Joseph A. Sgro (born September 20, 1949, San Diego, California) is a mathematician, neurologist and a technologist/entrepreneur in the field of frame grabbers, high speed smart cameras, vision processors, and related computer vision and machine vision technologies.
Sgro began his career as an academic researcher in advanced mathematics and logic. He received an AB in Mathematics in 1970 from UCLA followed by an MA in mathematics in 1973 and a PhD in mathematics in 1975 from the University of Wisconsin, where he studied logic model theory under H. Jerome Keisler.[1]
After serving as an instructor and post doctoral fellow at Yale and also holding a membership at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton University, Sgro returned to school to study neurology, and received his M.D. in 1980 from the Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine at the University of Miami, followed by an internship and a residency in neurology.
As an outgrowth of his work in neurophysiology, while still working as a post-doctoral fellow and an assistant professor of neurology, Sgro founded Alacron, Inc. in 1985 to manufacture frame grabbers and related technologies to commercialize the technology built to support his academic research. Extending his work in machine vision technology, in 2002, Sgro founded FastVision, a maker of smart cameras.
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During his first year as a PhD candidate at the University of Wisconsin, Sgro proved that the topological branch of model theory has completeness, which had previously been widely believed but was not definitely established.
Sgro’s proof drew attention throughout mathematical world, and, in 1974, a year before finishing his PhD, he was awarded a three year appointment as a Josiah Willard Gibbs Instructor in Mathematics at Yale University and received an NSF research grant to continue his work in topological model theory.[2] Wisconsin allowed him to accept this honor while remotely completing his thesis and dissertation at Wisconsin, which he did in 1975. His conclusions regarding the topological model theory formed the basis of his PhD thesis and dissertation. Published in in 1977, Sgro’s thesis “Completeness Theorems for Topological Models” also included additional theories by Sgro that were published in 1976 in the Israel Journal of Mathematics. His work also resulted in an invitation to speak at the Logica Colloquim ’77 European Meeting of the Association for Symbolic Logic. This event was held in Wrocław, Poland, which was then still part of the Eastern Bloc, making Sgro among the first mathematicians from the West to speak at an event “behind the Iron Curtain.”[3] Sgro also spent 1977-1978 at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University.[4]
Key research includes:
While researching mathematical logic, Sgro became interested in investigating the logic systems that the brain uses to process sensory information, and returned to school, intending to study neurophysiology, the branch of neurology and physiology that examines the functioning of the peripheral nervous system and cortical processing of sensory information. Neurophysiological research typically uses imaging tools for visualizing chemical activity in nerve pathways, and today also involves fMRI and other technologies to visualize brain activity. After receiving his M.D. degree from Miami in 1980, Sgro completed his internship at the University of North Carolina in 1981 and his residency in neurology at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in 1984.
After serving as a post-doctoral fellow in neurophysiology (1983–1985), as an Associate in Neurology (1985–1986) and then as an Assistant Professor of Neurology (1986–1987) at The College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University in New York City, Sgro relocated to Richmond, Virginia. There he served first as an Associate Professor of Neurology and as the Head of Neurophysiology (1987–1991) and finally, as Chief of the Division of Clinical Neurophysiology (1991–1994) at the Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center.
While working as a neurology researcher, Sgro focused increasingly on the use of machine vision technologies (especially frame grabbers) during surgery, to acquire graphical imagery measuring the operation of neurological function in various states of consciousness.
During his post-doctoral fellowship at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, Sgro achieved recognition in the medical community for his research and findings on the theory of evoked potentials, with a particular focus on somatosensory evoked potentials (SSEPs). He proved that SSEPs were “state dependent,” varying depending on whether the patient was awake or asleep (anesthetized). Following these findings, Sgro developed a more effective way to utilize the theory of evoked potentials by inventing technology and techniques to analyze ultra fast, pseudo-random evoked potentials. This work produced a more effective identification and treatment of sub-clinical diseases (diseases that otherwise went undetected and/or untreated until they become severe enough to qualify as clinical).
Achieving more effective detection and treatment of sub-clinical diseases involved increasingly intensive intra-operative patient monitoring. This research and the resulting findings stimulated Sgro’s interest in machine vision, specifically the use of frame grabbers to monitor neurological impulses during complex surgery.
To commercialize hardware developed initially for evoked potentials research, in 1985, Sgro co-founded Alacron, Inc. to do basic research and to build commercial medical imaging products such as frame grabbers. He was also appointed as an adjunct associate professor of Neurology at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in 1994.
Sgro's research work resulted in the following publications and grants:
In 1985, Sgro co-founded Alacron, Inc. in Nashua, New Hampshire. Sgro and the Alacron engineering team focused on the development and production of frame grabbers and high speed image processing computational subsystems. The product family currently includes frame grabbers, software, data recording devices and supporting peripherals. Despite initial focus on neurophysiology research and medical imaging, Alacron saw uses for its products expand outside the field of medicine into other applications, such as manufacturing, military, and other industries that use robotics extensively. Alacron is one of the two largest frame grabber manufacturers in the Automated Imaging Association's annual market data report.[11]
Examples of broader machine vision uses of frame grabbers originally developed for use in medical imaging include AS&E, which incorporated Alacron technology in backscatter X-ray equipment used for border security, and as image capture used for Voyage Data Recorders, the maritime equivalent of aviation “black boxes.”
In addition to the commercial product lines offered by Alacron, Sgro continued to perform basic research in integrating frame grabber technology with specialized systems for various disciplines. The company received SBIR grants where Sgro acted as principal investigators, including:
Academic presentations of Alacron’s technology and research include:
In 2002, Sgro launched FastVision, LLC. FastVision builds high-speed megapixel-plus digital cameras, based on CMOS imagers. The company's goal is to produce smart cameras, cameras with high-speed scalable integrated processing capabilities built into the same package housing the optoelectronics. Like most smart camera vendors, FastVision’s suite includes integrated FPGA processing and memory subsystems to enable in-camera image processing. When integrated with a high powered frame grabber or vision processor board (or a host subsystem), the resulting system capabilities can be expanded beyond simple image compression. The smart camera subsystem can be integrated with disk or non-volatile semiconductor storage inside or outside the camera to hold sustained real-time data acquisition, a valuable aid to system effectiveness when network connectivity is overloaded or is unavailable.
Applications for smart cameras range from security and surveillance, to robotics in medicine and manufacturing, to military applications such as bots, drones and intelligent weaponry, to satellites and inner and outer space exploration.