Real-time Hough/Radon transform: algorithm and architectures

The paper describes a new algorithm for computing the Hough/Radon transform (HT/RT) with reduced number of operations, and a dedicated single- or multiprocessor pipeline architecture, based on this algorithm. The latter envisages use of intermediate polar representation of image data. The implementation utilizes integer arithmetic only which makes the hardware realization compact and effective. The HT/RT architecture is equally suitable both for binary and gray-scale image transformation, which is achieved in constant time regardless of the scene contents. Since the transformation can be accomplished during a frame acquisition, the hardware device is able to act as a specialized HT/RT camera