Application Of The PIPE Image Processing Machine To Scanning Microscopy

Abstract

PIPE is a pipelined image processing device that was designed for real-time robot vision applications. It accepts images from a video camera 60 times per second, and contains hardware for digitizing, displaying, and performing operations on these images at video rates. Each stage of the pipeline contains arithmetic and logic units, convolvers, image buffers, and look-up tables. The purpose of this paper is to introduce PIPE and some of its applications to the scanning microscopy community. Three kinds of applications are described. The first is stereo analysis, whose purpose is to automatically extract range from two cameras mounted side by side. The second application is motion analysis and tracking. This application involves detecting motion, measuring its velocity, using it to obtain three-dimensional information, and tracking it through time. The final application is inspection of two-dimensional patterns.