[Insight-users] Image processing question

[Steve Boyd]

Hello,

I'm just getting started with ITK and would like to use the toolkit to
process image data in real time.  I was hoping I could get feedback on
whether ITK is suitable for my task (I think it is), and any feedback on
my methodology.   

The task, in short, is to use video to track the position of a ball
rolling across the floor. My pipeline should look something like this I
think:

[ImageSource] -> 
[SubtrackImageFilter (to subtract the background image without a ball)]
-> 
[DiscreteGaussianImageFilter (smoothing -- maybe not necessary)] -> 
[BinaryThresholdImageFilter (extract the ball image)] -> 
[Calculate COM (centre of mass of ball image)] -> (output xy image
coords of ball COM)

All the filters are available in ITK it seems, with the exception of
[Calculate Centre of Mass], correct?  I'll write that filter if it
doesn't exist already.

There are two issues that I'm concerned about: 
(1) the capability to do this in real-time (streaming 30 frames/s, 1MB
B/W images). 
(2) if there were two or more balls could they each be tracked
independently? (would require calculating COM for each ball!?!).

If anybody has any pointers, caveats, suggestions it would be very much
appreciated.  It's my first stab at real-time image processing...

Sincerely,

Steve



-- 
Steven Boyd, PhD

Assistant Professor
Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering
University of Calgary
2500 University Drive, N.W.
Calgary, Alberta, Canada, T2N 1N4

tel. 1.403.220.4173  fax. 1.403.282.8406  skboyd@ucalgary.ca
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