We describe a cell-based connected component labeling algorithm to calculate the 0th and 1st moment features as the attributes for labeled regions. These can be used to indicate their sizes and positions for multi-object extraction. Based on the additivity in moment features, the cell-based labeling algorithm can label divided cells of a certain size in an image by scanning the image only once to obtain the moment features of the labeled regions with remarkably reduced computational complexity and memory consumption for labeling. Our algorithm is a simple-one-time-scan cell-based labeling algorithm, which is suitable for hardware and parallel implementation. We also compared it with conventional labeling algorithms. The experimental results showed that our algorithm is faster than conventional raster-scan labeling algorithms.

In this paper, we present a high frame rate (HFR) vision system that can automatically control its exposure time by executing brightness histogram-based image processing in real time at a high frame rate. Our aim is to obtain high-quality HFR images for robust image processing of high-speed phenomena even under dynamically changing illumination, such as lamps flickering at 100 Hz, corresponding to an AC power supply at 50 / 60 Hz. Our vision system can simultaneously calculate a 256-bin brightness histogram for an 8-bit gray image of 512×512 pixels at 2000 fps by implementing a brightness histogram calculation circuit module as parallel hardware logic on an FPGA-based high-speed vision platform. Based on the HFR brightness histogram calculation, our method realizes automatic exposure (AE) control of 512×512 images at 2000 fps using our proposed AE algorithm. The proposed AE algorithm can maximize the number of pixels in the effective range of the brightness histogram, thus excluding much darker and brighter pixels, to improve the dynamic range of the captured image without over- and under-exposure. The effectiveness of our HFR system with AE control is evaluated according to experimental results for several scenes with illumination flickering at 100 Hz, which is too fast for the human eye to see.

This study investigates the effect of frame intervals on the accuracy of the Lucas–Kanade optical flow estimates for high-frame-rate (HFR) videos, with a view to realizing accurate HFR-video-based optical flow estimation. For 512 512 pixels videos of patterned objects moving at different speeds and captured at 1000 frames per second, the averages and standard deviations of the estimated optical flows were determined as accuracy measures for frame intervals of 1–40 ms. The results showed that the accuracy was highest when the displacement between frames was around 0.6 pixel/frame. This common property indicates that accurate optical flow estimation for HFR videos can be realized by varying frame intervals according to the motion field: a small frame interval for high-speed objects and a large frame interval for low-speed objects.