Data Acquisition and Image Processing Center

The Data Acquisition and Image Processing Center in Hessert Laboratory is involved in the acquisition of quantitative and qualitative data from flow visualization images acquired in its diverse experimental facilities.

The image processing system consists of a PC computer with a frame grabber board, a SONY video monitor with RGB capability (the computer can be used to work with images on the video screen) and a SVHS Panasonic video player. A second video monitor and a SVHS recorder are also available to duplicate videos.

The PC computer with GLOBAL LAB Image (from Data Translation), a powerful windows based image processing and analysis package, captures monochrome images from videotape. The images, displayed on the video monitor, can be digitized frame by frame to measure locations, distances, angles, and so forth. The images can also be stored on disk in TIFF format for future enhancements, such as contrast enhancement, brightness adjustments, smoothing, etc. Better image quality is obtained in the SVHS mode, but images recorded in the standard VHS mode can also be digitized. The video player only accepts a recording speed of thirty (30) frames per second (SP playback/record mode).

Direct comments, questions, and corrections to amedept@nd.edu