1. What is VXL ? Vision Something Libraries
A collection of Computer Vision libraries
Open Source, grass roots effort, 53 developers
Supported by good community, fast response
C++ with pragmatic use of templates
600k lines of code (over-estimate)
1.0 beta release, CVS
Widely ported
Research to Customer delivery

2. Where is VXL? Home: vxl.sourceforge.net
Dashboard (continuous and nightly test builds):
GE Private: openge.ge.com/projects/vxl
Documentation (Doxygen, structured comments):

3. History of CV Environments at GE (Mundy)
Geometer demo fails
TargetJr starts
Morse Project
Oxford Leuven
VIP Fortran (Flex)
Generic Graphics
Xray Metrology
Image Calc (SRI) Lisp
Geometer (GE) Lisp
XCV
TargetJr Used in DARPA Research
Focus Project
Light Gauge
TargetJr (C++)
Segmentation, 3d Modeling, Video, Feature Extraction
PDP-9
PDP-11
PC Platforms
Unix Platforms
Lisp Machine
Dynamic DB
Operator
Paradigm
Image Understanding
Environment (IUE)
Object Modeling
Paradigm
VACE
VXL
simple, light!

4. Why Common Environments? (Mundy)
Accumulation of effort
Basic libraries endure
Useful algorithms endure
Application delivery
Direct from research to application
Matlab not viable
Sharing of effort
Code/algorithm exchange between projects

5. Other Toolkits TargetJr: Computer Vision VTK: Visualization
ITK: Image Segmentation and Registration

6. Motivation for VXL Replace TargetJr and IUE Clean, lightweight
bulky, inconsistent interfaces, slow due to design
Clean, lightweight
Consistent interface to classes
Coding standards
Portability

7. VXL Portability
Platforms: Windows, Solaris, IRIX, Linux, FreeBSD, OSF, Cygwin, PlayStation2
Compilers: Visual C++, gcc, MipsPro, aCC
VCL: Interface to “standard” library
No RTTI, exceptions, nested classes, member templates …
CMake: Cross-platform Make,
Dashboard: Dart, public.kitware.com/Dart
Changing code base with fast response to problems

8. Cartesian, cylindrical
VXL core hierarchy
vxl
GE Private
vcl
STL
compatibility
v3p
contrib
core
vcl_cout
vcl_string
vcl_list
<vcl_deque.h> …
png
netlib
vpl
POSIX
compatibility
vbl
basics
vul
utilities
vsl
streaming
vgl
geometry
vil
image
vnl
numerics
Each Independent
Core Level 1
vpl_rmdir
vpl_usleep …
smart pointers
arrays
sparse arrays
points, lines
planes
conic sections
bounding boxes
polygons
region scan iterators
homogeneous
memory
management
file I/O
convolution
pyramids
warping
vectors, matrices
SVD, QR, eigen
conjugate gradient
Levenberg-Marquart
FFT
command line
directories
regex
binary object I/O
vidl
video
vcsl
coordinate
systems
vgui
GUI
Core Level 2
Call Anything
AVI, mpeg2
frame iterator
Cartesian, cylindrical
geographic, geodetic
manipulation
tableaus
simple and portable OR
use of native GUI

9. VXL contrib hierarchy brl gel mul vxl contrib oul oxl rpl tbl
Video processing, segmentation
Brown U.
gel
Dense image matcher, polygon triangulation, connected spatial objects, digital geometry, KLT
GE Research
3D images, PDFs, classification
mul
Manchester U.
vxl
contrib
Dense image matcher, polygon triangulation
oul
Otago U.
oxl
Epipolar geometry, segmentation
Oxford U.
Robust estimation
rpl
Rensselaer
Image processing
tbl
KUL?

10. Who Uses VXL? Brown University GE Research
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
Manchester University, UK
Oxford University, UK
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
University of Otago, New Zealand

11. VXL Library Level Concept (Perera)
regl
retinal
registration
level 2
retl
Retina Project
libraries
publ
internal public
rdbmel
DBM-Estimator
rtl
retinal
tracing
rpl
Rensselaer libraries
racl
active
contours
rrel
robust
estimation
rsdl
spatial data
structures
core
vxl core
v3p
3rd party
vgui
user interface
vnl algo
netlib
level 1
vbl
basics
vul
utilities
vgl
geometry
vnl
numerics
vil
imaging
tiff
png
level 0
vcl
C++ compatibility
jpeg

12. What is in VXL Core Level 1?
VCL: compatibility layer library
C/C++ Standard library interface
V3P: 3rd party libraries
jpeg, png, tiff, netlib, mpeg2
VBL: Basics library
Smart pointers, arrays, sparse arrays
VGL: Geometry
Points, lines, planes, conic sections, bounding boxes, polygons, region scan iterators, homogeneous
VIL: Imaging
Image memory management, file I/O, convolution, pyramids, warping
VNL: Numerics
Vectors, matrices, basic ops, SVD, QR, eigen systems
Amoeba, Brent, conjugate gradient, Levenberg Marquart, LBFGS (v3p)
Polynomials, FFT (v3p)

13. What is in VXL Core Level 2?
VIDL: video sequence library
AVI, mpeg2, frame iterator
VCSL: coordinate systems
Cartesian, cylindrical, geographic, geodetic
Manipulation operations
VGUI: multi-platform, OpenGL based, GUI
Tableaus
Simple and portable, or make use of native GUI
Display image in 8 lines

14. What is in VXL GE Contrib?
VSRL: Dense image matcher
GTRL: Polygon triangulation
VSOL: Connected Spatial Objects
GST: Simplified 2D Topology representations
VDGL: Digital Geometry
VTOL: 1, 2 and 3D Topology representations
GKLL: Kanade-Lucas_Tomasi feature tracker
VMAL: Multi-View Line matching
GEVD: Van-duc region finder

15. How does GE Use VXL (GE Private)?
Optical metrology for turbine blades
Fold detection, reconstruction
Multiple view image enhancement and superresolution
Registration, numerics
Airway tracking in CT
B-Splines, flexible template matching
Surveillance
Particle filters, articulated object modeling
Pipeline inspection
Multiple hypothesis tracking, Kalman filters
GE Private, project based

16. Segmentation in VXL
Recently ported from TargetJr to VXL (Mundy, Brown)
Van-duc edge detector
Region segmentation based on Van-duc edge detector

17. Questions that should be answered in these slides
What is in Target that is not in VXL?
Is there anything in the C Standard Library or STL that is not in VCL?
Need to improve the listing of what is available in contrib. Next time ask the reflector.