Control system and smart camera with image based trigger for fast synchrotron applications

High-speed X-ray imaging applications such as radiography and tomography play a crucial role for non-destructive investigations in material and biology sciences. For data-intensive applications, on-line analysis of the data is necessary for initial quality assurance and data-driven feedback. In this article we will present a new smart camera platform, with embedded FPGA processing that is able to stream and process data continuously in real-time. It is used in the new imaging beamline IMAGE, in ANKA. The new smart camera platform consists of a CMOS sensor, an FPGA readout card connected with a high speed PCIe interface to the GPU-based readout computer. It is tightly coupled to a newly implemented control system, called Concert. Concert enables efficient operation of the beamline by integrating devices and experiment process control, as well as data analysis. A key feature of smart cameras is embedded image processing. In this article we will demonstrate the potential of this approach with the implementation of an image-based self-event trigger. The algorithm automatically restricts the readout to selected regions with changed content. Application dependent trigger parameters are hidden by our control system which sets them automatically according to experiment requirements and conditions.