NYU-Poly Professor Launches Advanced Photo Recovery Software; Program Can Reassemble Deleted Photos

An advanced photo recovery software program, smart enough to find and reassemble fragmented digital photographs, has been developed by Nasir Memon, professor of computer science and engineering at Polytechnic Institute of NYU. Called Adroit Photo Recovery, the program uses sophisticated data recovery technology called SmartCarving, developed over years of research at Digital Assembly, a company founded by Memon and two of his students.

“SmartCarving is a whole new way of thinking about data recovery,” says Memon, CEO of Digital Assembly. “SmartCarving looks at deleted photos as gigantic jigsaw puzzles. “To recover deleted photos,” he explains, “SmartCarving uses advanced mathematical models and computer algorithms to solve each of the puzzles with hundreds of thousands of pieces simultaneously.” The program reassembles the popular JPEG format for digital images. The method can also be applied to other formats.

Memon cautions the consumer to think again when they believe they have erased snapshots from their camera cards before selling them. He learned this when he bought used camera cards on eBay to test the power of his software and recovered many highly personal images from them. “People think they have deleted the images,” he said, “but typically they have deleted only the table of contents, not the images themselves. You have to completely overwrite the images.”

Digital Assembly is a Brooklyn, New York-based startup developing innovative data recovery products. The company was founded at NYU-Poly and is currently hosted in Polytechnic’s Brooklyn Enterprise on Science and Technology Center. “Digital Assembly grew out of NYU- Poly’s commitment to invention, innovation and entrepreneurship,” says Memon. “The passion to invent and innovate permeates the Institute.” To learn more about Digital Assembly, visit digital-assembly.com