GPU Image Processing for XIMEA high-end xiD cameras with USB-3.0 interface

xiD - is a special family of USB 3.0 high-end cameras that are based on the newest CCD sensors from Sony: ICX674, ICX694, ICX814, ICX834.

Cameras are equiped with XIMEA proprietary "CLEANPATH" readout and sensor driving circuitry, providing scientific imaging device with extremely low readout noise architecture and high fidelity in color reproduction with clear 14 bits/pixel images in all modes. Standard features of the xiD family and the xiAPI include partial readout, different binning and ROI modes, external triggering and flash light synchronization, enhanced sensitivity and exceptionally high frame rates of over 57 fps achieved via 4-tap readout with 14-bit ADC.

xiD features

• USB 3.0 with newest CCD sensors from Sony
• Resolutions 2.8 MP, 6 MP, 9 MP and 12 MP
• Speeds 57, 28, 20, 15 fps respectively
• "EXview HAD CCD II" pixel technology
• Smallest design: 60 x 60 x 38 mm
• Peltier cooled and board level additional options
• Support of Windows, Linux and 30 Image Processing Libraries
• Designed to be USB3 Vision standard compliant
• Powered with single USB3 cable

Data path for realtime image processing on GPU

• Driver gets raw data from the camera
• Driver writes data to CPU memory buffer
• Application sends raw data from CPU to GPU
• Unpacking module for various camera formats
• Dark image subtraction
• Flat-Field Correction
• White Balance
• Image demosaicing
• Base Color Correction
• Denoising
• Curves and Levels with 1D LUT
• Data transform with 3D LUT
• Crop/Rotate/Resize/Remap/Sharp
• Gamma
• OpenGL output to monitor
• JPEG/JPEG2000 compression
• MJPEG/MJ2K stream storage to SSD/HDD/RAID in AVI/MXF

Advantages of GPU image processing for xiD cameras

• Per-pixel shading correction
• High quality demosaicing
• Low latency output to monitor via OpenGL
• Fast image processing for the whole pipeline
• Realtime image processing for multiple camera systems
• Low CPU usage