Abstract: Data interpolation is one of the most often task in engineering. Several techniques have been developed for data interpolation, but they expect some kind of data “ordering”. In many engineering problems, data are not ordered in any way and they are scattered in n dimensional space in general. Usually scattered data are tessellated using triangulation, tetrahedronization etc. but for n dimensional data interpolation this approach for is quite prohibitive because of the computational cost. An interesting technique is n dimensional data interpolation using Radial Basis Functions (RBF). RBF interpolation is computationally more expensive because interpolated data are not ordered, but offers quite interesting applications with acceptable computational cost, e.g. solution of partial differential equations, image reconstruction, neural networks, fuzzy systems, GIS systems, optics and interferometry etc.
We will introduce RBF theory at the “application level” including some basic principles and computational issues. There are two main groups of interpolating functions: ‘global” and “local”. Application of “local” functions, called Compactly Supporting Functions-CSFBF, can significantly decrease computational cost as they lead to a system of linear equations with a sparse matrix. The RBF interpolation will be demonstrated on engineering applications and on image reconstruction problem solution. We will show how the image with over 60% of corrupted/missing pixels can be reconstructed.

Brief Biography of the Speaker:
Prof. Vaclav Skala is a Full professor of Computer Science at the University of West Bohemia, Plzen and VSB-Technical University Ostrava, Czech Republic. He received his ING.(equivalent of MSc.) degree in 1975 from the Institute of Technology in Plzen and CSc. (equivalent of Ph.D.) degree from the Czech Technical University in Prague in 1981. In 1996 he became a full professor in Computer Science. In 1997 the Center of Computer Graphics and Visualization (CCGV) was formally established and since then he is the Head of the CCGV in Plzen (http://Graphics.zcu.cz).
Prof.Vaclav Skala is an associate editor of The Visual Computer (Springer), Computers and Graphics (Elsevier), member of the Editorial Board fo Machine Graphics and Vision (Polish Academy of Sciences) and the Editor in Chief of the Journal of WSCG. He is a member of international program committees of prestigious conferences and workshops. He is a member of ACM SIGGRAPH, IEEE and Eurographics Association.
Prof.Vaclav Skala has published over 200 research papers at conferences and research journals. His current research interests are computer graphics and visualization, mathematics, especially geometrical algebra, algorithms and data structures.
Details can be found at http://www.VaclavSkala.eu.