A real-time colour transformation architecture

There are two requirements for computer graphics and image processing. First, the need to specify colours in a way that is compatible with the hardware used. Second, the results should be comprehensible to the user. With this in consideration and with the availability of low cost colour imaging devices it is possible to develop low cost imaging systems for routine applications. With the densities and speed of new hardware devices, it is now possible to consider implementations of colour transformations in hardware. This paper describes an architecture for transforming RGB format video signals into many other colour representations. The importance of this is that by transforming images into other representations, different image processing algorithms may be used and tested for the extraction of features from colour images. Current transformation systems employ general purpose computing systems. This novel hardware architecture is capable of performing transformations in real-time and is easily configurable at any stage. It employs two FPGAs, an interconnecting device, combinatorial logic, and flash memory devices for the implementation of look-up tables (LUTs).