberrations," ACM SIGGRAPH 2013 (poster), July 2013.
  • F. Huang, D. Lanman, B. A. Barsky, and R. Raskar, "Correcting for Optical Aberrations using Multilayer Displays," ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG), vol. 31, no. 6, Nov. 2012.
  • B. A. Barsky, "Vision-Realistic Rendering: Simulation of the Scanned Foveal Image with Elimination of Artifacts due to Occlusion and Discretization," in Computer Vision, Imaging and Computer Graphics: Theory and Applications, P. Richard and J. Braz, Eds., Communications in Computer and Information Science, Vol. 229, Springer-Verlag, 2011, pp. 3-27.
  • C. Yeh, Y. Ho, B. A. Barsky, and M. Ouhyoung, "Personalized Photograph Ranking and Selection System," in ACM Multimedia 2010, 2010, pp. 211-220.
  • T. J. Kosloff and B. A. Barsky, "Two New Approaches to Depth of Field Post-Processing: Pyramid Spreading and Tensor Filtering," in VISIGRAPP (International Joint Conference on Computer Vision, Imaging and Computer Graphics Theory and Applications), 2010, pp. IS-9 to IS-18.

Awards, Memberships and Fellowships