Parallel optical pyramidal image processing

Pyramidal processing is a form of multiresolution image processing in which the image is decomposed into a sequence of images at different resolutions. Pyramidal processing aims to extract and interpret significant features of an image at different resolutions. Digital pyramidal image processing, because of the large number of convolution-type operations, is time consuming. On the other hand, optical pyramidal processors, described here, are preferable in real-time image-understanding applications because of their ease in performing convolution operations. Preliminary experimental results for optical Gaussian and Laplacian pyramidal image processing are presented.