National Instruments Announces Module for Camera Link FPGA Image Processing

[jboone]

NEWS RELEASE – June 7, 2010 – National Instruments today  announced the release of a new vision module for the PXI platform that provides a high-performance parallel processing  architecture for hardware-defined timing, control and image  pre-processing. The new NI 1483 Camera Link adapter module, in  combination with an NI FlexRIO field-programmable gate array  (FPGA) board, offers a solution for embedding vision and control  algorithms directly on FPGAs. Engineers and scientists can use FPGAs to  process and analyze an image in real time with little to no CPU  intervention. Additionally, using FPGAs helps eliminate the need to  design custom hardware.

"We see the speed and flexibility of FPGAs as a crucial technology to  perform intensive image processing at high speeds," said James Cotton, a  graduate researcher in neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine. "NI  LabVIEW FPGA graphical programming tools along with NI FlexRIO FPGA  hardware for PXI technology, allowed us to quickly develop a high  quality eye tracking solution that can resolve fixation position to  within tenths of a degree at up to 500 Hz.” 

Engineers and scientists can use FPGAs to perform operations by pixel,  line and region of interest. The FPGAs can implement many image  processing algorithms that are inherently parallel, including fast  Fourier transforms (FFTs), thresholding and filtering. The NI 1483 is  ideal for optical coherence tomography (OCT) and high-speed control  systems for applications such as laser alignment and sorting. The module  is also suitable for acquisition from Camera Link devices with custom  tap configurations and high-resolution sensors measuring more than 10  megapixels (MP) requiring hardware-based pre-processing.

The new module supports base-, medium- and full-configuration Camera  Link devices as well as 80-bit 10-tap configurations, all up to 85MHz.  This design gives engineers and scientists the ability to customize the  image acquisition when using custom image sensors. The 85MHz measurement  supports the Camera Link standardized specification to its fullest,  creating an excellent fit for those working on applications with high  frame rates. The module also integrates several I/O options including  four TTL I/O lines, two opto-isolated inputs and one quadrature encoder  input in addition to the many modular I/O and industrial communication  options available for the PXI platform. Engineers and scientists can  customize the NI FlexRIO hardware using the LabVIEW FPGA Module without knowledge of low-level hardware description languages or  board-level design. By using the LabVIEW graphical programming  environment, engineers and scientists vastly reduce their development  time while making use of existing VHDL IP.

Readers can view the FPGA vision white paper on www.ni.com to  learn more about the NI-1483 Camera Link Adaptor Module.