An Experimental Digital Image Processor

Ronald S. Cok

doi:10.1117/12.976206

10 December 1986 An Experimental Digital Image Processor

Ronald S. Cok

Proceedings Volume 0697, Applications of Digital Image Processing IX; (1986) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.976206
Event: 30th Annual Technical Symposium, 1986, San Diego, United States

Abstract

A prototype digital image processor for enhancing photographic images has been built in the Research Laboratories at Kodak. This image processor implements a particular version of each of the following algorithms: photographic grain and noise removal, edge sharpening, multidimensional image-segmentation, image-tone reproduction adjustment, and image-color saturation adjustment. All processing, except for segmentation and analysis, is performed by massively parallel and pipelined special-purpose hardware. This hardware runs at 10 MHz and can be adjusted to handle any size digital image. The segmentation circuits run at 30 MHz. The segmentation data are used by three single-board computers for calculating the tonescale adjustment curves. The system, as a whole, has the capability of completely processing 10 million three-color pixels per second. The grain removal and edge enhancement algorithms represent the largest part of the pipelined hardware, operating at over 8 billion integer operations per second. The edge enhancement is performed by unsharp masking, and the grain removal is done using a collapsed Walsh-hadamard transform filtering technique (U.S. Patent No. 4549212). These two algo-rithms can be realized using four basic processing elements, some of which have been imple-mented as VLSI semicustom integrated circuits. These circuits implement the algorithms with a high degree of efficiency, modularity, and testability. The digital processor is controlled by a Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) PDP 11 minicomputer and can be interfaced to electronic printing and/or electronic scanning de-vices. The processor has been used to process over a thousand diagnostic images.

Citation Download Citation

Ronald S. Cok "An Experimental Digital Image Processor", Proc. SPIE 0697, Applications of Digital Image Processing IX, (10 December 1986); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.976206

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