A real-time hardware implementation of the hough transform

• Published in: Journal of systems architecture Vol. 45; no. 1; pp. 31 - 45
• Main Authors: Cucchiara, Rita, Neri, Giovanni, Piccardi, Massimo
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Amsterdam Elsevier B.V 1998; Elsevier; Elsevier Sequoia S.A
• Subjects: Algorithmics. Computability. Computer arithmetics; Algorithms; Applied sciences; Arrays; Artificial intelligence; Computer architecture; Computer peripherals; Computer science; control theory; systems; Computer systems; Electronics; Exact sciences and technology; Field programmable gate array; Hardware; Hough transform; Pattern recognition. Digital image processing. Computational geometry; Pipelined architecture; Real time; Studies; Theoretical computing; Pipelined architecture; Field programmable gate array; Hough transform; Real-time; System architecture; Gray scale; System performance; Image processing; Hough transformation; Algorithm; Computational complexity; Real time system; Pipeline
• ISSN: 1383-7621; 1873-6165
• DOI: 10.1016/S1383-7621(97)00071-4

The paper presents a hardware implementation of algorithms based on the Hough transform (HT) for real-time straight line detection. In particular, the basic HT on the edge points (EHT) and the Gradient-Weighted Hough transform (GWHT) for gray-level images are analyzed in detail and implemented on a pipelined architecture using Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA). Algorithms execution times are compared with other hardware and software based systems in order to assess the efficiency of the presented approach. The paper shows how the achievable performance can meet the real-time requirements of an industrial inspection application.