<title>Novel hardware architecture for real-time, continuous line scan processing</title>

Abstract

Time delay and integration (TDI) line scan cameras generate continuous, high resolution images of surfaces moving at very high speeds and are ideally suited to continuous surface inspection. However, continuous inspection applications that use TDI line scan cameras present formidable challenges to machine vision processors. For instance, line scan images are very wide and flow continuously from the camera with no frame breaks. These infinitely long images must undergo complex 2D processing in real-time. Multiple camera outputs must be elegantly managed and processed concurrently. Frame-based vision processors have limited ability to process continuous line scan video. This paper describes a new machine vision processor based on novel hardware architecture that has been specifically designed for real-time processing of continuous line scan images. Pipelined and parallel, this architecture used a series of modular processing elements to continuously process very wide, infinitely long line scan images.