Streaming Elements for FPGA Signal and Image Processing Accelerators

Field programmable gate array devices boast abundant resources with which custom accelerator components for signal, image and data processing may be realised; however, realising high performance, low cost accelerators currently demands manual register transfer level design. Software-programmable ’soft’ processors have been proposed as a way to reduce this design burden but they are unable to support performance and cost comparable to custom circuits. This paper proposes a new soft processing approach for FPGA which promises to overcome this barrier. A high performance, fine-grained streaming processor, known as a Streaming Accelerator Element, is proposed which realises accelerators as large scale custom multicore networks. By adopting a streaming execution approach with advanced program control and memory addressing capabilities, typical program inefficiencies can be almost completely eliminated to enable performance and cost which are unprecedented amongst software-programmable solutions. When used to realise accelerators for fast fourier transform, motion estimation, matrix multiplication and sobel edge detection it is shown how the proposed architecture enables real-time performance and with performance and cost comparable with hand-crafted custom circuit accelerators and up to two orders of magnitude beyond existing soft processors.

FPGA based Streaming Image Processing Processor (SIPPro) architecture to accelerate data intensive applications

Current data-intensive image processing applications push traditional embedded architectures to their limits. FPGA based hardware acceleration is a potential solution but the programmability gap and time consuming HDL design flow is significant. The proposed research approach to develop “FPGA based programmable hardware acceleration platform” that uses, large number of Streaming Image processing Processors (SIPPro) potentially addresses these issues. SIPPro is pipelined in-order soft-core processor architecture with specific optimisations for image processing applications. Each SIPPro core uses 1 DSP48, 2 Block RAMs and 370 slice-registers, making the processor as compact as possible whilst maintaining flexibility and programmability. It is area efficient, scalable and high performance softcore architecture capable of delivering 530 MIPS per core using Xilinx Zynq SoC (ZC7Z020-3). To evaluate the feasibility of the proposed architecture, a Traffic Sign Recognition (TSR) algorithm has been prototyped on a Zedboard with the color and morphology operations accelerated using multiple SIPPros. Simulation and experimental results demonstrate that the processing platform is able to achieve a speedup of 15 and 33 times for color filtering and morphology operations respectively, with a significant reduced design effort and time.

Geological image processing of petrographic thin sections using the rotating polarizer stage

One of the fundamental problems with image processing of petrographic thin sections is that the appearance (colour I intensity) of a mineral grain will vary with the orientation of the crystal lattice to the preferred direction of the polarizing filters on a petrographic microscope. This makes it very difficult to determine grain boundaries, grain orientation and mineral species from a single captured image. To overcome this problem, the Rotating Polarizer Stage was used to replace the fixed polarizer and analyzer on a standard petrographic microscope. The Rotating Polarizer Stage rotates the polarizers while the thin section remains stationary, allowing for better data gathering possibilities. Instead of capturing a single image of a thin section, six composite data sets are created by rotating the polarizers through 900 (or 1800 if quartz c-axes measurements need to be taken) in both plane and cross polarized light. The composite data sets can be viewed as separate images and consist of the average intensity image, the maximum intensity image, the minimum intensity image, the maximum position image, the minimum position image and the gradient image. The overall strategy used by the image processing system is to gather the composite data sets, determine the grain boundaries using the gradient image, classify the different mineral species present using the minimum and maximum intensity images and then perform measurements of grain shape and, where possible, partial crystallographic orientation using the maximum intensity and maximum position images.

Neural Network based studies on Spectroscopic Analysis and Image Processing

International School of Photonics, Cochin University of Science and Technology

Colour image processing

In the context of the round table the following topics related to image colour processing will be discussed: historical point of view. Studies of Aguilonius, Gerritsen, Newton and Maxwell. CIE standard (Commission International de lpsilaEclaraige). Colour models. RGB, HIS, etc. Colour segmentation based on HSI model. Industrial applications. Summary and discussion. At the end, video images showing the robustness of colour in front of B/W images will be presented

A new processing method of CaZn(2)(OH)(6)center dot 2H(2)O powders: Photoluminescence and growth mechanism

In this communication, we report on the formation of calcium hexahydroxodizincate dehydrate, CaZn(2)(OH)(6)center dot 2H(2)O (CZO) powders under microwave-hydrothermal (MH) conditions. These powders were analyzed by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Field-emission gum scanning electron microscopy (FEG-SEM), ultraviolet-visible (UV-vis) absorption spectroscopy and photoluminescence (PL) measurements. XRD patterns confirmed that the pure CZO phase was obtained after MH processing performed at 130 degrees C for 2 h. FEG-SEM micrographs indicated that the morphological modifications as well as the growth of CZO microparticles are governed by Ostwald-ripening and coalescence mechanisms. UV-vis spectra showed that this material have an indirect optical band gap. The pure CZO powders exhibited an yellow PL emission when excited by 350 nm wavelength at room temperature. (C) 2009 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.

Investigation of AISI 1040 steel corrosion H(2)S solution containing chloride ions by digital image processing coupled with in electrochemical techniques

This paper presents a study of AISI 1040 steel corrosion in aqueous electrolyte of acetic acid buffer containing 3.1 and 31 x 10(-3) mol dm(-3) of Na(2)S in both the presence and absence of 3.5 wt.% NaCl. This investigation of steel corrosion was carried out using potential polarization, and open-circuit and in situ optical microscopy. The morphological analysis and classification of types of surface corrosion damage by digital image processing reveals grain boundary corrosion and shows a non-uniform sulfide film growth, which occurs preferentially over pearlitic grains through successive formation and dissolution of the film. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Image processing technique to count the number of logs in a timber truck

This paper summarises the results of using image processing technique to get information about the load of timber trucks before their arrival using digital images or geo tagged images. Once the images are captured and sent to sawmill by drivers from forest, we can predict their arrival time using geo tagged coordinates, count the number of (timber) logs piled up in a truck, identify their type and calculate their diameter. With this information we can schedule and prioritise the inflow and unloading of trucks in the light of production schedules and raw material stocks available at the sawmill yard. It is important to keep all the actors in a supply chain integrated coordinated, so that optimal working routines can be reached in the sawmill yard.   

Convex Hulls in Image Processing : A Scoping Review

The demands of image processing related systems are robustness, high recognition rates, capability to handle incomplete digital information, and magnanimous flexibility in capturing shape of an object in an image. It is exactly here that, the role of convex hulls comes to play. The objective of this paper is twofold. First, we summarize the state of the art in computational convex hull development for researchers interested in using convex hull image processing to build their intuition, or generate nontrivial models. Secondly, we present several applications involving convex hulls in image processing related tasks. By this, we have striven to show researchers the rich and varied set of applications they can contribute to. This paper also makes a humble effort to enthuse prospective researchers in this area. We hope that the resulting awareness will result in new advances for specific image recognition applications.

Quantitative fractography by digital image processing: NIH Image macro tools for stereo pair analysis and 3-D reconstruction

A set of NIH Image macro programs was developed to make qualitative and quantitative analyses from digital stereo pictures produced by scanning electron microscopes. These tools were designed for image alignment, anaglyph representation, animation, reconstruction of true elevation surfaces, reconstruction of elevation profiles, true-scale elevation mapping and, for the quantitative approach, surface area and roughness calculations. Limitations on time processing, scanning techniques and programming concepts are also discussed.

Quantitative characterization of multi-phase materials by digital image processing

An automatic image processing and analysis technique has been developed for quantitative characterization of multi-phase materials. For the development of this technique is used the Khoros system that offers the basic morphological tools and a flexible, visual programming language. These techniques are implemented in a highly user oriented image processing environment that allows the user to adapt each step of the processing to his special requirements.To illustrate the implementation and performance of this technique, images of two different materials are processed for microstructure characterization. The result is presented through the determination of volume fraction of the different phases or precipitates.

A new processing method of CaZn2(OH)(6)center dot 2H(2)O powders: Photoluminescence and growth mechanism

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)