An FPGA-based Digital Camera System controlled from an LCD Touch Panel

Field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) are in use to build high performance image processing systems. This paper presents the design and implementation of such an open FPGA-based digital camera system for image capturing and real-time image processing. Images captured with a CMOS sensor are initially stored in the system´s memory and then they are displayed on an LCD touch panel. The main goal of this proposed architecture is to be used as a platform to implement and test advance image processing algorithms. Apart of this, the system supports the control of the image sensor, through the LCD touch panel. In addition, has the ability to communicate with a PC through a JTAG interface for storing the images on it. The structural element for this proposed architecture was chosen to be the low cost and widely used at universities, Altera´s DE2 development board.