The evolution of displays over the last decade and a half, has seen a linear extrapolation from designs that perform simple raster refresh to include processing of those algorithms that can be easily and inexpensively added on within the basic architecture. Operations that do not fit this 'straightjacket' have been rejected as too expensive or even impossible to implement. The paramount example is geometric warp, the unavailability/expense of which has meant that the advantages of interactive digital image processing have not found practical use in many cases due to the difficulty of accessing the necessary subset of data, in the correct orientation, for display on the screen. To a user, the limitations are functional - not being able to turn a knob and rotate the image - but they have their roots in two definable categories. The base technology has not supported many desired functions, or perhaps has not supported them at an acceptable cost, plus there has been a rather narrow perspective of the design of image processing displays. The limitations of existing displays are summarized below: Refresh memory design Nearly all existing systems use discrete channels of refresh memory. This has either limited the size of the system, since the cost/practicality of multiplexing all the re-sultant paths becomes prohibitive, or it has limited the flexibility of the system by forcing groups of memory channels to be multiplexed in mutually exclusive sets. Further-more, discrete channels constrain the image size to be multiples of the channel size both spatially and radiometrically. This impacts the operational use of the system and may impact its cost (consider medical applications with say one dozen, 128x128 images in a case study).

Date Published: 11 July 1985
PDF: 7 pages
Proc. SPIE 0534, Architectures and Algorithms for Digital Image Processing II, (11 July 1985); doi: 10.1117/12.946566

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 0534:
Architectures and Algorithms for Digital Image Processing II
Francis J. Corbett, Editor(s)