SecurityWorldMarket

07/09/2008

Real-time ambient light rejection camera development kit

Mountain View, California (USA)

Pixim Inc. introduces its Eclipse camera development kit (CDK), a special-purpose video camera design based on Pixim's Digital Pixel System technology that uses ambient light rejection to deliver consistent monochrome images under all lighting conditions, for biometric and machine vision applications.

Changes in ambient lighting - including uneven illumination, shadows, reflection and glare - confuse machines into interpreting images incorrectly. The images made possible by the Eclipse CDK allow for the kind of consistent, identifiable edges and contours that are crucial for the effectiveness of applications such as facial capture, machine vision and a range of other image-based biometrics and video analytics.

Pixim's Eclipse technology works through a unique method of real-time image subtraction to perform ambient light rejection. The Eclipse ambient light rejection technology emits IR light, capturing image pairs, one containing ambient light and one with ambient and IR illumination. It then performs image subtraction in real time to completely eliminate the ambient light from the image. By canceling out the ambient light, Eclipse eliminates confusion within video analytics algorithms in identifying actual image boundaries, shapes and contours.

"As security measures increasingly rely on biometrics and other machine-based monitoring and interpretation of data, the consistency of the captured image becomes crucial," said John Monti, vice president of marketing and business development at Pixim. "Pixim's Eclipse technology delivers the consistently accurate images required for optimal machine vision results, with the added benefit that it's a small, low-cost, low-power design. Eclipse represents yet another example of the inherent advantages of Pixim's Digital Pixel System technology."

Situations that will benefit from Eclipse-based ambient light rejection cameras include:

Biometrics applications
Facial recognition
Iris recognition
Eye tracking (including glint detection)

Security
Access control (e.g., airports, government offices, research facilities)
Perimeter control (e.g., borders, warehouses, ports)
ATM video recordings
Choke points
Image-based alarms
Trip wires

Machine vision
Robotics
Structured light

The Eclipse CDK takes advantage of Digital Pixel System capabilities including global shutter, fast aperture and very high-speed on-chip memory. These capabilities allow Eclipse-based cameras to offer dramatically better performance with less power consumption and at a lower cost than other ambient light rejection cameras. Eclipse technology also eliminates ambient light from the image, whereas other solutions only reduce ambient light on the order of 10- or 100-to-1, while requiring up to ten times the cost and ten times the power of Eclipse technology.

As a self-contained, compact system, Eclipse technology uses an IR lamp that is driven from an external port, so it can be located outside the camera. As an example, the illuminator can be located near an entryway and the camera located hundreds of feet away, in a convenient, small, unobtrusive place.




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