Mathematical Moments From The American Mathematical Society

Normally when creating a digital file, such as a picture, much more information is recorded than necessary-even before storing or sending. The image on the right was created with compressed (or compressive) sensing, a breakthrough technique based on probability and linear algebra. Rather than recording excess information and discarding what is not needed, sensors collect the most significant information at the time of creation, which saves power, time, and memory. The potential increase in efficiency has led researchers to investigate employing compressed sensing in applications ranging from missions in space, where minimizing power consumption is important, to MRIs, for which faster image creation would allow for better scans and happier patients. Just as a word has different representations in different languages, signals (such as images or audio) can be represented many different ways. Compressed sensing relies on using the representation for the given class of signals that requires the fewest bits. Linea