Hilbert-Huang Transform Success Stories

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Far-reaching Applications of Hilbert-Huang Transform Enable Multiple Successes

Technology Description

Dr. Norden Huang, through his work on nonlinear random ocean waves and air-sea interaction processes, developed the Hilbert-Huang Transform (HHT). The HHT is a highly efficient, accurate, adaptive, reliable, labor-saving and user-friendly data analysis tool that gives full energy-frequency-time distribution of data, identifies very local events of abrupt frequency changes, and portrays energy-frequency more precisely than traditional methods. Indeed, HHT enables previously unavailable analysis of nonlinear and nonstationary data-a difficult problem for science/engineering applications and key to NASA mission success.

The HHT has crosscutting and far-reaching applications, including everything from earthquake signals and global temperature variations to structural damage detection and biomedical data analysis. The HHT is now in use in over 60 universities and government agencies and is currently being evaluated for license by over 40 commercial companies.

Spin-in and Spin-out Successes

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In FY04, Goddard’s IPP helped secure the following five spin-in partnerships for the software program that implements the HHT algorithms:

NASA Ames Research Center will use HHT to analyze data from tests of rotocraft.
The software provides Goddard’s Laboratory for Hydrospheric Processes with a better method for analyzing microwave data related to snowfall on ice sheets.
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), a major teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School, is using the HHT to enhance the diagnosis and monitoring of patients at risk in a number of significant medical areas, such as sleep apnea (associated with increased mortality), epileptic seizures, stroke, sudden cardiac death and neurological disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease and depression.

As part of this spin-out partnership with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), NASA Dryden Flight Center will use BIDMC’s HHT-related findings for air wing flutter analysis.
The Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., will apply HHT to (1) analysis of oceanographic and meteorological data and (2) analysis of vegetation data.
The intelligence community will work collaboratively with Goddard to apply HHT to speech/speaker recognition applications for antiterrorism and crime investigation/prevention work. This effort will benefit NASA also as these advances could be applied to human-robotics interface and systems access control for Space Exploration applications.

Goddard’s IPP is now pursuing even more spin-in partnerships for this technology as well as spin-out arrangements to benefit the private sector and academia. These partnerships are the result of extensive outreach by IPP. A key tool in OTT’s outreach effort is a comprehensive HHT Web site that allows those interested in using HHT to download an evaluation copy.

The HHT has been identified by NASA’s Inventions and Contributions Board as “one of the most important discoveries in the field of applied mathematics in NASA history.” Dr. Huang has received numerous awards for the HHT, including the 2003 NASA Invention of the Year Award. Also, on the strength of this invention, Dr. Huang was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2000, the highest honor that can be accorded to an engineer.

Contact

Innovative Partnerships Program Office
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Phone: (301) 286-5810
E-mail: techtransfer@gsfc.nasa.gov

+ Read more about NASA's HHT technology

Space Shuttle Endeavor

NASA Goddard’s HHT software is playing a valuable role in advancing NASA’s “Return to Flight” mission. (Photo: NASA Dryden Flight Research Center Photo Collection. Space Shuttle Endeavor. Photo by Tom Tschida.)