A Multiprocessor-System for the Acquisition and Analysis of Video Image Sequences

We give a preliminary report on the organization, architecture and programming of an image processing system optimized for the high speed storage, handling and analysis of digitized time-varying video image sequences. Typical known video processor architectures are characterized by dedicated data paths. Spatial multiplexing is used for system reconfiguration. The multiprocessor architecture described here uses a time-multiplexed synchronous bus for easy system expansion. Control and computational tasks are distributed among several levels of software and corresponding hardware to simplify efficient programming. The basic data structure supported is the data stream. Data streams are assembled and distributed under programm control. Performing I/0- and computational tasks can be visualized as passing these structured data streams through a chain of programmed processors. We expect that this concept, which is supported by hardware, will simplify the efficient programming of concurrent I/0- and computational processes required for fast execution of image sequence processing tasks. Applications from medical X-ray image processing are given.