<title>Global image processing operations on parallel architectures</title>

Abstract

Image processing operations fall into two classes: local and global. Local operations affect only a small corresponding area in the output image, and include edge detection, smoothing, and point operations. In global operations any input pixel can affect any or a large number of output data. Global operations include histogram, image warping, Hough transform, and connected components. Parallel architectures offer a promising method for speeding up these image processing operations. Local operations are easy to parallelize, because the input data can be divided among processors, processed in parallel separately, then the outputs can be combined by concatenation. Global operations are harder to parallelize. In fact, some global operations cannot be executed in parallel; it is possible for a global operation to require serial execution for correct computation of the result. However, an important class of global operations, namely those that are reversible-that can be computed in forward or reverse order on a data structure-can be computed in parallel using a restricted form of divide and conquer called split and merge. These reversible operations include the global operations mentioned above, and many more besides-even such non-image processing operations as parsing, string search, and sorting. The split and merge method will be illustrated by application of it to these algorithms. Performance analysis of the method on different architectures-one-dimensional, two-dimensional, and binary tree processor arrays will be demonstrated.