Update December 6th, 2002

PICCOLOR Newsletter Winter 2002


Now the new picCOLOR program had two years to show its advantages for all types of image analysis. In many different projects it has been used successfully. Some of the new functions implemented in the past year are:
- Many new functions in the picCOLOR main program
- New functionality in the 3D Tracking extension module
- New frame grabber support and 1394 FireWire interface

New functions in picCOLOR basic program:

- MMX and Multithreading support for many functions
- New and faster affine transformation functions
- Morphological functions with circular or rectangular kernels of very large size
- Large convolution masks for Laplace filter up to 13*13
- Polynomial dewarping function up to coefficients of 3rd degree
- Bayer true color images can be transformed to gray level or RGB color images.
- New form of Hough transform for line and edge detection, now additionally for circles and ellipses
- New interactive circle measurement function
- Pattern matching functions have been improved and have a new user interface
- Pixel graphics for image presentation: different simple graphics functions and 106 different text fonts
- New supported frame grabbers are:
- Euresys Grablink Value/Expert, IDS Falcon/Eagle, FireWire 1394 (not yet fully tested)
- Other frame grabbers can be implemented easily on request
- The benchmark function was enhanced and shows more tests and displays your computer configuration

Sequence extension module:

New video stream functions have been implemented: now video streams can be saved directly to hard disk. Using the ring buffer system no images get lost even if Windows or the hard disk have larger delays. Tests with very simple ATA RAID 0 systems have shown that a video stream of 32MByte/s could be saved to disk without any image loss. This gives more than 40 minutes of uncompressed video with an 80GByte drive system and a high resolution 1360*1032 pixel camera at 23Hz. Stream load functions allow to load the original picCOLOR streams and additionally other uncompressed streams.
Overlay functions allow to draw different grid types on sequence images during play.

2D/3D Real Time Object Tracking Extension Module:

Tracking is done in long ring buffers now. Therefore some delay by background Windows functions or hard disk synchronization cannot result in any missing data now anymore. A new type of 3D-stereo calibration was implemented that gives much higher accuracy. The new method uses more than the minimum of 6 calibration markers and uses Gaussian least square minimization to find the best fit of the calibration marker array. Measurement errors of the calibration markers are presented as error vector field. Depending on frame grabber and camera system used, either two screen stereo or split screen stereo can be used.

Bar Code detection and reading:

The bar code reader was improved to read barcodes under very difficult conditions with light reflections and dirt or scratches on the bar codes. Additionally the "Code 39" is implemented. The orientation of the code is output to be able to rotate the code images and use them for additional character reading. Additional 1D Bar Codes can be implemented easily on request

Available special modules:

- 3D/Sequence processing
- Interferometrics
- Stereometric measurement and display
- Particle Image Velocimetry / Objekt tracking (PIV/PTV)
- 2D/3D-Position-Tracking in Real Time
- Fringe Correlation Method (for surface deflection measurement)
- True Color Extensions
- Bar Code Reader
- OCR/OCV Character recognition and rotation
- Real Time Processing
- User-Programming in "C"

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