This twelfth quarterly technical report discusses work on classification algorithms and an improved lighting system. Measurements on core in the Stillwater Mine core room showed that false positive sulfide classifications occurred at breaks in the core and there were also problems with camera saturation due to glints from crystal facets within the core. To reduce false positives due to noisy data, a wavelet transform smoothing program was explored. Results indicate classifications improve only marginally with smoothed data for spectral angle mapping techniques. A new lighting technique was developed to decrease saturation due to glints from facets within the core samples. This appears to have decreased the glints and it has the added benefit of greatly decreasing false positives near the breaks in the core.

This thirteenth quarterly technical report describes data collection at the Stillwater Mine and an additional improvement to the lighting system. The data collection system was returned to the Stillwater Mine during this reporting period and a large amount of data was collected. The data will be analyzed and correlated with fire assays in the next reporting period. The majority of work done this quarter has been devoted to collecting data from cores scanned in the Stillwater Mining Company core room. This work is somewhat tedious and tiresome, but essential to: (1) obtain enough data to reliably determine the correlation between assay results and spectral imaging results; (2) find bugs and glitches in the system that arise only periodically or after long periods of use; and (3) obtain data on the natural (and man-made) variations in the Stillwater ore that may confuse the machine vision algorithms.

This tenth quarterly technical report discusses the progress made on a machine vision technique for ore grading based on hyperspectral imaging. A graduate student at Montana Tech has successfully defended her thesis related to this project. Arrangements with Stillwater Mining Company to deploy a machine vision system in their core room have been completed. Designs for they system that will be installed next quarter have been drawn and parts are being machined. Presentations on the spectral imaging system developed during this effort have been made to Stillwater Mining Company and at a remote sensing symposium at Montana State University.