tamura@cavax3.cis.canon.co.jp (Hideyuki Tamura) (06/14/91)
The following message is from Dr.T.Matsuyama, the chairperson of TC5 of
IAPR. This is posted instead of him.
Hideyuki Tamura
Information Systems Research Center
Canon Inc.
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CALL FOR REPORTS ON
IMAGE PROCESSING / COMPUTER VISION SOFTWARES ON WORKSTATIONS
I am serving as the chairman of Technical Committee 5 of IAPR
(International Association for Pattern Recognition). General topics of
our TC are on benchmarking and software. Currently we are conduction a
world-wide survey on "new-generation" image processing / computer vision
software systems. Motivations behind this survey are as follows:
[MOTIVATIONS OF THE SURVEY]
In the 1980's, advances of computer hardware and software technologies
produced so called engineering workstations to realized new flexible
programming environments. They equip high resolution (color) bitmap
displays with so-called multi-window systems, high speed network
interfaces with standardized protocols, and fast CPU's and large
memories with many powerful programming tools. Moreover, several new
programming paradigms have been proved to be very useful in many
application areas: functional languages like Lisp, logic programming
languages like Prolog, and object-oriented languages like Smalltalk.
These new featured hardwares and softwares enable us to develop new
generation image processing / computer vision software systems. In
fact, many research groups and some private companies are developing new
image processing / computer vision softwares making full use of such new
programming environments.
Considering the current situations mentioned above, we believe that
it is very useful for all members of IAPR to survey newly developed
image processing / computer vision softwares on workstations.
On behalf of TC5 of IAPR, I would like to ask you to report
characteristics of the software systems that you and/or your research
group have developed / are using.
The format of the report is shown in the last part of this mail with an
example description. I would appreciate it if you could send the report
by e-mail to me BY THE END of JULY. We are sending this mail to
researchers and research institutions around the world who have
developed image processing / computer vision software systems on
workstations.
We plan to summarize the reports gathered and publish the survey as a
technical paper or a article of the IAPR Newsletter. Since our survey
is purely motivated by academic interests and its objective is to inform
characteristics of new-generation image processing / computer vision
softwares to all members of IAPR, your report and the survey will never
be used for any commercial purposes.
I would greatly appreciate it if you would help us by writing a
report on the software systems used by your group.
LASTLY, SINCE I CANNOT DIRECTLY ACCESS THIS NEWSGROUP, I ASKED CANON
INC., WHO WROTE THE ATTACHED REPORT ON VIEW-STATION FOR OUR SURVEY, TO
POST THIS ARTICLE TO THE NEWSGROUP, AND I WOULD LIKE YOU TO SEND YOUR
REPORTS DIRECTLY TO ME AT THE FOLLOWING E-MAIL ADDRESS.
Sincerely yours,
Takashi Matsuyama
Department of Information Technology
Okayama University
Okayama, Okayama 700
Japan
TEL: +81-862-52-1111 ext.510
+81-862-53-9453 (direct)
FAX: +81-862-55-9136
E-mail: tm@chino.it.okayama-u.ac.jp
[EXAMPLE OF THE SURVEY FORMAT]
(1)Name of Software System
VIEW-Station
(2) General Information
(2-1)Developper: Canon Inc., Japan
(2-2)Contact Address:
H.Tamura
Information Systems Research Center
Canon Inc.
890-12 Kashimada, Saiwai-ku
Kawasaki, Kanagawa 211 Japan
TEL:+81-44-549-5111
FAX:+81-44-549-5434
E-Mail:tamura@canon.co.jp
(2-3)Commercial vs Public Domain
Semi-public domain; VIEW-Station is a free software but is not a
public domain software. Users must sign a license agreement with
Canon Inc. in Japan.
(2-4)Documentation
(a)VIEW-Station Software System: An Overview
(b)VIEW-Windows Overview
(c)microV-Sugar Users Manual
(d)Reference Manuals of V-Server, V-Sugar, V-Sugarlib, VIEW-
Windows and microV-Sugar (On-line Manual)
(Languages)All manuals are written in both Japanese and English.
(3)Objective/Goal
VIEW-Station (Vision and Image Engineering WorkStation) is an image
processing software system on workstations which is based on a
combination of contemporary workstation and image processing hardwares.
The aims of the system are research and development of image processing
applications. Further aims of the system are to avoid unnecessary
duplications of software developments in academia and industry, and to
provide a common software platform to encourage healthy application
development. With such common platform, we will be able to exchange and
test programs developed at foreign organizations very easily.
(4) Host Computer and Dedicated Image Processor Requirements
The VIEW-Station software system runs on various systems consisting of
UNIX workstations (e.g. SUN, HP, DEC), and memory mapped image
processing hardware using the VMEbus (e.g. VICOM, Nexus). Library
routines, which are to be used in developping application programs and
application systems, are implemented to have hardware independent
interfaces ( calling sequences ). Thus, the system is also usable with a
standalone workstation without any image processing hardware.
(5) OS Requirements
The VIEW-Station software is implemented on such UNIX operating systems
that supports the socket and system calls managing shared memory. Also,
the system call mmap is used for combining a workstation with image
processing hardwares. Note that some UNIX systems do not support the
shared memory management.
(6) Organization of the Software System
The system software consists of the following three levels,
(a) System Level (System Software)
This level absorbs the differences between image processing systems
(hardware). V-Server is a module to dynamically manage the resources
of the image memory, which may be a part of the shared memory on a
workstation or a frame buffer of an image processing hardware. V-
Server also supports basic functions for users to design image
processing languages and image processing programming systems. That
is, it implements the OS (pseudo system call) level function
extensions specific to image processing such as image memory
allocation.
(b) Programming Level (Programming Tools)
This is the level for developing image processing application
programs. V-Sugar is a framework (an image processing language) to
implement image processing programs. This level also includes an
image processing algorithm library V-SugarLib, an image file system
library VSFilSys, and a window system library VIEW-Windows, which are
used in developping various image processing programs. Moreover,
SPIDER I and II, which include more than 500 image processing
algorithms, can be used.
(c) Command Level (End-User Interface)
This level supports interactive and experimental image processing
environments. MicroV-Sugar is designed as a simple command language,
by which users can interactively execute various commands for
standard image processing, display, and file management. It is
planned to provide VS-Shell, another command language with more user
friendly graphical interface, and VPL, a visual programming language
which utilizes a high level graphical interface, as tools which sit
on top of V-Sugar.
(7) Image Processor Management
Some image processing programs in V-SugarLib are implemented to use a
special image processor, NEXUS6800, with which fast image processing is
realized.
(8) Display Management
Window system: X window system(X11R4), X toolkit
Irrespectively of a standalone workstation or a system which includes a
workstation and an image processing hardware with a full color image
display, it is possible to display black&white and color images by the
same software interface onto the multi-window screen of the workstation
and the image display. It is also possible to display black&white and
color images by the same software interface on workstations with
different types of bit-map frame buffers: 1 bit, 8 bits, and 24 bits
planes. Note that a X-window system and VIEW-Windows on 24 bits color
frame buffers (i.e. Sun cg8 and cg9 frame buffers) has been developed,
with which full color image can be displayed on a multi-window screen of
a workstation. Internal modules for displaying images, graphs, and 3D
perspectives are realized as widgets, so that various user interfaces
can be constructed by combining these widgets and the widgets such as
Athena widgets becoming widely available. VIEW-Windows includes such
utility functions for image display.
(9) (Image) Memory Management
In order to manage allocation, release etc. of the image memory, V-
Server is provided in VIEW-Station. This is an independent image memory
management program running as a process in UNIX, separate from the
process which executes the image processing algorithm. The V-Server
program processes the physical characteristics of the image memory
(size, configuration, etc.) and general information such as the status
of the usage. It serves as an image memory manager which virtualizes
physical memories on a workstation and an image processing hardware. In
writing a program using V-Sugar and its libraries, image data areas in
the virtual image memory are automatically allocated by the variable
declaration in the program. V-Sugar manages the number of references to
each allocated image data area by reference counting, and releases the
data area when it is not referenced to by any variables. Thus, the
automatic image memory allocation/de-allocation facilities are supported
in V-Sugar programming.
(10) File Management
As there are enormous varieties of image file systems, the file systems
in VIEW-Station aim to achieve the following conditions: to be capable
of dealing with multiple file formats to be able to register and deal
with user-defined file formats The file system I/F of V-Sugar is
designed to be an interface to image file systems with satisfy these
conditions.
(11) Network Management
Nothing special other than network facilities in ordinary UNIX
workstation environments is supported.
(12) Program Development ( Programming Language )
Base Language: C++ (AT&T C++ Release 1.2, Sun C++ 2.0)
V-Sugar is a programming tool for image processing which forms the core
of the VIEW-Station software. It is designed on the basis of C++. That
is, a user write image processing programs in C++ using V-SugarLib where
various useful image processing/management tools are implemented. By
inter-mixing the good points of object-oriented and functional
notations, V-Sugar has improved the notation standards and re-usability
of image processing programs. A major characteristic of V-Sugar is that
it provides the necessary data types for image processing. Thus, the V-
Sugar data types are provided as classes of C++ and are used as the
input/output arguments of library functions. The data types in V-Sugar
that an application programmer should know are 8 kinds as follows: grey
image, binary image, line image, class image, label image, distance
conversion image, orientation image and direction code image.
(10) (End-) User Interface
MicroV-Sugar is designed as a simple command language for easy
interactive image processing experiments. As the name suggests, microV-
Sugar inherits the features of V-Sugar: functional style notation and
data type checking. It is planned to provide VS-Shell, another command
language with more user friendly graphical interface, and VPL, a visual
programming language which utilizes a high level graphical interface, as
tools which sit on top of V-Sugar. The release of these user-friendly
interfaces will be in one year.