A fast interval processor

摘要

The advent of high resolution Linear Image Sensors, and high p.r.f. stepping motors makes fast continuous scanning a practicable possibility. The FIP system under development at the MRC Edinburgh is intended to scan a conventional microscope slide in a time of 1 or 2 min with pixel size of 1 μm.The high pixel data rate (8 MHz peak) easily saturates most computer configurations, so special electronics is used to compress the data from a set of contiguous, above-threshold, pixels (i.e. ·intervals’) into a set of interval parameters. These interval parameters, which include topological information, are then processed in one or more fast microprocessors to give object parameters from which the cells can then be classified according to some criterion.The paper describes the hardware and software architecture, with comments on special buffering problems due to the continuous scan approach.The linkage procedure used to reconstitute contiguous object descriptions is also described. This has to be very fast since the processing time available per object is only of the order of 1 ms.