ACOP Video Application Users Manual

Description

ACOP Video Application is an application which can be used to render live image data from the tine system. The applciation requires a connection to an image server, which it then polls for data and displays an image on the main canvas.

The application also provides several different options and applications, such as color space settings, aspect ration, analysis etc. which are described in the sections below.

Main Window

AcopVideoApplication

The main window of the application consist of two separate parts: the image canvas (upper part) is used for rendering the image and at the bottom of the window there are main control for the application.

Connection section defines the channel from which the application shall poll data. Enter the name of the channel (e.g. /PETRA/MDI2_Prosilica2/Output/Frame) or press the small button next to the inpout field and browse the ENS explicitly. Once the channel is selected, the PLAY and STOP buttons become available. To start the video display, press the PLAY button to stop the video at any time press the STOP button.

Configuration section provides the most common display settings. Color combo box allows selection of color map to be used on the image. The intensity of the beam in the image will be display according to the selected color map. Zoom combo box provides the option to zoom in or out from the image; there are several predefined scale factors that one can select and image will be drawn as selected immediately. Overlay combo box allows user to turn the overlay info on or off: if ON the image data will be constantly on, if OFF meta data will never be displayed, and if AUTO data is displayed on mouse over only. Keep Aspect Ratio defines if the image is shrunk or expanded to fill the entire available space or if the original aspect is kept.

The File section provides two buttons for saving the image. These two buttons are available only when the video feed is stopped. When pressing any of the buttons, user is required to specify the destination file into which the image is stored. In case of Save As command the raw image is stored (no normalization or color map is applied to the image) and in case of Export command the current snapshot is stored (any applied settings are visible on the exported image). Both commands always save the full size image.

Popup menu is also available on the image canvas, which provides some of the features mention above such as start and stop. Other common acop features are also included, such as connection info, capture screen (same as Save As) and preferences dialog can be opened, which provides several other settings.

Preferences Dialog

The preferences dialog consists of 3 sections: Analysis, Connections and Video Properties.

Analysis

Analysis panel provides options for on-the-fly image analysis. It is divided into three sections: Parameters, Background, and Threshold.

On the top of the analysis setting panel one can choose one of three possible analysis modes:

  • No Analysis - no image analysis is performed; image is drawnas received from the server
  • Local Analysis - image analysis is performed on the local machine. Raw image is received from the server and then specific calculation is performed according to the selected parameters. In this mode any video channel can be selected.
  • Remote Analysis - image analysis is performed on the remote server. In this case one has to connect to a specific Video Analysis Server, property Analysis. All the necessary analysis is performed on the server and user only receives the analysis results, which are drawn on the canvas.

When remote or local analysis is selected, two side views are displayed next to the video image and certain additional markers are drawn on the main image canvas. The main analysis is done as statistical analysis of the image. The average, standard deviation, amplitude etc. are calculated using simple statistical calculation. While this method works acceptably for well defined beam shapes it fails in case of a sparse beam. The results of this analysis are visible in the canvas with red color.

Apply and Reload buttons are used only in Remote Analysis mode. When a value is changed by the user, Apply should be pressed in order to send the data to the server. If you change a value and decide that you do not want to apply it, you can reload the values from the server using the Reload button. In Local Analysis the changes are applied automatically.

In the bottom of the customizer, there is a checkbox Display Values, which opens a table that displays all analysis values:

  • First section provides the 1-dimensional data (xy projection). This is the data obtained from the analysis of the side views for horizontal and vertical axes. For each of these two there are five values: mean (m), standard deviation (s), amplitude (A), slope (k) and constant (C). The distribution function is defined as A e^((x-m)^2/(2s^2)) + k x + C. For each of these two values there are two results: one is from the statistical analysis and the other one results from the fitting algorithm.
  • Second section provides 2-dimensional data. STD A and STD B are the standard deviations in the main axes and rotation is the angle of rotation of these axes from the normal x-y coordinate system. Amplitude is the amplitude of the image (bit value) and minimum is the minimum (bit) value.
  • Third section provides the image data.

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AcopVideoApplication Analysis Parameters
Parameters
AcopVideoApplication Analysis Parameters

Parameters tab provide the most basic analysis options:

  • Display Statistics turns on/off the statistical analysis curve (red curve) in the sideviews.
  • Perform Fitting turns on/off additional algorithm to calculate the beam parameters. This option enables fitting of the side views using Levenberg-Marquardt fitting algorithm. The algorithm is in general very precise, but it requires some more time and should therefore be used only at slower refresh rates. The fitting data is plotted in green.
  • Perform Smoothing turns on/off the smoothing algorithm. If on the data in the sideviews will be smoothed by averaging the values around each of the values. This features allows for simple remove of the noise and may sometimes lead to better fitted results.
  • Region Of Interest defines the region which is used during the analysis. One can specify a precise region around the center of the beam to minimaze the background impact on the analysis. The region of interest is marked on the main canvas with a blue square.
  • Select Entire Image will change the region of interest to include the entire monitored image.

    Threshold part of the parameters tab is used to define the threshold for calculation. The threshold is a value, which defines the lower boundary, which is still used in the analysis. Any pixel of the image, which has a lower value than the threshold, is excluded from analysis.

Background
AcopVideoApplication Analysis Background

Background section provides options to select and apply the background to the current image. User is able to trap the current image as background to use no background or to select a specific image from the hard drive.

The background image is always subtracted from the real image. The subtraction is done in a ways that the live image is first converted into raw rgb values and so is the background image.

Threshold
AcopVideoApplication Analysis Threshold
  • Threshold defines the individual pixel threshold value. Every pixel which has the luminosity lower than threshold is omitted from calculation.
  • Apply Threshold turns on/off the threshold usage. At any time user can decide that the threshold entered in the Threshold field is used in calculation or not. First, user needs to specify the threshold value and after that the threshold is applied. When the threshold is applied it cannot be changed. If the threshold needs to be changed, first untick the Apply Threshold checkbox, change the value and apply the threshold again. When the checkbox is unticked, no threshold is applied (this is not the same as 0 threshold: due to background subtraction image can have negative values, which can be below threshold or not).
  • Automatic Threshold Calculation defines if the threshold is calculated automatically or user defines his own threshold value. If calculation is selected, the average value is calculated in the treshold region of interest and that value is taken as threshold. If calculation is turned off, user is allowed to explicitely define the threshold that he wants to use.
    Threshold is calculated in the region marked as Threshold ROI, however the values that lay inside
    the original ROI are skipped.
    
  • Threshold Calculation Region defines the region which is scanned for automatic threshold calculation. This region is marked with orange square on the main video canvas.
  • Select Entire Image will change the threshold egion of interest to include the entire monitored image.
  • Copy Values from ROI copis the current ROI and sets its also as the threshold region.
Applied Settings
AcopVideoApplication Analysis Settings

Applied settings sections provide the overview of the values currently applied on the analysis engine.

Connection

AcopVideoApplication Connection

Connections section provides the ENS browser, where user can select the image channel that he wants to connect to. Access rate and mode can also be selected as well as other tine data, that is used for connection, can be specified.

Video Properties

AcopVideoApplication Video Properties

Video Properties tab provides the same options as they are already available on the main screen and explaind in the Main Window section.

Video Analysis Server

The current version of the analysis server does not provide all features due to unclear future
of the video transport.

Video analysis server is a tine server, which connects to a specific video feed and performs the analysis of the video image. The results of the analysis are then propagated through the properties of the device server. The server has the following properties:

  • Image - the raw image from the source server
  • Analysis - the analyzed image. AImage property type, which carries with it all neccessary information about the analysis and the analysis parameters. For the contents of the AImage structure see javadoc.
  • AnalysisResult - an array of 8 values, which are the results of the 2D statistical analysis: mean x, std x, mean y, std y, amplitude, rotation angle, std along large axis, std along small axis
  • AnalysisParameters - an array of 11 values defining how the analysis should be performed: threshold, ROI X, ROI Y, ROI width, ROI height, threshold ROI X, threshold ROI Y, threshold ROI width, threshold ROI height, calculate threshold flag (1=true, 0=false), perform fit flag (1=true, 0=false)
  • Background - the background image
  • BackgroundId - the ID of the background image
  • Active - a command that activates or deactivates the device

    When using the analysis server with the video application, one has to select Remote Analysis from the analysis customizer and then connect to the Analysis property.