Parallel image understanding algorithms on MIMD multicomputers

The heterogeneous nature of data types and computational structures involved in Computer Vision algorithms make the design and implementation of massively parallel image processing systems a not yet fully solved problem. It is common belief that in the next future MIMD architectures with their high degree of flexibility will play a very important role in this research area, by using a limited number of identical but powerful processing elements. The aim of this paper is to show how a selected list of algorithms in which a unique Image Understanding process can be decomposed could map onto a distributed-memory MIMD architecture. The operative modalities we adopt are the SPMD modality for the low level processing and the MIMD modality for the intermediate and high levels of processing. Either efficient parallel formulations of the algorithms with respect to the interconnection topology of processors and their optimized implementations on a target transputer-based architecture are reported.