Opto-electronic morphological processor
US5263096A · kind A · utility
Assignee
Inventors
Key dates
| Filing date | Apr 1, 1991 |
| Grant date | Nov 16, 1993 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Apr 1, 2011 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC G)Physics
- CPC primaryG06V10/895
- WIPO fieldComputer technology
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
The opto-electronic morphological processor of the present invention is capable of receiving optical inputs and emitting optical outputs. The use of optics allows implementation of parallel input/output, thereby overcoming a major bottleneck in prior art image processing systems. The processor consists of three components, namely, detectors, morphological operators and modulators. The detectors and operators are fabricated on a silicon VLSI chip and implement the optical input and morphological operations. A layer of ferro-electric liquid crystals is integrated with a silicon chip to provide the optical modulation. The implementation of the image processing operators in electronics leads to a wide range of applications and the use of optical connections allows cascadability of these parallel opto-electronic image processing components and high speed operation. Such an opto-electronic morphological processor may be used as the pre-processing stage in an image recognition system. In one example disclosed herein, the optical input/optical output morphological processor of the invention is interfaced with a binary phase-only correlator to produce an image recognition system.
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.