A mixed signal VLSI circuit for skeletonization by grassfire transformation
M. Oláh, P. Masa and A. Lõrincz
Proceedings of the ICANN'97, Lausanne,
pp. 1205--1210
Abstract
This paper presents a novel mixed-signal VLSI focal-plane array processor
perfor
ming
the morphological operation of skeletonization of binary images at
a processing speed of up to 10K frames/second.
The chip directly implements the grassfire algorithm.
The system is a 2D array of identical processing elements (PEs) with integrated
photodetectors allowing parallel optical input. The skeleton computation is
performed in a fully parallel, asynchronous manner by local interactions
between PEs, the transformed image is represented by analog values. The
transfor
mation is a VLSI analogue of time-integrated off-center-on-surround type
nonlinear computation. The output of the transformation can be serially
accessed
with an on-chip raster-scan circuit generating
multiscanning-compatible video signal. The system is currently being physically
designed in a standard 0.7um digital CMOS process. Layout of the processing
element and preliminary system specifications are presented.
