COMPUTING GEOMETRICAL FEATURES OF DIGITAL OBJECTS IN GENERAL PURPOSE IMAGE PROCESSING PIPELINE ARCHITECTURES.

The problem of computing projections of digital images is considered. Algorithms that are suitable for implementation in general-purpose image processing and image analysis pipeline architectures are presented. The authors also propose some new pipeline configurations that achieve a remarkable degree of parallelism in the computation of projection data and, in fact, of many other geometrical descriptors of digital images. In particular, random access memories and other dedicated hardware devices are not needed in the algorithms. The effectiveness of the approach and feasibility of the proposed architectures are demonstrated by running the algorithms in commercially available short-pipelines for image processing and analysis. Examples are shown of the use of projection data for machine vision applications.