User:Level zero/proposal

Personnel Information

Name	Mohit Daga
Email Address	mohit.daga@ieee.org
IRC(nick)	zero_level
Phone Number	+91 9783582684
Mailing Address	E#221 Ram Path, Shyam Nagar, Jaipur – 302019.(IN)
Time Zone	UTC +0530

Brief Background

I am an Undergraduate Student in Computer and Communication Engineering. Currently in my pre-final year, I have done diverse range of projects varying from Computer Systems, graphics, Image Processing and Learning. (details are in my Resume)

Project Information

Project Title

Consolidating and Adding the Image Processing tools to LIBICV

Brief summary of Project

BRL-CAD has a number of image processing tools. Currently all the tools are implemented in a modular fashion where in each tool is accessed as a module. The primitive task of this project is to combine the image processing tools to a library and advanced element of this project is to add additional relevant functions from CxImage library to the BRL-CAD’s image processing library (LIBICV). This task will ensure the reusability of these tools by the application programmer through relevant api calls in the code and thus will be useful for building a proper GUI for BRL-CAD and helpful in other new tools/functions to be added to BRL-CAD in future.

I have identified the following list of the various tools (current IPTs) which can be integrated with the CxImage

Project Description (Detailed)

Introduction

• This project aims at consolidating the Image Processing Tool (IPT) (around 100 in number) under a library (already initiated as LIBICV in BRL-CAD).
• Additionally this project will integrate features from the CxImage library to the current tools to enhance there usability.

BRL-CAD’s IPT(s) Information and Current Status

BRL-CAD’s IPT(s) are extensively written for various Image Processing task. Apart from the other formats, it has support for the BRL-CAD pioneered .pix format and the unix plots. Thus BRL-CAD cannot use any other third party library for Image Processing without altering them. Therefore work is underway in strengthening and Consolidating BRL-CAD’s image Processing Library.

Currently these tools are implemented as standalone applications where in each tool is a separate program and separate executable are compiled through these programs. To run any tool, currently we pass command line arguments to the executable file (separate for each tool) and the return arguments are received on standard output buffers or it could be done by saving the output at some location.

Consolidating IPT(s) under LIBICV

This is the primary task of this project wherein the current tools are to be arranged and consolidated to a library lib_icv. It is possible to create our own library of function by writing the current function as subroutines. Any api caller just needs to include the said library and thus has access to the current modules which will be declared as functions in that library.

Libraries consist of a set of related functions to perform a common task. In our case we have set of tools (in src/util) which are compiled separately. We can write these tools in modules (each containing one or more current tools) and compile (into objects) them individually to link that to a shared library. This could be done very easily using the make in unix which helps resolving dependencies and compile modules and link them to shared library.

Among the current tools groups will be identified which could enhance the usability of the tools. Proper Documentation will be done as discussed in later sections.

Introduction about CxImage

CxImage is a C++ image processing library that can load, save, display, transform images in a very simple and fast way. CxImage is open source and licensed under the zlib license.

This library implements various image processing algorithms which are not the part of the current utilities. As per the current digging of the source code of the utilities, I propose to integrate functions from this library to the current BRL-CAD IPTs (as per the attached index) This will give added functionalities with more parameter.

For eg. the pixinterp2x reads and interpolates a .pix file tp double its resolution. After the project this will be integrated to the interpolation module of the CxImage library. This will make sure that the user can interpolate to arbitrary resolution using various methods thus it will enhance the usability of this interpolation function for BrlCad.

Using the CxImage Library Function

To make this library useful with the current libICV, I propose to write a bridge functions to convert between the two formats (icv_image_file struct ⇔ CxImage class). These functions may look like the following

icv_image_file* cvt_CxImage2icv(CxImage )
CxImage* cvt_icv2CxImage(icv_image_file* )

Documentation

• Currently brlcad has man pages for all the tools in the utilities. I propose to change these man pages with the manuals of the functions implemented. This can be done with the sync of converting each function to the library function.
• Besides this since this will turn out to be a library which could be used as a third party library by users belonging to other fraternity therefore, I propose to create a complete documentation of all the functions parameters they take

Why BRL-CAD?

In my final year at the university, I am due to work on my Under Graduate thesis. As per my background, my university has assigned me a faculty dealing in graphics and Image Processing. This motivates me to utilise my summer holidays working with BRLCAD due to their large codebase dealing with Image Processing and Graphics and thus becoming a regular contributor with it in my final year which would help me to complete my thesis.

Why you?

I am good in c, c++. I will not say that I possess excellent coding skills. But I have enough to work on this project. Besides this I am dedicated and have an inquisitiveness to learn new things. Anything else?