Image acquisition system based on synchronized high-resolution gigabit ethernet cameras

Abstract

Over the past few years, a huge increase in the number of various computer vision applications can be observed. These are widely used in such areas as video surveillance, medical diagnostics, biometrics recognition, and the automotive and military industries. Most of these solutions take advantage of high-resolution cameras in order to obtain high-quality images. Surprisingly, little attention is paid in the literature to the practical implementation of off- the-shelf image acquisition systems. Most of the available solutions are composed of custom-developed electronic devices that use specialized multi-core DSPs and/or FPGA technology. Therefore, a novel realization of a scalable and comprehensive image acquisition system based on synchronized high-resolution Gigabit Ethernet cameras is presented in this paper. The proposed solution allows for the connection of multiple cameras along with any number of external illumination modules. The selected devices can be synchronized with each other in user-defined configurations. Hence, a designed solution can be easily integrated in both simple and complex applications. The authors describe the design and implementation processes of the proposed platform in detail. The performance issues that can occur in such systems are presented and discussed. The obtained results are encouraging and useful for the development of similar solutions.