PICCOLOR Newsletter Spring 2004

Again a lot of time has passed since the last newsletter has been published more than a year ago. Many interesting projects have been performed successfully. All the new processors that have been presented by Intel and AMD give a lot more processing power. New MMX and SSE2 functionality shows large gain for some functions, especially the skeleton function and rotations. The enhanced hyperthreading capabilities of the new Pentium P4'E' Prescott processors show a lot of potential, and the new 'Hammer' processors from AMD with their potential of 64Bit processing show their first benefits. Some of the new functions implemented in the past year are:
- Many new functions in the picCOLOR main program
- New functionality in the 3D/Sequence extension module
- New functionality in the 3D Tracking extension module
- New functionality in the Particle Velocimetry (PIV) extension module
- New functionality in the Barcode extension module
- New frame grabber support

New functions in picCOLOR basic program:

- Images can be zoomed out to be able to see even very large images completely (like 4MPixel camera images)
- Image Buffers can now be of any size in x and y
- Images can be arranged and sized on the screen by automatic control
- Morphology functions are enhanced, angular erosion/dilation was included
- New global binarization functions: Abutaleb, Kapur, Otsu, Kittler, as can be found in the Xite program
- New local dynamic binarization functions, as can be found in the Xite program:
- Yanowitz Bruckstein, Niblack, Nakagawa Rosenfeld, Taxt Flynn Jain, Eikvil Taxt and Moen, Parker
- Color space transformations: RGB, HLS, HSI, YIQ, UVW, XYZ, U*V*W*, LAB
- New skeleton functions, by Zhang & Suen, and by Lee & Chen
- GIF 89a graphics format is almost completely implemeted
- New functions for evaluating internal 1D-histograms
- Pattern matching now determines the correlation coefficient
- The average function has been improved in speed
- An image can now be used as threshold surface for another image
- Small objects of any size can now be removed from images
- A very fast integer zoom function has been implemented
- A regression curve can be calculated for the object histogram of Xcg or Ycg (center of gravity)
- Stereo functionality on the following frame grabbers is supported: Euresys GrabLink Expert and IDS Falcon/Eagle
- Save Windows Bitmap BMP is enhanced
- Notebook is implemented now
- Control of digital I/O with DII card
- Communication with COM port, StdOut, or DDE has been improved
- Stepper motors are supported with the CONRAD hardware. The new function has been used for microscope control
- Included watershed, texture, and binarization in the benchmark, also testing processor cache size
- New MMX and SSE2 support, and also test versions compiled for AMD64 are available

Sequence extension module:

- Sequences and 3D images can now be loaded or saved by internal functions instead of MACRO functions
- A new stream file player allows to view very long stream files
- Time stamps can be saved in the stream images
- Manual Snap Shot function for sequences
- GIF 89a animated graphics can be converted to picCOLOR sequences

Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) Extension Module:

- B16 images (from PCO cameras with two frames) can be loaded
- Corellation coefficients can now be determined and used as rejection criteria
- The PIV functions are now available as static or DLL library and can be used in your program

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

- Automatic illumination adaptation for 2D/3D marker tracking
- Error vectors can now be calculated and output
- New trigger possibilities, like trigger by character on serial port (RS-232)
- Individual marker size can be set and rejection criteria can match close bounds for much saver detection
- Additional functions are available for data post-processing and transfer to other computers

Bar Code detection and reading:

- 1D Barcodes include: EAN8 EAN13 UPC-A UPC-E Code39 2of5
- 2D Barcodes include: PDF217
- Now either one single code or all codes of an image can be detected

Stereometric measurement and display:

- A DirectDraw Stereo viewer was developed that allows usage of shutter stereo glasses

Available special modules:

- 3D/Sequence processing
- Interferometry
- Stereometric measurement and display
- Particle Image Velocimetry / Particle 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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