ON THE COMPUTATION AND USE OF PROJECTIONS OF DIGITAL IMAGES IN GENERAL PURPOSE IMAGE PROCESSING PIPELINE ARCHITECTURES.

The problem of computing projection, of digital images is considered. Algorithms are presented that are suitable for implementation in general-purpose image processing and image analysis pipeline architectures. Also, some new pipeline configurations are proposed 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 these algorithms. The effectiveness of the approach and feasibility of the proposed architectures are demonstrated by running the algorithms in commercially available shortpipelines for image processing and analysis. Examples are shown of the use of projection data for machine vision applications.